Self defense without weapons.

Pearson, Mark

Cam Gratz wheeled and pivoted, fighting for a grip, balance. Feigning trips and sweeps, he made several full turns around the mat before he sensed an opening. He stepped and swept his opponent across his posted foot, pulling on the heavy cotton jacket, gripping so tightly the thick cotton bit into his knuckles, tore calloused skin. The burn would come later, creep across his fingers like blue flames licking kindling. He stood for a fraction of an instant, poised on one foot, back straight, leaning slightly backwards while one arm pulled his opponent's shoulder to him, and his other arm simultaneously pushed his opponent's shoulder away, tipping him like a table top. His opponent, wiry, nimble, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu player, good with arm bars and fighting from the mat, but not as good on his feet, stepped and stumbled over Cam's extended foot. He caught his balance mid-step, adjusting his center of gravity in midair like a human gyroscope. Moving in a half-circle across the mat, Cam stepped deep, this time hooking with his leg, catching his opponent for a second before he slipped back and out, and then a fierce flurry ensued as the men tumbled to the mat, wrapped and rolled out of bounds with elbows and knees flying, the sound of their struggle echoing sharp and high in the rafters of the cold gymnasium. Cam glanced at the referee. No points scored. Next time, Cam thought. I'll get him with that sweep. He got lucky. I can beat this guy. I'll win this thing. He pulled his jacket down snug, retied his belt and walked back to the center of the mat.

A tough draw for a first round match, but the tournament was small and they'd have to meet sooner or later. OK, Cam thought, so it's now. That's what he came for anyway. It was a tune-up tournament for the world championships in the middle of Pennsylvania coal country, not too far from the hundred acres of rolling hillside pastures and muddy ravines he'd grown up on. Who would have thought the Brazilian would have made the trip to nowheresville, but Sombo tournaments were scarce anywhere and the world championships were only four months away. They had the same idea and there they were.

It was Caim's first tournament since tearing up his knee at a tournament in New York and barely a month since he got the word he was on the team for worlds. He'd put his name in to challenge for the world team after nationals. Nobody else challenged, not even the national champ at his weight. He'd been third at nationals, but he got the spot by forfeit. The national Sombo federation sent him a letter confirming his place on the team. He tucked the letter away in a book. Every once in a while he pulled it out and read over it. It gave him a sense of accomplishment, like the All-American certificate he had stuffed away in one of his boxes. He'd hang it on a wall some day when he settled. The only downside was he had to pay his own way to the worlds. It was fifteen hundred dollars he didn't have. He had four months to train and raise the money. Working at a bar and a little coaching earned him spare change, enough to live and hit weekend tournaments. Lately, he'd been thinking about raising that money as much as about training.

He usually traveled to tournaments with his buddy Dinkins, but Dinkins had started traveling with his new girl and her daughter. It made Cam uncomfortable. He always thought about his lack of family, his mother gone, his father stubborn, distant, and of what it might be like to have a family with Becky, the girl, now woman, he had seen off and on since high school and sometimes thought he loved. Besides, last time he'd ridden with Dinkins, all Dinkins talked about was some pyramid sales scheme that he planned to do when he quit the Marines. He was going to make a million dollars selling vitamins and soap, blah, blah, blah. Cam got sick of hearing about it.

When Dinkins asked him, "Need a ride?"

Cam said, "I'll meet you there." He thought maybe he'd stop and see Becky. She wouldn't expect that. Not after the way he'd left things. But he figured when she found out where he was going she'd make a joke of it, flip her hair over her shoulder the way she did and raise her eyebrows. "Kung Fu fighting," she'd say. Who needed that crap? He drove straight to the tournament.

He woke up in the gravel parking lot of an old high school at sunrise. Walked around puddles rimmed with ice. Weigh-in was routine. Dropping ten pounds to make 163 was easy. Afterwards, he met up with Dinkins. They ate sliced turkey and oranges in silence and waited. An official posted draw-sheets. First match, Cam drew the Brazilian.

