My Father, the Angel of Death by Ray Villareal

Author:Ray Villareal
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2006-12-15T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

On Monday morning, I handed Mrs. Petrosky her autographed picture of the Angel of Death, along with her autograph book. She hugged me tightly, smothering me in her brown wool sweater. It was embarrassing to be hugged that way by my teacher in front of the class. But I didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to chance hurting her feelings.

“Who is your father going to wrestle tonight, Jesse?” she asked excitedly.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

That was true. My father seldom speaks about his matches. He goes out and does his job, much like everyone else. Except that he beats people up for a living. When he does talk about wrestling, he usually tells funny stories about the “boys.” That’s how he refers to his fellow wrestlers.

There was the time, for instance, when Ice Man Jacob Sloane, who is an amateur magician, was showing the boys backstage a trick he’d recently learned. He had Red Lassiter handcuff him, hands behind his back, to a metal pole. Sloane bragged that he could uncuff himself in less than fifteen seconds.

But after fifteen seconds, he still couldn’t get free. He tugged and twisted, but the handcuffs wouldn’t open. Minutes later, while the other wrestlers hooted and howled with laughter, Jacob Sloane sent Red Lassiter to get the key for the handcuffs from his dressing room. Lassiter searched everywhere, turning Sloane’s dressing room upside down, but he couldn’t find the key anywhere.

Sloane and Lassiter were scheduled to fight against the Black Mamba and Dr. Inferno, and their match was up next.

While Sloane struggled to get loose, Frank Collins ordered his crew to find a pair of wire cutters. In the meantime, he quickly put together a match between Wally Armstrong, who wasn’t even scheduled to fight that night, and Gargoyle Gorman, who’d wrestled in an earlier bout.

The ring announcer, Dan Greenberg, introduced it as a “bonus match.” But the live audience wasn’t interested in watching two jobbers fight. They booed loudly. They chanted, “Bo-rring! Bo-rring!” as Gargoyle Gorman and Wally Armstrong kept their match going, stalling for time.

Finally, in an instinctive act of pure genius, Frank Collins created a scenario in which the cameras showed Red Lassiter frantically searching for his tag-team partner. He found Sloane “badly beaten” and handcuffed to a pole, purportedly the dastardly work of the Black Mamba and Dr. Inferno. Seconds later, in a TV interview, Red Lassiter vowed revenge against his partner’s attackers. He recruited Kronos to team up with him to avenge the vicious beating of the Ice Man.

The match was pretty decent with a tremendous effort on everyone’s part, considering it had been put together so quickly.

While the show was still in progress and since wire cutters or the key still hadn’t been located, a crew member rushed out of the arena and found a hardware store nearby. He quickly purchased a hacksaw and speeded back.

Jacob Sloane’s handcuffs were finally off. He ran down to ringside before the match was over and helped Red Lassiter and Kronos defeat their opponents, at the same time getting revenge for his “attack.

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