Ugly Behavior

The Crusher

He’d never had any luck with soft things. Even when he was a kid, his hands had been so big they’d just mashed things up, no matter how hard he tried to hold them steady, no matter how hard he tried to hold them in the same gentle way he loved them. The harder he tried the worse it was. The harder he tried the more things he broke.

Even words. He tried to hold them gently in his mouth but they always spilled out broken.

“Damn damn damn…” That was the way he’d told Alice how much he loved her. “Damn damn damn,” with tears in his eyes. Alice just looked at him as if he were somebody who was always going around breaking things. And, of course, that was true. That was what he was.

But that wasn’t everything he was.

He got into the business because of his arm wrestling. At every bar in the northwest that had such a contest, he’d show up to arm wrestle. That was his specialty, his only talent. He had a grip that made flesh shrink and bones fold, and nobody wanted to hold hands with him.

He’d never held Alice’s hand. He’d been too afraid. She’d had a hand like a little bird and he’d broken more than a few birds when he was a kid. And hamsters. And kittens. And he’d loved them all. So he wasn’t about to hold Alice’s hand, whom he loved most of all.

Of course, he won every arm wrestling competition he entered. That was how he first came to the attention of the promoter. He’d broken some fellow’s arm up above Portland, and it made the local papers. The fellow hadn’t pressed charges or anything like that—in fact he’d told the reporters how much he admired the strength, the skill it took.

But he knew there wasn’t any skill involved. Mashing things. Crushing things. He would have stopped it if he could. But he just didn’t have the control.

“James,” she whispered. “James don’t go.” It was Alice’s voice, all right, and Alice was the only one called him James. To everybody else he was Jim, or Big Jim, when they used his name at all. To most people, he guessed, he didn’t even have a name.

Except she’d never told him not to go. Nothing like that. That was just something his heart told him. What she’d really said, he’d crushed out of his mind forever.

“A guy like you, you can make some money.” That was all that wrestling promoter said, really, pretty much said the same thing over and over. Just used different words for it. The promoter kept trying to build up his ego, not knowing that that didn’t matter much to him. But he needed to make a living, so he signed, and that made the promoter very happy.

They billed him as “The Crusher,” a name he didn’t care for, but he also didn’t care enough to get the promoter to change it. Before every match he’d crush something for the audience: a few oil cans, a steel trashcan, sometimes cantaloupes or melons that made a satisfying mess. He hated to admit to feeling the satisfaction, but it was there.

And now entering the ring, The Crusher! A thunder of boos, with scattered cheers, the cheers increasing with each bout. That’s what he liked best about professional wrestling: the frame of cheers and boos, the dancing around that went in between. If only those cheers and boos would follow him out of the ring, rise up like music at important points in the rest of his life, he’d feel a lot more comfortable about moving around with other people. Not happy exactly—happy was a word they used in bad movies and stupid TV shows. He’d figured that much out at least. But comfortable, the way most people are comfortable walking around being the way people are supposed to be. He’d never had that, but he’d like to.

And now entering the ring… He pushed down on the bottom rope and stepped through. Then he walked around the ring a couple of times, reaching out his hands to slap his opponent’s hands, pulling back quickly as if he was touching fire. Pretty much every match started that way because that was the way the promoter wanted it. Slap and dance, circle and tease, then the first hard embrace: his opponent pressing his body full into him, and the Crusher thinking it was like some play, or some movie, and that gave him the butterflies so bad he could hardly breathe.

Then his opponent would get away, or, rather, The Crusher would release him, and there would be more dancing, and making faces, and doing these things with the eyes, kind of like two little boys in a playground, which is what the crowd really wanted to see, two little boys in a playground, even though they might not know it. The crowds didn’t want to see somebody really get hurt, even though that was the way it might look sometimes. But Jim could see right through that, and it kind of made him feel good about people. Although that never lasted too long.

So he tried to give the crowd what they really wanted. The dance and the tease, the tickle, and several hard embraces with dances in between. Then finally The Crusher, both his name and what he did at the same time. “Crush-er! Crush-er!” the crowd would shout, and they were calling out his name, but they were also telling him what to do, telling him how to end it. And he always obliged. He wrapped his arms around his partner and crushed, but he always held himself back a little. These were big guys up against him, but he still had to hold himself back. Lots of times they would pass out, and he’d step back a little, holding on to them with one hand so they wouldn’t hit the canvas too hard.

Sometimes a rib would end up getting cracked, and that always made him feel really bad. Then the next time in the ring he’d be too easy, and it wouldn’t be convincing, and the promoter would get mad, and then the time after that he’d squeeze harder, and it would be too hard and the guy would get hurt, and then Jim, aka The Crusher, would be miserable again.

He first started seeing the girl in the crowd up in Washington State. She was thin and pale, with hair so blonde it looked white under the lights. She was there at every match, and once he almost killed a fellow because he caught on to how intensely she was staring at him, and he found himself staring back, rock still with his arms around this guy, and before he knew it a couple of his wrestling buddies were there in the ring with him, trying to pry his arms from around the man’s gut.

