A Reality Competition Adventure
A work of parody and fiction. The Struggle and everyone on it are invented, and none of it is affiliated with or endorsed by any real television show, network or person.
Eight months after my season of Exile Isle aired, I started wearing sunglasses to the grocery store so people would leave me alone. It worked great. Nobody's bothered me once.
My name's Dale Tummins. I'm a consultant and a reality star, and I live above the Sudsy Duck Laundromat in Wendleton. The dryers run all night, which is nice, because they're so loud I can never tell when nobody's knocking.
I keep a pen in every pocket in case of autographs. I've got the signature down to just "Dale," no last name, so I can move through a crowd fast. So far I've used it on two checks and a parking ticket, and the parking ticket came back.
Mostly I wait by the phone. Once you've been on television, it's only a matter of time before television calls back. I keep the phone on the pillow next to me, so if it rings in the night, I'm right there.
So far it's rung twice. Both times it was Phil, asking if I was okay, which tied up the line.
I told him to stop calling. Somebody might be trying to get through.
The man on the phone said his name was Glenn Vossberg and he was a television producer. I told him I was a consultant, so we were both in business. He sounded like he was smiling, and also like he was eating.
"Dale," he said, "have you ever heard of the Struggle?"
"Heard of it?" I said. "I'm a huge fan." I'd never seen it once. I knew it was a show, because Glenn had just told me, and I knew it was a big one, because he said it with a capital S.
"It's been on forever," Glenn said. "Veterans of other reality shows live in a house together, compete every day and vote each other out. This year it's vets against rookies. Season Forty-One. We're calling it Old Dogs, New Fleas."
"Love the name," I said. "Who are the fleas?"
"You'll see," Glenn said. He told me the whole office had watched my season of Exile Isle. "You're a story, Dale," he said.
"Thank you," I said. I didn't know what kind of story he meant. But I've read a few, and nearly all of them have a hero in them. The rest are cookbooks.
"What does it pay?" I said. I'm a professional, so I always ask that third.
"There's an appearance fee," Glenn said, "and a shot at a million dollars."
"Which one's bigger?" I said.
"The million," Glenn said. I'd guessed that, but it's always good to hear a producer say it.
Then he told me about the house. It was a lodge in the Alps, beside a lake, with a hot tub, a gym, a pool table and a big fridge that the sponsor keeps full.
"Full of what?" I said.
"Hot dogs, mainly," Glenn said. I told him I'd need a few days to think it over. Then I said yes before he could take the hot dogs back.
"Great," Glenn said. "Bring your friend."
"I don't have one," I said. "I'm sort of a lone wolf."
"Phil," Glenn said.
"Oh, Phil," I said.
When I told Phil the Struggle had called me, he sat down on his couch and didn't move for a full minute. I thought he'd died. I started looking around his apartment to see what he'd want me to have. Then I noticed he was smiling, so I put the lamp back.
Phil Brumley teaches biology at Wendleton High. He was on Exile Isle with me, sort of as my plus-one, though the paperwork says it was the other way around. He's watched the Struggle since he was fifteen years old. He's seen every season, and some of them twice on purpose.
He keeps a notebook for each one. In the season nine notebook there's a chart of who voted for who, with arrows going everywhere. I asked him who won season nine. He said that wasn't really the point of the chart.
"Okay, but who won?" I said.
"The point is how they got there," Phil said, and he held the notebook against his chest.
"Fine," I said. "Who got there?"
He put the notebook back on the shelf, very carefully, with its back to me. Then he said quietly, "They called me too, Dale. On Monday."
That hurt a little. Monday's a whole day before Tuesday, and you'd think a show would call its main guy first. But then I felt proud. If they wanted Phil, they'd obviously done some research on who his friends were. You don't get a Phil without a Dale. That's just how Phils work.
"We're going to be on the Struggle," Phil said. His voice cracked on Struggle, and he had to go stand in the kitchen for a minute.
"I'll teach you everything I know about the show," I told him when he came back.
"You've never seen it," Phil said.
"So it'll be quick," I said.
That night I was packing when I looked down through my window and saw Hollis Brandt at the door of the Sudsy Duck. Hollis is a big, sunburned man who's good at everything he does, and what he mainly does is collect. He knocked on the glass with a clipboard. It made a very patient sound.
I didn't have time to pack my own clothes, so I filled the suitcase from the laundromat's lost-and-found bin on my way out the back. It was mostly socks. None of them matched, but on television that comes across as personality.
When I got to the bus stop two blocks away, I could still hear Hollis knocking. He's a very patient man. It's his worst quality.
The contract for the Struggle was forty-one pages long. Phil said that was one page for each season. I think it was a coincidence, but I didn't say so, because his eyes were already wet.
Page one said, No phones. I asked if that meant a phone that's turned off. It did. I asked about a phone that's turned off and inside a sock. Phil said a sock doesn't change anything. I disagreed, but I left the phone at home anyway.
Page two said, No outside food. I asked if that meant all the inside food was free. Phil said that isn't really the opposite. But it turned out it was free, so I was right.
Page six said there were cameras everywhere in the house except the bathroom, and some in the bathroom. I asked which bathroom had the fewest. The contract didn't say, and I respected that. They don't know which bathroom I'll pick either.
Page nine said, Rookies may not use the hot tub. "What counts as using it?" I asked Phil.
"Getting in," Phil said.
"What about just the feet?" I said.
"Then your feet are in it," Phil said.
"What if it's one foot," I said, "and the rest of me is standing on the deck, talking to people?"
"Then your foot's in the hot tub, Dale," Phil said.
Page thirty said the production wasn't responsible for injury, lost property, hurt feelings or personal growth. I was glad about that last one. I didn't want to come home a different guy.
Page forty was about where to send my appearance fee. Somebody had already filled in the address, which saved me some time, so I signed it without reading it. That's the kind of trust a show like this runs on.
Phil read the whole contract twice with a highlighter and initialed every page. I initialed the first page, and on the rest I drew a little star, because that's sort of my brand.
"That's not legal, Dale," Phil said.
"It's a star," I said.
On the flight to the Alps, I practiced my intro package on the people sitting near me, since they couldn't really leave.
"Dale Tummins," I said. "Consultant. Reality star. I live above a laundromat, but don't let that fool you. I'm here to clean up." The woman by the window put her headphones on, which is fine. Some people get overwhelmed.
A man across the aisle asked me which laundromat. I told him the Sudsy Duck, in Wendleton. He said he'd been there once, years ago, and it was very clean. That was the first time anybody had ever recognized me.
Somewhere over the ocean I came up with my nickname for the season, Dale the Dark Horse. I said it out loud a few times to get the feel of it. It had a nice ring to it, and also a horse.
"Do you know what a dark horse is, Phil?" I said.
"It's someone nobody expects to win," Phil said, "and then they win."
