Read Online Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving - Free Book Online

a good idea. There was a barracks somewhere for visiting teams; the soldiers sounded more or less sure of this, although they weren’t sure which barracks it was.
    Lee Hall confided to me that he thought we should go somewhere warm and “just run.” That way we’d at least be losing weight. And how much sleep would we get before weigh-ins, anyway? I agreed with Lee.
    Caswell looked remarkably well rested; he’d slept the whole way from Manhattan and was now viewing the austere buildings of the military academy with the eagerness of a child who’d just arrived at an amusement park — apparently Caswell never worried about his weight.
    It was then I noticed that our taxi driver was too frightened to leave; he couldn’t possibly find his way back to the city — “not in
dis
dark,” he said. The M.P.s were doubly unsure which barracks might be available for
him.
    One of the soldiers got up the nerve to make a phone call. I don’t know the name or rank of the man who was awakened, but his voice was exceptionally powerful and loud. We were brought to a darkened building in a Jeep — our taxi driver, too; he’d happily left the keys to his cab with the M.P.s at the gate. It was one of those stone dormitories where the stairs were lit with timed lights; on each floor, a single switch turned on the lights for the entire stairwell. At every stair landing, next to the hall door, the light switch was indicated by a small bulb that glowed the dull yellow of a cat’s eye. The lights “ticked” for two minutes and then they went out; to turn them on, you had to find the nearest cat’s eye again. By this torturous method, a few wrestlers were sprinting or jogging up and down the stairs — sometimes in light, sometimes in darkness, depending on the whim of the timed lights in the stairwell. One of these stair runners directed us to a huge, bad-smelling, overheated room where many wrestlers were lying on cots; they were fully clothed, under mounds of blankets — trying to sweat off the extra weight while they slept. (Most of them were lying in the dark, awake.)
    â€œMan, it stinks in here,” our taxi driver said.
    At first glance, it seemed there were no empty cots, but this didn’t trouble Caswell, who made himself comfortable on top of his gym bag on the floor; I think he was asleep by the time Lee Hall and I had changed into our sweatsuits and were running around the stairwell. The guys who’d been running the stairs ahead of us had worked out a system with the lights: when the lights went out, whoever was nearest a stair landing looked for the dull-yellow bulb. We kept running, whether the lights were on or off. Nobody talked on the stairs. Every so often I would call out “Lee?” and Lee Hall would say “What?”
    After 15 or 20 minutes, I was sweating the way I wanted to; I started trotting more slowly, moving just fast enough so the sweat didn’t stop. I think I was asleep when I ran into a wall in the dark. My eyebrow was split open. I could feel that I was bleeding, but I didn’t know how badly I was cut.
    â€œLee?” I called.
    â€œWhat?” Lee Hall said.
A Thief
    I was 128 pounds at the weigh-ins. The Army trainer shaved my eyebrow and covered the cut with a butterfly bandage; he advised me to have the cut stitched up properly when I got back to Pittsburgh. I knew I’d run too much — my legs felt dead.
    We went to the mess hall after weigh-ins, and there was our taxi driver; it’s time I gave him a name — let’s call him Max.
    â€œWhat are you doing here, Max?” I said. For starters, Max was eating an enormous breakfast — steeling his courage for the ride back to Manhattan, I thought. But Max had decided he’d hang around and watch the preliminary round of matches.
    â€œIf you guys win, maybe I’ll stay for the next round,” Max informed us. “Anyway,