Jeff
11-02-2007, 01:54 PM
Morning arrived, and with it, the overwhelming heat. The scorching rays of the sun sliced through the watery haze in the sky and beat down on the land, scorching the grass and turning parking lots into furnaces. Jeff Andrews panted and wiped sweat from his brow for what seemed like the twenty second time in as many minutes.
Packing for a week long road trip isn’t like packing for a trip to Ocean City and back again. It needs more than a couple changes of clothes, a few 12-packs of Vault Zero and a large supply of Carrot Cake flavor Cliff Energy Bars. A shaving kit, underwear, all that complicated stuff. It needs directions, a map, all sorts of shit, seeing as he’s never driven west of the Mississippi before – his trip to Texas the other week was by plane, and his stint in the Las Vegas based Paradise City Wrestling, he lived in a luxury condo within walking distance of a grocery store and a gymnasium readily available.
“If you’re ever down in texas look behind you… cos that’s where the Jeffman’s gonna be” he sang, throwing his suitcase into the back of his silver jeep.
He’d checked in with his stablemates in the Untouchables an hour or so ago. Danny Vicious had told him to take it easy, a bit of worry in his voice. Ronnie Long had said the same.
Kai Scott had been difficult. “Why aren’t you flying?” he’d asked, and he hadn’t liked the answer he got.
“So you’re going to make the trip take four times what it could if you’d take the plane. You’ll miss out on all those days of training, instead, you’ll sit in your car and drink sodas. And you have to admit that it’s been a long time since sitting around with nothing to do hasn’t caused you to do something stupid.”
“I got the idea to reform the Untouchables while I was sitting around doing nothing” Jeff had responded, a menacing undercurrent in his voice that would have silenced most every other wrestler and wrestling personality in the business. But not Kai Scott.
“You know, maybe you shouldn’t…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be a sack of shit in the ring, barely able to beat Surge! I tell you what, Kai, you can bitch at me once you start pulling your weight around the Untouchables instead of trying to play puppetmaster. You’ve been around long enough to know that Jeff don’t dance.
“Hmmph.” Kai had said. “Well then, I guess I better go ahead and apologize for misunderestimating you.”
Kai had hung up then, and Jeff had strained against his impulse to call back so he could direct a stream of profanity at his stablemate. Instead, he’d been conscientious, not hard to do after tripping over the half empty bottle of jagermeister he’d forgotten after the events last night, spilling it on the carpet, bruising his foot on the bottle, and his face on the broken half of the phone when he fell and landed on it. He’d poached an egg – a rather fancypants way of cooking eggs, but better than raw and healthier than fried – and a bowl of oat bran cereal. Then he’d cleaned up, chugged half a bottle of milk and poured the rest down the drain, and proceeded to load his jeep.
And as he swung into the jeep, he tried to decide how he was feeling. Eager to get on the road, anxious about what was lying ahead, angry about all the people he’s exchanged words with, the OCW wrestlers with whom he’s on hostile terms and the stablemates that aren’t acting right.
As for the last night… during the mundane if scorching and dry day, it’s hard to believe that such a thing ever happened.
*****
About three hours down Interstate 70, Jeff Andrews came to the realization that road trips alone are boring. Swilling Vault Zero until he felt about to explode, driving in silence because he’d drifted out of the range of his favorite radio stations back in Maryland, the air conditioner turned up full blast against the sun… not a lot of variation. The interstate was just heavily traveled enough and curvy that he couldn’t ignore the road.
Nothing to do, too busy to think about it.
He was almost imagining music. Notes that could be seen rather than heard, drifting down from the sun like invisible hailstones in his vision.
Go south.
Wait, what? California’s west, not south.
Too dragged out and lazy to even curse about it, Andrews leaned back and held the wheel with one hand, wearily gazing over the rolling hills. West Virginia, if possible, was dryer than Maryland. At least in Maryland, some of the hardier weeds stayed green enough to give the landscape a mottled appearance, but here, everything was just baked into a uniform tan color. Even the trees were turning brown around the edges.
“Some rain, some rain, my entire fucking 12 pack of Vault Zero for some rain.”
The clouds didn’t hear him. The sun sang.
“Fuck you for being so damn hot, and fuck Al Gore for being right about you.” He flipped the sun off, pulled off the road, and began the laborious task of pulling the hood of his jeep up, when he realized where he was.
“Exit 67.”
Back when he was young, still a kid and living with his parents, Exit 67 was a fairly major destination place for Jeff Andrews. His father owned property out in the backhills of Braxton County, WV, and Exit 67 was the way to get there. When he’d first started making the trip, it had been an old two lane road, its asphalt faded to pale gray, the lines on the road weathered. On one side, an old wooden fence separating the road from a vast farm, and a truck stop. On the other, Skidmore’s Motel with its little restaurant, Lloyd’s Motel, and the bowling alley. That was it. Skidmore’s Restaurant was open 24 hours a day and filled with locals, serving delicious and huge country style breakfasts and the tastiest, if not precisely authentic, cheese steak subs.
It was peaceful, it was quiet, and for a suburban born and bred boy, it was refreshing. It was beautiful.
