Silence #4: SOS

You are not reading this. And what you are not reading is not made of words. I do not think in words. I think in things closer to shapes and colors. But this is not exactly my thoughts either. I guess you could say what you’re not reading here are the shapes and colors that make up my subconscious, or what they would be if translated to words, to a reader that’s not really there.

That is to say, this text does not exist.

My name is Jason Snow.

I was born in 1979. That makes me far too old to be a professional wrestler, yet also far from the oldest. This is not a job that lends itself eagerly to retirement. I spent the majority of my youth building, apparently, quite the legacy in my field before retiring–disappearing, in fact–at age 31.

A year ago I came back. And what a difficult year it’s been. I’ve won matches, sure–I even won a title–but I’ve also lost more matches in this past year than I believe I lost in my previous PRIME years combined. In some ways, I think my biggest and most dangerous opponent has actually been my own legacy. It’s always there, breathing down my neck. I hear it in the voice of every fan. I see it in the eyes of every new opponent on the other side of the ring. I’m fighting for wins, for titles; they’re fighting for immortality.

Some believe I’ve lost a step. You’re supposed to, after all. Father Time is unbeaten, and all that jazz. I don’t feel it. But I also know, when it happens, you don’t feel it. So while I still don’t believe that’s what’s happening, it’s not lost on me that age is not the kind of thief that shows up in broad daylight. Rather, it breaks into your bank account and robs you a penny at a time.

I have recently stopped speaking. In a way, it’s been a relief. Whatever difficulty there’s been in communicating has been balanced by snuffing out the endless need to translate my thoughts–which are not words–into words. I am far from an unintelligent man, but I am, at the best of times, not well-spoken.

I know, I know. You’re wondering about the baby.

Yes, I’ve recently acquired a baby. If you’re not yet aware–mind-reader that you are–the means by which I acquired the boy were far from pleasant. They were about as bad as you can imagine, in fact. I killed the boy’s mother. In cold blood. I’ll spare you the worst of it, but, in the moment, it felt like something I was being forced to do–not killing her would lead to something far worse, after all–but isn’t that always the way it goes? Before she died, the mother stayed quiet in hopes that the baby, who I’m pretty sure was the real target that night, would remain unknown to me. She was trying to protect him. Now I stay quiet too.

I don’t know the baby’s name. I’ve been tempted to give him a name of my own, but that somehow feels–oh, the irony–wrong.

The baby has a name. It was given to him by his mother. I just don’t know it. And I don’t know how to find it out. This is one area, I suppose, where you could say living in silence will present some challenges.

The only thing I really know about the baby is Cheryl King wants him dead. And believes he is.

Upon returning to Dempsy from Japan, I immediately went to the wrestling school because I knew Greg Miller would be there, and, given that I hadn’t been arrested yet, I knew Greg hadn’t turned the baby over to the police. My head was still pounding from the fight with Hayes Hanlon on Night One of Culture Shock, and also from Manhunt on Night Two when I walked through the door. Familiar smells, sounds. Sweats and grunts.

It didn’t take long to spot the baby, swinging happily in his baby swing, which hadn’t been here when I’d left for Japan. On either side of there was a burly Johnson brother, wrestling hopefuls, currently deep in the throes of baby-talk and funny faces.

On the left: Mike “The Maniac” Johnson; 6’4 (billed 6’7), 315 lbs (“350 lbs”)

On the right: Julius (real name: Jerry) Johnson; 6’2, 250 legit.

The Johnson brothers have been mainstays at the gym since I started coming here. Mike is the older and more promising wrestler of the two, which isn’t saying much. He can leverage his size enough to beat up on smaller opponents, but he’s never going to win more than he loses. He is, nevertheless, a spectacle, showing up in a mask made of duct tape, and a ragged gray-that-used-to-be-white t-shirt, he brags, has never been washed in the six years since he became “The Maniac.”

