My Boss Put My Face On The Screen Above The Empty Ring

We had once made a whole room stand up by walking through the back door. That night, my boss made them stand up to watch me leave.

I was forty-two, with a shaved head, a broad nose, and gray showing in my short brown beard.

Grant Mercer wore a cream suit, red glasses, and his silver hair brushed straight back.

He looked clean enough to sell a church.

I stood near the ring at Pine Reach Hall in Duluth, Minnesota, holding a broken turnbuckle in one hand. My eleven-year-old daughter, June, sat behind the sound board doing math homework.

On the big screen above us was my face from twenty years earlier.

Back then, I had hair. Back then, people called me Eli Voss of the Night Crew.

There had been three of us: me, Wes Porter, and Luis Calder. We wore plain blue work shirts to the ring. Our entrance music started with a factory whistle.

We were never rich. We were the men who set up the chairs, wrestled, then stacked the same chairs after midnight.

People remembered that.

Grant had sold four hundred tickets to our reunion. Some cost $38. The front row cost $62.

Wes was driving up from southern Minnesota. Luis was due after his shift at a bus garage. For one night, the three blue shirts would hang together again.

Then Grant took the microphone.

“Before we celebrate our past,” he said, “we need to clean it up.”

The screen changed.

Under my old picture were two words.

MISSING: $18,600.

I set the metal part on the ring apron.

“Grant,” I said. “What are you doing?”

He held up a packet.

“These are signed receipts from our crew reserve. Eli handled ring operations. Eli knows where the money went.”

A man near the aisle called, “Is that true?”

“No,” I said.

Grant tilted his head toward me as if I were being difficult about a late delivery.

“I gave you a chance to settle this in private.”

He had given me a chance to sign a paper saying I had received $4,800 in back pay. I had refused because I had received nothing.

I had worked six shows without pay. Grant kept saying the ticket service was slow. Then the furnace broke at home, and slow stopped being a word I could live on.

“You owe me wages,” I said.

Grant spread his hands.

“And now you want more.”

Someone booed. I could not tell whether it was meant for him or me.

June stood up behind the sound board.

I pointed at her chair. Stay there.

She sat, but she did not lower her eyes.

“Take the money off the screen,” I told Grant.

“Return it, and I will.”

He nodded toward the side door. Two hired ushers came forward. One was a college kid I had taught to tape cables down so nobody tripped.

“You don't have to touch me, Ben,” I said.

He looked at the floor.

I crossed to June. She closed her math book and put it in her backpack. On the cover, she had drawn our three blue shirts.

“Can we take your jacket?” she asked.

“Tomorrow.”

It hung backstage beside the two other reunion jackets. I could not make myself walk past the crowd again to get it.

Outside, June took the broken turnbuckle from my hand.

I had forgotten I had picked it back up.

“We should leave this,” she said. “It belongs here.”

She placed it carefully beside the door.

I had served eight years in the Army before coming home to raise her. I had learned to keep my voice steady when I was afraid. It had never been harder than on that sidewalk.

“Did you take it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why did he put it on the screen?”

“Because a screen is bigger than my voice.”

My phone kept buzzing. I turned it off.

We drove home past the dark lake. Our kitchen was cold, and the repair bill for the furnace was clipped to the fridge: $1,140.

June warmed soup while I checked the folder where I kept my pay stubs.

No receipts. No missing money. Just six show sheets, each marked PAYMENT PENDING in Grant's neat writing.

“Where are the old ones?” June asked.

“Old what?”

“The papers from when you had hair.”

I almost smiled.

“Basement. Maybe.”

She knew about my tapes. Every winter, I watched one match and complained about my knees. She had always liked the walk to the ring better than the wrestling.

“You said you kept the business stuff in the cases,” she said. “So nobody would tape over anything important.”

There were three plastic tubs under the basement stairs.

I carried up the first. June wiped dust from a case labeled WINTER BENEFIT, 2006.

Inside the sleeve, folded behind the cover, was a yellow page.

At the bottom were four signatures.

Mine. Wes's. Luis's.

And Grant Mercer's.