Now, Exit 67 is grown up in what can only be termed “Interstate Exit Sprawl”. No new housing has been put in, yet one of each and every fast food joint has been slammed into the side of the mountain. A gargantuan Days Inn sits on the top of the mountain above Skidmore’s, and where the farm used to be, are a series of small restaurants, a handful of gas stations and an outlet mall.
His first job, ever, was one he did at Skidmore’s Restaurant – stacked chairs so the elderly waitress didn’t have to, and got paid five bucks and a hot apple Danish. For an 11 year old, a freakin’ jackpot.
And now, it’s still there, but surrounded on every side by brand names and fast food joints.
Sighing, he tried to figure out exactly what the state of Exit 67 might be symbolic of in his life.
But then he passed a Taco Bell, and lost his chain of thought.
*****
An hour or so later, having eaten lunch, he headed on down the road. The little town of Flatwoods was brown and parched, save a few lawns who had sprinklers set up. Off in the distance, the hills shimmered, and when he stopped for a traffic light, he could hear the lows of cows over the jeep.
Down the road he went, out of the town, past a cluster of little shanty-like houses around a dilapidated bar and a closed restaurant, and then out into the country.
It had been so many years since he’d been out this way…
He turned off the main road onto a gravel road that lead back into the woods. There was a small patch of greenery, a swamp that the drought hadn’t completely dried up yet. Then a tall hill with a little church on the top, a shed to his left full of rusting farm equipment and tractor parts, a few postcard-pretty houses to his right, around a sharp curve…
“…fuck…”
A small house sits about halfway up a huge rounded hill. Made of boards so weathered they’ve faded nearly to black, a sagging, half rotted porch in the front, one corner propped up on cinderblock fragments, the words “Keep Out – Danger” have been spray painted across what may once have been the main window.
“…I used to live there…”
If Jeff Andrews had been driving a car rather than a jeep, he’d have ripped the bottom off, considering the speed at which he tore up the mud-and-rock driveway. The jeep bounced back and forth, nearly going on two wheels at one point, but he didn’t notice. Jamming on the emergency break, he leaped out, leaving the door swinging and bolting through the overgrown grass towards the house.
The front door is unlocked, but sticks badly. Inside, it’s tough to believe anyone could have ever lived there. Pieces of ceiling have fallen, the floors have buckled and warped, and the only piece of furniture left, an old antique wooden table, is covered with stains. And the inside of the house is as musty, and nearly as dark, as a mausoleum.
“How did this happen?”
Stepping out of the living room and into the hallway, he looked around. The kitchen was in the worst shape of any room in the house, one entire corner had fallen in. The old refrigerator was still there, but the thought of the electricity still working was laughable. The floor in what had once been a bedroom had bubbled upwards, warped by the conditions and leaking water.
For the first time in over a decade, he thought of his parents. They hadn’t approved of Mexico, hadn’t approved of his goal to get into pro wrestling, and worse than all that, they hadn’t disapproved of Heidi, they’d over-approved of her. His dad had flat out told him that she was out of his league, that she’d get frustrated with him and leave him because she was just too high caliber for a guy like him to deal with. He hadn’t talked to them since he and Heidi left for Mexico in 1996, only knew from his cousin Miah’s sister (who had nothing to do with the wrestling business) that they still lived in Baltimore.
A roll of thunder echoed in the distance, and a much closer one, almost right overhead, responded. A split second later, the sunlight streaming through the window blinked out.
The house was small enough that all the rooms had windows, but he was standing in the hallway, the darkest place, and although he could see the way out, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
And then, the sound of a striking match.
He whirled around. A massive figure, completely obscured by shadows, held the flickering match in his hand, curling, blunt fingers dwarfing the match. He brought the match up to his face and lit something – a cigarette, Jeff realized, as a little red circle appeared against the blackness. The man shook out the match, inhaled… and as the embers brightened, Jeff Andrews fell flat on his back in shock.
“Long time no see, mate.”
“Aussie Jack!”
Laughter thicker than the dust poured out of the man’s mouth as he lowered the cigarette.
“The one and only.”
Andrews scrambled to his feet, shaking plaster out of his shirt and hair.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The shadows flickered a bit, and he thought he saw the outline of Aussie Jack Davis shake his head.
“I figure I should be asking you that, Jeff.”
The light flickered again. It had been nearly 6 years since he’d last seen Aussie Jack, but the man hadn’t changed much. He still wore an old brown shirt, the sleeves ripped to shreds, and a shapeless hat. He still smoked, too… if Aussie Jack hadn’t had a cigarette in his hand, back in the day, he was probably in the wrestling ring.
“I wanted to come here, and so I did.” Andrews shifts on his feet, unsure of what to do. Instinctively he starts to move back towards the living room, where pale light is still filtering in, but something stops him.
“You wanted to come back… wanted to come back… bloody galah.” This time, he doesn’t have to imagine the shake of Aussie Jack’s head, he can trace it by the glow of the cigarette. “You thought you wanted to come back, you mean. Thought you’d come looking for your past, Jeff. Found death. Found emptiness. Found decay. Bet you don’t even know what that means.”
Another peal of thunder roared, this time so loud that dust sifted out of the ceiling. Andrews sneezed. Aussie Jack raised his hand.
