WRESTLING TIME

a short story by Gary Canup

"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and behold the mystifying anatomical wonder, Elephant-Skin Girl! Her skin is baggy and loose just like an elephant's! You will be amazed!"

"Hot dogs and hamburgers! Get your juicy hot dogs and hamburgers right here!"

"Ring toss, a game of skill! Toss the ring on a peg and win a fabulous prize! Step right up!"

"Mommy, I wanna play ring toss!"

"It's time to go home now, dear."

"I wanna win a teddy bear!"

"It's getting late. You have school in the morning. Besides, all those games are fixed."

"What does that mean, Mommy?"

"Never mind."

She dragged her kid off through the crowd, past a buxom young woman who was strolling down the colorful midway, munching buttered popcorn from a waxed carton. The young woman had lived in this small town all her life and always came to the carnival during its annual visit. She loved it all: the drunken melodies of the calliope, the bustling crowds, the freak shows and the game booths and the delicious snacks; the towering dizzy lights of the Ferris wheel, the centrifugal thrills of the tilt-o-whirl, the speeding excitement of the roller coaster and the frightened squeals of those bold enough to ride; the sword swallowers and the fire eaters, the mind readers and the fortune tellers, the dunk tanks and the shooting galleries! She was always reluctant to go home at the end of the night knowing that the carnival would soon leave town and travel on.

She was a tall, big-boned young woman with short, naturally blond hair, cool and voluptuous tonight in her cotton dress. She was the best-looking girl in town and knew it. The townsmen, the out-of-towners, and even the carnies gawked at her openly, especially her ample bosom. The lustful stares of men and the jealous glares of their women gave her endless pleasure. Although she relished this power that she wielded over men, she never took advantage of it, instead chose to turn up her nose at their crude advances and ribald remarks and walk on by with secret satisfaction. They could ogle her all they liked but none of them would ever possess her. She took an almost sadistic pleasure in denying them her favors.

Lately, however, she had begun to notice that the men were not staring as much as they used to, especially the younger men. She was thirty-five now, and her fondness for snacks had increased her girth almost to the point of plumpness. Her reaction was defiant: so her face was not quite as smooth as it used to be, her chin not quite as high, her eyes not quite as bright; so she had been eating too much and her dress felt a little snug. So what? She still attracted enough admiring gazes to please her vanity. After finishing her popcorn she haughtily dropped the carton in an overflowing waste receptacle and strolled away regally licking her buttery fingers.

"Step right up and behold a miraculous transformation! See this beauty-full girl turn into a gorilla! You will be astonished and amazed!"

"See the human pincushion! Steel rods driven into his body will not faze him! You must see to believe!"

"Come right in for a glimpse of Penguin-Girl! This wondrous oddity of nature has hands and feet attached directly to her torso! Something to tell the grandkids! Step right up!"

There was also Alligator-Man, the Bearded Lady, Wolf-Boy and Pinhead — nothing she had not seen before, nothing that really piqued her interest. She was nearing now the lurid end of the midway, where neon girlie shows prevailed, where the mixed crowd of women and children had given way to solitary men in raincoats skulking about. There was nothing for a decent girl down here.

She was about to turn back when she heard:

"Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and watch a beautiful girl wrestle The Amazing Jerry Attrick! She may be a girl in your neighborhood! And ladies, don't pass up this chance to wrestle The Amazing Jerry Attrick! Pin him and win a grand prize! Beat him on points and win $5,000! ― How about you, pretty lady?"

She reluctantly wandered up to the barker, who was dressed like a singer in a barbershop quartet, and sported an oily black mustache over an oily white grin.

"I ain't never rassled before," she replied.

"You look like you could handle yourself all right!"

She had, in fact, been an excellent athlete in high school, though that had been a long time ago. In addition she watched a lot of wrestling on television and was familiar with many of the holds and moves. She looked uncertainly at the poster mounted on an easel beside the entrance to the rowdy tent, where an unseen bout was in progress, where a crowd of boisterous men hooted and cheered. The poster displayed the picture of a bald and skinny old man in a black leotard standing in a classic biceps-flexing pose, except that his withered arms had absolutely no biceps to flex. He looked weak and infirm but his wrinkled face was cocky and smug.

"This him?" she asked.

"That is The Amazing Jerry Attrick, yes!"

She smiled to herself. The old man could not have been frailer-looking had he been made of pipe cleaners. "Don't look like much."

