Early Autumn

CHAPTER 17

It took about an hour to set up. Most of that time was spent getting the speed bag mounted. I finally nailed through the strike board into two thick branches that veered out at about the right height. For me. For Paul we’d have to get a box to stand on. It took three trips in and out for me to get the weights out Paul carried some of the small dumbbells. I carried the bar with as many plates as I could on either end, and then went back and carried out the rest of the plates in a couple of trips.

“Now, after lunch,” I said, “we’ll work out for a couple of hours and then knock off for the day. Normally we’d do this in the morning and build the house in the afternoon, but we got a late start today because we had to get you outfitted, so we’ll start the house tomorrow afternoon.”

For lunch we had feta cheese and Syrian bread with pickles, olives, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber wedges. Paul had milk. I had beer. Paul said the cheese smelled bad. There were a couple of camp chairs outside the cabin, and after lunch we went out and sat in them. It was one thirty. I turned on the portable radio. The Sox were playing the Tigers.

Paul said, “I don’t like baseball.”

“Don’t listen.”

“But I can’t help it if it’s on.”

“Okay, a bargain. I like the ball game. You like what?”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay. I’ll listen to the ball game when it’s on. You can listen to whatever you want to any other time. Fair?”

Paul shrugged. On the lake a loon made its funny sound.

“That’s a loon,” I said. Paul nodded.

“I don’t want to lift weights,” Paul said. “I don’t want to learn to hit the punching bags. I don’t like that stuff.”

“What would you rather do?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll only do it on weekdays. We’ll take Saturday and Sunday off and do other stuff.”

“What?”

“Anything you want. We’ll go look at things. We’ll fish, shoot, go to museums, swim when the weather’s warmer, see a ball game in case you learn to like them, eat out, see a movie, go to a play, go down to Boston and hang around. Have I hit anything you like yet?”

Paul shrugged. I nodded. By two thirty the Sox were three runs ahead behind Eckersley and our lunch had settled.

“Let’s get to it,” I said. “We’ll do three sets of each exercise to start with. We’ll do bench presses, curls, pullovers, flyes, some shrugs, some sit-ups. We’ll work out combinations on the heavy bag and I’ll show you how to work the speed bag.”

I hung a big canteen of water on one of the tree branches. It was covered with red-striped blanket material and it always made me feel like Kit Carson to drink from it.

“Drink all the water you want. Rest in between times. No hurry. We got the rest of the day.”

“I don’t know how to do any of those things.”

“I know. I’ll show you. First we’ll see how much you can work with. We’ll start with bench presses.”

I put the big York bar on the bench rests with no weight on it.

“Try that,” I said.

“Without any weights?”

“It’s heavy enough. Try it for starters. If it’s too light we can add poundage.”

“What do I do?”

“I’ll show you.” I lay on my back on the bench, took the barbell in a medium-wide grip, lifted it off the rack, lowered it to my chest, and pushed it straight up to arms’ length. Then I lowered it to my chest and pushed it up again. “Like so,” I said. “Try to do it ten times if you can.”

I put the bar back on the rack and got up. Paul lay on tie bench.

“Where do I hold it?”

“Spread your hands a little, like that. That’s good. Keep your thumbs in, like this, so if it’s too heavy it won’t break your thumbs. I’ll spot you here.”

“What’s spot?”

“I’ll have a hand on it to be sure you don’t drop it on yourself.”

Paul wrestled it off the rack. It was too heavy for him. His thin arms shook with the strain as he lowered it to his narrow chest I had a hand lightly at the midpoint of the bar.

“Okay,” I said. “Good. Good. Now push it up. Breathe in, now blow out and shove the bar up, shove, blow, shove.” I did some cheerleading.

Paul arched his back and struggled. His arms shook more. I put a little pressure under the bar and helped him. He got it extended.

“Now onto the rack,” I said. I helped him guide it over and set it in its place. His face was very red.

“Good,” I said. “Next time we’ll do two.”

“I can’t even do it,” he said.

“Sure you can. You just did it”

“You helped me.”

“Just a bit. One of the things about weights is you make progress fast at first It’s encouraging.”

“I can’t even lift it without the weights,” he said.

“In a couple of months you’ll be pressing more than your own weight,” I said. “Come on. We’ll do another one.”

He tried again. This time I had to help him more.

“I’m getting worse,” he said.

“Naturally, you’re getting tired. The third try will be even harder. That’s the point. You work the muscle when it’s tired and it breaks down faster and new muscle builds up quicker.” I was beginning to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Paul lay red-faced and silent on the bench. There were fine blue veins under the near-translucent skin of his chest. The collarbone, the ribs, and the sternum were all clearly defined against the tight skin. He didn’t weigh a hundred pounds.

