Page 62 of Takedown

Frank Kovac and Whitfield père, delivered by the same corridor, sons in tow, no exits available — and I watched, holding my breath, as my father stuck out his mill hand with two missing fingers and said, "Frank Kovac. Your boy fixed my boy's setup," and Grayson's father took the hand with the dry exact grip and the appraisal running visibly behind his eyes — the drawer sliding, the recalibration — and said, "Grayson Whitfield. Your son solved my son's ride. I watched it happen twice this season. It cost us a wrestle-off," and my father, who does not smile at strangers, smiled, and said:

"Cost you fair."

"It did," said Whitfield père, and something passed between the two fathers then — over the heads of the whole sport, in the oldest register there is, two men pricing each other's sons and finding the accounts in order — and they talked for ten minutes about riding time and the '88 tape while Grayson and I stood beside them like furniture, not looking at each other, both of us memorizing every word against loss.

That's a different book too. The last one, if I ever get that far. It has a parking lot in it, and a tape, and two men older than their sons are now. I've seen the ending. It's good.

* * *

The banquet was loud and the bus home was the third kind, the best kind, and somewhere in Connecticut, in the dark, with a bronze medal in my bag and the whole republic asleep around us, Grayson's hand came across the aisle, palm up, the standing offer, permanent now, and I took it.

"Three years," he said, quietly, to his window. Meaning: the cycle. The Trials. One spot per weight and both of us headed for the same one, the arithmetic we'd tabled on a snow day, un-tableable now, riding home with us through the dark like a third passenger we'd both learned to love.

"Three years," I agreed, to mine.

"Terrible system."

"The only one there is."

He laced our fingers tighter, and New England went by black and gold, and I leaned my head back on a bus seat at the end of the best season of my life, holding hands with the problem I intend to have forever, and did the only math that was ever worth doing:

Today. Then tomorrow's today. Then the next one.

Best days of our lives, the old man said. Plural. He knew the whole time.

THE END