"He's the retired middle-weight champion of the world!"

"What century he retire in?"

The barker flung his head back and guffawed. "Wonderful! A pretty lady with a sense of humor! You think you can beat him?"

She studied the poster, unimpressed with the old man as a possible opponent. "What did you say the prize is?"

"Beat him on points and win $5,000! Pin him and win the grand prize!"

"What's the grand prize?"

"The grand prize, pretty lady, is eternal youth!"

She looked at him, unsure whether she had heard him correctly. "Excuse me?"

"Pin The Amazing Jerry Attrick, pretty lady, and you shall never grow old!"

She continued to gawk at him. "Yall crazy?"

"No indeed, pretty lady! So what do you say?"

She looked back at the poster, shaking her head. These carnival types were addled. That $5,000 sounded mighty good, though. Ever since she had lost her job at the bank (a jealous female manager had fired her for all the attention she was getting from the male employees) money was tight.

"You mean all I got to do to win $5,000 is beat this old man on points?"

"That's all, pretty lady!"

"Is it rigged?"

"Absolutely not! A deputy from your own town will be in attendance to make certain that everything is legitimate!"

"So what's the catch?"

"No catch at all, pretty lady!"

"How many rounds is there?"

"Only three!"

She eyed him suspiciously. "What would I rassle in?"

"A leotard in the color of your choice, either white or blue!"

"Yall got a dressing room?"

"One that is completely private!"

I'll bet, she thought. Probably peepholes all over it. But then she would not have to undress entirely, she could put the leotard on over her bra and panties. "It better be real money that I win. I used to work in a bank, so I know fake bills when I see em."

"I'm sure you do, pretty lady! So what do you say?"

She continued to study the matter. The way she saw it was this: She was younger, heavier, and stronger than the old man, and she reckoned it would be the easiest $5,000 she would ever win. All she had to do was be careful not to pin the old guy: that grand prize was a load of hooey. She figured this Jerry Attrick codger was just some sad old rich guy who had conceived of these wrestling exhibitions as a way to get his arthritic old paws on the flesh of young women. Other than the humiliation of traipsing around in a leotard in front of a crowd of leering jerks and getting groped in public by a codger, she saw no downside.

"All right, I'll do it."

"Smart decision, pretty lady! Just enter the tent and turn to your right, you'll eventually reach the dressing booths!"

A previous bout had ended about thirty minutes ago, and as the young woman was entering the tent, an old woman was shuffling out, bruised and battered and holding one arm at an awkward angle.

"Gentlemen, step right up and watch a beautiful girl wrestle The Amazing Jerry Attrick! She may be a girl in your neighborhood!"

"Did you know that 'carnival' is a word that derives from the Latin and means 'farewell to flesh'?" a pedantic professorial type asked his date

"I didn't know that," the date replied, with an undisguised yawn.

She closed the curtain and thoroughly inspected the dim interior of the dressing booth for peepholes. She had chosen the blue leotard on the theory that the darker color would make her look less voluptuous than the white, but the garment proved at least a size too small, and it was all she could do to squeeze into it. Having left her socks and sneakers on, she emerged from the cubicle and walked to the large curtain that separated the shadowy rear area of the tent from the well-lit arena, and pulling and plucking at the leotard, she peeked through the curtain. The arena was packed with men who sat in the bleachers laughing and talking with anticipation, the air thick with cigar smoke. There were also a few women in the stands, and they too were chomping cigars. She tugged the bodice and stretched the seat of her leotard in a nervous effort to contain all the fleshy overflow. A roped-off aisle led from the curtain to the ring, in which stood the barker, who was now functioning as both the ring announcer and the referee. He blew into a microphone. "Gentlemen and ladies, may I have your attention please? I now introduce to you our next challenger of the evening! Let's have a warm welcome for: Pretty Lady!"

Unsure of how the crowd would react, she emerged rather timidly, squinting into the glare of the lights ― and the moment they saw her the crowd jumped to their feet and went wild with enthusiasm, cheering and whistling and applauding. Despite the lecherous overtones, the ongoing ovation felt glorious, and her deep cleavage bunched as she thrust her arms triumphantly into the air and galloped down the aisle towards the ring, bosom bobbling. Some of the men reached over the ropes to pat her back, as though she had already won. She trotted up the steps and bent to squeeze between the ropes into the ring and was literally on stage now, dancing about with her arms in the air in an attitude of celebration. The men, as always, were going wild with lust, and she exulted. Go ahead, boys, go ahead and crave what none of you will ever possess!