Cam Gratz was square-jawed and square-shouldered, rugged-looking, kept a few steps from handsome by a dented nose, a false front tooth he could pop in and out at will, and a pair of ears thick as pork rinds that could have passed for moonscape. He was incorrigibly silent and sullen in a way that made people avoid him. The silence was distilled from years of solitude spent on a dairy farm in the hills of central Pennsylvania, and an unfortunate family history that simmered in his memory.

As an undersized boy Cam had a routine. He was up at six a.m. and running: down the dirt roads that crisscrossed the farm, up the hills, through the valleys: a different route everyday. He kept moving like that all through high school and into college, lifting weights, pitching hay. People wondered. Was he crazy? But, a high school counselor said he was all right. His mother was murdered by an itinerant farm hand when he was ten. It was the biggest news of the year in a farm community prone to silence and secrets.

Cam saw a picture of the murderer in the newspaper. The image of the hollow-faced coward stayed with him and filled him with hurt and hatred. It became his fuel, and it burned slowly and brightly inside him.

Late to mature and consumed by his physical routine, he was shy around girls. Growing up a runt without a mother did that to him. He'd grown since and stood almost five-nine. It took him until twenty to wrestle the clothes off of Becky Walsh, with her help, in the cab of his pickup, and then work up the courage to propose to her because he thought that was right. She declined the offer, citing her own youth and inexperience, and a desire to see the world before the responsibilities of marriage and family doomed her to the farm wife's life that trapped her mother at eighteen. They kept in touch, got together whenever Cam came back into town.

Just past thirty, his wrestling career mostly behind him except for the occasional tournament, Cam was drinking with a bunch of jar-head high school buddies on leave from the Marines at a D.C. dive with a cement floor and a loud screeching band, when Cooper Branch mentioned a Sombo tournament the next day at some high school in Maryland.

"I heard of it, but what is it exactly?" Cam said.

"Kind of like Judo," Coop said. "You wear a jacket, try to get the other guy to submit. Elbow locks, ankle locks, can't twist fingers, or choke."

"Sounds crazy," Cam said.

"It's a fucking blast," Coop said. "You ought to see it. We do it in the Marines. Russian KGB invented it."

"All right," Cam said. "I'll watch."

Next morning at weigh-in while Coop and his two Marine Corps buddies registered, Cam sat in the bleachers, his eyes closed against the fluorescent gym lights, cheap beer gone sour in his belly and working a grip on his brain. Coop and company set their bags around Cam.

"What do you weigh?" Coop said to Cam.

"Seventy-five," Cam said.

"Only two guys at eighty," Coop said. "Why don't you weigh-in. You're already third. I've got some extra shoes, and gear."

"You crazy?" Cam said. "I've never done it before."

"You can wrestle," Coop said. "I'll show you a few things. You'll be all right. Just get out there and brawl."

First match was with a bald guy with a beard and a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on his calf. A judo player trying to make the cross-over like the wrestlers. When he stepped on the mat, all the old anger flared up inside him. It was easy to raise. He learned early on to walk onto the mat mad as hell. He taught himself to win that way. Cam head-locked his opponent three times and held him on his back for three points. When Cam walked off the mat, light-headed and ready to heave his guts, Coop and his buddies cracked him on the back.

"Looks like a Sombo man to me," Coop said. "A damn hurricane. A lion, untamed, fucking wild. What do you see out there, man? What are you looking at like that?"

Cam caught his breath. "Shoulder's killing me," he said.

"Don't sweat it," Coop said. "Elbows and knees are what you got to watch mostly. Let me show you some more stuff."

He pulled Cam off to the side, showed him how to grip the jacket, set up an arm bar.

"You need a couple submission holds in your repertoire," he said. "Learn grip fighting."

Cam won his next match, which amounted to the championship. The tournament director gave him a painted gold medal and shook his hand. Cam's knuckles stung. The heavy fabric of his opponents' jackets had chafed them raw.

"Going to nationals?" he asked Cam.

"Haven't thought about it."

"You ought to," he said. "You got some ability and time to learn the sport."

"You going to nationals?" Cam said to Coop as they threw their bags in the backseat of Coop's new red Ford Mustang and climbed in.