"No," I said. "It's a horse that runs at night. All the other horses are asleep, so it wins, and nobody even sees it happen."
"That's not what it means," Phil said.
"Then why would they call it dark?" I said.
Phil thought about it. "Because nobody knows anything about the horse," he said.
"Because it's dark out," I said, but he'd already gone back to his binder. Phil had a big three-ring binder with a tab for every vet on the show, and some of the tabs were so thick he'd put rubber bands around them. He'd been reading it since the airport, moving his lips.
"Do I get a tab?" I asked him.
"You're not a vet," Phil said.
"Can I have one anyway?" I said. He sighed, wrote my name on a sticky note and handed it to me.
I stuck it on my forehead and slept the rest of the way. When I woke up, the whole plane knew my name.
The house was a big old mountain lodge with a hot tub, a pool table, a gym and fifty-two cameras. I counted forty of them myself. Phil found the other twelve, because some of them were in the lamps.
The lake was right out back, cold and green, with a dock and a sign on the dock that said, Do not drink the lake. I hadn't planned to. But once a sign tells you not to, you start getting curious.
The hot tub had its own rule card in a little plastic stand. It said, Vets only, and rookies who touch the hot tub will be dealt with. I liked that. It's good to know somebody's in charge.
The vets got real beds upstairs, and the rookies got a bunk room off the kitchen. I didn't mind, because it put me closest to the fridge. The fridge was full of hot dogs and cans of the sponsor's energy drink, Ruckus, with a note on the door that said, Help yourself. I'd had four hot dogs before I found the bathroom.
The other rookies were a yodeler, a ventriloquist, a man named Gus, somebody's twin brother and Tad Groves, from a dating show. Tad had the biggest arms I've ever seen in a tank top. He cried when he saw the lake. He said it was just so pretty.
We'd come up in a regular van with a driver who coughed. The vets came an hour later in their own van, with music blasting out the windows.
The first one out was Johnny Apples. He had a big grin on him, the grin of a man who's just counted something and liked the total. He pointed right at me and said, "Rook."
"Vet," I said, pointing back. He laughed, so I'd say we hit it off.
Then PT Tambourine got out, and the whole van rose about four inches. He's the biggest man I've ever stood next to on purpose. He looked down at me and said, "Hey, buddy," so quietly I wasn't sure it had happened. I said, "What?" But he'd already gone inside.
Mark Short shook my hand with both of his. He's the oldest vet, from season one. He told me season one was filmed at a motel by a highway, and the hot tub was a bathtub they took turns sitting in with their clothes on. The story took ten minutes. I didn't mind, since I'd brought a snack.
Clara Maria Sorbet looked me up and down, twice, in case she'd missed something. "Who are you?" she said.
"Dale Tummins," I said. "Exile Isle, Season Thirty-One."
"No," she said, and walked off. I'm still not sure what she meant by that.
Daycee Clerk nodded at me once. Les Hillmann explained the layout of the house, though nobody had asked. Tori Bargain shook my hand and then looked at it. Leroy Carrot smiled at everybody. Zach Pennies wanted to know who'd already eaten four hot dogs, and he got so upset about it that I decided not to tell him.
I figured they'd all seen my season, so I went around and asked. Nobody had. Leroy said he'd heard of it, and then he asked if it was a cruise.
I guess when you're that big a star, you don't have time to watch television. I don't either. Already we had something in common.
The Confessional is a closet with one stool, one camera and a little speaker up in the corner. Glenn lives in the speaker. Well, he lives in a van in the parking lot, but you know what I mean.
"Tell us who you are," the speaker said. I'd been practicing since the plane. I sat up straight and looked into the lens. "Dale Tummins," I said. "Consultant. Reality star. I live above a laundromat, but don't let that fool you. I'm here to clean up."
"Great," Glenn said. "Again, but angrier."
"Why angrier?" I said.
"Just angrier," Glenn said.
I'm not an angry man, and I didn't know what I was supposed to be angry about. So I thought about the hot tub card, and about Zach Pennies counting my hot dogs. "Dale Tummins!" I said. "Consultant!"
"Angrier," Glenn said.
I thought about the gas company never signing its letters. I stood up and pointed right at the camera. "I live above a laundromat!" I yelled. "But don't you let that fool you!"
There was a long pause. "One more," Glenn said. "Pretend the camera took your parking spot."
I don't have a car. But I've seen what losing a parking spot does to a man, and I gave it everything I had. Afterward I had to sit down for a while.
Tad was waiting in the hall for his turn, and he looked scared. "How was it?" he said.
"Furious," I said. "I've never felt better."
At dinner the last two rookies showed up, and one of them owed me four thousand dollars. I mean I owed him. I always get that one backwards.
It was Hollis Brandt. He came into the dining room with a duffel bag in one hand and a ledger in the other. He'd been cast off a regional cable show called Wake Masters, where men do tricks on jet skis. Apparently he's one of the best there is. Apparently they still let him near jet skis, even after what happened to his.
He sat down right next to me and opened the ledger. There was a page with my name at the top, and it had columns. I've never had columns before.
"Four thousand dollars," Hollis said, "and half a coconut."
"Hollis, we're on television," I said. "You can't collect on television."
"Let's find out," Hollis said. I'll be honest, it was nice to see a face from home, especially one that knew exactly where I'd be for the next six weeks. Most people don't make that kind of effort.
The other new rookie was Brianna Kettle, from a baking show called Proof Positive. She was tall and calm, with strong arms from a lifetime of kneading, and she sat down across from me. I wanted to make a big first impression, so I held out my hot dog.
"No, thank you," Brianna said.
"I only took one bite," I said. "And it was from the end, so the middle's basically new."
"No," Brianna said.
"It's still warm," I said. "From my hand."
"There's a whole fridge of them," Brianna said, "right there." Then she picked up her plate, moved to the far end of the table next to Phil, and asked him about his binder.
I've been around women, and I know that "no, thank you" is just "later" with good manners. Plain "no" is also "later," only faster. I wrapped the hot dog in a napkin and put it in my pocket, so it'd be ready when she came around.
Next to me, Hollis wrote something in the ledger. I leaned over to look. It was the hot dog.
The host of the Struggle showed up on a bicycle, which I thought was a bold choice for a mountain.
His name's DJ Lavender, and he's hosted the show for as long as anybody can remember, including Mark Short, who can remember a lot. He's got tattoos up both arms and a gray beard, and he squints even indoors, in case of wind. He got off the bicycle and looked at all of us for a long time.
"Rookies," he said. "Vets." That was the whole greeting. "DJ," I said back, to keep it even.
Then he told us how it worked. Every rookie gets a vet partner. You live as a pair and compete as a pair, and if your pair messes up, you could end up in the Hole. He didn't say what the Hole was. He just said "the Hole" and let it sit there, and Tad started crying a little.
