Vision Quest by Terry Davis Page A

do if people are leering at her, but she doesn’t react well at all to threats of physical violence. Carla grabbed on to Tower and this girl started pulling her off. Tower got between them and told Carla she’d better split. So Carla did. She doesn’t talk about it much. Elmo’s the one who told me. Carla and I get along pretty well now.”
    â€œI’ll be damned,” Gene says.
    â€œListen,” I say. “How would you like to meet one of Carla’s friends? She’s better-looking than Carla—a little flashier. Her chromosomes are probably restructured, but she’s a nice girl.”
    â€œWhat’s her name?” Gene asks.
    â€œBelle,” I reply.
    Gene nods. I’m sure he’s seen her around. Everybody knows cheerleaders.

X
    We’re circled up on the mat and Coach is going over the scouting report for the Lewis and Clark match. L.C. is especially tough in the lower weights. Damon Thuringer, “Sausage Man,” our sophomore at 105, has a real tough one. He’s wrestling a Japanese kid named Kenuchi Mashamura. Mash is a senior who has taken the state championship at both 119 and 112. Early in the season a Spokesman Review article quoted him as saying he was beginning to think seriously about college wrestling, so he thought he’d train real hard this season and drop down to a weight where he could be more competitive. He was sincere. He’s a very humble guy. He’s also a monster, a real teratoid. He looks about thirty years old with his giant little body and his furry eyebrows and cauliflower ears even more grotesque than mine. Of course, Mash is undefeated.
    Sausage is a baby-faced, flute-playing, downy-haired hobbit. Carla thinks he’s the cutest thing in the world and is always after me to stop scaring his little brother. Sausage’s record is four and four. He is well-conditioned and fierce to a fault, but I hope he’s made peace with himself. Coachhas made him captain for the meet. That’ll help a little. It always give the guy a psychological boost. The whole school knows who the captain is because Coach announces it over the intercom at the beginning of the week. Kids encourage him in the halls, call him “Captain” and stuff. And when he leads us out on the mat and circles us up for our warm-ups, people ooh and aah and yell heartening sentiments because they know what a tough match the guy must have if he’s captain.
    As we’re circled here on the mat listening to Coach go over the scouting report, Otto and I plot to harass the Sausage Man.
    Coach is saying he’s glad Kuch and I got our wrestle-off for Shute out of the way a few days early, so now we can get down to thinking about the immediate future. We could have waited until next week, but we were too nervous and wanted to get it done. I’m glad we did. Before, I was worried about Kuch and Shute. Now I’m just worried about Shute. Both Kuch and I still officially have to wrestle off with our number-two men to see who wrestles L.C. But we’ve been beating them all season.
    While Coach explains that Kuch’s man likes to work a fireman’s carry right to a fast pin, Otto and I sneak around the circle to Sausage, who peers out from beneath a pile of wool blankets. He has some trouble making weight. He’s down from 125 as a cross-country man. He spends slack time doing pushups and situps in his rubber sweat suitunder his bunch of wool blankets. You’ll come off the mat after a drill and off in a corner will be a boy-sized green heap with gold trim pumping furiously up and down. We often wonder aloud about the true nature of these movements. It’s reported that his girl is denying Sausage his strokes and that Sausage has taken to throbbing his cob more frequently than may be healthy.
    Otto sneaks one way and I sneak the other. Coach is talking about Romaine Lewis, L.C.’s man at fifty-four. Coach looks around for me. I