“It’s all dried up, Jeff. All withered.”
“No, I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what that means, either.” The shock at seeing a figure from his past in a place he by all rights shouldn’t know about was fading. “Don’t know what you’re doing here either, so maybe it’s time you explained.”
And Aussie Jack laughed. His eyes acclimating to the dark, Andrews could see the massive frame of the man. Nearly seven feet tall, his head just low enough to avoid scraping itself on the ceiling, probably weighing upwards of the 300 pound mark…
“You want your past, Jeff. All you’ve ever wanted to do is relive your past. You want the Youngbloods back, you want the Untouchables back, and you want Heidi back – no, you want the old Heidi back. You don’t want the one that can out perform you. But here’s what your past is…”
Aussie Jack sweeps his arm out to the side.
“This.”
Before he even had time to think about why he was doing it, Andrews shifted his weight to his right foot, and threw his left leg upwards, towards Aussie Jack’s face. But he might as well have been moving in slow motion. Moving almost languidly, Aussie Jack caught his left ankle in mid air, lifted up, and dumped him unceremoniously on his back in the hallway. Another wave of dust floated down from the ceiling, accompanied by a chunk of something larger, and any retorts, verbal or physical, that Andrews could have come up with were drowned in a fit of coughing.
“Fear, Jeff. Your fear life… you fear that what you work for will turn into this. And so you try endlessly to recreate your past, but each time, it’s more hollow than the last. Remember The Andrews Foundation? Remember The Unforgiven II? You can’t change it… you can’t fix it. Look at me, mate. Look at me.”
Still lying on the floor, Andrews looks up at the craggy face illuminated mainly by the cigarette.
“You never beat me, Andrews. LBWF, UK Title. The only person, literally, the only person in your career who can say that. You could have done better against TJ Killingbeck, or against Ripper Longshanks, but you proved that you could beat them both – to yourself.”
“FEAR, Jeff. As represented by the man who you were always afraid of. The man who did to you the only thing you couldn’t justify, that you couldn’t pretend away or make excuses for. And that is why, seven years after the LBWF, you still fear me.”
Maybe it’s just all the dust in the air, Andrews thinks as he picks himself up, but he can’t smell smoke from the cigarette.
“Maybe I fear you… maybe.” He said, his voice sounding softer than it should. “But one of the things that even my enemies have always given credit to me for, is that I have no fear. Observe.”
Stepping forward, Andrews forms his fists into two middle fingers, and brandishes them into Aussie Jack’s face.
“I don’t know who you are or what exactly you’re supposed to be. I don’t know if you represent the real Aussie Jack, or if you’re just some sort of shadow. But either way, you know where I am, and where I’m headed. If you’ve got anything else to say, go to California. Sunlight blazing, diamonds in the sky.”
Stepping around Aussie, he steps out into the front room. Light streams in through the window, but the hallway behind him is unnaturally dark.
“And put that fucking stink-stick out, it’ll stunt your growth.”
And amazingly, Aussie Jack does as asked, stubbing out the cigarette between two fingers. With that bit of light gone, he’s as good as vanished in the darkness.
“If you don’t fear, Jeff, then climb the hill behind the house and tell it to your best friend.”
*****
While he was inside, even if it were only for a few minutes, the sky had clouded over with gray. The clouds raced by, thunder rumbled, and the air was moist.
“Climb the hill… what if I don’t wanna? Though maybe if I do it’ll jinx down some rain.”
Chuckling slightly, he looks at the sky. The clouds are racing, moving at different speeds and against each other, and a faint memory of a tornado that flew through here a decade ago, destroying square miles of forest and killing two dozen, flit through his mind…
Up in the clouds, some small ones, darker gray but whispy and ethereal, float below the others, almost as if riding it, or sailing it…
Sailing… ships… the ships of gold and slaves that Dionicio Castellanos had talked about…
“Was that a Barrier?”
And he’d talked about Fear. And Dionicio had said that Fear was a barrier.
“Up the hill we go.”
About halfway up, a wild cherry tree grows, with a pile of rocks at its roots. The tree is old and hoary, with rough bark and leaves turned brown around the edges from the drought and the heat. So many limbs grow that the tree seems shapeless from a distance.
And now, he remembers something else… something very different.
Digging a hole. Swinging a mattock, cutting through roots, his heart heavy, his parents and a friend who might have been Kai standing behind him.
The rocks are covered with lichen. Andrews grabs a fallen branch and uses it to scrub the rock clean, looking for the words…
Rex Tyrannosaurus Clark
1983-1996
“My goal in life would be to be half as good a person as my dog already thinks I am”
If you’ve never owned a dog, you wouldn’t understand. A dog loves his person more purely than a human being is able to love anything. There’s a reason that lifetime murderers have been rehabilitated through dog training programs. There’s no replacement for a caring, loving, completely non judgmental face.
He uses his shirt to brush lichen dander and dust from the branch off the rock, and wonders if he has enough time to get a pair of pruning shears and neaten the grave site up a little bit, cut the tree back and make it look like a tree rather than a rubbish heap.
Another crack of thunder rolled.
