A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews

Rather, two five-pound plates came flying out and landed in the dirt. Then two ten-pound plates. Then a set of twenty-fives. When the second set of fifty-pounders hit the dirt Willard and Joe Lon hustled their balls, spat, and scowled at each other.
    Duffy Deeter came strolling out of the Winnebago wearing only a pair of elastic workout shorts that clung to his rocklike buttocks and swelling thighs like a second skin. Earlier when he’d carried the bar out he’d had on a light cotton sweatshirt and pants and looked like what he was: five-six and about a hundred and fifty-five pounds. Now he looked like he’d said SHAZAM inside the Winnebago, setting off an explosion in his little body so that it was not little any more but roped and strung with incredible muscle.
    It was obvious he had warmed up inside. Sweat on his skin shined like oil. He quickly loaded the bar. Across the dusty aisle Joe Lon and Willard watched him. Duffy Deeter regarded the bar, stared at it as though he expected it to maybe attack him. He breathed four quick times, making his rib cage swell like a bellows. On the fourth deep breath he dropped onto his back on the bench, reached up and took the loaded bar out of the cradle, and did ten easy presses, after which he replaced the bar and popped up on his feet. He came up glowering at Joe Lon and Willard. He held them in his feisty little stare.
    They ambled across the road toward Duffy Deeter, Willard kicking at little clumps of dirt. He had on his Puma sprinter’s shoes this morning. He was closing in on Joe Lon’s two-twenty state record and was expected to break it before he graduated. The only record of Joe Lon’s he actually owned, although everybody thought he would own them all before the season was over, was Times Carrying The Ball in a single game. Joe Lon’s old record had been forty-two. Willard had raised that to forty-five. He had carried the ball every play of the game except three. He told Coach Tump he wanted the record and Coach Tump let him go for it. He took it the first time he had the chance and the Mystic Rattlers still won the game by a margin of twenty-one zip.
    Duffy was standing beside the bench breathing when he looked up and pretended to see them for the first time, which both of them accepted as pretense and took no exception to. They would have done the same thing.
    “Hey,” said Duffy Deeter, grinning, “how you doing?”
    Joe Lon smiled back, nodded. Willard said, “We gone be all right.”
    Duffy Deeter loved young jocks like these who thought they were strong. They always looked as though they had an aluminum cup in their pants and a helmet on their heads. Their universal contempt for anything weaker than they were showed in their faces as a kind of stunned bemusement. And most of them talked as though they had just tackled the goal post with their heads.
    “Gittin a little workout?” said Joe Lon.
    “Trying to ,” said Duffy Deeter. “Going to a little iron always makes me feel better.”
    “Do seem to,” said Willard, smiling and winking at Joe Lon, taking no pains to hide the wink from Duffy.
    Duffy said: “Jesus, I hate to come off from home like this and have to work out alone.” He shook his head. “Hate that.”
    Willard nodded at the bar. “What you pushing on there anyhow?”
    “Two-ten,” said Duffy.
    Whatever the rush of blood meant that Willard had felt when he first saw Duffy Deeter and the Olympic bar had subsided and he was just about to walk away when the door to the Winnebago opened and a long-legged, blackhaired cream-colored piece of ass stood there eating an apple in what may have been the shortest dress Willard Miller had ever seen. Raised the way she was in the doorway, Willard and Joe Lon looked dead into the bulging eye of her pussy. She was wearing red panties.
    Joe Lon kept looking at her and said: “I wouldn’t mind me a little iron this morning myself.”
    Willard Miller’s eyes never wavered either when he said: