Page 16 of Fool Me

“Don’t worry,” Sadie said lightly. “Idon’t mind a little dirt.”

He peered over Sadie and into the bar. Colored lights ribboned through smoky air, flickering and dancing to the beat. In addition to the eardrum-splitting music, the crowd sounded like a convention of carnival barkers. He had to yell to be heard, and they weren’t even fully inside yet. “Are yousurethis is where you want to go?”

She slipped from his grip, moved directly behind him, and pressed both hands into his back. “I’m sure!” she shouted as she pushed him forward.

A few strides inside, he saw it—the reason for the yelling, the reason the couple leaving had been soaking wet. In the center of the space sat a makeshift pool with a rubber floor and rubber sides. Around twenty feet across, its insides quivered with sticky, shiny grey mud. Inside the circle, two women wearing barely-there bikinis grappled as the crowd jeered and egged them on.

The Down & Dirty Bar hosted mud wrestling.

Sadie grabbed his hand and pulled. “I’ve got seats reserved for us right up front, c’mon.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I don’t want to watch.”

Her bright eyes flashed with playful challenge. “Well, it’s my date, my choice, remember? You won’t get your suit dirty just watching…” She giggled into her hand. “…probably.”

“No, I mean, I don’t want to watch—I want to wrestle! It’s so much fun. Used to do it as a 4H kid back in Ohio. Don’t you want to too?”

“I…” she began, but he didn’t hear the rest of it. A large man with the words Down & Dirty on the front of his shirt walked past, and Grant took the opportunity to ask him how to sign up for a time slot. Without warning, he threw a heavily tattooed forearm around Grant’s neck and began to pull him away.

“Come with me, Buddy,” he said, as if Grant now had any choice in the matter. The crowd parted automatically as the man pushed through, aiming for the opposite side of the bar. “Sign-ups in the back. I doubt you want to get your suit and fancy shoes mussed. We’ve got some clothes you can change into and lockers to keep your things safe.”

“Great,” Grant yelled, hoping to be heard through the din. He looked back and waved energetically at Sadie, who’d taken a seat right in front of the mud pit. She spotted him too and smiled, but a look of worry crossed her features. She’d probably just realized he’d be wrestling on an empty stomach, but who cared about food when you could mud wrestle?

Barefoot and wearing a borrowed white T-shirt and black shorts, Grant returned to the main room. He waved at Sadie as his new friend led him to the ring and motioned for him to climb in. She gave him another worried look, which was sweet, but she needn’t be concerned. He winked back at her in a way he hoped would reassure. The mud was surprisingly cold given the heat of the room, but smelled a whole lot better than the cow field mud he’d grown up wrestling in.

“Aw, he’s a pretty boy!” someone yelled from the crowd.

“My momma could take him,” said another.

“She already did…twice!” yelled a third.

Grant responded with an embarrassed smile, but inside, he grinned like a shark. Not being jacked or rough looking helped him in a wrestling match, because he was deceptively strong and quick.

His first volunteer opponent emerged from the crowd. After climbing into the ring, he immediately got into Grant’s personal space. About Grant’s age and size, his breath smelled like a beer-soaked rag. A whistle somewhere blew, and they squared off. The man tried to grab Grant around the neck, but Grant ducked. Off balance, the poor sap ended up sprawled in the muck next to Grant’s right foot. Grant simply sat on the man’s back, held him down for the required three-count, and the match ended. The crowd clapped and chanted, “Down & Dirty! Down & Dirty!” Grant obliged them by prancing around the ring while clasping his hands in the air like a winning heavyweight prizefighter.

And that’s when he noticed Sadie. She wasn’t chanting or clapping or yelling at all. Her face was in her hands as if she was upset. Was she not having fun? Was someone bothering her? This wouldn't do. He started moving toward her to ask if she wanted to leave just as the music dimmed and a loudspeaker crackled to life.

“Alright, alright,” said a gravelly man’s voice in an announcer’s tone. “Settle down, you cretins. Pretty Boy did good his first go, but his luck’s just run out. Give it up for…SLINGER!”

Slinger?

The crowd went into a frenzy, the lights flashing and strobing as frenetically as the finale of a fireworks show. From the back of the bar, Grant saw the top of a large, shiny bald pate bobbing toward him through the crowd. When he reached the ring, Grant understood the great smooth stone of the man’s head wasn’t the problem—the problem was the living boulder it was balanced atop. At least six foot six, muscles rippled from the guy in places where muscles didn’t belong. His near-black eyes stared hungrily at Grant from under a single eyebrow stretched across his face—a face that looked like a cauliflower and a mountain troll had had a child. Grant swallowed. They didn’t grow boys likethatin Ohio.

He looked back at Sadie again. Her hands were still over her face, but she’d parted her fingers to stare at Slinger too. One pretty blue eye rolled toward Grant. Seeing him looking at her, she lowered her hands. “Want to go?” she mouthed.

But it was too late for such mundane decisions. In seconds, arms like tree trunks compressed Grant’s chest, freeing it of pesky oxygen. He felt himself being lifted in the air and, before he could say “my name’s mud,” Slinger had fulfilled the promise of his name. Grant had been slung flat on his back in the muck. He got busy making mud angels in a desperate attempt to find some purchase in the slippery stuff, but all movement ceased when he noticed Slinger’s solid mass blocking out the rays from the ceiling lights.

Grant had watched enough professional wrestling to realize that Slinger planned to drop straight down onto him, turning him into a human pancake drowning in mud syrup. At the last millisecond, Grant rolled out of the way of the falling behemoth. His mouth filled with the taste of clay, but it worked. The next county over felt the smack of the giant’s chest hitting the ooze.

A winded Slinger dawdled just long enough for Grant to get to his feet. He spent the two seconds he thought he had to move toward Sadie, trying again to see whether she wanted to leave, but boa constrictor fingers gripped his ankles, and he found himself doing a backwards breaststroke through sludge instead.

This wasn't going well. He might even be seriously hurt. He needed a strategy.

From his sea-level vantage, Grant noticed something that often held true with large guys. As per the Greek tale of Achilles, their ankles are their weakest body part. Sure enough, Slinger’s looked freakishly delicate under calves the shape and size of a turkey roast. The bell dinged the end of round one, and they retreated to opposite corners for a ten-second count. This was it. This was his only chance.

When the count reached ten, but before Slinger squared off with him, Grant reared back and launched his body into the mud as hard as he could. No doubt flummoxed by Grant’s odd move, Slinger just stood there, angled sideways to Grant, and that was his mistake. The slick mud continued Grant’s forward motion until, at the last second, he twisted so that his back slammed into Slinger’s right ankle. The yelp from the colossus silenced the crowd. Half the mud in the ring went airborne as Slinger cannonballed into it, his injured ankle cradled in both hands. Grant stood, placed a finger on the whimpering man’s head, and waited for the count of three.

The bar exploded in a roar of cheering and whooping. Empty and not-so-empty beer cans went airborne. From somewhere and everywhere, airhorns rent the smoke-filled room.

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