An Excerpt from Cataract City

Two weeks after the rally, as spring shaded into an early summer, the Eastern Wrestling Alliance returned to town.

The Memorial Arena was filling by the time I showed up with my father. I pushed through the turnstile, pulling on dad’s hand like a dog straining against its leash. Dad was still in his work clothes, tie hanging from his neck like a wet noose.

“Come on, Dad.”

“Hold your horses, Dutchie.”

The ring was bathed in a halo of light thrown by a mesh-enclosed lamp burning above. Dunk waved at us from the fifth row, wearing his Bruiser Mahoney T-shirt.

“We had front row but we couldn’t save enough seats,” he told me.

“You could’ve stayed,” I said.

“Nah,” he said. “Better to sit together.”

The curtain-jerker was between Disco Dirk and the Masked Assassin. Dirk swiveled his hips and preened for the ladies, which was wasted effort as there weren’t more than a handful of them there. The Assassin caught Dirk with a pumphandle slam and pinned him, much to everyone’s relief.

A few more matches, then an intermission. We stood in line at the concession stand. Further back stood Mr. Lowery and Mr. Hillicker with their sons. Mr. Lowery jutted his chin at my father and said something to Mr. Hillicker; their dark laughter drifted up the queue.

Our fathers bought two draft beers apiece, clinking their plastic cups with unambiguous grimness. Dunk was hopping from foot to foot.

“Bruiser’s up next.”

His opponent was the Boogeyman, who stalked down the aisle with his lizard-green face, stepped through the ropes and stalked around the ring flicking his bright red tongue.

“Let’s go up close,” Dunk said, tugging my sleeve. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

We ran down the aisle as Bruiser Mahoney’s music began: John Henry was a Steel-Drivin’ Man.

“Somebody is cruisin’ for a bruuuuuisin’!”

The crowd rose to a thunderous roar as Bruiser Mahoney burst through a rainbow of sizzling fireworks. He ran with a high-kneed and almost clumsy gait, robe billowing off his heels. His face was set in an expression of controlled wrath­­—of joy. You could imagine a Spartan warrior running into battle with that same teeth-gritted cockeyed look.

“Bruiser!” Dunk cried, stretching one arm over the barrier.

Bruiser Mahoney slapped Dunk’s palm on the way past. It sent Dunk reeling into me. He just sat there with a blissful expression, staring at his reddening hand.

Bruiser Mahoney booted the Boogeyman in the breadbasket, stunned him with a shot to the solar plexus, flung him into the ropes and tagged him with a dropkick, then hauled him up and delivered a mat-shaking suplex. The crowd was mad for blood and Bruiser was happy to oblige.

Looking back now, I could see why the guys we watched those nights never hit the big time—even Mahoney, who’d wrestled for six months in the WWF as Jimmy Falcone, working as a trail horse: a guy whose sole job is to lose and make his opponent look good while doing so. After that stint the promotion sent him packing to the carnival-tent and county fair circuit.

It wasn’t that guys like Mahoney were any less muscular than the men who made their livings in the big league; it was more that their bodies lacked the requisite speed and grace. Their limbs seemed slightly disconnected from their brains. They moved at a plodding pace, more like durable tractors than souped-up race cars. And sure, there would always be a place for tractors, but it was not under the bright lights of Maple Leaf Gardens. The Garden City Arena in St. Catharines with its two-thousand-seat capacity was a better fit.

But we were too young to understand how men might be held back by their physical limitations—we figured these guys were fighting each other because they hated each other. We were fortunate that this was the arena they’d chosen to settle their blood feuds.

It was a see-saw of a match. The Boogeyman sprayed poisonous green mist—in fact, lime Jell-O—into Mahoney’s face, then smashed him with a powerbomb. Normally that would be enough to put away the stoutest challenger, but the crowd rallied Mahoney back. He blocked the Boogeyman’s double axe-handle chop and slung him into the ropes, tagging him with a crippling lariat clothesline on the rebound. He climbed the top turnbuckle. The lights hit every contour of his superhuman physique. Mahoney paused in that silvery fall of light—a showman aware of the moment—before spreading his arms and leaping.

He was only ten feet off the ground but from my vantage he could have had wings. For a moment he remained motionless—the whole world did—then the gears clicked and everything accelerated and Bruiser Mahoney slammed the Boogeyman, spiking him to the canvas.

One. Two. Three.

Bruiser Mahoney grabbed the microphone. “Yeah?” A wild cheer went up. He grinned. “Ohhh yeeeeah!”

The cheer was louder this time. It rose up and up, the sound of three thousand lungs emptying towards the roof beams.

“And I’ll be here, I’ll…be…right…here,” Bruiser said, stomping his foot on the mat. Three thousand mouths repeated his words—we all knew his mantra by heart. “I’ll be right here for you, fighting for you, always with you!”

Bruiser Mahoney’s head swiveled towards the ceiling as he unleashed a mad-dog howl.

“Thank you! Good night!”

Next, we were filing down the aisles, feet crunching over stale popcorn and paper cups. Lifeless, inert, shuffling like zombies under a buzzing Orange Crush sign.

Our fathers bought another beer as the arena emptied. I saw Mr. Hillicker lingering beyond the arena doors. He glanced inside, spotted my father, then turned over his shoulder and spoke to someone I couldn’t see.