The names were in a cement mixer, which was already turning when we came outside. I don't know how DJ got a cement mixer up a mountain on a bicycle. But when a man's a legend, you don't ask him how he moves concrete. He reached in and pulled the slips out two at a time.
Phil got PT Tambourine. I felt bad for Phil, because PT's a quiet guy, and a partnership needs talking. Brianna got Les Hillmann, who started explaining their strategy before she'd even sat back down. Tad got Leroy Carrot, who patted him on the back until he stopped crying. Tori Bargain got Hollis. The yodeler, the ventriloquist, Gus and the twin's brother went to Johnny Apples, Clara Maria, Daycee and Zach, though I couldn't tell you who got who.
I got Mark Short. Mark's the oldest vet in the house. Some people would see that as a problem, but I saw a man with more experience being coached than anybody alive.
DJ looked at my slip and then at me. "Laundromat," he said.
It was from my intro package. They'd played it on a big screen at breakfast, the angry version. "It's Dale," I said.
"Laundromat," DJ said.
Nobody gives you a nickname unless they feel close to you. I've known Phil for years, and he still calls me Dale.
Mark leaned over and shook my hand. "Looks like it's you and me, kid," he said.
"Don't worry, Mark," I said. "I'll carry you."
He laughed for a long time. I think he was relieved.
The rookie bunk room had eight bunks, two windows and a wool blanket on every bed. Phil found that out by touching one.
Phil's allergic to wool, and his hand went red up to the wrist from one corner. So that night he slept under a bath towel instead. It covered him from his chin to about his knees. The rest of him he left up to God.
Around ten, Johnny Apples leaned in the doorway. Vets never come into the rookie room. It smells like feet, and since the yodeler moved in, a little like yodeling.
"Rook," he said, looking right at me. "You're my guy."
"Thanks, Johnny," I said. "What do you need?"
"Nothing," Apples said. He smiled, tapped the doorframe twice and was gone.
I lay there in the dark. Nobody had ever told me I was their guy before. Phil says I'm his friend, but usually he sighs first, and Phil always wants something back, like his car, or for me to stop telling people his car is mine. Apples didn't want anything at all. He just wanted me to know.
"Phil," I whispered. "Johnny Apples says I'm his guy."
"What does that mean?" Phil said from under the towel.
"It means I'm his guy," I said. Phil sneezed. Then he sneezed again.
I lay awake for hours, honored. Phil sneezed all night long, and I counted along to pass the time. He got to three hundred and twelve. I've never been prouder of either of us.
Mark Short has been on the Struggle since the very first season, back when, he says, they shot it on actual film and the trucks didn't have seatbelts.
The morning after we got paired, he asked me to walk around the lake with him and talk strategy. I'd been hoping he'd ask, because a vet that old needs guidance. We'd gone about ten steps when he started in on season one.
"In season one," Mark said, "the challenges were mostly carrying things. We carried a canoe up a hill. We carried a refrigerator. One day we carried a cameraman, because he'd twisted his ankle and nobody had a plan for that."
"Who won?" I said.
"The cameraman, I guess," Mark said. "He didn't have to walk."
Then he told me about season two, and season four, and the time the whole house slept on a bus. Mark tells a story at about the speed you'd walk a dog, stopping whenever something smells interesting. We were halfway around the lake before I could get a word in.
"Mark," I said, "things are different now. These days you've got to have a brand. Take me. I live above a laundromat, and I put that right in my intro. That's a brand."
"That's smart, kid," Mark said. He said it so warmly that I could tell nobody had ever explained branding to him before.
"Also," I said, "you can't tell so many stories during the challenges."
"I don't tell stories during the challenges," Mark said. "Just on walks."
"Right," I said. "That's what I'm saying."
We came around the far end and finished at the porch steps. Phil was up on the porch with his binder, pretending not to listen. Mark sat on the bottom step and squinted out at a crane they were setting up on the dock.
"Here's my plan, kid," Mark said. "I'll handle the hard parts. You try to stay out of the lake."
"That's a good plan," I said. "For you." He laughed and patted my knee and went inside for lunch.
Mark's been on this show longer than anybody, and he's seen everything. But he's never had a partner like me.
He's a lucky guy.
That night in the bunk room, I told Phil about my walk with Mark, since he'd missed most of it.
"We got to the far side of the lake," I said, "and Mark stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. He said, Dale, I'm getting up there. I need someone to lead this pair. And I said, Mark, I'll do it. But only because you're asking."
Phil was quiet for a second. "That's not how I remember it," he said.
"You weren't even there," I said.
"I was on the porch," Phil said. "He said he'd handle the hard parts, and you should try to stay out of the lake."
"That was the end of the walk," I said. "I'm talking about the middle."
"I could see you the whole way around," Phil said. "Nobody touched anybody's shoulder."
That's the trouble with being right there when something happens. All you get is what happened. A memory needs to sit a while before it's any good. It's like a hot dog. You can eat one right away, but it's better after it's been turning on the roller for a few hours.
"Memories don't get better, Dale," Phil said. "They just get different."
"Exactly," I said. "And mine's had all afternoon."
Phil got out his journal and wrote something down. I asked him what he was writing. "What happened," he said.
I told him to put a little note at the bottom saying there's another version, and it's longer. Longer is usually better. That's just science.
The first daily challenge was a cargo net hanging off a crane over the lake. You hung on as long as you could, and then you were in the lake.
DJ Lavender rode his bicycle out to the end of the dock and stopped. "Rookies," he said. "Vets."
Then he explained it. Everybody hangs on the net at the same time, and when you let go, your clock stops. Your time and your partner's time get added together, and the pair with the most time wins and becomes the Power Pair. The Power Pair is safe, and it gets a say in who goes to the Hole. Mark nodded along the whole time. He'd heard it about forty times.
"Questions?" DJ said. I raised my hand and asked if the lake was heated.
"No," DJ said. "Laundromat."
Standing there on the dock, I decided my nickname for the season was The Rookie Assassin. I didn't tell anybody, because an assassin doesn't. Also, nobody asked.
The crane was yellow and very tall, and the man driving it looked tired. Under the net sat a guy in a little boat with a long pole, for scooping. I thought that was a nice touch. Not every show gives you your own boat.
We climbed a ladder onto the net, and the crane swung it out over the water. From up there I could see the whole lake, and the house, and the van where Glenn lives. Everybody down there looked very small, which is how an assassin likes it.
"Go!" DJ said, and I lasted four seconds. There was a short period of hanging, and then a cold front moved in from below, followed by lake. Visibility was poor and a little green, with scattered weeds.
The man in the boat hooked me by the shirt and towed me back to the dock without a word. I respect a quiet professional.
I watched the rest from the dock in a towel. People dropped off one at a time, and each one made a different noise going in. The yodeler's was the best.
Mark hung on for eleven minutes with his eyes shut. Add my four seconds and that's eleven minutes and four seconds, which put us right in the middle. I was proud of us.
