The wrought iron gate slams with a heavy metallic clang prompting a trio of teenaged girls to stop short their pursuit of another young woman, who, safely on the other side maintains stride. Her well-worn black and white sneakers beat a path up the brick sidewalk stopping only at the varnished, chestnut door of the two story brownstone to which it lays claim. Chest heaving with copious breaths she fumbles about the right pocket of a pair of faded blue jeans for the keys, tears streaming from her soft blue eyes –one of which is blackened - while her hunters chide her from the other side of the black iron fence which keeps them at bay.
“Aww, the little girl doesn’t want to play any more”, a husky brunette calls out while leering at her prey through angry snuff colored eyes.
“What’s a matter little kitten?” chides a lanky, freckle faced redhead while shaking the gate, “is it time for your breast feeding?”
“She looks like she wants to honk” Their companion, a hulking, giantess of a teen laughs obnoxiously. She kicks at the ground where the fence meets the sidewalk with a pair of sturdy, black leather boots and joining her companions in shaking the fencing.
With a nervous grip their prey shakily slides the key into the lock and quickly lets herself in. She slams the door shut and locks it before leaning against it exhaling a sigh of relief while reaching up to brush aside an errant strand of sweaty blonde hair, her sobs echoing throughout the foyer.
“What in the bloody… “The muffled thud of boot steps hurriedly crossing a carpeted floor reverberate from across the dimly lit foyer and forcing Catherine Riley to wipe the tears from her reddened face. “Kitty cat, what’s wrong, what happened?”
Alarmed, Catherine drops her glare to the floor attempting to play it off while her mind races for an excuse that proves elusive. “Nothing Uncle Ernie,” she replies softly, still trying to bring her heartrate down. Her uncle, an older, heavyset man with loose jowls and a leathery complexion from 68 years of life looks on from behind a pair of wire framed glasses, his blue eyes flickering in concern while she continues. “I just thought to take a jog home from school, to get some exercise, ya know?”
“Bollocks young lady,” he snorts, “pick your head up, let me see your face”. An audible gasp slithers through pursed lips as he takes the youngster’s chin gently into his hand. Noting the black ring around the eye and the onset of swelling beneath it his gruff expression turns to one of paternal concern. “Who did this to you?” he demands. “I want names”!
“Nobody Uncle Ernie”, Cat says with uncertainty, not even believing herself but still hoping to convince her elder, a man notorious for his temper that nothing was amiss. “I just had an accident in gym class, nothing more”.
“What were you learning, street fighting”? He scoffs. Grabbing his niece by the shoulder he carefully moves her aside, clearing the way to the door which he promptly opens to peer out into the street. A curt breeze gingerly sweeps his short grey hair as he steps fully onto the patio in search of the perpetrators but even with the aid of a clear sky and the sun to his back he sees no sign of wrongdoers, the only other person outside within sight is an elderly woman whom he recognizes as their neighbor Mrs. McArdle of more than 30 years walking her dog. He responds to her greeting with a wave of his own before slamming the door shut. “Bloody little shits”, he fumes. “Let me get my hands on them. I’ll rip off their bleeding legs and use them as a Billy club”. His demeanor quickly shifts gears from belligerent to kindly, turning back to his niece looking up at him through sorrowful eyes. “Come with me to the kitchen”, he says, guiding her with a beefy hand on the back. “Let’s get you fixed up”.
Seated at the painstakingly crafted old world style kitchen table, Cat nurses her eye with an ice pack while sipping a diet Pepsi. Her uncle meanwhile busies himself at an equally old gas stove preparing a pot of tea. He shuffles about across the polished wooden floor gathering a cup, saucer and coaster until the whistle breaks the silence with a sudden shriek alerting him that his drink is ready. Taking the silver pot by its’ wooden handle he quietly fills his cup before setting the kettle back down and joining Cat at the table. Setting the white porcelain cup and saucer down on the lovingly crafted, multi-colored yarn coaster the big man leans back in his chair seated opposite his niece which creaks in protest.