“Last try,” I said. He took the bar off its rest and this time I had to keep it from dropping on him. “Up now,” I said, “blow it up. This is the one that counts most. Come on, come on, up, up, up. Good. Good.”

We set the bar back on the bench. Paul sat up. His arms were still trembling slightly.

“You do some,” he said.

I nodded. I put two fifty-pound plates on each end of the bar and lay on the bench. I lifted the weight off the cradle and brought it to my chest.

“Watch which muscles move,” I said to Paul, “that way you learn which exercise does what for you.” I pressed the bar up, let it down, pressed it up. I breathed out each time. I did ten repetitions and set the bar back on the rack. A faint sweat had started on my forehead. Above us in the maple tree a grosbeak with a rose-colored breast fluttered in and sat I did another set. The sweat began to film on my chest. The mild breeze cooled it.

Paul said, “How much can you lift?”

I said, “I don’t know exactly. It’s sort of a good idea not to worry about that. You do better to exercise with what you can handle and not be looking to see who can lift more and who can’t and how much you can lift. I can lift more than this.”

“How much is that?”

“Two hundred forty-five pounds.”

“Does Hawk lift weights?”

“Some.”

“Can he lift as much as you?”

“Probably.”

I did a third set. When I got through I was puffing a little, and the sweat was trickling down my chest.

“Now we do some curls,” I said. I showed him how. We couldn’t find a dumbbell light enough for him to curl with one hand, so he used both hands on one dumbbell.

After two hours Paul sat on the weight bench with his head hanging, forearms on his thighs, puffing as if he’d run a long way. I sat beside him. We had finished the weights. I handed Paul the canteen. He drank a little and handed it back to me. I drank and hung it back up.

“How you feel?” I said.

Paul just shook his head without looking up.

“That good, huh? Well, you’ll be stiff tomorrow. Come on. We’ll play with the bags a little.”

“I don’t want to do any more.”

“I know, but another half hour and you’ll have done it all. This will be fun. We won’t have to work hard.”

“Why don’t you just let me alone?”

I sat back down beside him. “Because everybody has left you alone all your life and you are, now, as a result, in a mess. I’m going to get you out of it.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean you don’t have anything to care about. You don’t have anything to be proud of. You don’t have anything to know. You are almost completely neutral because nobody took the time to teach you or show you and because what you saw of the people who brought you up didn’t offer anything you wanted to copy.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No, not yet. But if you lay back and let oblivion roll over you, it will be your fault. You’re old enough now to start becoming a person. And you’re old enough now so that you’ll have to start taking some kind of responsibility for your life. And I’m going to help you.”

“What’s lifting weights got to do with that stuff?”

“What you’re good at is less important than being good at something. You got nothing. You care about nothing. So I’m going to have you be strong, be in shape, be able to run ten miles, and be able to lift more than you weigh and be able to box. I’m going to have you know how to build and cook and to work hard and to push yourself and control yourself. Maybe we can get to reading and looking at art and listening to something besides situation comedies later on. But right now I’m working on your body because it’s easier to start there.”

“So what,” Paul said. “In a little while I’m going back. What difference does it make?”

I looked at him, white and narrow and cramped, almost birdlike, with his shoulders hunched and his head down. He needed a haircut. He had hangnails. What an unlovely little bastard.

“That’s probably so,” I said. “And that’s why, kid, before you go back, you are going to have to get autonomous.”

“Huh?”

“Autonomous. Dependent on yourself. Not influenced unduly by things outside yourself. You’re not old enough. It’s too early to ask a kid like you to be autonomous. But you got no choice. Your parents are no help to you. If anything, they hurt. You can’t depend on them. They got you to where you are. They won’t get better. You have to.”

His shoulders started to shake.

“You have to, kid,” I said.

He was crying.

“We can do that. You can get some pride, some things you like about yourself. I can help you. We can.”

He cried with his head down and his shoulders hunched and the slight sweat drying on his knobby shoulders. I sat beside him without anything else to say. I didn’t touch him. “Crying’s okay,” I said. “I do it sometimes.”

In about five minutes he stopped crying. I stood up. There were two pairs of speed gloves on top of the light bag strike board. I picked them up and offered one pair to Paul.

“Come on,” I said. “Time to hit the bag.”

He kept his head down.

“Come on, kid,” I said. “You only got up to go. Let me show you how to punch.”

Without looking up he took the gloves.