Winds

Winds

A Branford Perry story by Stephen Brooke ©2023

Only once did I see Larry wrestle live. But there was television.

Yes, Larry’s big break, his appearance on a nationally televised program. I made sure to tune in that Saturday afternoon for the broadcast, straight from Atlanta. Well, it was taped, I’m certain, but still.

Scattered boos greeted Larry Large as he entered the ring. No one knew him; probably no one cared enough to feel one way or another about him. Even the announcers couldn’t help but sound bored, as he went through the motions of a mop-up match with star Rod Remington.

“This Larry is a large boy. He could give Rod some trouble,” came the laconic remark of the color commentator.

At which moment, the muscular Remington picked Larry up like a small child and deposited him on the turnbuckle. Naturally, when Larry attempted to leap on his adversary from that perch, he was slammed into the mat and took the one-two-three in short order.

It was pretty much typical of what one would see on TV in those days. It was also pretty much the end for Larry's dreams of breaking into the big time.

I heard he got his teaching credentials eventually, closed the faltering gym, and took a job as a coach. Out in Arbeka, on the other side of the county, out among the ranches and tomato fields. But I had already said farewell to Genoa by then.

I didn’t see Larry in the months before I left. I had taken a job at the Y that summer, in their youth program, and was working out there. Christine was another matter.

Larry's dreams weren't her dreams, nor were they mine. “I don’t feel like competing anymore,” she had told me, during the days when she and Larry were still sometimes on, sometimes off. Those days faded into the ones when she and I started being something more than friends. But where Larry had trouble making ends meet, I had no ends at all.

Just a starving artist—that was me. I was chafing in Genoa. I knew that. My home town could never be my home port again, only one more harbor where I might drop anchor for a while. I suppose Christine was chafing too, wasn’t she? Looking for her own new course to chart, one away from Larry and all he had been in her life, all the entwined sets and reps and diets and heartbreak.

We sailed together for a couple months and then our winds blew us apart again. Blew us apart, and me away.