“I tried to tell you back in the day, Jeff, that this is what life’s all about. Everyone dies. Everything dies. And nobody else cares.”
Andrews whirls around.
A man just about his own size stands there, his arms folded. Shaggy brown hair lies unstyled on his head, and his fashion choice – Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt, American Eagle blue jeans and an earring in his left ear – are out of place within the borders of West Virginia.
“Like I said, back in the LBWF, I tried to tell you. But you didn’t listen to me. You believed in your friends, and in your girlfriend. I laughed at you for having a mind filled with buttercups and daisies, and told you it was no proper frame of mind for a wrestler. But you not just ignored me, Jeff, but you laughed in my face.”
“I laughed in your face every time you opened your fool mouth, Cripopler.”
Crippler smirks at the name.
“So you did.” Andrews’ old rival, the former 4 time LBWF Heavyweight Champion, laughed it off. “And I laughed right back at you, Daniels.”
Andrews felt the hot blood rush up the back of his neck and into his ears and face, and his vision blurred as he clenched his fists. “Call me Daniels again and I swear to god I’ll kill you. No one will ever find your body out here, bastard.”
“Classic, Jeff, classic. Dish it out, throw a fit when it gets redirected at you. No wonder Big D went out of LBWF as the champion and you went out as a joke.”
“I beat you.”
“After I’d been retired for months and came back as a one time thing. Congratulations, Jeff.”
“I also beat you for the LBWF Heavyweight Title. You never reigned again after I got done with you.”
“And this isn’t the LBWF and no one cares anymore, so save it.” Crippler strode up the hill, seeming to float through the overgrown grass. “Just like this.”
He beckons to the grave site of the dog and the overgrown tree above it.
“No one cares about this.”
“Cripps, I honest to god mean it, if you talk about my dog, I’m going to rip your head off and bury you face down in the nearest pile of cow shit.”
“I wouldn’t talk about your dog.” Crippler shakes his head as he climbs, stopping just outside Andrews’ reach and propping his foot on one of the rocks. “They don’t deserve any of this. All of them give us loyalty and love. Some give us life itself. Never have two living things belonged together more than man and dog. And yet… thirteen years, Jeff. Your dog lived thirteen years. You’re thirty.”
He paused. Andrews said nothing, continuing to watch him.
“And that’s why I laugh at you, Jeff. Your love for Heidi burned like holy fire back in those days. And now, it burns like unholy fire, eating away at your soul. Look at what Kai has become… all he does is use and discard people. How long do you have until you have your turn at the chopping block? Or will you do what you always do, dig in your heels and fight back and win, destroying your best friend in the process? Have you forgotten what Ronnie Long said to you so many years ago, after you had him injured? He said, I will prove to you what hate really is.”
“Hate, hate, hate. Fuck love. All that shines, turns to dust. All that is loved, turns to hate. Or dies.”
“Dogs don’t hate. You could have never brought yourself to hate Rex. She died instead… and I want to ask you something, Jeff.”
“Who do you think the world thinks it is?”
A jet of lightning rockets across the sky, followed by a roll of thunder.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Jeff. I heard you tell Avarice that all you want to do is rip the World in two. So why shouldn’t you? Who the fuck does the world think it is, Jeff? Who the fuck does it think it is? It takes your love and either kills it or turns it against you. It takes your health, your hair, your body, your energy, and eventually you die an old man full of nothing but sorrow. The poor regret their misfortune, the rich regret their misdeeds knowing that they may be accountable, and those in the middle regret all the choices they ignored in favor of the comfort of stability and routine.”
“Tell me, Jeff. Who the fuck does the World think it is?”
Crippler’s green eyes burn, and Andrews meets them only briefly before turning away. It’s not fear, but a lack of energy. Staring down the man he used to hate so much, the man who’s echoing what he used to say, just seems undoable.
Instead, he kneels down by Rex’s grave, placing his forehead on the rock.
Crippler’s green eyes are replaced by a pair of soft brown eyes.
And then he stands.
“I don’t know who the world thinks it is, and I decided, I don’t care. It’s all meaningless, they say… so fuck it all. I’ll make myself mean whatever I want to in whatever little microcosm I decide to abide in. Now get the hell out of my way, you Ghost of the Shitty Past.”
Gripping the rock with both fingers, he grits his teeth and strains. The rock comes out of the ground, and he heaves it down the hill. Another rock is grasped, lifted and thrown. Crippler says nothing as the throwing continues, until finally, one rock is left, surrounded by bare dirt.
He then starts in on the tree, grabbing handfuls of leaves and small twiggy branches, ripping them out by the handful and throwing them at Crippler. The trunk of the tree slowly is bared, and he finally slows down, his hands dirty and scratched.
“May the rain wash you away like the filth of decades, Steve O’Meara, and may I never have to think about you again.”
Crippler took a step backwards.
“There’s no rain where you’re headed, Jeff.”
A blast of hot wind ripped across the top of the grass, carrying seeds and dust with it. Andrews closed his eyes and guarded them with an arm, and when he was able to open them again, Crippler was gone.
Turning, he knelt down by Rex’s restored grave.
A few minutes later, something hot hit his forehead.
Raising his eyes skyward, a beam of sunlight cut through the storm clouds, narrowly missing the grave and landing right on him.