PT hung there for almost an hour without moving. I don't think he noticed. Phil hung right beside him the whole time, mouthing something. I found out later he was naming the bones of the hand, in order, to keep his mind off his hands.
When the last other pair hit the water, Phil and PT were still up there. DJ looked at them for a while. "Power Pair," he said.
They brought Phil in, and I ran down the dock and hugged him. We were both dripping, so it evened out.
"We did it, Phil," I said.
"PT and I did it," Phil said.
"You and I are friends," I said. "So technically."
Phil didn't argue. He was too tired to, which is the same as agreeing.
Later DJ rode past me on his bicycle and slowed down. "Laundromat," he said. "Four seconds."
He remembered my time. Nobody else even came close.
The Huddle is a fire pit with benches around it, and it's where everybody votes people into the Hole. I'd been looking forward to it all day, because I'd never had a reason to sit by a fire pit before, except to warm up a hot dog.
DJ Lavender rode up on his bicycle and stood by the fire with his arms crossed. The fire pit's about forty feet from the house, and he rode the whole forty.
"Rookies. Vets," he said. "This round, the Hole is rookie against rookie. The Power Pair names one. The house names the other."
The Power Pair was Phil and PT, because of the cargo net. I'd been telling everybody that was a team win, since Phil and I are friends. Nobody argued, which I took as agreement.
Phil stood up with a card in his hand and looked at it for a whole minute. PT put one big hand on his shoulder and didn't say anything, which for PT is still a lot of hand.
"We nominate Tad," Phil said. "I'm sorry, Tad. It's because you're strong."
Tad started crying right away. He cries the way he does everything, hard and with his shirt off, and he said he wasn't crying, it was the smoke. There wasn't any smoke on his side.
Then came the house vote, where you stand up, say a name and give a reason. The yodeler went first. "Dale," she said. "He's the easiest."
Johnny Apples went next and gave me a little wink. "Dale," he said. "Nothing personal, Rook. Easiest matchup in the house."
Clara Maria said, "Dale. Look at him." I sat up straighter so she'd have more to look at.
It went around the fire like that. Dale, because he fell off the net in four seconds. Dale, because he's slow. Dale, because he asked what the Hole was during the meeting about the Hole. Zach Pennies said, "Dale," and then, "Come on, man," and I'm still not sure who that part was for.
Then Hollis stood up with his ledger and opened it to a page with a bookmark in it. "Dale," he said. "Four thousand dollars."
I told him that wasn't a reason. "It's a balance," Hollis said, and he sat back down.
When it got to me, I said Tad, since I'd heard he was already in. DJ said that didn't count. I said that was fine, because it was a protest.
But I was flattered. Fourteen people had all thought of me at the same time, and that doesn't happen unless they're scared of you. Nobody votes for a guy they're not worried about. That's just strategy.
"Laundromat," DJ said. "Tad. See you in the Hole."
I nodded at him, man to man, and he nodded back.
Or at his bike.
The Hole is an old stone cistern at the bottom of the hill, with sand on the floor and big lights on poles. They used to keep water in it. Now they keep people. I thought that was a nice reuse.
You walk down a ramp to get in, and if you lose, you walk back up the same ramp and leave forever. That's a lot of responsibility for one ramp. The whole house stood around the rim looking down at us, and the vets sat on the edge with their legs dangling. It's nice when people come out to see you.
Tad was already in the sand, stretching. Up close, he's about twice my size, and some of that's hair, but not enough.
DJ Lavender held up a wooden stick about as long as a broom handle. "Stick Tug," he said. "You both hold the stick. Whoever ends up with it wins. Laundromat. Tad. Ready?"
I asked if I could ask a question. DJ said no.
I'd been training for this my whole life without knowing it, because I don't let go of things. I've had the same TV remote for eleven years, and three roommates and a landlord have tried to take it. The landlord brought a crowbar, and I still have the remote. I don't have the apartment, but I have the remote.
So my strategy was simple: grab the stick and never let go, even if it killed me, or worse, hurt.
DJ said, "Go!" Tad pulled, and I went with it. I went across the sand on my stomach, then on my back, then on my side, which I hadn't known you could do in one pull. I got sand in my ears, my mouth and somewhere in my pants I'm still finding. But I didn't let go.
"Let go, Dale," Tad said. He was crying a little. "Please. I don't want to hurt you."
"Never," I said. Then I said, "Ow," but mostly I said never, and I hung on.
Tad gave one huge pull, and something ripped. It was his tank top. It tore all the way down the back, and Tad looked over his shoulder at it, horrified, and his hair fell into his eyes.
He let go with one hand to fix his hair. It turned out that was the hand doing all the work. I flew backward across the sand and landed flat on my back, holding the stick, and everybody on the rim went quiet, and then the twins' brother started laughing, and then everybody was.
DJ walked over and looked down at me. "Laundromat wins," he said. "That's the Struggle."
Tad walked up the ramp in his torn tank top and shook my hand on the way. He said his hair had never betrayed him before. I told him that's how hair gets you.
Johnny Apples was waiting at the top, and he put his arm around me. "You're my guy, Rook," he said.
I'd been on the Struggle five days, and I was undefeated. Phil said one-and-oh isn't much of a record. I said that's exactly what undefeated means.
Look it up.
Mark Short found me on the porch the next morning, eating a hot dog for breakfast. It was my second, because I'd had one on the walk from the fridge.
"Hell of a tug, kid," Mark said, and he meant it. Mark means everything he says, even the long parts. He sat down and told me about season one. Back then there was no Hole, just a pit with a garden hose in it, and the challenges were built by a guy named Ed out of whatever Ed had in his garage.
"We did a tug once," Mark said. "I lost to a guy who was half asleep. Ed's rope broke and I went into a hedge."
He said he lay in that hedge a minute and decided something. You can't win every tug, but you can walk out of the hedge like a gentleman. He's walked out of a lot of hedges since then, he said, and he's proud of every one.
It was a nice story. It ran about twenty-five minutes, and the hedge was only at the end, so I'd had plenty of time to think up some notes.
"That's great, Mark," I said. "But here's my thing. Why lose with dignity when you can win with it?"
Mark thought about that. "Well, kid," he said, "you don't always get to choose."
"See, that's a loser's mindset," I said. "No offense. Here's a tip. When you win, act like you expected it. Then act like you expected more. Then point at somebody."
Mark asked who he was supposed to point at. "Doesn't matter," I said. "They'll figure it out."
Mark laughed until he had to wipe his eyes. He put a hand on my shoulder and said I was something else. Then he took my hot dog, ate half of it and handed it back.
I let it go. That's what you do for a partner who's still learning.
The Confessional is a closet with a stool, a camera and a little speaker on the wall where Glenn's voice comes out. It's the only room in the house where nobody's yelling, unless it's you.
"Talk about Tad," Glenn said.
I told him Tad's my nemesis. "Tad went home," Glenn said.