“Now then”, he says looking Cat in the eyes. “Tell your Uncle Ernie what happened today at the Battle royal, and don’t try to lie to me anymore”, he admonishes with a shaking of his index finger. “You’ll never be any good at it any way”.
“Well, I didn’t lie about being in gym class”, she begins while suppressing a halfhearted chuckle over the elder man’s comment about lying to him. He’s right she muses. He has always been able to tell when she was trying to lie to him. “It’s three girls”, she continues. “Darla, a little fat shit with a Little Debbie haircut. Then there’s Diane, she’s this skinny slapper who always chums it up with Darla. She’s a tall ginger with freckles and everything, looks like a bloody plank with lipstick and eyeballs. Then there’s Roberta. She this gigantic, fat arse Billy No-mates, at least until she met Diane and Darla at the beginning of the school year, then they all started tossing together. They’re all 14, a year older than me”. She pauses to take a sip of her soda while casting a curt glance to her uncle, hoping not to have upset him with her choice of language. He does not seem to care and continues to look on with interest, his mind obviously processing what she has told him thus far. Despite his advancing age the man’s mental state still seems as sharp as ever. “Any way they’ve been picking on me for just about the whole school year, me and a couple other girls. I guess it was my turn again today”.
“Again?” he interrupts in his gravelly voice.
“As I said, they’ve been picking on me the whole school year. First it was over my dark eyebrows, they would say it makes me look like a zombie. Then it was about my legs, how my right leg is a little bit shorter than my left and causes me to walk a little differently and today it was my toes. They saw that my second toe is longer than my big toe when we were changing into our gym clothes”.
“And that gives them reason to go beating somebody up”?
“Well, not entirely”.
“Go on”, he dictates softly, pausing to take a sip of tea, his kindly blue eyes remaining fixed on his niece.
“They wouldn’t shut up about it”, she says. “They were calling other girls over to show them my toes while laughing and cracking jokes. I finally got tired of it all and told them to bugger off. Then Roberta pushes me up against my locker and is about to hit me but the teacher walked in and broke it up. They said they would get me after school and although I tried to avoid them they caught up with me around the corner from Mack’s Tavern. Roberta grabbed me and they all pushed me into the alley behind it and started hitting and kicking me before one of the patrons saw what was happening and yelled. That gave me a chance to escape and I ran home”.
“All that tosh just because you’re different,” he growls while slapping his tea down in disgust. “They may as well declare war on the whole bleeding planet”.
“Fortunately today was the last day of school for the year”, Cat adds before draining the last of her soda. “So I don’t have to worry about it for a while”.
“You don’t have to worry about it ever again”, Ernie says picking his tea back up.
“What do you mean Uncle, what are you going to do”?
“It means”, the elder man drops his voice upon noticing a spot on his red sweater and reaches for a napkin to dab at it and giving his mind the opportunity to visualize his intended plan of action. An action he had considered for a long time, only to allow himself to be talked out of it time and again but no more. Looking across the table at his young niece nursing her black eye with an ice pack consisting of cubes bundled into a white linen towel he quietly resolves to stand his ground. He turns his attention briefly back to the tea stain on his hand knitted sweater and dabs at it again. No more would he acquiesce to tradition. In his brother’s only child he saw someone every bit as deserving of what he could teach her, gender be damned. Clenching his fist he drops the napkin back onto the table and lifts his gaze to meet hers. “It means I am going to make you a part of our family legacy”, he says. “I am going to teach you how to handle girls like that”.
Her mouth agape Cat stares incredulously at her uncle, stunned by the announcement. Although she has long known of his career training professional wrestlers but never having considered herself as a candidate she had brushed the thought aside almost as quickly as it had entered her mind. Professional wrestling was and remains a tough sport practiced by highly skilled athletes with the balance of a gymnast, the strength of a bull and the quickness of a panther, qualities she has never seen herself as having. Still, the fact that he would even suggest such a possibility left her mind reeling. This is a man who has wrestled himself and trained others in the craft for more than 40 years. Obviously he must see something that she does not, but what? Questions begin to pepper her train of thought with the cacophony of a hail storm on a tin roof, each one louder than the last and each one bringing with it another. She shakes her head in an effort to compose her thoughts and fixes her gaze firmly on her uncle’s face, his blue eyes smiling at her from behind a pair of thin, gold wire-framed spectacles; he had expected her reaction.
