Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

“You oughta know,” Sammy said, a goddamn smirk stretched across his face.

“Watch yourself, boy,” I said. “Besides, that ain’t a bit professional. He might as well be prancing around in some strip show.” I still couldn’t get over the size of Bobby’s arms, which probably had a good two inches on Sammy’s. And then, with a sickening feeling, I suddenly realized that Willard Lowe’s son was going to beat Sammy for the South Ohio, him of all the people in the goddamn state. Willard Lowe was my one true enemy; I’d hated that prick since we used to fight over the plastic weight set in fourth-grade gym class.

“Aw, Luther, I’m just talkin’ for fun,” Little Ralph said.

“Hey, go ahead, Ralphie,” I said. “Get on over there and shake your flabby ass for those fucking drunks.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You fuckin’ faggots are all the same, no discipline at all,” I said. “Don’t talk that shit no more. He’s just showing off like some little punk in school.” As soon as I said that, Willard Lowe walked out of McDonald’s with a cup of coffee. He had that big grin on his face that shows off all his perfect white teeth: the same one he used to taunt me with back in the old days whenever we went up against each other. Nobody realizes how important the smile is in a contest. I’d be the first to admit, I never could smile worth a shit; people always said I looked like a starving rat clamping down on a chicken neck. It was my only defect, but it cost me the Midwest title seven years in a row. Still, Willard’s lost his juice now, gave up pumping iron for big buckets of slop and an old lady’s treadmill, so I guess, in the end, I won after all. He’s just another lazy bastard now and the world’s full of them .

We drove on back to the Power House; I mixed Sammy up some protein, then ordered him to hit the sack. I had the only true weight gym in southern Ohio, no women, no aerobics, no Nautilus shit. But since it was damn near impossible to find any decent bodybuilders around here, I had to rely on fat-ass powerlifters or the occasional football player to keep the place open. It used to be a gas station, and Sammy and I slept in the back. On rainy nights the fumes rising out of the oil-stained cement smelled like dinosaur blood.

A couple of days after Bobby Lowe made an ass out of himself in front of the McDonald’s, he stopped over at the gym. I knew immediately something was up; his old man used to pull the same kind of shit right before a contest. “I thought it up myself,” he started explaining. “Extreme posing, that’s what I call it. The more fucked the situation, the better. Shit, I even got ESPN willing to come down and take a look. We’re talkin’ big money here, Luther.”

“So?” I said.

“Well, I thought I could get Sam over there next Saturday. Make it a little contest. The other night was just a trial run.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” I said. “Sammy’s training for the South Ohio.”

“Hey, Dad,” Sammy said, “I think—”

“Shut up!” I yelled and then turned back to Bobby. “Look, I know what you’re doing. Your old man was the same way, always fucking with me. Him and that goddamn stupid grin of his. Now get the fuck out of my gym!”

“Gym?” he said, glancing around. “More like a fuckin’ prison maybe.” Then he turned and strutted out like hot shit, his lats scraping the paint off the doorframe.

I cranked up the discipline that week, three sessions a day. Sammy was too gutted at night to even untie his lifting shoes, just slept propped up in the corner like a bag of shit. But it was the only way we were going to win; he’d taken after his skinny-ass mother, just a little bird of a thing who kept sneaking cigarettes and coffee until the cancer got her. I kicked myself a thousand times for not knocking up some fat-ass Amazon with big bones. Still, with the Deca I was pumping in him, Sammy managed to put on five pounds of muscle that week. Every two hours, I meted out creatine and fat burners and liquid protein. For breakfast, he got a spoon of oatmeal; for dinner, a sliver of baked fish. At night, I gave him wooden clothes hangers to chew on. “Shit, son, we’re mostly powder anyway,” I’d tell him whenever he started to cramp. “South Ohio!” I screamed every time he puked.

But then, the next Saturday, Sammy didn’t show up for the eight o’clock workout. I’d spent the afternoon purging in the bathroom, and somehow he’d slipped away. I walked back to the fridge to get a bottle of Nitro, and discovered the Deca bottle was almost empty — six weeks’ worth! The little faggot was going for the easier, softer way, just like his mother always did. I went ahead and did my back and shoulders, then took a shower and got dressed. I had a good idea where he’d run off to, and I wanted to catch the little bastard in the act. My plan was to kick his ass all over Main Street, embarrass the fuck out of him. Nobody disobeyed Luther Colburn. I had twenty-one-inch arms and a fifty-four-inch chest.

By the time I made it down to the main drag, traffic was at a standstill; shit, cars were even backed up onto Route 23. The cold weather had definitely set in, and the sign on the bank read eighteen degrees. I cut back and forth through the alleys until I finally found a spot to park behind Miller’s Auto Parts. As soon as I walked around the corner, I spotted him, my stupid son. He was standing across the street under the Mickey D’s sign in his posing trunks, a pair of women’s panties hanging on his head.

The town was in an uproar, even worse than the week they put on the Farmers’ Festival. Bobby Lowe would hit a pose, then Sammy would copy him. Everyone was honking their horns and passing bottles and screaming stupid shit, as if they’d just discovered Elvis beating his meat in their shower stall. Then I saw it. It stretched across his face, gleaming like a toothpaste ad. I’d never realized Sammy could smile like that. It was like seeing his mother all over again. But then, just as I started across the street, dodging the cars and cursing the fucking drivers, he swung around to do a full frontal and dropped to the sidewalk.

I remember kicking him, ordering him to get up, and then some bastard hitting me in the head with something from behind. They were sliding Sammy and me into the ambulance when I came to. He was code blue. As we flew up the highway with the siren wailing and the lights flashing, I watched the paramedic work on him. Sammy was still smiling when the man gave up. “You’re shitting me,” I said as a chunk of bloody glass fell out of my head and landed on the rubber floor mat. “Do something, goddamn it!”

The paramedic zapped Sammy with the paddles again. Little white sparks flew off his frozen chest. Nothing.

“Jesus Christ, that boy’s the next South Ohio,” I said, grabbing the man by the throat. “He’s got a smile that can beat the world. He can’t be dead!” I shut off his air, watched as the veins in his eyes started to burst, and then I suddenly turned him loose. “I’m sorry,” I told him, “but that’s my boy.”

“Really, mister, I did everything I could.”

“He’s only eighteen years old,” I said, kneeling down beside the gurney and running my hand over my son’s dead body.

In the ER, some doctor came in the curtained-off room where they were stitching up the back of my head. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Mr. Colburn, your son suffered a heart attack. He had hypothermia, and his cholesterol was…” He glanced down at his clipboard. “Six hundred to be exact. Was he on medication?”

I shook my head. “No, he was healthy as a horse. Shit, you saw him.”

“Well, maybe on the outside,” the doctor said, staring at me. “Okay, let me ask you this, was he on some type of steroids? We’ll get a toxicology report back tomorrow, but do you know anything about it?”