11 Our Ape Man

As a senior Keith doggedly stuck to wrestling, alternating between the varsity and the Selah Vikings “B” team. He made up in strength what he lacked in finesse, won a few matches, and earned his letter. Teammates proudly wore the big “S” on their hundred-dollar blue-and-gold lettermen’s jackets, but he saved his money. His girlfriend knew he was a letterman, and he didn’t care what the other kids thought.

At practice the coach lined up the team for the rope climb. Keith had never made it to the top and was tired of being teased about it. This time he hauled his two hundred pounds all the way. At the top the rope pulled loose from the bracket and he fell twenty-five feet to the hardwood floor.

His feet hit first and he slammed hard on his side and head. Witnesses said he bounced three feet. “I was out for a few seconds. I cried in pain and the coach told me to stop acting like a baby. Some of the other kids thought it was funny. I could hold back the crying but not the pain. After Coach told me to get up and quit faking, somebody helped me to my feet and I found I could hop on one leg.

“I wriggled out of my wrestling gear, showered and dressed. All this time I was in terrible pain on my left side, and I felt dizzy. I heard one of my teammates say, ‘He didn’t even make it to the top!’ I was too groggy to argue.

“Coach called my mom, and she rushed me to the emergency room in Yakima Memorial Hospital. My big sister, Sharon, was working there as a nurse at the time. They X-rayed and diagnosed severe sprain. They told me I would be wrestling again in two weeks.”

 

A few days after the injury, Keith tried to pull on his Red Wing hightop logging boots and found that his left foot was too swollen. The pain kept him off his feet for a week, and he wondered why the love of his life had stopped returning his phone calls. He slashed the side of his shoe to fit his swollen foot and drove to Clarice’s house. “I limped up to the door and her mother met me. She said, ‘She don’t wanna see you no more.’ I said, ‘Why?’ As she was shutting the door, she said, ‘She just don’t.’ Clarice didn’t even tell me herself. She didn’t even tell me herself.”

Back home he thought about the breakup and blamed himself. “Clarice enjoyed my company and my car, but the gimpy foot was a little too much. Who would want to be seen with the school freak? I limped for months. Brad and the other kids had called me Igor since middle school. Now I was really Igor.”

 

He returned to the wrestling team and tried to work out. At meets, competitors went for his foot. Doctors promised that the swelling would subside. He widened the cut in his left boot and returned to class, but his sagebrush killing sprees, motorcycle and bicycle hill-climbs and trout-fishing expeditions had to be put on hold. He had a few impromptu dates, swore off girls again for the rest of the school year, and worked in the family’s punch-press room with his brother Brad.

At the wrestling banquet he was introduced as “Tarzan, our apeman.” Everybody else laughed.