"And now, gentlemen and ladies, if you would please settle down, I give you our featured performer, the retired middleweight cham-pi-on of the world, The Amazing Jerry Attrick!"

"Booooooo!" the crowd erupted as one.

The curtains at the other side of the tent parted, and her opponent feebly emerged. He was clad in a dark robe, whose drooping hood concealed his face, and he carried an hourglass and scythe. Many of the spectators laughed at his costume. She actually felt sorry for the old man as it seemed to take him forever to dodder down the aisle to an unrelenting riot of boos, some of the spectators actually pelting him with paper wads. Using the scythe as a crutch, it was all he could do to mount the steps, and she wondered whether it would humiliate him to go over and help him into the ring. She decided right then and there to go easy on the old boy: she did not want to snap his brittle bones, and if his withered, trembling, arthritic fingers actually managed to grab a hold of some of her choicer flesh, what harm could it do? All she wanted was to beat him on points and get the hell out of here with the $5,000, which she was already planning how to spend.

At the ropes, he feebly set down the scythe and hourglass. Then, with a sudden agility that startled both her and the crowd, he whipped off his robe and vaulted over the ropes and into the ring and danced about spryly in his black leotard, working his fists like a prize fighter and peering at her menacingly.

After a gasp, the crowd gave him grudging applause, and for the second time tonight she wondered whether she was the impending victim of a scam. She squinted at the old man to make sure that he wasn't actually a much younger man merely wearing a wrinkled-old-man suit beneath his black leotard.

Jerry Attrick continued to caper about. He performed a series of rapid stutter steps to show off his footwork, and the crowd booed his excessive theatrics, but the old man seemed to relish his role of villain and actually appeared to feed off their abuse.

The referee brought them together in the center of the ring. The old man glowered at her with cocky malice. After issuing instructions, the referee told them to go to their opposite corners and at the sound of the bell to come out wrestling; and they obediently went off; but only after Jerry Attrick glared at her with menacing eyes beneath his gray beetling brow and said: "Good luck, lard ass!"

Suddenly she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to hurt him badly.

From the opposite corner he continued to taunt her with both words and gestures. Only at this late stage did she begin to wonder exactly how she was going to defeat this old man. She really did not have a strategy. She had planned merely to push him around a little for her $5,000 but now she feared that she might not even be able to catch the old fart.

The bell sounded, and they approached each other cautiously, circled warily. The crowd looked on with intense eagerness. She was aware that her breasts were swinging and that her butt cheeks were bulging from the leotard but tried not to let the knowledge distract her. The old man seemed to sense, as she did, that the crowd would soon start to boo the lack of action, so he began to provoke her by indicating the expansiveness of her hips compared to the narrowness of his own and the tactic worked for she charged like an enraged she-bear bent on inflicting serious carnage, but suddenly he was gone and reappeared behind her, playfully patting her buttocks, and by the time she spun around he had vanished and was behind her again. The crowd took delight in his energetic antics. He was grinning at her and hopping around as if drawing upon a boundless source of vitality and as she panted she began to wonder what drug the old fart was on as she charged again and this time he pulled from behind him his robe and holding it like a matador's cape drew it gracefully aside and shouted "Ole´" as she bulled her way past and the crowd guffawed and applauded. Slowly he was winning them over. This is humiliating, she thought, turning and panting. I can't even lay a finger on him. If I could just grab a hold of him I could use my superior size and strength to throw him around a little and score some points but I can't even touch him. Maybe I'm charging too impetuously, she thought. Maybe if I approached more cautiously and backed him into a corner I could get him into some kind of hold. She tried this new approach, her arms outspread to limit his room to maneuver around her, all the while being careful not to let him behind her again, and the tactic seemed to work to some degree, but every time she backed him into a corner he managed to squeeze out of danger, dancing just beyond her lunging reach. He was still grinning at her, though perhaps less broadly now, which was a good sign, she thought, a good sign. Dancing about he beckoned her to charge again, tried to insult her into a charge, but she maintained her discipline and stuck to her tactic. Finally the crowd began to boo, and this disturbed her more than she wanted it to. She felt a peculiar need to do something laudible, to get them cheering for her once again, so the next time she backed him into a corner she dove for his spindly white hairless legs but he vaulted over her to escape the predicament and the crowd responded with cheers and laughter. She lumbered to her feet again, winded and panting and sweating profusely under the lights as the bell sounded to end round one.