Mike, though, is about the furthest thing from a real maniac. Along with trying to live his dream in the ring, he’s been slowly working his way toward an accounting degree. How he became known as “The Maniac” was not ring-related whatsoever. In the early years of his training, which occurred in the northeast, Mike, who is originally from California, often offered to drive other wrestlers to shows and, for the first several winters, did not grasp that you have to slow down for snow and ice. So while opposing wrestlers beat up on him in the ring, friendly wrestlers riding shotgun and in his backseat began fearing for their lives. Thus, “The Maniac” was born as a behind-Mike’s-back reference to his driving. And when Mike finally found out his nickname, he believed it was a reference to his in-ring style (if I were better with words I’d call it “clumsy barbarian”) and so he crafted the mask and cut holes in his least favorite t-shirt. Mike eventually invested in snow tires and slowed down, but “The Maniac” remained.

The younger Johnson, Julius, is by far the lesser fighter (which is saying something) and yet might also have better prospects in the wrestling business. I’ve overheard Greg telling him, several times, that with his “fuckin mouth” he should transition into being a manager while he’s “still got two brain cells to fire at each other.” Julius has, through monumental lack of skill, suffered, if you believe him, “thirty-six concussions; twenty-one diagnosed and sixteen that” he “was able to hide from the commission.” He is roughly twenty-five years old.

Despite the brain trauma, Julius remains unquestionably bright–brighter even than his soon-to-be certified accountant brother. As children, Mike said, they had been more/less inseparable, and when their parents bought a new, larger home, and forced the children into separate, but neighboring, bedrooms, Julius quickly learned Morse Code, taught it to Mike, and within a few nights they were tapping out messages through the wall. Mike said Julius got so fluent that he could tap full sentences, the noise from which led their parents, downstairs, to believe the new house was haunted.

When the brothers saw me approaching, they smiled in unison. Mike “The Maniac” pulled the baby out of his swing and said, “Look who’s here, buddy. It’s Daddy.”

I am not the baby’s father. But it’s better if most of these guys believe that.

And it was easy to sell. The baby, by that point, had learned to light up when he saw me. And I can’t say I didn’t light up a little too. I took the baby from Mike and pulled him close to my neck, which he grabbed onto. (...This baby could collect my neck all he wanted.)

Mike said, “Sorry you lost your belt, Mr. Snow.”

I nodded.

That’s when I heard Greg Miller’s familiar voice coming closer as he spoke. “So you couldn’t give me the heads up you were gonna go bad against Hanlon?” I turned to see him hustling over. He added, “Suits you better I guess. You were always an asshole.”

It was not lost on me that, when the baby saw Greg approaching, he reached out. Greg gave the baby a soft smile and tousled his yellow hair. The decision to leave the baby here with Greg appeared to have been a good one. Aside from the apparent attachment between them, not to mention, again, the lack of police involvement, there was also the swing, a crib, a diaper changing station near the bathroom door. The wrestling school looked like it was becoming slowly infested by a daycare.

Greg, leaving a finger for the baby to clutch, said, “We need to talk about this. Or whatever you do now that you don’t talk.” He gave me a cold look. “And another thing we need to talk about is this guy in the wheelchair. You don’t tell me anything now? Who is this guy?”

Rexton William Bader… He’s a story for another day.

I smelled the baby’s head and peered at Greg.

Greg said, “Who you got next?”

I shrugged. This was quite some time before I would learn my next opponent would be FLAMBERGE. But, even so, I knew I had a fight coming. I knew I would stop at nothing to get my hands back on Hayes Hanlon. That fight, the way I saw it, was not yet over.

I made an overt gesture with my eyes at the wrestling ring where Shawn Diamond (real name: Reginald Willard) and Nils Heimlennen (he has three fingers on his left hand and refuses to say why) were putting in reps.

Greg read it correctly. “You want to train? You sure? You just had yourself an all out war at Culture Shock. Two of them.”

When a warrior, go to war.

That night–after putting in several exhausting rounds with Dexter “The Creep” (a name he comes by honestly) Maxwell–I stretched out in my live-in hotel room’s bed and failed to sleep. Too many questions.

Who is the baby?

And why does Cheryl King want the baby dead?

So, to search for answers, considering I don’t speak, I found myself doing the thing that everyone who avoids real-life conversations does: I scrolled social media.

I first searched Bryce. Bryce is Cheryl King's most trusted underling. But I remembered how, while he was giving me instructions (“Kill everyone inside,” he had said), he had begun to cry. It was clear to me now that he didn't want the baby dead. Not really.

So far as I could tell, there was no trace of Bryce online.

So I looked up Cheryl. No trace of her either. Around this time the exhaustion won out and I began to nod off. And soon I was asleep.

The week went by. And then another. By day I trained, leaving the baby in the care of the wrestling students. They were more than happy to participate in feeding and burping and peek-a-boo, if only to be noticed by “the great Jason Snow.” (There were noticeably fewer Jason Snow enthusiasts when it came time for diaper changing.) At nap time they spoke in hushed voices and put a pause on all ring (or likewise noisy) work.

I got my hands on Hayes Hanlon at ReVival 65. And then at the end of the night was given the news that, at ReVival 66, I'd be taking on FLAMBERGE.

“He's a lot like you,” Greg Miller told me when I returned again to the wrestling school, where, by this point, one corner of the warehouse had basically been turned into a playground for the baby. And I couldn't help but notice, while training, that the baby's corner of the gym had become a more popular spot than any of the heavy bags or weight benches or the squat ring in the center of the dusty space. Greg Miller was sitting next to me on a blanket that had been spread out over the concrete where the baby, it seemed, sometimes played with blocks. “FLAMBERGE, I mean,” he said. “He's the new young wonderboy. The kid that rose through the ranks, sliced and diced through legends, all that shit. Pretty much what you did twenty, twenty-five years ago.”

Had it really been that long?

“Not to mention,” Greg said, “he's a little fuckin crazy. That's probably where he resembles you most.”

I couldn't argue that. Even if I'd been willing to speak.

“Mr. Snow?”

I looked up.

It was Kelli (real name) Kenzi (fake name), the school's lone female student. Speaking of “a little fucking crazy.” Kelli grew up with nine—yes, nine—brothers. And after years of learning to fend for herself through the chaos of her childhood home, she found the real world too tame by comparison, and thus went into professional wrestling, where a childhood spent beating up boys came in handy. Growing to six-three didn't hurt either, nor did her ability find any cheapshot available (also a skill acquired from growing up with so many brothers). Kelli was a solid fighter in her own right, definitely tough, but by God she just never missed an opportunity to go for your eyes, nipples, or groin. Some of her training sessions looked like outright assaults, and Greg Miller would often have to stop her and remind her that sparring was to remain “light,” and that there was no such thing as “light sparring” with twisted testicles.

Away from the ring Kelli drove a fuel truck and—it was rumored—would burn down your house or car if you offered her a piece of the insurance payout.

Whenever she held the baby, however, as she did now, she was on her best behavior, and you'd never guess that this was the same woman I'd once watched bite a man on the inside of the thigh until he screamed like Marv from Home Alone. (The man in question, however, was Dexter “The Creep” Maxwell, and pretty much everyone assumed he'd had it coming.)

“Mr. Snow I just thought you should know that the baby had the sniffles while you were away. It wasn't really an issue, but you know...” She leaned down a bit, holding him tight to her shoulder. “...It would just be really helpful to know his name. What if there's an emergency?”

She was right of course. I wasn't going to be able to hide the baby forever. I knew that.

“And really,” she went on, “it's just not good for kids to go by ten or twelve different names. Everyone here calls him something different. Maybe you could at least write it down? Or maybe even just let us come up with our own name.”

I shook my head at that. It wasn't that it was a bad idea; it was that I knew this boy's mother had given him a name. And she'd wanted him to keep it, and be known as that. I might have taken everything else from her—literally everything—but maybe I could leave her with that.

That night, phone in hand, I dove harder into social media. While Cheryl King didn't have any accounts I could find, her used appliance shop, “Kitchen Care,” had several. I wondered who might run them. Mostly, the socials contained photos of the shop and its wares, but there were also photos of Cheryl. I scanned through those.

I thought, Why would you want this baby dead, without putting the thought into words.

My scrolling led to the occasional photo of Cheryl with her family. It was important, I supposed, to keep up the appearance of strong family ties while running a low key appliance store, even if secretly you were the biggest crime lord in town. ...Especially then. I remembered Cheryl's three idiot daughters from the Christmas dinner at her house, and, upon a little more digging, found each of their names and their own social media accounts. Nothing that seemed like a useful scrap of information anywhere. Nothing that might point me anywhere.