He sighed.
As he walked back to the car, the heat ripped the clouds asunder and came down on his back like a weight.
He backed down the driveway and left.
Packing for a week long road trip isn’t like packing for a trip to Ocean City and back again. It needs more than a couple changes of clothes, a few 12-packs of Vault Zero and a large supply of Carrot Cake flavor Cliff Energy Bars. A shaving kit, underwear, all that complicated stuff. It needs directions, a map, all sorts of shit, seeing as he’s never driven west of the Mississippi before – his trip to Texas the other week was by plane, and his stint in the Las Vegas based Paradise City Wrestling, he lived in a luxury condo within walking distance of a grocery store and a gymnasium readily available.
“If you’re ever down in texas look behind you… cos that’s where the Jeffman’s gonna be” he sang, throwing his suitcase into the back of his silver jeep.
He’d checked in with his stablemates in the Untouchables an hour or so ago. Danny Vicious had told him to take it easy, a bit of worry in his voice. Ronnie Long had said the same.
Kai Scott had been difficult. “Why aren’t you flying?” he’d asked, and he hadn’t liked the answer he got.
“So you’re going to make the trip take four times what it could if you’d take the plane. You’ll miss out on all those days of training, instead, you’ll sit in your car and drink sodas. And you have to admit that it’s been a long time since sitting around with nothing to do hasn’t caused you to do something stupid.”
“I got the idea to reform the Untouchables while I was sitting around doing nothing” Jeff had responded, a menacing undercurrent in his voice that would have silenced most every other wrestler and wrestling personality in the business. But not Kai Scott.
“You know, maybe you shouldn’t…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be a sack of shit in the ring, barely able to beat Surge! I tell you what, Kai, you can bitch at me once you start pulling your weight around the Untouchables instead of trying to play puppetmaster. You’ve been around long enough to know that Jeff don’t dance.
“Hmmph.” Kai had said. “Well then, I guess I better go ahead and apologize for misunderestimating you.”
Kai had hung up then, and Jeff had strained against his impulse to call back so he could direct a stream of profanity at his stablemate. Instead, he’d been conscientious, not hard to do after tripping over the half empty bottle of jagermeister he’d forgotten after the events last night, spilling it on the carpet, bruising his foot on the bottle, and his face on the broken half of the phone when he fell and landed on it. He’d poached an egg – a rather fancypants way of cooking eggs, but better than raw and healthier than fried – and a bowl of oat bran cereal. Then he’d cleaned up, chugged half a bottle of milk and poured the rest down the drain, and proceeded to load his jeep.
And as he swung into the jeep, he tried to decide how he was feeling. Eager to get on the road, anxious about what was lying ahead, angry about all the people he’s exchanged words with, the OCW wrestlers with whom he’s on hostile terms and the stablemates that aren’t acting right.
As for the last night… during the mundane if scorching and dry day, it’s hard to believe that such a thing ever happened.
*****
About three hours down Interstate 70, Jeff Andrews came to the realization that road trips alone are boring. Swilling Vault Zero until he felt about to explode, driving in silence because he’d drifted out of the range of his favorite radio stations back in Maryland, the air conditioner turned up full blast against the sun… not a lot of variation. The interstate was just heavily traveled enough and curvy that he couldn’t ignore the road.
Nothing to do, too busy to think about it.
He was almost imagining music. Notes that could be seen rather than heard, drifting down from the sun like invisible hailstones in his vision.
Go south.
Wait, what? California’s west, not south.
Too dragged out and lazy to even curse about it, Andrews leaned back and held the wheel with one hand, wearily gazing over the rolling hills. West Virginia, if possible, was dryer than Maryland. At least in Maryland, some of the hardier weeds stayed green enough to give the landscape a mottled appearance, but here, everything was just baked into a uniform tan color. Even the trees were turning brown around the edges.
“Some rain, some rain, my entire fucking 12 pack of Vault Zero for some rain.”
The clouds didn’t hear him. The sun sang.
“Fuck you for being so damn hot, and fuck Al Gore for being right about you.” He flipped the sun off, pulled off the road, and began the laborious task of pulling the hood of his jeep up, when he realized where he was.
“Exit 67.”
Back when he was young, still a kid and living with his parents, Exit 67 was a fairly major destination place for Jeff Andrews. His father owned property out in the backhills of Braxton County, WV, and Exit 67 was the way to get there. When he’d first started making the trip, it had been an old two lane road, its asphalt faded to pale gray, the lines on the road weathered. On one side, an old wooden fence separating the road from a vast farm, and a truck stop. On the other, Skidmore’s Motel with its little restaurant, Lloyd’s Motel, and the bowling alley. That was it. Skidmore’s Restaurant was open 24 hours a day and filled with locals, serving delicious and huge country style breakfasts and the tastiest, if not precisely authentic, cheese steak subs.
It was peaceful, it was quiet, and for a suburban born and bred boy, it was refreshing. It was beautiful.
Now, Exit 67 is grown up in what can only be termed “Interstate Exit Sprawl”. No new housing has been put in, yet one of each and every fast food joint has been slammed into the side of the mountain. A gargantuan Days Inn sits on the top of the mountain above Skidmore’s, and where the farm used to be, are a series of small restaurants, a handful of gas stations and an outlet mall.