She retired to her corner and slumped down on the stool and rested against the ropes, out of shape, out of breath, already tiring. She took a drink from her water bottle. The old man disdained use of both stool and bottle and still danced around, playing to the crowd. He's gotta be on something, she panted. No way he should have more energy than she. But at least she wasn't losing. She hadn't scored any points yet but then neither had he.

Before she knew it, the bell sounded again. He lept forward and beckoned her out of her corner, and she put down her water bottle and with reluctance dragged herself out to resume her tactic of cautious approach. She felt as though she had aged a decade since the start of the bout. She felt heavy and sluggish, not unlike an elephant stalking a panther. But she was getting better and better at cutting down his angle of escape and perhaps he was more tired than he let on for at one point she actually managed to grab his leotard and was utterly astonished by the ease with which she spun him to the canvas. "One point for the Pretty Lady!" the referee shouted, and the crowd cheered. She rushed to press her advantage but the old man rolled away and was on his feet again. Wow, she thought. I actually scored a point! And it was so easy. I'm ahead in this bout. Now the old man would have to come to her. All she had to do now was keep him at bay for another round and a half and she walked out of here with $5,000! Despite her exhilaration over scoring a point, she felt irritated that the old man did not appear in the least bit concerned about her lead and in a moment she discovered why, for when he approached, and she reached out to keep him at bay, he spun to the canvas and kicked her legs out from under her and she fell on her face with an "Oof." "One point for The Amazing Jerry Attrick!" the referee yelled. "Shit," she muttered and struggled to get up but he was on her like fur on a monkey and had her in some kind of choke hold with both skinny arms wrapped around her throat making it difficult for her to breathe. She was on her knees and when he pulled her head back to tighten his hold, one of her breasts spilled out of her leotard, and the crowd sprang to its feet. "Holy Cow!" the referee crowed. "Look at that bodacious tata!" The crowd was going crazy and she wanted to stuff her breast back in but he was trying to force her onto her back and it was all she could do at the moment merely to breathe and to avoid being pinned. So there it wobbled for all to see. Perhaps it was the harsh unflattering lighting but the breast to her appeared saggy and even somewhat withered and it was shrieking outrage alone that gave her the strength to break the hold and to use her weight and leverage to flip the old man over her shoulder and onto his back. "Another point for The Pretty Lady!" the referee shouted with surprise. She lumbered to her feet and, to the groaning disappointment of the crowd, stuffed her breast back into the leotard. The old man too was soon on his feet again but he appeared shaken by her escape and for the first time tonight actually seemed to look at her with some measure of respect as the bell signaled the end of round two.

Drenched with sweat and leaden with fatigue, she struggled back to her corner and plopped down on the stool, lungs bellowing, and she did not even have the strength to lift the water bottle. Her back was aching, she had pulled a muscle in her thigh, and she sat there massaging her throat. Drunks, all middle-aged bums, were imploring her for a date now. She looked at the old man. He was no longer clowning around. He sat on his stool, glaring at her with serious intent, and she glanced away. She was ahead by a point. She did not need to score any more points. All she needed to do was to hold him off for another round. But she knew that she no longer had the strength nor the breath. Such was her exhaustion that she was not even sure that she could go out there for the final round.

The bell that sounded gave her virtually no sense of rest. She limped out to meet her opponent. Jerry Attrick was all business now, had all the catlike swiftness and efficient movement of a middle-weight champion rejuvenated. He scored point after point, and about halfway through the round pinned her.

The referee slapped the canvas three times, then hoisted the old man's arm in triumph. The old man left the ring, grabbed his robe and hourglass and scythe, and exited the arena to a howl of cheers.

Gradually the cheering faded into silence.

The arena was empty now.

She lay in the ring, staring into the lights, which were blinking off one by one. It was so quiet that she could hear the distant song of the calliope. Slowly, creakily, she pushed herself to her feet, her body stiff and aching. It seemed to take her a full hour to leave the ring and to reach the dressing booth, to change her clothes, to depart the tent.

The midway was deserted now. The Ferris wheel, the tilt-o-whirl, the roller coaster all were motionless. As she doddered down the midway, she managed to convince herself that it was merely a trick of the fun-house mirrors that she now looked so feeble and old; and she went off down the midway, no longer ogled, no longer desired, no longer young.