He didn’t wrestle for awhile after that, didn’t even show up to watch. He’d take these long walks in the woods and he’d be so full of aches he’d think he’d pulled every muscle in his body. But he hadn’t pulled a thing, and no amount of heat or ointment was going to fix him. Sometimes he’d find a good-sized tree and wrap his arms around that, squeeze and crush and pretend he was pulling the thing out of the ground roots and all, and then sometimes the aching would go away.

The girl showed up again at a match in northern California. She looked the same but more so, her eyes noticeably red even from the ring, as if she’d been doing nothing but crying since the last time he saw her. That wasn’t likely, he thought, but the fantasy made him smile a little. He never thought of himself as having fans.

She was at every match in San Francisco, and he saw her at all the cities and towns all the way down the coast. That first night in San Diego she was waiting for him outside when he left the dressing room.

“Mr. Crusher,” she said, shyly, like a schoolgirl. It made him laugh, and then he saw this uncertain look cross her face and he felt bad.

“Jim. It’s my real name.”

“Sure.” She had inched closer, but he edged away. For some reason he was scared of this small and lovely person.

“I saw you wrestle tonight,” she said.

And dozens of times before, he thought, but said nothing.

“You’re very… strong,” she said. “It’s like you could break anything… that bothered you.”

“Some things you can’t break.”

“It’s like you could just crush it out of existence,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him, and looking into her eyes he could tell she hadn’t. “You’re strong enough… you could just make it not be.”

He was embarrassed now. And he wanted her to stop saying what she was saying. “Do you want me to sign a picture or something?” he asked and immediately felt himself redden. Now she would think he was some sort of arrogant would-be celebrity. Some of the guys did think of themselves as celebrities, but Jim didn’t.

“If you want. But I would really like to take you out to dinner, if that’s okay with you.”

“I…” Jim couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. Finally he let them grip and wrestle each other. “I usually…”

“I don’t know anyone here,” she said. “And I really find it depressing to eat by myself.”

Jim surprised himself by agreeing, even though the very idea terrified him. But telling this woman no, after the things she had just said to him, would have mortified him even more.

They took her car. Jim didn’t drive—steering wheels had never felt right in his hands.

It wasn’t until they got to the restaurant that Jim wondered how he was going to eat in front of this sweet young thing. He always ate alone, and almost never in restaurants. Sometimes when the bus stopped and the other wrestlers all went in to eat, together around some long table, Jim would order something to go, then eat it on the bus. Sometimes he would stare out the bus window, and into the restaurant where the others were, and pretend he was eating with them.

It was his hands, of course, that made him unsuitable for public dining. There was no way those massive hands and forearms could hold a fork delicately, or use a knife without bumping into the person next to him or sending his own food flying across the table. And those thick, long fingers of his were always getting in the way. They were like wandering roots, and he had no control over them. Sometimes he wouldn’t watch them for awhile, then glance down and they’d be wriggling in secret, anxious to touch and break something.

So he struggled through the meal and actually ate very little, dropping some of it on the floor, some into his lap. Finally so hungry he could have cried, he picked up a pork chop and stuffed the meaty side into his mouth, using the bone as a handle. He closed his eyes while he did this, not wanting to see her look at him. But she never said anything about it, or seemed to notice. Mostly, she talked about herself.

“My dad has this junk car lot outside Eugene,” she went on. “Andy’s, but that’s not his name. I don’t know who Andy is, or even if there ever was one. The place is full of rusted hulks, mostly, but he refuses to clean up the place or haul anything out of there. He always says he’s going to fix them up, even the ones so rusted through they don’t have floors anymore, and the seats are full of wild flowers. He lives there full-time in this shack. We moved out there when I was twelve, after my mom died.”

Jim put the piece of pork chop down, edged the plate away as if he could pretend he’d never seen it before. “I’m… sorry,” he said, and immediately felt stupid, clumsy. She’d been twelve. It was a long time ago. It was probably dumb for him to say “sorry” now.

But she didn’t seem to have heard him. “I used to watch him move pieces of cars and trucks around. He was big, like you. And he didn’t say much, like you. Like most of the wrestlers I’ve met, I guess.” He looked at her then, and when she saw that she acted suddenly nervous. “Well, I know you’ve seen me around the circuit. I go to lots of matches, especially when I see certain wrestlers and what they can do, well, I guess I follow them around to see what more they can do.”

Jim had no idea what she was talking about. He really wished he could eat some more, just to have something to do with his mouth and hands. He tried folding his hands together on the table, but didn’t know quite what to do with his overstuffed fingers. “Some of the wrestlers… they have lots of fans,” he said awkwardly.

“Oh… oh, I’m sure they do,” she said with a little wink that made Jim have to look away. “I know you have your fans, too. I’ve seen how the people look at you, especially the women.”