“Hey,” Mr. Diggs said to my father, nodding towards the dressing room door. “You figure Bruiser Mahoney’s in there?”

Dad chuckled. “I’d guess so.”

“How would you like to talk to the Bruiser?” Mr. Diggs asked the two of us. “He’s just a man.” I caught an edge of irritation in his voice. “A man like any other man.”

“Like us,” my father said.

Saying this, he turned and walked towards the dressing room. Striding purposefully albeit with a noticeable wobble, pulling me behind him.

The wrestlers sat on folding chairs arrayed haphazardly around a wide tiled room. Here and there were open duffle bags, knee braces, piles of sodden towels and grimy balls of tape. The room was foggy from the steam billowing out from the shower stalls. It smelled of Tiger Balm and something to which I could give no name.

“Hey, can I borrow your deodorant?” Disco Dirk said to the Masked Assassin.

“I wouldn’t give it to him,” one of the Lucky Aces said. “He’s got that rash on his dick he picked up in the Sioux.”

“Ah, go fuck your hat,” Disco Dirk as the other men roared.

One by one they took notice of us. None made any effort to cover up. The Brain Smasher brushed the tangles out of his hair, naked in front of the mirror.

“Bruiser,” he said. “I think somebody’s here looking for you.”

“Is it Estelle,” came Bruiser’s voice from the showers. “I told that one it was once and no more. I’m no tomcatter.”

“It isn’t,” the Brain Smasher said.

“Well who in hell is it?” Bruiser said, stepping into the room with a towel wrapped round his waist.

Maybe it was his wet hair hanging down his shoulders in dark ropes instead of the wild mane I was accustomed to. Or maybe it was the water glistening in the concavity between his chest muscles that I’d never seen before. Or the plastic cup with an inch of piss-colored liquid in it that he downed quickly before tossing the empty cup into the showers. Or was it simply the shock of seeing Bruiser Mahoney in a locker room surrounded by naked men, amidst piles of spangly boots and neon tights? Whatever it was, he looked shockingly human for the first time.

“Mr. Mahoney,” my father said, finding his voice. “This is my son, Dutchie.”

“And my son, Duncan,” Mr. Diggs said, guiding his boy forward. “They’re your biggest fans.”

“Oh, are they now?” Bruiser Mahoney said. “I must say they ought to be, that you’d bring them into this snakepit with these vipers.”

He laughed and strode forward, offering a hand that swallowed my father’s own. He shook Mr. Diggs’ hand next, then knelt down before me and Dunk like a man preparing to accept a knighthood.

“Look at you, my wide-eyed little warriors.”

Up close his eyes were blue, terrifically blue, the skin around them scored with little cracks, like fissures in alabaster. He smelled of carbolic soap. The cleft in his chin bristled with untrimmed stubble.

“Welcome to the bestiary.” He smiled. The point was broken off one eye tooth. “Fancy joining the carnival, boys?”

It was overwhelming to be so close to him, to all these men. I still struggled with the notion that the Masked Assassin might lend Disco Dirk his deodorant. Was it possible that any of these men actually wore deodorant, or stood in line at the post office to mail a parcel or behaved in any way like normal people? How could a creature like the Boogeyman have a job, a mortgage, a wife? It was impossible to imagine him grilling steaks in his backyard, his lizard-green face grinning above a Kiss the Cook apron. I had figured these men vanished behind the curtain after a match and lived in some nether-realm, squabbling amongst themselves like petulant demigods until they stepped back through that curtain to settle their grievances the next month.

“You’re my favourite wrestler.” There was a quaver in Dunk’s voice. “You’re sort of…well, perfect.”

Bruiser Mahoney laughed. His breath washed over me. I caught the same smell that I’d once caught coming off my father when he stepped into my room late one night, watching me silently from the foot of the bed.

“Perfect, he says. You hear that, fellas? It’s like I keep telling you!”

“A perfect boondoggle,” Outbacker Luke cracked.

Bruiser Mahoney took our fathers aside.

“…come by your house, do the dog-and-pony,” I heard him say. Our fathers sunk their hands into their pockets and smiled politely. “…reasonable rate…wouldn’t gyp you fellas…”

My father rested his hand on Bruiser’s shoulder, patting it the way you might pat a dog. Next he reached for his wallet. Mahoney’s big hand went to my father’s wrist, trapping his hand in his pocket.

“Later,” he said softly. “Either of you have a stick of gum?”

When he came back his breath smelled of spearmint instead of whatever had been in the plastic cup. He grabbed a polaroid camera from his duffel, handed it to Disco Dirk.

“Take a shot of me with these little Bruisers,” he said, kneeling to grab us around the shoulders. His power was immense: it was like being hugged by a yeti.

To Duncan and Dutchie, Mahoney wrote on the still developing photo. Two warriors in the Bruiser Mahoney armada.

He signed it with his initials—Yours, BM—and for an instant I was terrified I’d laugh. Sometimes my mom would warn me through the bathroom door, “If you’re taking a big BM, Dutchie, make sure you flush twice or you’ll plug the pipes.”

When Bruiser handed the photo to Dunk, Dunk stared at him gratefully and said: “I want to grow up to be just like you.”

For a moment, Mahoney’s expression slipped. Under it was the face of a creature who was old, haunted and lost.

“Ah, you’ll grow up, boy,” he said. “You’ll learn.”