"Hell yeah," Coop said.

Coop's buddy, Dinkins, a genuine rock head with an authentic military haircut, high and tight, kept talking about going to Japan and doing something called shoot fighting. His scalp shifted as he spoke.

"They pay you to fight," he said. "No holds barred. Submission. Everything. Like Sombo only no rules. It's a fucking brawl, for real."

"Sounds like human cock fights," Cam said.

"Hell yeah," Dinkins said.

Where'd this guy come from? Cam wondered. What the hell am I getting myself into? But, he felt good, lungs burning, sore shoulder, bloody knuckles stinging. He was back into the world of competition that he missed and it was something new, this Sombo. As crazy as it seemed, he liked it. He liked walking out onto the mat, waiting for another match to begin, the anticipation, and then the clash. He was focused again, the way he had been during college.

"Hoorah," Dinkins shouted. A bright red mat-burn blossomed on the side of his face. "Nothing better than walking around with battle scars. Cuts, bruises, aching muscles. Makes you know you're alive."

Cam stared at the road ahead. Dinkins was right.

"You into it?" Coop said.

"I'm into it," Cam said.

"Nationals here we come," Dinkins hollered.

Dinkins was a red white and blue box of rocks, courtesy of Uncle Sam and whatever shithole he grew up in back in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but he was all right somehow. Cam sensed a brawler's kinship, a mutual dissatisfaction with self and situation, and the desire to beat the shit out of the boredom that life too often presented.

A few weeks after that first tournament, he moved to Virginia to train with the Marines, and rented a trailer near Quantico. He needed a reason to get out of Philadelphia where he'd been working odd jobs, a little coaching, bouncing, driving back at harvest time and planting time to help his father on the farm. He'd been thinking about going back to school, but he wasn't sure for what. Virginia was hot and humid, air like dripping water. The trailer, a tin can that doubled as a solar collector.

Cam did a hundred pull-ups a day in sets of twenty, then ten, and five. He threw his jacket over a pull-up bar and hung on it. The fabric bit into his skin, rubbed it raw until it calloused. His grip got stronger. He could hang on an opponent's jacket all day. His technique got better. He learned arm bars and leg locks. He ran in the blazing midday heat with his jacket on and heavy boots. He set his goals: nationals early next March; the worlds a year from August in Japan. Between then and worlds, he'd hit every tournament he could find.

He went home to visit his dad, thought maybe he'd surprise Becky too. He was feeling pretty good about the move, like finally he was going somewhere after a long dry run of just living to pay the bills. It was mid-November, but winter had set in. Becky waitressed at the Breezeway Truck Stop. He got there at dinner time, walked in as she hauled a tray of chicken fried steak out of the shiny kitchen doors. He took a seat in her section.

"Doing anything when you get off?" Cam said. He pushed some pale corn into a pile of mashed potatoes topped with yellow gravy.

"Didn't your mom ever teach you not to play with your food?" Becky said. Her brown hair was tucked under a red cap. She was lean, muscular legs, shaved and glistening.

"Didn't have a chance," Cam said.

"We got to talk," Becky said. "More coffee?" She raised a pot.

"Sure," Cam said.

He watched the trucks come and go, listened to their air brakes screech. Becky cleared his table.

"I got a date," she said.

"Who?" Cam said.

"Lyle Clovis."

"Lyle Clovis?" Cain said. "What the hell?"

"That's only half of it. I'm pregnant." She patted her belly.

"What?"

"Don't worry," she said. "It's not yours."

"I thought."

"You don't want to get married anyway, Cam," she said and kissed him on the forehead. "You're too busy Kung Fu fighting."

He tried to forget about Becky as he drove out to see his father. It had snowed already. Low drifts edged the roadsides. Naked fields glistened under a thin, patchy cover of snow and ice. Severed corn stalks stuck through. Winter was all right, he thought, if you knew how to bundle up against it. He was sure his father would be happy to hear about his success and maybe pitch in a little cash toward his cause. When he pulled in the drive at The Big G Ranch, Brugman Gratz leaned against the hog pen fence, arms over the top rails. He stood six feet solid with a torso like a packed grain sack, and a neck that sloped outward from his hairy ears. He weighed three hundred pounds.