Jim felt his face fill with blood. He was suddenly dizzy, and squeezed the edge of the table until he heard a cracking noise. Then he jerked his hand away, trying to focus on the fact that he was in a restaurant, where ordinary, real-life people spent their time. He tried to look at her and smile, let her know that everything was okay and that he could be perfectly normal. But he couldn’t get his eyes up. He found himself staring at her plate, her hands and arms. And then he saw where her sleeve had ridden up, and all the scars it had been hiding.

“I was going to tell you about those,” she said softly. He was a little alarmed that she could tell where he was looking. “I don’t want to hide anything from you… Jim. I’d never want to keep secrets from you.”

Jim still didn’t look into her eyes. What was she talking about? He felt like some fellow in a movie—women just didn’t talk to him this way. “It’s okay…” he mumbled, not understanding, and not knowing what else to say.

“My dad was a very lonely man after my mother died. He wasn’t good with other people, never had been.” Just like me, Jim thought. The idea made him nervous. “I was pretty lonely, too, living out there with him. We didn’t have a TV, and I never understood much about things, never had friends to compare the things that were happening to me. But for all I didn’t understand, I was growing up pretty fast. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Jim?”

“No…” he said with a shock, as if the very idea of his understanding was impossible to imagine.

She leaned closer. “It was like I was his wife, Jim. We had sex.” She had no expression on her face. He couldn’t understand that. Why was she telling him things he couldn’t possibly understand? “I thought giving to him was what I was supposed to do. I just wanted to make him be okay. But he took everything.” She grabbed his wandering fingers and squeezed them together in her hand. He was surprised by how much it hurt. “Everything…”

“I… I wish that hadn’t happened. I wish I…”

“You can help me, Jim. I knew from the first time I saw you in the ring that you could help me.”

He thought she was going to drive him back to the motel where the promoter and the rest of the wrestlers were staying. She’d asked him where he was staying, and he told her, but she didn’t drive him anywhere near there. She drove him to another motel, a smaller one further out. When she pulled up in front of a room and turned off the ignition, she said to him, “You’re going to help me, Jim.”

Jim knew it wasn’t a question. And she had no right driving him out there and not telling him where they were going—he knew that much. But it didn’t make him mad. He didn’t think he could ever be mad at someone like her. Not just because he liked her. But because she scared him, too.

He followed her into the room, and when she told him to take off his clothes, he did. And when she told him to get into bed with her, he did. But when she told him to hold her, to make love to her, he hesitated.

“You told me you would help me,” she said softly. He could barely see her face in the dark of the room, but he felt her all over his skin. “You promised, Jim.”

His hands were trembling. He didn’t know what to do with them. “I’m scared,” he whispered.

“I know you are, sweetheart. But you’re going to help me. Hold me, Jim. I can’t do this unless you hold me. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I need this real bad.”

So he slipped his arms carefully around her, trembling as he touched the soft smallness of her, afraid of his own clumsy fingers, afraid of his huge hands. She was a glass doll he had to carry somewhere, and he was scared because she hadn’t told him where yet. “Tell me,” he said. “Please tell me.”

“Hold me a little tighter, Jim. I can’t feel you enough. Hold me.” And when he still hesitated she started doing things with her hands, stroking his chest, wiggling down under him to rub his groin. She was suddenly everywhere, and he had to reach to catch her, to hold her. “Tighter, Jim… tighter…”

“I want to… I can’t…”

“…tighter… what I need…”

Then it was over. Maybe it had been over for minutes and he hadn’t noticed. He couldn’t be sure. What surprised him most was that he hadn’t heard the bones breaking, or realized when she’d stopped telling him to hold her tighter. He cried for a long time, and then finally he was mad at her. Furious. She’d gotten exactly what she wanted, but did she ever think about what it would do to him?

It took a couple of weeks for him to get to her father’s junk yard. He had to take the back roads, and he hitched a ride only when he thought it was pretty safe.

Of course her father was dead. At least five years, according to the man who had taken over the place. Jim wasn’t surprised. “You sure are a big one,” the man said, and Jim just nodded. “Need a job?” And of course Jim took it. Besides the other considerations, he had to eat.

He could wrestle a whole car by himself if he took his time. And ripping things out, breaking things, that was easy enough. He liked the dance he did with a big piece of rusted steel up in his arms, raised toward the sky like a gift. The owner would laugh and shake his head and say he’d never seen anybody so strong. “You’re a regular super duper hero,” he said. “The Muscleman. The Bruiser.”

But Jim knew he was The Crusher, and always would be. When the owner went home at night, Jim stayed behind in the little falling-down shack. Then in the middle of the night he would walk and pick up the sharpest pieces of ragged steel he could find, and hold them, embrace them, crush them into his chest where they made scars that tangled and grew into the most beautiful and complex design he had ever seen.

And she would watch, and tell him, tell him how strong he was.