"A nemesis is forever, Glenn," I said. "That's what makes him a nemesis instead of just a guy."
"Say it like you mean it," Glenn said. So I said it louder, and he said it wasn't there yet, and I asked him where it was. He said to give him more size.
So I stood up on the stool. It's a small stool, built for sitting, and barely for that. I got both feet on it and pointed at the camera.
"Tad Groves," I said, "is my nemesis for life."
The stool tipped. I went into the wall, and the wall turned out to be the door, and the door turned out to open. Zach Pennies was in the hallway eating cereal, and I landed in it. He took that personally.
From inside the closet, I heard the little speaker. "That's the one," Glenn said.
I've always been good on the first fall.
PT Tambourine is the most feared man in the Hole, so I decided he'd be my rival. Every great competitor needs one, and Tad was gone, and PT was right there in the gym.
He was doing curls with a dumbbell the size of a fire hydrant. Phil was next to him, curling one of the little purple ones they use at the Y, and PT was coaching him so quietly I had to lean in. "Elbows in, buddy. That's it. Slow down. Slow is strong."
Phil's arms were shaking, but he was doing it. He'd been doing it every morning at six. I'd slept through all of those, which is its own kind of training.
I walked up and stood right in front of PT. "PT," I said. "I want you to know something. As of today, you and me are rivals."
PT kept curling. "Mm," he said, or he might've said "Hmm." It was very low, so I explained it. "Rivals," I said. "Like a war, but in a gym."
PT put the dumbbell down, and the floor shook a little. He looked at Phil. Phil looked at the ceiling, where there wasn't anything.
"Rivals," PT said slowly. Then, all at once and very loud, "Like what, buddy? Like a bit?"
I said sort of, except I was coming for him. PT nodded like he was trying to be supportive about it. Then he looked me up and down, the way you'd look at a used car you weren't planning to buy, but you wanted to be nice to the salesman.
"Buddy," he said, "you want a spot?"
I said, "No, thank you," and walked out with my head high. In the hallway I thought it over. You don't offer to spot a man you're not afraid of. A spot means standing over a guy with your hands right by his throat, just in case. That's what a careful man does around a dangerous one.
Behind me I heard PT say, "Good, Phil. Again." Phil was doing an extra set. I'd gotten him so fired up he couldn't stop.
I've always been a motivator.
Every night three people have kitchen duty. The card on the fridge said so. It also said, Hot dogs are for everyone, which is the best sentence I've ever read on a fridge.
That night it was me, Phil and Brianna Kettle. Brianna was on a baking show called Proof Positive and came in second, and she was making bread for the whole house because the vets had eaten all the regular bread. I decided this was my opening.
"You know," I said, "I could teach you to bake."
Brianna kept kneading. "I was on a baking show, Dale," she said.
"Sure," I said. "But did they teach you the secrets? The real ones?"
She said there aren't any secrets, it's just flour, water, salt and yeast. "See, that's what they want you to think," I said.
I've baked once. It was a frozen pizza, and the box said four hundred and twenty-five degrees, and I did four hundred and fifty, because I'm not a follower. It came out great on one side.
"That's nice of you," Brianna said. "But no. Thank you, though."
I heard "Thank you," which is about two words from yes. Then she turned to Phil and asked if he wanted to try a fold. Phil washed his hands for a full minute, the way they teach you in a lab, and Brianna showed him. You stretch one side of the dough up, fold it over, turn it and do it again. Phil got it right away. He's got gentle hands from holding frogs.
"That's perfect," Brianna said. "You've got a feel for it."
"I read a book about gluten once," Phil said.
They both laughed. Then they folded for twenty minutes and talked about yeast, which it turns out is alive. I didn't need to know that. I'd been eating it for years, and what it does on its own time is its business.
I sat on the counter, ate a hot dog and watched them bond. I could tell what was happening. They were bonding over me. When two people both know a great guy, they naturally find each other, and then they talk about yeast.
When the bread came out, Brianna cut the first slice and gave it to Phil, and the second slice went to me.
Second. For a rookie, that's a medal.
The second daily was two flatbed trucks driving side by side up a mountain road at about the speed of a nervous jogger. You jumped from one truck to the other, grabbed a flag and jumped back.
DJ Lavender explained it from his bicycle. He rode alongside the trucks the whole time, uphill, which I thought showed real commitment to bicycles.
"Rookies. Vets," he said. "Eight flags. Three minutes a pair. Both partners jump. Laundromat, stay on the truck."
I asked which truck. DJ said any truck. I took that as trust, since he didn't say it to anybody else. The rule card on the truck said, Do not lean out to wave at the camera crew. Somebody had underlined "wave" twice. I put my hand down.
Mark and I went fourth. The gap between the trucks was about four feet. Under the four feet was a road, past the road was a cliff, and past the cliff was the lake, which I already knew about.
DJ said, "Go!" Mark took one step and jumped and landed on the other truck like he'd done it a hundred times, which on this show he has. He grabbed a flag, jumped back and looked at me. "Your turn, kid," he said.
I looked at the gap, and I decided my real value was on this truck. "I'll hold this side," I said.
"It doesn't need holding," Mark said.
I told him that's because I was holding it.
So Mark jumped again, and again. He went back and forth eight times and got every flag. When he came back with the last one, the whole cast cheered from the side of the road, and the yodeler yodeled, which I didn't know was a cheer until then.
I cheered too, and I pointed at Mark, so people would know who'd been supporting him. I'd kept the first truck steady. I yelled "Jump!" before most of his jumps, and twice I yelled "Flag!" when he was already holding a flag. That's a lot of yelling for three minutes, and none of it made the highlight reel.
Then DJ read the card out loud again. Both partners jump. So we came in last with every flag, which is a record nobody's going to touch.
Then I climbed down off the truck and did it wrong. I'm not sure how, because it's a truck, and I've gotten off trucks before. I came down on my ankle, rolled into a flag pole and snapped it in half. They're special flag poles. They fly them in.
So the damage was my pride, which was fine by dinner, my ankle, which was the size of a grapefruit by dinner, and the flag pole, which they say they're going to bill me for.
Mark helped me hobble to the van. "You did fine, kid," he said. I said I knew.
But it was nice he noticed.
I've decided the Hole is my home turf. I'm one-for-one down there, and nobody else in the house can say that, except the ones who are two-for-two, and a few who are five-for-five, and Daycee, who's some number I didn't want to ask about.
So I've got a new name for myself: Hole Dale. It's short, it's easy to remember, and it sounds like a place you'd drive to. "Where are you headed?" "Hole Dale."
That night I limped down there on my ankle with a hot dog. The lights on the poles were off, and the sand was cold, and the ramp looked smaller without anybody walking up it crying.
I walked around the edge and talked to it, the way you'd talk to a car you need to start.
"Hello, Hole," I said. "It's me, Hole Dale. You've probably heard."