Cam's old man, Brugman Gratz, owned the Big G Ranch, the only dairy farm in Pennsylvania to be called a ranch. He ran a couple of steer with the heifers and hogs and figured that gave him the right.

"Missed you at harvest time," he said.

"I'm trying to earn enough money to go to the Sombo world championships," Cam said.

"What the hell is that?" Brugman Gratz said. "Some kind of dance. You got a college degree. You're wasting you're time. You need a job."

"I got a job," Cam said. "Bouncing at a bar."

"Like I said you need a job," he said. "Drinking beer and chasing pussy while you sit on your ass for twenty five bucks a night ain't work."

"Don't worry about me," Cam said. "I can take care of myself."

"Don't come begging for handouts around here," his old man said.

"I don't need any handouts," Cam said.

He turned around and left.

Slow night near closing time at the City Nightclub, the beer joint Cam worked for a few extra bucks on Fridays and Saturdays: Cam sat at the door. He'd picked up some extra hours around the holidays because no one else wanted to work. He thought about his father, mean as a wounded boar, conflicts as far back as he could remember. He tried to put it out of his mind by running through a sequence of moves, ending with a submission and victory.

After the last drunk straggled out of the bar, Cam grabbed a mop, poured detergent and steaming water in a bucket and swabbed down the bathrooms. The detergent stench clung to his hands as he walked down the darkened alley to his car. It was like the stench of the farm and the images of his boyhood. He couldn't shake them. Most people his age were sweating over careers and families. Cam thought he was lucky, loose, prepared for whatever life threw at him. He could hang with anything.

A couple of days before New Year's, Cam was sleeping when the phone rang around midnight. He fumbled it then caught it before it hit the ground.

"Hello," he said.

"Cameron?"

"Becky?"

"Yeah," she said. It sounded like she'd been crying.

"Where are you?" Cam said. He was awake now.

"At home," she said.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Me and Lyle broke up," she said.

"What do you want?" he said. He was staring out the window, wide awake, shivering in his shorts, his heart racing.

"I want to see you," she said.

"I can come tomorrow," he said.

"What about tonight?" she said.

"It'll take three and a half, maybe four hours," he said.

"I'll leave the door open," she said.

Becky was sleeping when Cam walked in. She wore a big blue football jersey with the number fourteen on it. The sheets were flipped back and the jersey hiked up over her hip. A streetlight cut the room in half, threw a white triangle across the bed and onto the wall, illuminating her milky skin. Cam leaned over her, kissed the side of her face. She stirred, turned toward him. Her breath smelled like sweet wine. A bottle of white and two glasses sat on the bedside table, sweating.

"Lyle," she said.

"Lyle? Shit," Cam said. He stepped away, thought about driving back the same route he'd just covered.

"Cam honey. I'm sorry," Becky said. "I was sleeping."

She took his hands, pulled him to her. He ran his hands up under her shirt, across her ribs. She wrapped her arms around his back.

"What took you so long," she said.

"I went as fast as I could." He'd driven through the night, up the interstate, surprised at the number of night travelers around him.

He lifted her shirt over her head. She raised her arms to help him. He stood up, looked at her as he slipped off his shirt, and unbuckled his belt.

"You're still in good shape," she said.

"You hardly look pregnant," he said.

"I will soon."

They lay in bed until late morning. The streetlight faded into daylight. Cam threw back the sheets and stood up.

"Leaving already," Becky said.

"Got a workout this afternoon and work tonight."

"You going to move back sometime?" she said.

"Maybe," he said.

"Why don't you?" she said.

"You asking?" he said.

"Wondering," she said.

"I don't know."

Becky had her face buried in her pillow. Her back shook as she sobbed.

"You're going to be a lonely old man," she said.