“You’re talking about teaching me to wrestle”? She asks.
He says nothing other than offering a nod of his head, shifting his aged bulk back into the old wooden chair which emits a light squeak in protest to await her next question.
“What makes you think I am cut out for that sort of thing”? She demands while setting her half melted ice pack down onto the table. “They’re all musclebound! They flip and flap about the ring like monkeys on crack and they’re as big as a house! I’m nothing like that Uncle Ernie. You know that. I can’t do somersaults or bench press ten times my body weight”. Shaking her head in exasperation she continues, “I don’t have the body or coordination to do the crazy things they do. I mean, I might make a decent ring girl,” she pauses to consider her words and resumes, waving her hands dismissively. “Provided I was size two ten feet tall perfect. I suppose stilts are an option and I can always stuff my bra but other than that I don’t see how it can happen”.
Leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table Ernie bows his head as Cat’s voice trails off leaving him to envision her ramblings in a comedic parody of the craft he has donated the majority of his life to perfecting. With a chuckle he shakes his head but the image of his niece trying to walk about the ring on a pair of stilts and her shirt stuffed with a pair of melons proves to be too much and the brief chuckle is followed by another and then another. The chuckles soon converge into a rolling peal of laughter which echoes throughout the otherwise empty house. The laughter continues for several moments until he finally manages to calm himself down. Dabbing at his left eye with a napkin he draws a deep breath.
“Ah kitty cat”, he says with a beaming grin. “You never fail to make me laugh”. He sets the napkin down and replaces it with his tea. He blows over the rim of the cup through pursed lips; a light whistle gliding through them before he takes a sip of the beverage, his nostrils reveling in the floral undertones. Smacking his lips the man exhales a satisfied murmur and turns his attention Back to Catherine, who has since reapplied the ice pack to her tender eye, “Ah how I love that sarcastic wit of yours, but I don’t think you understand my dear”.
“I do believe that I understand”, she says while rising from her seat. The rubber soles of her sneakers squeak as her feet glide across the polished wooden floor, guiding her to the sink. Opening the towel she dumps the nearly melted ice cubes into it and reaches to the freezer on her left for a fresh supply, pausing to drop a few into her glass which she then refills with Diet Pepsi, her drink of choice. “I understand that you have been training professional wrestlers since long before I was even born”, she says rejoining him at the table. “But I can’t bench press a biscuit let alone another person. My point still stands”.
“The only point you have – you silly bird – is your head”, he responds with a chortle.
“Uncle Ernie, I can’t do that stuff they do on the telly”! She exclaims.
“I’m not talking about that poppycock you watch on Saturday night. That is nothing more than theatre, a show put on to entertain the audience. I do not train for that. What I do is pass on the legacy started by your Grandfather Billy Riley in 1950 by teaching catch wrestling”.
She had heard the term thrown about by various members of her family through the years, her uncle and father most notably but as a young girl her attention was predominately elsewhere so she never bothered to learn more about it, preferring instead to associate with other children her own age. A quick trip down memory lane brings to her images of both her father and uncle’s trophy collection, an immense display of wrestling prodigy and, strangely enough, no championship belts. A sweat stained padded mat situated over a hard dirt floor illuminated by candlelight and lined by several creaky old wooden benches inside of a large shed behind her Grandfather, now her uncle’s house and a seemingly endless line of people, all young men gathering inside the shed for hours on end almost every time she and her parents visited. She recalled the groaning and constant grunts as well as the lingering stench of perpetual perspiration. The smell alone was enough to ensure that she never ventured inside the shed for more than a fleeting moment and questions to her father were either quickly forgotten by her youthful mind or simply went unanswered.