His first job, ever, was one he did at Skidmore’s Restaurant – stacked chairs so the elderly waitress didn’t have to, and got paid five bucks and a hot apple Danish. For an 11 year old, a freakin’ jackpot.
And now, it’s still there, but surrounded on every side by brand names and fast food joints.
Sighing, he tried to figure out exactly what the state of Exit 67 might be symbolic of in his life.
But then he passed a Taco Bell, and lost his chain of thought.
*****
An hour or so later, having eaten lunch, he headed on down the road. The little town of Flatwoods was brown and parched, save a few lawns who had sprinklers set up. Off in the distance, the hills shimmered, and when he stopped for a traffic light, he could hear the lows of cows over the jeep.
Down the road he went, out of the town, past a cluster of little shanty-like houses around a dilapidated bar and a closed restaurant, and then out into the country.
It had been so many years since he’d been out this way…
He turned off the main road onto a gravel road that lead back into the woods. There was a small patch of greenery, a swamp that the drought hadn’t completely dried up yet. Then a tall hill with a little church on the top, a shed to his left full of rusting farm equipment and tractor parts, a few postcard-pretty houses to his right, around a sharp curve…
“…fuck…”
A small house sits about halfway up a huge rounded hill. Made of boards so weathered they’ve faded nearly to black, a sagging, half rotted porch in the front, one corner propped up on cinderblock fragments, the words “Keep Out – Danger” have been spray painted across what may once have been the main window.
“…I used to live there…”
If Jeff Andrews had been driving a car rather than a jeep, he’d have ripped the bottom off, considering the speed at which he tore up the mud-and-rock driveway. The jeep bounced back and forth, nearly going on two wheels at one point, but he didn’t notice. Jamming on the emergency break, he leaped out, leaving the door swinging and bolting through the overgrown grass towards the house.
The front door is unlocked, but sticks badly. Inside, it’s tough to believe anyone could have ever lived there. Pieces of ceiling have fallen, the floors have buckled and warped, and the only piece of furniture left, an old antique wooden table, is covered with stains. And the inside of the house is as musty, and nearly as dark, as a mausoleum.
“How did this happen?”
Stepping out of the living room and into the hallway, he looked around. The kitchen was in the worst shape of any room in the house, one entire corner had fallen in. The old refrigerator was still there, but the thought of the electricity still working was laughable. The floor in what had once been a bedroom had bubbled upwards, warped by the conditions and leaking water.
For the first time in over a decade, he thought of his parents. They hadn’t approved of Mexico, hadn’t approved of his goal to get into pro wrestling, and worse than all that, they hadn’t disapproved of Heidi, they’d over-approved of her. His dad had flat out told him that she was out of his league, that she’d get frustrated with him and leave him because she was just too high caliber for a guy like him to deal with. He hadn’t talked to them since he and Heidi left for Mexico in 1996, only knew from his cousin Miah’s sister (who had nothing to do with the wrestling business) that they still lived in Baltimore.
A roll of thunder echoed in the distance, and a much closer one, almost right overhead, responded. A split second later, the sunlight streaming through the window blinked out.
The house was small enough that all the rooms had windows, but he was standing in the hallway, the darkest place, and although he could see the way out, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
And then, the sound of a striking match.
He whirled around. A massive figure, completely obscured by shadows, held the flickering match in his hand, curling, blunt fingers dwarfing the match. He brought the match up to his face and lit something – a cigarette, Jeff realized, as a little red circle appeared against the blackness. The man shook out the match, inhaled… and as the embers brightened, Jeff Andrews fell flat on his back in shock.
“Long time no see, mate.”
“Aussie Jack!”
Laughter thicker than the dust poured out of the man’s mouth as he lowered the cigarette.
“The one and only.”
Andrews scrambled to his feet, shaking plaster out of his shirt and hair.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The shadows flickered a bit, and he thought he saw the outline of Aussie Jack Davis shake his head.
“I figure I should be asking you that, Jeff.”
The light flickered again. It had been nearly 6 years since he’d last seen Aussie Jack, but the man hadn’t changed much. He still wore an old brown shirt, the sleeves ripped to shreds, and a shapeless hat. He still smoked, too… if Aussie Jack hadn’t had a cigarette in his hand, back in the day, he was probably in the wrestling ring.
“I wanted to come here, and so I did.” Andrews shifts on his feet, unsure of what to do. Instinctively he starts to move back towards the living room, where pale light is still filtering in, but something stops him.
“You wanted to come back… wanted to come back… bloody galah.” This time, he doesn’t have to imagine the shake of Aussie Jack’s head, he can trace it by the glow of the cigarette. “You thought you wanted to come back, you mean. Thought you’d come looking for your past, Jeff. Found death. Found emptiness. Found decay. Bet you don’t even know what that means.”
Another peal of thunder roared, this time so loud that dust sifted out of the ceiling. Andrews sneezed. Aussie Jack raised his hand.
“It’s all dried up, Jeff. All withered.”