The words stung Cam. He thought about his father, spending his days on the farm alone, just goddamn mean. He slammed the door on the way out. He could still smell her on his hands. He gripped the steering wheel, pressed his face into his hands, and breathed it in. What the hell happened? Who the hell did she think she was? Get knocked up by that dirtball Lyle Clovis and expect him to step in like nothing ever happened. Fuck that.

Working out with Dinkins one day a few weeks before nationals, he caught Dinkins' arm, straightened it. Dinkins yelled.

"Damn Gratz. You don't know when to quit."

Cam let go. Blood pounded in his ears.

"Sorry man."

"Like hell," Dinkins said. "What are you thinking? It's practice."

They stayed away from each other in practice for a few days.

"Ever think about what you're going to do when you quit this?" Coop asked him one day.

"Quit?" Cam said. "What the hell for?"

"Can't do it forever," Coop said.

"As long as I can," Cam said.

"You can't go around beating the shit out of people for the rest of your life," Coop said.

Cam looked at him like he'd suddenly gone insane.

"What are you telling me this for? You, a fucking Marine."

"This is a nowhere sport man," Coop said. "What's it good for? A few broken bones, torn ligaments maybe? I heard a story about a guy who dislocated his knee. They almost had to amputate. It's a bum's sport."

"What about worlds?"

"Screw it," Coop said. "I'll go to freestyle nationals. Then I'm going home. I'm not re-enlisting."

"Thought you were a lifer," Cam said.

"Guess not," Coop said. "Time for something new. Janice and I are getting serious."

"That what you want?"

Coop shook his head. "Yeah. Don't you?"

Nationals didn't turn out as well as Cam had hoped, but third was good enough to get him on the challenge ladder for the world team. He kept getting better each time he competed. He found tournaments up and down the East Coast. At a tournament on Long Island, he was cruising in the final when he took a step and hyper-extended his knee. It was an old injury that kept getting worse. He finished the match, but the knee swelled up bad. A doctor took a look, said it was probably cartilage, to give it three week's rest. It would be rested in time for a tournament in Pennsylvania near his father's farm.

On his way to the Pennsylvania tournament, he stopped to see if his old man had mellowed. It had almost half a year since his last visit to the farm, short as it was. Cam got out of his pickup, walked with a limp. Brugman, at his favorite spot on the hog pen fence, nodded when he saw the boy limping, turned back to the hogs, and spit a stream of brown juice that hit a big boar in the eye. It shrieked and snapped its head, took off on a full run.

Cam stood on the bottom rail, let his hurt leg hang. Brugman offered a drink from a half-pint of whiskey.

"No thanks," Cam said.

"Good day to be a farmer," Brugman said. He raised the bottle toward the silo and swallowed.

"Wouldn't know," Cam said. He shifted his foot on the rail.

"Guess you wouldn't."

"I'm hoping to go to Japan in August," Cam said.

"Join the service?" Brugman said.

"Not exactly," Cam said. "Going to the world Sombo championships."

Brugman put the bottle in his jacket. "You still doing that shit?"

"You ever want something bad?" Cam said.

"Every day I want your mother to come back," his father said. "Once thought I wanted a hog farm."

Brugman Gratz took a deep breath.

Cam sensed his hurt. His father filled his massive lungs with sorrow and emptiness. Cam felt it too. All those years, the two of them never talking, and now Cam's question, and his father's answer were slipping into a familiar silence.

"The dismal pastures, she called it," Brugman said looking out at the muddy hillside he called a pasture.

"Why'd you stay?' Cam said.

"It's all I know," Brugman said. "I'm too stubborn to learn new tricks."

"Not me," Cam said. "I'm stubborn, but not stupid. When a gig is up, I'll move on. I know when to stop."

Cam hopped down from the fence.

"Leaving already," his father said.

The question surprised Cam. He thought maybe he would stay for a moment. "Tournament," he said.

His father pursed his lips, not quite a smile. Eyes cast downward. Was that disappointment, Cam wondered.

The pungent stench of manure hung on the cool breeze. The fields fertilized, half plowed. Ammonia burned into nasal passages, sinuses, stirring brain cells and memory. The land was in the throes of spring thaw, ice then rain. The place that had been dead to him for so long was preparing to come to life again. He drove straight to the tournament and slept in his truck in the parking lot. He woke up warm in an old Army surplus sleeping bag despite frost on the windshield. Probably the last one of the year, he thought.

