The mat, the scorers’ table, and the two team benches took up most of the gym floor. At one end of the wrestling room was a slanted rectangle of bleachers, with not more than a dozen rows of seats. The students considered the bleachers to be appropriate seating for the “older types.” Faculty spectators sat there, and visiting parents. There were some townspeople who regularly attended the wrestling matches, and they sat in the bleachers. The day Elaine and I had seen Mrs. Kittredge watch her son wrestle, Mrs. Kittredge had sat in the bleachers—while Elaine and I had closely observed her from the sloped wooden running track above her.
I was remembering my one and only sighting of Mrs. Kittredge, when Tom Atkins and I noticed Miss Frost. She was sitting in the first row of the bleacher seats, as close to the wrestling mat as she could get. (Mrs. Kittredge had sat in the back row of the bleachers, as if to signify her immortal-seeming aloofness from the grunting and grimacing of human combat.)
“Look who’s here, Bill—in the first row. Do you see her?” Atkins asked me.
“I know, Tom—I see her,” I said. I instantly wondered if Miss Frost often, or always, attended the wrestling matches. If she’d been a frequent spectator at the home meets, how had Elaine and I missed seeing her? Miss Frost was not only tall and broad-shouldered; as a woman, it wasn’t just her size that was imposing. If she’d frequently had a front-row seat at the wrestling matches, how could anyone have missed seeing her?
Miss Frost seemed very much at home where she was—at the edge of the wrestling mat, watching the wrestlers warm up. I doubted that she’d spotted Tom Atkins and me, because she didn’t glance up at the surrounding running track—even during the warm-ups. And once the competition started, didn’t everyone watch the wrestlers on the mat?
Because Delacorte was a lightweight, he wrestled in one of the first matches. If Delacorte had played Lear’s Fool as a death-in-progress, that was certainly the way he wrestled; it was agonizing to watch him. Delacorte managed to make a wrestling match resemble a death-in-progress. The weight-cutting took a toll on him. He was so sucked down—he was all loose skin and super-prominent bones. Delacorte looked as if he were starving to death.
He was noticeably taller than most of his opponents; he often outscored them in the first period, and he was usually leading at the end of the second period, when he began to tire. The third period was Delacorte’s time to pay for the weight-cutting.
Delacorte finished every wrestling match desperately trying to protect an ever-diminishing lead. He stalled, he fled the mat; his opponent’s hands appeared to grow heavy on him. Delacorte’s head hung down, and his tongue lolled out a corner of his open mouth. According to Kittredge, Delacorte ran out of gas every third period; a wrestling match was always a couple of minutes too long for him.
“Hang on, Delacorte!” one of the student spectators inevitably cried; soon all of us would echo this plea.
“Hang on! Hang on! Hang on!”
At this point in Delacorte’s matches, Elaine and I had learned to look at Favorite River’s wrestling coach—a tough-looking old geezer with cauliflower ears and a crooked nose. Almost everyone called Coach Hoyt by his first name, which was Herm.
When Delacorte was dying in the third period, Herm Hoyt predictably took a towel from a stack at the end of the wrestling-team bench nearest the scorers’ table. Coach Hoyt unfailingly sat next to the towels, as near as he could get to the scorers’ table.
As Delacorte tried to “hang on” a little longer, Herm unfolded the towel; he was bowlegged, in that way a lot of old wrestlers are, and when he stood up from the team bench, he (for just a moment) looked like he wanted to strangle the dying Delacorte with the towel, which Herm instead put over his own head. Coach Hoyt wore the towel as if it were a hood; he peered out from under the towel at Delacorte’s final, expiring moments—at the clock on the scorers’ table, at the ref (who, in the waning seconds of the third period, usually first warned Delacorte, and then penalized him, for stalling).
While Delacorte died, which I found unbearable to watch, I looked instead at Herm Hoyt, who seemed to be dying of both anger and empathy under the towel. Naturally, I advised Tom Atkins to keep his eyes on the old coach instead of enduring Delacorte’s agonies, because Herm Hoyt knew before anyone else (including Delacorte) whether Delacorte would hang on and win or finish dying and lose.
This Saturday, following his near-death experience, Delacorte actually hung on and won. He came off the mat and collapsed into Herm Hoyt’s arms. The old coach did as he always did with Delacorte—win or lose. Herm covered Delacorte’s head with the towel, and Delacorte staggered to the team bench, where he sat sobbing and gasping for breath under the all-concealing mantle.
“For once, Delacorte isn’t rinsing or spitting,” Atkins sarcastically observed, but I was watching Miss Frost, who suddenly looked at me and smiled.
It was an unselfconscious smile—accompanied by a spontaneous little wave, just the wiggling of her fingers on one hand. I instantly knew: Miss Frost had known all along that I was there, and she’d expected that I would be.
I was so completely undone by her smile, and the wave, that I feared I would faint and slip under the railing; I foresaw myself falling from the wooden track to the wrestling room below. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have been a life-threatening fall; the running track was not at a great height above the gym floor. It just would have been humiliating to fall in a heap on the wrestling mat, or to land on one or more of the wrestlers.
“I don’t feel well, Tom,” I said to Atkins. “I’m a little dizzy.”
“I’ve got you, Bill,” Atkins said, putting his arm around me. “Just don’t look down for a minute.”
I kept looking at the far end of the gym, where the bleachers were, but Miss Frost had returned her attention to the wrestling; another match had started, while Delacorte was still wracked by sobs and gasps—his head was bobbing up and down under the consoling towel.
Coach Herm Hoyt had sat back down on the team bench next to the stack of clean towels. I saw Kittredge, who was beginning to loosen up; he was standing behind the bench, just bouncing on the balls of his feet and turning his head from side to side. Kittredge was stretching his neck, but he never stopped looking at Miss Frost.
“I’m okay, Tom,” I said, but the weight of his arm rested on the back of my neck for a few seconds more; I counted to five to myself before Atkins took his arm from around my shoulders.
“We should think about going to Europe together,” I told Atkins, but I still watched Kittredge, who was skipping rope. Kittredge couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Frost; he continued to stare at her, skipping rhythmically, the speed of the jump rope never changing.
“Look who’s captivated by her now, Bill,” Atkins said petulantly.
“I know, Tom—I see him,” I said. (Was it my worst fear, or was it secretly thrilling—to imagine Kittredge and Miss Frost together?)
“We would go to Europe this summer—is that what you mean, Bill?” Atkins asked me.
“Why not?” I replied, as casually as I could—I was still watching Kittredge.
“If your parents approve, and mine do—we could ask them, couldn’t we?” Atkins said.
“It’s in our hands, Tom—we have to make them understand it’s a priority,” I told him.
“She’s looking at you, Bill!” Atkins said breathlessly.