“No, I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what that means, either.” The shock at seeing a figure from his past in a place he by all rights shouldn’t know about was fading. “Don’t know what you’re doing here either, so maybe it’s time you explained.”
And Aussie Jack laughed. His eyes acclimating to the dark, Andrews could see the massive frame of the man. Nearly seven feet tall, his head just low enough to avoid scraping itself on the ceiling, probably weighing upwards of the 300 pound mark…
“You want your past, Jeff. All you’ve ever wanted to do is relive your past. You want the Youngbloods back, you want the Untouchables back, and you want Heidi back – no, you want the old Heidi back. You don’t want the one that can out perform you. But here’s what your past is…”
Aussie Jack sweeps his arm out to the side.
“This.”
Before he even had time to think about why he was doing it, Andrews shifted his weight to his right foot, and threw his left leg upwards, towards Aussie Jack’s face. But he might as well have been moving in slow motion. Moving almost languidly, Aussie Jack caught his left ankle in mid air, lifted up, and dumped him unceremoniously on his back in the hallway. Another wave of dust floated down from the ceiling, accompanied by a chunk of something larger, and any retorts, verbal or physical, that Andrews could have come up with were drowned in a fit of coughing.
“Fear, Jeff. Your fear life… you fear that what you work for will turn into this. And so you try endlessly to recreate your past, but each time, it’s more hollow than the last. Remember The Andrews Foundation? Remember The Unforgiven II? You can’t change it… you can’t fix it. Look at me, mate. Look at me.”
Still lying on the floor, Andrews looks up at the craggy face illuminated mainly by the cigarette.
“You never beat me, Andrews. LBWF, UK Title. The only person, literally, the only person in your career who can say that. You could have done better against TJ Killingbeck, or against Ripper Longshanks, but you proved that you could beat them both – to yourself.”
“FEAR, Jeff. As represented by the man who you were always afraid of. The man who did to you the only thing you couldn’t justify, that you couldn’t pretend away or make excuses for. And that is why, seven years after the LBWF, you still fear me.”
Maybe it’s just all the dust in the air, Andrews thinks as he picks himself up, but he can’t smell smoke from the cigarette.
“Maybe I fear you… maybe.” He said, his voice sounding softer than it should. “But one of the things that even my enemies have always given credit to me for, is that I have no fear. Observe.”
Stepping forward, Andrews forms his fists into two middle fingers, and brandishes them into Aussie Jack’s face.
“I don’t know who you are or what exactly you’re supposed to be. I don’t know if you represent the real Aussie Jack, or if you’re just some sort of shadow. But either way, you know where I am, and where I’m headed. If you’ve got anything else to say, go to California. Sunlight blazing, diamonds in the sky.”
Stepping around Aussie, he steps out into the front room. Light streams in through the window, but the hallway behind him is unnaturally dark.
“And put that fucking stink-stick out, it’ll stunt your growth.”
And amazingly, Aussie Jack does as asked, stubbing out the cigarette between two fingers. With that bit of light gone, he’s as good as vanished in the darkness.
“If you don’t fear, Jeff, then climb the hill behind the house and tell it to your best friend.”
*****
While he was inside, even if it were only for a few minutes, the sky had clouded over with gray. The clouds raced by, thunder rumbled, and the air was moist.
“Climb the hill… what if I don’t wanna? Though maybe if I do it’ll jinx down some rain.”
Chuckling slightly, he looks at the sky. The clouds are racing, moving at different speeds and against each other, and a faint memory of a tornado that flew through here a decade ago, destroying square miles of forest and killing two dozen, flit through his mind…
Up in the clouds, some small ones, darker gray but whispy and ethereal, float below the others, almost as if riding it, or sailing it…
Sailing… ships… the ships of gold and slaves that Dionicio Castellanos had talked about…
“Was that a Barrier?”
And he’d talked about Fear. And Dionicio had said that Fear was a barrier.
“Up the hill we go.”
About halfway up, a wild cherry tree grows, with a pile of rocks at its roots. The tree is old and hoary, with rough bark and leaves turned brown around the edges from the drought and the heat. So many limbs grow that the tree seems shapeless from a distance.
And now, he remembers something else… something very different.
Digging a hole. Swinging a mattock, cutting through roots, his heart heavy, his parents and a friend who might have been Kai standing behind him.
The rocks are covered with lichen. Andrews grabs a fallen branch and uses it to scrub the rock clean, looking for the words…
Rex Tyrannosaurus Clark
1983-1996
“My goal in life would be to be half as good a person as my dog already thinks I am”
If you’ve never owned a dog, you wouldn’t understand. A dog loves his person more purely than a human being is able to love anything. There’s a reason that lifetime murderers have been rehabilitated through dog training programs. There’s no replacement for a caring, loving, completely non judgmental face.
He uses his shirt to brush lichen dander and dust from the branch off the rock, and wonders if he has enough time to get a pair of pruning shears and neaten the grave site up a little bit, cut the tree back and make it look like a tree rather than a rubbish heap.
Another crack of thunder rolled.
“I tried to tell you back in the day, Jeff, that this is what life’s all about. Everyone dies. Everything dies. And nobody else cares.”
Andrews whirls around.