Dinkins was in his corner screaming at him: "Watch that arm bar. It's all he's got. He stinks on his feet"

Tumbling out of bounds, Cam's head hit the mat hard. Stunned, he tried to stand, but his head felt glued to the mat. The Brazilian broke and rose, returned to the center of the mat. The referee slurred his words as he bent to check on Cam. He looked up, but a halo of sparks surrounded the edges of his vision. He blinked and it cleared. He blinked again and it was gone. He felt a rush of heat as if the blood had rushed back into his head. He stood, roiled his neck, walked back to the center of the mat. He was fine. On the whistle, Cam grabbed the Brazilian's jacket. The Brazilian jumped into a standing arm bar. He grabbed Cam's wrist, wrapped it tight in Cam's own jacket, and jumped upside down so his feet were planted in Cam's chest and his shoulders pressed into the mat. He felt his ribs bow, the air kicked from his lungs. The Brazilian's hips pressed against Cam's elbow. The pain shot into Cam's brain, he dropped to the mat and gripped the Brazilian's jacket, pulled tight to ease the pressure on his elbow. He stalemated him there. The referee broke them and started them back on their feet. Cam stood up. His elbow burned and tingled. He could hardly bend it. He took a break, and then returned to the center of the mat. Careful with that reach, he told himself.

Cam turned to Dinkins. "I'll get him." He felt good. Sweat flowing, adrenaline pumping. He knew what he had to do. Fake a sweep, set up an arm throw. Pitch this guy right on his back. He pictured the perfect throw. The Mongolians had a word for it. They wrestled on straw and dirt, the sweepings from their stables. They called it getting thrown in the shit. That's what he was going to do: throw his man in the shit. He gave Dinkins a thumbs-up.

The referee started them in the center of the mat. Dinkins was wrong. The Brazilian had an inside reap and he came in fast after the whistle. Cam blocked it at first, but he felt the knee pop, and the pain flashed through his brain like a bright light. He yelled. The next thing he remembered was staring at the black space behind the lights, watching the rafters come into focus.

The knee felt dislocated like two numb bones rubbing against each other, but it looked all right at first. It wasn't disfigured. It only felt that way.

A doctor walked onto the mat, tried to straighten his leg and pressed lightly on it. It wouldn't go all the way down. The doctor shook his head. Cam was flat on his back when the referee raised his opponent's hand. I had that match, he thought. Right there in my grip. His knuckles burned. Someone reached down, helped Cam to his feet. He was done. Cam hopped off of the mat, his hand on Dinkin's shoulder. He sat on the bleachers as the doctor torqued his knee, the dull pain crept up his thigh and down his calf.

"Cartilage definitely," he said. "Probably your ACL too."

Cam showered in the musty locker room, careful not to slip on the slick concrete floor. He eased his jeans over his knee. It was swelling badly now, red and puffy like a softball protruding from the side. The swelling spread up his leg. It felt like a spike had been hammered into the bone behind his knee. When he walked, the muscles in his hamstring tightened and burned. A charge ran through his elbow when he tried to lift his arm over his head and into the sleeve of his shirt. He sat down, took a breather, and tossed his wet towel, shoes, and sweaty gear into his gym bag. He didn't zip it. Going up the stairs he gripped the handrail. Halfway to his car he sat down on a bench. His good leg was shaking and he couldn't stand on his bad one.

"You all right to drive?" Dinkins said.

"I'll make it," Cam said.