But then I remembered something. Cheryl didn't only have daughters. She also had, and has, a son. And that son is the mayor of Saint Ambrose. Why, I asked myself without words, would Cheryl proudly showcase photos of her moron daughters but make no mention of her successful son? The son, Matthew Bedford, didn't even carry Cheryl's last name.

Of course, the mayor of a mid-sized U.S. City is going to be all over social media. And so he was. Matthew Bedford (I), 54, apparently a lover of golf and reading to children. Page after page of photos, quotes, policy ideas, arguments, the occasional snide insult.

And then I found it. The thing I'd been looking for.

I nearly scrolled right by it, a photo of Bedford with his staff at what appeared to be a party, dated roughly two years ago, but I stopped when I saw red hair. She was just one of eight or nine people smiling on the periphery of the photo–nowhere near the focal point–but I'd know her anywhere. I'd killed her. It was the baby's mother.

She appeared in no other photos. After a while I gave up on finding more.

For a long time I just sat there in the dark. Then I got up and went over to the baby's crib.

He slept peacefully on his back in his white-and-blue jammies.

I put my hand on his chest and let his heart beat against my palm.

One more thing I need to clarify: I do speak sometimes. I'm not completely mute. I speak often—but I speak only—to the baby.

“Everyone thinks I'm your father,” I said softly while he slept. I could see his eyes twitching beneath their lids. “I wish I was. I really do. But I'm pretty sure I know who your father is.”

The baby stretched out but didn't wake up.

I turned the light out and went to bed.

The next day, back at the gym, Greg Miller was giving me a million warnings about Rexton William Bader. “I'm just saying, maybe you know better—it ain't like you're gonna tell me—but I spent all night researching the guy and I can't find shit. He talks about how he was supposed to be this top-notch wrestling prospect in the eighties. But I was around in the 80s. I remember everybody. I would remember him.”

I nodded along, holding a plank position on my elbows and toes throughout, trying to relax the shaking off for just a little bit longer. I knew Greg would eventually try to dig up information on Rexton, and I knew he wouldn't find anything. Rexton William Bader never wrestled a match in his life. Never served in Iraq either.

“But what I mean is, can you really trust the guy?"

Trust.

"He already turned on one 'protege.'”

That was planned from the beginning.

“And now you're gonna walk—well, not walk, but you know—you're gonna roll him down to ringside and trust him out there. What if he thinks FLAMBERGE is a better protege than you? What if your skull's the next skull to put a dent in that oxygen tank of his?”

Then I'll feed it to him.

It was at this moment that the Johnson brothers walked into the gym. From my position on the floor I heard the door open, and then heard them chattering. I'd been waiting for them. After a quick scan, still in plank, I saw them making their usual first stop—over at the baby's little playground in the corner.

A few more seconds of pain and then I popped up to my feet, and jogged their way, Greg Miller saying, “Hey, I was right in the middle of talking to you. Are you deaf too now? Hey where you goin?”

Julius noticed me first. He smiled. “Hey Mr. Snow,” he said, “how're you and the baby doing? I mean—I should say, I hope you and the baby had a good night.”

From the pocket of my shorts I pulled my cellphone, which I had ready and loaded for this moment. I held the screen up to him. He looked at it. Looked at me.

Mike approached from behind. He had the baby in his arms already.

The two of them looked at the photo.

Mike said, “Who's that?”

Julius said, “If you want us to understand, Mr. Snow, I'm sorry, but you're really gonna have to speak.”

I responded by reaching over with my free hand and putting it on his shoulder. He looked immediately nervous, but after searching my eyes for any sign of danger he seemed to relax.

“I don't--”

Tap-tap-tap

Taptaptap

Tap-tap-tap

Julius squinted at me.

Communication without words. Like this text.

Mike said, “Mr. Snow, who is that in the--”

“Wait,” said Julius. He looked at me hard. “Are you sayin what I think you're saying?”

Tap-tap-tap

Taptaptap

Tap-tap-tap

Julius blinked a few times. Then he looked over his shoulder at his brother.

“He needs our help.”