The Hole didn't say anything, because it's stone. But I could tell it was listening, because it was very quiet, and that's mostly what listening is.
"Anybody comes down here against me," I said, "you hold them like you held Tad."
Something rustled in the corner, and then something hissed. I stood very still, and a raccoon walked out from behind the ramp and looked at me. It was holding a hot dog bun from the house, so right away we had something in common.
It hissed again. "Same to you," I said. I'd never had home turf answer back before, and I took it as a welcome.
Then it walked over and took my hot dog. Home field advantage.
Hollis Brandt cornered me at the fridge at six in the morning. I was getting my first hot dog of the day, which is the most important hot dog.
He had his ledger, and it was a real ledger now, green, with columns. In Wendleton it'd been a notepad. The Struggle had changed him.
"Dale," he said. "We need to talk about interest." I told him I was interested, to be polite.
He opened the ledger and showed me. The first column said Jet ski, four thousand dollars. The next one said Interest, and the next said Interest on the interest. The last one said Ankle, which I didn't understand, but it had a number in it.
"Why's my ankle in there?" I said.
"You're going to use it to get out of paying," Hollis said. "I'm pricing it in."
The bottom line said four thousand, three hundred and eleven dollars. I asked where the eleven came from, and Hollis said it was a convenience fee. I asked whose convenience. He said his.
So I thought fast. I opened the fridge wide so he could see in. It was hot dogs, top to bottom, and a few cans of Ruckus nobody wanted.
"Hollis," I said. "What if I paid you in these?"
Hollis looked at the hot dogs for a long time. He's a very competent man, and he looks at everything for a long time. "Hot dogs are a dollar each," he said.
"Deal," I said, and I reached for a bag.
"But these are the house's hot dogs," he said, "so they're not really yours. Hot dogs that aren't yours are fifty cents. And there's a handling fee, because I have to handle them."
I asked how much that was. "A dollar a hot dog," Hollis said.
I gave him a bag of twelve, and he wrote it down very neatly. Twelve hot dogs at fifty cents came off. Twelve handling fees went on. He turned the ledger around, and the new bottom line was four thousand, three hundred and seventeen.
"I owe you more," I said.
"You do," Hollis said.
"But I paid you."
"You did," Hollis said. He put the bag in his own drawer in the fridge. He has his own drawer. I don't know how he got it.
I walked away feeling great. It's not every day a creditor takes hot dogs, and most of them won't even discuss it. I'd moved Hollis further in one morning than anybody's moved him in years.
Also, I'd eaten one before I handed them over. He only counted the bag.
The third daily was on the lake, on pool floats shaped like a slice of pizza. You paddled out to a buoy with your hands, a producer in a boat asked you a trivia question about your housemates, and if you got it right, you paddled back.
DJ Lavender explained it from the dock. His bicycle was on the dock too, and I don't know how it got down the stairs.
"Rookies. Vets," he said. "Wrong answer, you go back to the dock and start over. Go!"
The water was green and cold and very still. Next to me, the ventriloquist was looking at it nervously, and so was his dummy. They'd both been nervous all week. I put a hand on his shoulder, because this was my chance to give back.
"Here's something I learned the hard way," I told him. "Lakes are deeper than they look."
"Thanks, Dale," he said. Then the dummy said, "Who asked him?" which I felt was out of line.
I got on my pizza float, and it flipped, and I went straight to the bottom. It wasn't that deep. But it was deeper than it looked, so I'd been right, and I want that on the record.
I got back on and fell off the other side, four times. After that the float and I had an understanding. It would stay up, and I'd hang on to the edge and kick.
I kicked all the way out to the buoy, and the producer in the boat read me my question. "Which rookie this season," she said, "was on a castaway show called Exile Isle?"
I couldn't believe my luck. I knew this one personally. "Phil," I said.
She said no. "Phil was on it," I said. "I was there. I saw him."
"It's you," she said. "The answer's you."
I told her that was a trick question, since there were two of us. She said go back and start over. So I kicked all the way back and all the way out again, and she asked me the name of the laundromat Dale lives above.
"The one downstairs," I said. She said that wasn't a name. I said it was to me. She let it go because the boat needed gas.
While I was out there, Hollis and Tori won. They got every question right on the first try. Hollis even knew my birthday, and I don't know how.
I kicked in to the dock last, with the float upside down on my head, and DJ was waiting. "Laundromat," he said. "Stop splashing."
I hadn't known I was splashing. But it's nice when the host notices your technique.
Johnny Apples invited me into the bathroom for a meeting. I'd never been invited to a meeting before, except by Hollis, and those are more like collections.
The upstairs bathroom is where the vets talk strategy. Johnny turned on both sinks and the shower before he said a word, because running water confuses the microphones. I said it confused me a little too, and he laughed and pointed at me. He does that. It makes you feel like you said something.
"Rook," he said. "I'm putting something together."
"I'm in," I said.
Johnny said he hadn't told me what it was yet. I told him I was in for that too.
He sat on the edge of the tub, and I sat on the lid of the toilet, which felt right. It's the head of the table, in a bathroom.
He called it the Orchard. It was some vets and a few rookies, and he'd plant us all around the house, he said, and we'd grow, and at the end of the season we'd harvest. I asked what we'd harvest. He said everybody else.
"How many are we?" I said.
Johnny counted on his fingers. He got to seven and stopped, and he tapped the seventh finger twice and looked at me. "That's you," he said. "Seven."
I liked that. Seven's a lucky number, especially for whoever has seven of something. Then Johnny leaned in and said, "You're my guy."
That was the third time he'd said it. I'd been keeping count, and so, I think, had he. Some people need to say a thing a few times before they really mean it, and Johnny meant it now. You could tell, because the shower was running.
I asked him who the enemy was, and he asked me who I thought. I'd thought about this a lot, mostly in the bunk room at night, so I had my list ready. "PT, because he's afraid of me," I said. "Tad, because he's my nemesis. The raccoon. And the lady in the boat who said I wasn't on Exile Isle."
Johnny looked at me for a while. The mirror was all fogged up by then, so I couldn't see what my face was doing.
"Tad went home, Rook," he said.
"That's what he wants you to think," I said.
Johnny smiled. He's got a great smile, and he's brought it every season. "Okay," he said. "Here's all I need from you. When I say a name at the Huddle, you say the same name. That's it."
I asked what if I had a better name. "You won't," Johnny said.
"But what if I do?"
"Rook," he said, "you won't."
I respected that. He believed in me so much he'd already decided what I'd think.
He turned off the sinks and the shower and walked out. Somebody in the hallway asked him how it went. He said, "Seven," and they both laughed.
I stayed in a while. I'd been in there forty minutes, so I figured I might as well use it.
A production assistant came and got me after lunch and walked me out to the van. It's parked behind the house, white, with no side windows and a lot of cables running into it. Some people would find that creepy. I found it cozy, because it was warm and there were snacks.