A man just about his own size stands there, his arms folded. Shaggy brown hair lies unstyled on his head, and his fashion choice – Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt, American Eagle blue jeans and an earring in his left ear – are out of place within the borders of West Virginia.
“Like I said, back in the LBWF, I tried to tell you. But you didn’t listen to me. You believed in your friends, and in your girlfriend. I laughed at you for having a mind filled with buttercups and daisies, and told you it was no proper frame of mind for a wrestler. But you not just ignored me, Jeff, but you laughed in my face.”
“I laughed in your face every time you opened your fool mouth, Cripopler.”
Crippler smirks at the name.
“So you did.” Andrews’ old rival, the former 4 time LBWF Heavyweight Champion, laughed it off. “And I laughed right back at you, Daniels.”
Andrews felt the hot blood rush up the back of his neck and into his ears and face, and his vision blurred as he clenched his fists. “Call me Daniels again and I swear to god I’ll kill you. No one will ever find your body out here, bastard.”
“Classic, Jeff, classic. Dish it out, throw a fit when it gets redirected at you. No wonder Big D went out of LBWF as the champion and you went out as a joke.”
“I beat you.”
“After I’d been retired for months and came back as a one time thing. Congratulations, Jeff.”
“I also beat you for the LBWF Heavyweight Title. You never reigned again after I got done with you.”
“And this isn’t the LBWF and no one cares anymore, so save it.” Crippler strode up the hill, seeming to float through the overgrown grass. “Just like this.”
He beckons to the grave site of the dog and the overgrown tree above it.
“No one cares about this.”
“Cripps, I honest to god mean it, if you talk about my dog, I’m going to rip your head off and bury you face down in the nearest pile of cow shit.”
“I wouldn’t talk about your dog.” Crippler shakes his head as he climbs, stopping just outside Andrews’ reach and propping his foot on one of the rocks. “They don’t deserve any of this. All of them give us loyalty and love. Some give us life itself. Never have two living things belonged together more than man and dog. And yet… thirteen years, Jeff. Your dog lived thirteen years. You’re thirty.”
He paused. Andrews said nothing, continuing to watch him.
“And that’s why I laugh at you, Jeff. Your love for Heidi burned like holy fire back in those days. And now, it burns like unholy fire, eating away at your soul. Look at what Kai has become… all he does is use and discard people. How long do you have until you have your turn at the chopping block? Or will you do what you always do, dig in your heels and fight back and win, destroying your best friend in the process? Have you forgotten what Ronnie Long said to you so many years ago, after you had him injured? He said, I will prove to you what hate really is.”
“Hate, hate, hate. Fuck love. All that shines, turns to dust. All that is loved, turns to hate. Or dies.”
“Dogs don’t hate. You could have never brought yourself to hate Rex. She died instead… and I want to ask you something, Jeff.”
“Who do you think the world thinks it is?”
A jet of lightning rockets across the sky, followed by a roll of thunder.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Jeff. I heard you tell Avarice that all you want to do is rip the World in two. So why shouldn’t you? Who the fuck does the world think it is, Jeff? Who the fuck does it think it is? It takes your love and either kills it or turns it against you. It takes your health, your hair, your body, your energy, and eventually you die an old man full of nothing but sorrow. The poor regret their misfortune, the rich regret their misdeeds knowing that they may be accountable, and those in the middle regret all the choices they ignored in favor of the comfort of stability and routine.”
“Tell me, Jeff. Who the fuck does the World think it is?”
Crippler’s green eyes burn, and Andrews meets them only briefly before turning away. It’s not fear, but a lack of energy. Staring down the man he used to hate so much, the man who’s echoing what he used to say, just seems undoable.
Instead, he kneels down by Rex’s grave, placing his forehead on the rock.
Crippler’s green eyes are replaced by a pair of soft brown eyes.
And then he stands.
“I don’t know who the world thinks it is, and I decided, I don’t care. It’s all meaningless, they say… so fuck it all. I’ll make myself mean whatever I want to in whatever little microcosm I decide to abide in. Now get the hell out of my way, you Ghost of the Shitty Past.”
Gripping the rock with both fingers, he grits his teeth and strains. The rock comes out of the ground, and he heaves it down the hill. Another rock is grasped, lifted and thrown. Crippler says nothing as the throwing continues, until finally, one rock is left, surrounded by bare dirt.
He then starts in on the tree, grabbing handfuls of leaves and small twiggy branches, ripping them out by the handful and throwing them at Crippler. The trunk of the tree slowly is bared, and he finally slows down, his hands dirty and scratched.
“May the rain wash you away like the filth of decades, Steve O’Meara, and may I never have to think about you again.”
Crippler took a step backwards.
“There’s no rain where you’re headed, Jeff.”
A blast of hot wind ripped across the top of the grass, carrying seeds and dust with it. Andrews closed his eyes and guarded them with an arm, and when he was able to open them again, Crippler was gone.
Turning, he knelt down by Rex’s restored grave.
A few minutes later, something hot hit his forehead.
Raising his eyes skyward, a beam of sunlight cut through the storm clouds, narrowly missing the grave and landing right on him.
He sighed.
As he walked back to the car, the heat ripped the clouds asunder and came down on his back like a weight.
He backed down the driveway and left.