But now, her Uncle, the same man from her memories, only older, sits in front of her seeming to imply that what he teaches is something completely different from the professional wrestling she has long been certain that he has been teaching. And a whirlwind of questions gust through her mind which breezes with possibilities previously unconsidered. What makes it so different from Professional wrestling? How could this help her deal with the bullies from school? How can she be expected to do this when she remains convinced that she is unsuited for professional wrestling and, most of all, what exactly is catch wrestling? The term is only vaguely familiar to her, often used by her family and equally as often cast aside by a young girl with other thoughts and inclinations. She holds no doubts to her family’s background in the sport, the ostentatious display of her father’s accolades and accomplishments in the living room had certainly seen to that but is it something that she can learn? Her mouth opens to give voice to the loudest question in her mind but is interrupted by the shrill ringing of the old style cord telephone hanging on the wall next to the refrigerator.
“Would you grab the bone Cat”?
With a shuffle of her feet Cat bolts up from her chair and hop steps to the phone, picking the receiver up into her hand she cradles the red plastic against her cheek and answers with a cheery ‘Hello’. She listens for a moment to the voice on the other end and grins broadly in recognition.
“It’s Mum and Dad”, she whispers while covering the microphone with her left hand. Ernie turns ponderously in his seat towards Cat and the telephone in anticipation as she continues. “We’re doing fine Dad, me and Uncle Ernie are just sitting at the kitchen table and chatting”. The conversation continues in this vein for the next several moments with Cat relaying some of her experiences at school and home over the previous weeks as her Uncle sat for her while they have been vacationing in New York City. In turn mother and father alike take turns speaking with their daughter, relaying their own experiences in the United States as Ernie Riley begins to fidget anxiously until finally gesturing to Cat with a silent instruction to hand him the phone. “One moment Dad”, she replies to both her father and uncle. “Uncle Ernie wants to speak with you”.
“Paul”! He answers gleefully upon accepting the receiver from his niece. “How the hell have you been”? A similar round of small talk between the brothers begins as it had moments before with Ernie initiating but ever impatient the elder of the two siblings cuts it short after a surprisingly brief exchange. “Look Paul, let me cut to the chase here. Cat has been having some trouble at school with a couple of birdies and I mean to start teaching her in the pit”. The Pit refers to the informal wrestling school held in his backyard, known professionally as The Snake Pit. While both brothers are owners of the school, it has always been Ernie who tended to the daily affairs and continues to serve as the lead instructor with Paul taking on the role of silent partner. He responds to the obvious question by relaying to her father Cat’s tale from earlier in the day. “Don’t you worry about them blokes”, he interjects to answer a question before it even asked. “I’ll handle them”.
The Snake Pit when it was originally founded by Billy Riley was intended to teach men only as such sports were traditionally male back in the 1950s. This tradition continued until 1978. Upon the death of the founder his sons Ernie and Paul assumed ownership and several former students with children of their own began to pressure the brothers into teaching young boys. The brothers agreed and The Snake Pit continued business as usual but women and girls remained barred from participating in strict adherence to older conceptions. Paul, younger by 12 years had anticipated a backlash by some of the more conservative veterans and posed the possibility. But the strong personality of Ernie Riley would hear none of it.
“It was me who allowed those blokes to bring their kids to learn the craft, and now I’m going to bring my niece and teach her the same way I taught them, better in fact and there isn’t a bloody thing they can do about it”. A brief pause ensues between the men as Cat looks on from her seat, her heavy eyebrows arched in uncertainty. “Don’t you worry about a thing Paul, When I get through with her our little kitty cat is going to be a man eating tigress. We’ll see you soon”.
Turning back towards Cat he hands the receiver to her, his eyes asking her to hang it back up. She dutifully complies before eagerly bouncing back into her chair, her expression glimmering with hope.
“Well”? She asks. “What did he say”?
“He about bit my bloody arm off! He loves the idea of your becoming a strong and independent woman. So get your gear together because tomorrow you and I are taking a trip to the pit”.
“I can’t wait”! Cat cries, leaping from her chair to tightly embrace her Uncle. “But you still haven’t explained the difference between catch wrestling and the stuff we see on the idiot box”.
“You’ll learn that tomorrow, just be sure to get your rest. You’re going to need it”.