Glenn Vossberg was in there with six screens. It was the first time I'd seen him. He had a fleece vest and a big smile, and he was eating pretzels without looking at them, the whole time.
"Dale," he said. "Have a hot dog." I had two. He watched me eat them like he was proud of me.
"Let me ask you something," Glenn said. "What if you called Clara Maria out at dinner tonight?"
I asked him what for. "Whatever you want," Glenn said. "Just make it big."
"I was going to anyway," I said. And I was, from about that second on.
At dinner I waited until everybody had food. Then I stood up and tapped my can of Ruckus with a fork, but it made more of a thud.
"Clara Maria," I said. "I've got something to say to you."
The table went quiet, and Clara Maria put down her fork. She can hang off a cargo net for an hour. She looked at me like I was the net.
She told me to go ahead. I hadn't gotten that far. "I think you know what you did," I said.
Clara Maria said she didn't. I told her to think about it, and she thought about it for about two seconds. "You know what I think?" she said. "I think you're a plant. I think the producers put you here. Nobody's this bad by accident."
The whole table looked at me. Les Hillmann said, "Oh, that's good," and wrote it down. I said, "Thank you," and sat back down.
She meant it as an attack, but you have to read between the lines. She was saying I was so good on TV I must've been hired to do it. That's what a plant is. A professional.
Later the production assistant passed me in the hallway, and Glenn's voice came out of the walkie on her belt. "Great stuff, Dale," Glenn said.
"I know," I said. "I've been on TV before."
Once. But it counts.
They'd fixed the stool. It had a new leg and a card taped to the seat that said, Sitting only. I felt that was aimed at someone.
I'd come in to explain the Orchard, because I felt the fans had a right to know. "Glenn," I said, "you can't tell anybody this."
"I won't," Glenn said from the little speaker. "Go ahead."
So I told the camera everything. I told it about the bathroom and the sinks and the shower. I told it Johnny Apples has seven people, and I'm the seventh, the lucky one. I named everybody in the Orchard, and the ones I wasn't sure about, I named anyway, to be safe.
I explained the enemies, including the raccoon. I explained that whenever Johnny says a name at the Huddle, I say the same name, unless I have a better one, which he says won't happen, because that's how much he trusts me.
Then I explained the code word, which is "Seven." Johnny never told me it was a code word. But he said it in the hallway and people laughed, so it's either a code word or a joke, and Johnny doesn't joke about the Orchard.
Glenn asked if there was anything else. I thought about it. "Don't show this to anybody," I said, "until it airs."
There was a little pause. Then Glenn said, "Perfect."
I agreed. I'm great with secrets. You just need somebody to tell them to.
The fourth daily was a honey relay, which I thought was a nice change of pace. Every daily so far had been about falling off something, and this one was mostly about honey.
The crew had built a giant plywood beehive on the lawn, full of tunnels and volunteers in bee costumes. You crawled in, filled a jar from a barrel of real honey in the middle, and crawled back out.
The rule card said, Bees may tap. Bees may not sting. Some bees are real.
Phil read that last line three times, and then he got very quiet. Phil's allergic to bees. He's allergic to a lot of things, but bees are the one he carries a special pen with a needle for.
"You don't have to go in," I told him. "You can stand outside and cheer for me. That's a job too."
"I'm going in," Phil said. PT had found him an old beekeeper hood in the garage, with a net that came down over his face. Phil put it on, said he could see fine, and walked into a post.
My strategy was simple. Everybody else was going to carry the honey, and I was going to eat it. Then I'd have a ton of energy, and in a sense I'd still be carrying the honey.
Mark went first for our pair and came out in under a minute with a full jar, waving to the crowd. That put a lot of pressure on me, and I resented it a little.
It was dark and warm in the hive. A bee tapped me on the shoulder, so I tapped him back, and he didn't like that. He said he was a volunteer.
I found the barrel and filled my jar, and then I drank it. Then I filled it again and drank most of that. Then I sat down in the tunnel for a while, because honey's heavier than people think, especially once it's inside you.
When I came out, my jar had about a spoonful in it and one bee antenna. Mark said that was all right. The judges said it wasn't, and we lost.
Phil and PT won. Phil came out with a full jar in one hand and his other hand closed in a fist. I figured he had a honey candy in there, so I asked him for half. "It's not candy," Phil said, and he put it in his pocket.
He only got stung once, on the thumb. PT carried him to the medic tent anyway, very gently, the way you'd carry a pie.
At dinner I told everybody how I'd gone into the hive early to lure the bees away from Phil. Bees go where the honey is, so I'd turned myself into the honey. "I took one for the team," I said. "About twenty jars for the team."
Phil was eating a hot dog with his good hand. "That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
"That's because you were wearing a hood," I said. "You couldn't see me saving you."
"I could see," Phil said. "I could see you sitting down."
I let him have that one. A man who's just been stung deserves something. Besides, I still had honey in my beard, and I was saving it.
PT Tambourine finally gave me a spot. I'd been asking for weeks, mostly by standing near him in the gym and flexing.
The gym was in the basement next to the boiler, and PT was down there every morning at five with Phil. PT lifted, and Phil took notes. Phil used to need both hands to open the fridge. Now he needed one, and he held the door for me with the other.
I lay down on the bench under the bar. There weren't any weights on it, because I like to warm up first.
"Buddy," PT said, so quietly I almost missed it. "You want a spot?"
"I'm fine," I said, and then I lifted the bar off the rack, and it came straight down onto my chest and stayed there.
It turns out an empty bar weighs forty-five pounds. Nobody tells you that. They paint it silver so you'll think it's light.
I said "Help" in a calm voice, so I wouldn't show weakness. PT reached over with one hand and lifted the bar off me without even looking. He was telling Phil something about thumbs. "Thumb around the bar, buddy," PT said. "Always. That's your grip."
He set the bar back on the rack with a little click, and then he patted my stomach twice, the way you'd pat a dog that wasn't yours.
"Good set," PT said. I sat up with a red stripe across my chest, and I felt great. Most people go their whole lives without getting lifted off a bench by a legend. I asked him if we could do this every day, and he said, "Sure, buddy," and I could tell he was rattled.
On the way upstairs I explained to Phil that PT had been nervous. You could tell by how fast he moved that bar. He didn't want to see what I'd do with it.
"He moved it fast because it was on your neck," Phil said.
"Chest," I said.
"It was heading for your neck," Phil said.
That night I added PT to my list of people who fear me. I keep it on a napkin in my suitcase. It was getting pretty long, and some of the names I'd had to guess at.
The night before the Shake-Up, Mark Short knocked on the bunk room door with two hot dogs and a flashlight. He said he had some advice for me. I said I had some for him too, so it was a fair trade, and I took both hot dogs.
We sat on the porch steps. Down by the lake the crew was building something tall out of scaffolding, and Mark said it was probably for us. I waved at it.