He gripped the steering wheel, hunched forward, trying to keep the weight off his leg, as he started the car. A sharp jab behind his knee made him lose his grip. He leaned back, and the car shuddered as he released the clutch. He closed his eyes and pictured Becky, but he couldn't hold the image of her face. His heart raced. Coop was right. It was a sport for bums. What the hell was he doing? He pounded the steering wheel. "God, I'm a fucking ass," he said. He'd been pissed off since he could remember. He'd held on to so much shit for so long. He thought about the baby. So what if it wasn't his. There was a little kid going to grow up without a father. The thought just broke him, and he wept as he clutched the steering wheel. Then he opened his eyes and cranked the ignition. It would take two hours to get to Becky's if he took all the shortcuts. He couldn't bend the leg, but he could use it like a post to work the gas and brake. When the pain came, he clenched his teeth, thought about biting down on the steering wheel. At a flashing red light he just stopped and stared, the stoplight pulsed in his brain.

Becky was banging pots and pans around the kitchen sink when Cam walked up to her front door. The old wood porch creaked as he walked across it. Buster, Becky's mixed blood Shepherd raised his head and sniffed at Cam, flicked his tail and lay back down. Cam could see her through the dining room window moving around the kitchen. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail with one long strand hanging down in front of her ear. He wanted to nestle his face there. As he pulled himself up to the door, his knee throbbed and he suddenly felt light-headed, sick to his stomach. He leaned against the doorjamb, rang the doorbell and ran his hand across his head. It was caked with dried sweat and felt like rough grass. His knuckles, raw and red and crusted with blood, burned as he moved his fingers over his hair. I must look like a bum, he thought. After the injury, he'd showered then thrown on an old sweatshirt a pair of shorts and some work boots, unlaced, with the tongue awry. His face was pale, swollen, and his knee had blown up so much his leg looked strangely distorted. The cold air felt good on the knee. He was brushing his hair when Becky opened the door. She just stared at him. She doesn't even recognize me Cam thought. "Becky," he said.

"Cam," she said. "What the hell happened to you? You look like shit."

The hamstring on Cain's good leg seized up. He pitched over backwards and landed on his butt on the old wood porch with a bang and a clatter. The old dog lurched up and barked and moved to a new place on the porch. Inside, a baby began to cry, sputtering at first like an engine getting started and then it got rolling full bore. "You woke the baby," Becky said and turned around, slamming the front door shut, leaving Cam lying on the cold boards clutching at his hamstring. She was back a few moments later, calming the child, who had stopped crying. "You need a doctor?" Becky said.

"Maybe," Cam said.

Becky shifted the baby in her arms. "I think you do, unless falling on your ass is a normal part of your day."

Cam rolled to the side and tried to push himself up, but the hamstring cramped up. Becky switched the baby to one arm and reached a hand down to Cam. "Come inside," she said. "It's cold out here." Cam held Becky's hand and hobbled up to his feet. He walked inside like he had two wooden legs and collapsed onto the couch. "Kung Fu fighting again?" Becky said.

"It's not Kung Fu."

"Whatever." Becky stood in front of him with the baby on her hip.

"I feel kind of sick, lightheaded." Cam lay back, covered his eyes with a hand, and then closed them. Sparks of light floated in front of him. He felt like dozing off.

"You should eat."

When he opened his eyes, the baby was staring at him, studying his face.

"She looks like you," he said.

"That's what everybody says, but I think she looks like you."

A charge rushed through him. He suddenly felt awake.

"That's right," Becky said.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"You didn't seem too interested."

Cam shifted awkwardly on the couch. His leg tightened up.

"You want to hold her?"

"Can I?" He reached up, took the baby in his hands. She was so small, fragile. He could feel the little fibs, the tiny heart beating. The baby's head rolled on her neck.

"Hold her against your chest so she can hear your heart," Becky said.

Cam pulled the baby onto his chest, and lay back on the couch. The baby's soft little head tickled his chin. In a moment she was sleeping.

"What now?" he said.

"Looks like she's got you pinned."

"I think so," Cam said. He closed his eyes and felt her tiny breath on his neck. He'd never felt so tired. He thought about being a father and it made him feel warm, happy, in a way he'd never felt before. He thought about his own father, running the farm alone, and walking the fields by himself; there must have been a time when his father felt the same as he did as he lay there holding his own child.

"Do you think my father would want to meet her?" he said.

Becky knelt next to him. Her hair brushed across his face and his skin tingled down across his neck. He closed his eyes.

"I bet he would," she said.