Mark's been on the Struggle since the very first season. Back then, he said, the hot tub was a motel bathtub, and you took turns. He'd told me that one on the first day. It was better the second time, because I knew where it was going and could eat.
"Here's the only thing I know," Mark said. "The people who last here are the ones who make friends. Not deals. Friends."
I'd brought a notepad, so I wrote down "deals."
"Friends," Mark said.
"Right," I said, and I underlined "deals."
Mark looked at my notepad for a while, and then he started laughing. It wasn't a mean laugh. He laughed until he had to take his hat off. "Kid," Mark said, "you remind me of me in season one."
That stung. I didn't know much about season-one Mark, but I pictured a younger, worse Mark, without the hat. I had nothing against Mark. I had a lot against that guy.
"I'll try harder," I said.
"No, it's a nice thing," Mark said. "I was all right. I just didn't know it yet."
I told him I already knew it, about myself, so I was way ahead of where he'd been.
Mark put his hat back on and told me one more story. In season one they'd had to carry a canoe up a hill, and he'd made friends with the guy on the other end, and they'd gotten to the top together, slow and laughing the whole way.
"And that's how you won," I said.
"No, we came in last," Mark said. "But we were friends by the top."
I wrote down "came in last." Then I crossed it out, because that's terrible advice.
Mark said good night and went in. I stayed out on the steps and looked at the scaffolding in the dark. Tomorrow it'd be every man for himself, which was fine with me. I've been every man for myself my whole life.
I'd miss Mark, though. He was a good partner. He carried both of us most of the time, but somebody had to carry the notepad.
The rule card by the hot tub said, Rookies may not use the hot tub. Rookies may look at the hot tub from a respectful distance.
I'd been looking at it from a respectful distance for three weeks. At three in the morning, I decided I'd been respectful enough.
I crept out in my swim trunks and a towel. The patio lights were off, but the hot tub was glowing and bubbling, and somebody was already in it. It was Brianna.
"No," Brianna said.
"I haven't said anything," I said.
"I know," she said. "I'm getting ahead of it."
I took that as a good sign. A woman doesn't get ahead of something unless she's been thinking about it. So I got in, very slowly, and sat on the far side to give her room to think.
Brianna said she had permission, because she'd helped Daycee with a puzzle. I said I had permission too, from myself. Brianna said that's not how permission works. I said it was in my family.
Then the patio door slid open, and Daycee Clerk came out in a robe. She looked at me for one second. Then she got in on the other side, very calmly, like I was a pool noodle somebody had left there.
I figured I was in trouble, but Daycee didn't say a word about me. She asked Brianna how Phil was doing.
"He's good," Brianna said. "He's really good."
"He reads everything," Daycee said. "Nobody reads everything."
"He read this card twice," Brianna said.
I told them I'd taught Phil to read. Not reading in general, just rule cards. Neither of them said anything, which in a hot tub is how you agree. Then they talked about Phil for twenty minutes, and I nodded the whole time and took a little off the top.
Then Phil showed up in the doorway in his pajamas, holding the rule card. He'd taken it right off the wall. "Dale," Phil said, and he read the whole card out loud, including the small print at the bottom. The small print said, Rookies found in the hot tub will be asked to leave by the nearest rookie.
"I'm the nearest rookie," Phil said. "Please leave."
So I got out. Brianna waved. Daycee said, "Good night, Phil." Walking back to the bunk room, I was dripping and freezing and very happy. I'd been in the vets' hot tub with two of the best women in the house, and only one of them turned me down.
The other one didn't notice I was there.
DJ Lavender rode his bicycle straight into the living room. Nobody had opened the door for him. It was just open, and I'm pretty sure it had been locked.
"Rookies. Vets," DJ said.
He leaned the bicycle against the pool table and told us the partners were done. Starting today there were no pairs, just every player for themselves. He called it the Shake-Up. "Partners," DJ said. "Over." Then he rode out again, and somebody had to go shut the door.
The house went nuts. People were hugging and yelling and dragging their bags up and down the stairs. Zach Pennies kicked an ottoman across the room, because Zach takes everything personally, including furniture. I ate a hot dog to stay calm, then a second one, in case the first one hadn't counted.
Then Johnny Apples stood up on the couch. "Rook," Apples said. "Come here."
I went over, and he put his arm around me in front of the whole house. "This guy," Apples said. "You're my guy."
Everybody looked at me. Clara Maria shook her head, and Les wrote something down, and a couple of people laughed out loud, which is what people do when they're impressed and don't know how else to show it.
I knew right away what it meant. With the partners gone, the house needed a leader. Apples had looked around the room and picked me, out loud, on a couch, so nobody could argue about it later.
I'd need a new nickname for the second half. Something that said I was the one pulling the strings. I went with "The Puppet Master." I liked it because it was true, and because a puppet can't argue with you. On his way out of the room, Apples gave the string on my hoodie a little tug, and I took that as a sign.
I found Phil in the bunk room, packing up his journal. "Phil," I said. "It's every man for himself now. So here's the plan. You stick with me."
"That's two men," Phil said.
"Every man for himself, together," I said. "It's strategy. Just follow my lead."
"I understand," Phil said. Then he said, "Les asked me into his group this morning. Tori asked me after lunch. And PT says I'm with him no matter what."
"Who asked you first?" I said.
"Les," Phil said.
"I asked you before that," I said. "In my head, on the plane."
"That's three alliances," I told him. "That's a lot to keep track of, so let me handle them."
"I'm handling them," Phil said.
"Let me handle you handling them," I said.
Phil zipped up his bag. "Dale," he said, "Apples calls everybody his guy."
"Not standing on a couch," I said.
He didn't have an answer for that, and I didn't blame him. He'd been in that house for three weeks. I'd been the Puppet Master for almost an hour.
At dinner, Apples asked me to pass the ketchup, so I passed it. You have to let them feel in charge.
The first solo daily was a memory wall hanging off a crane, about eighty feet over the lake. It swayed a little in the wind, to keep it interesting, I guess.
DJ Lavender stood at the bottom, holding his bicycle. "Board. Study. Up. Answer," DJ said. "Go!"
A board on the ground had twelve facts about the house. Who'd been on the most seasons. Who fell in the lake first. Who'd eaten a hot dog for breakfast eleven days in a row. You got two minutes to study, and then the crane lifted you up to the wall, and you slid name tiles into the right slots.
I used my two minutes wisely, and I studied the crane. If you're going up in something, you should know who's driving it. A man in a hard hat was eating a sandwich in the cab, and I memorized the sandwich. Turkey.
Then they strapped me into a harness and hoisted me up. The wall turned slowly in the wind, and so did I, in the other direction.
The first question was, Who's been on the most seasons? I put up "Turkey."
The second question was, Who fell in the lake first? I knew that one. It was right on the tip of my tongue. I put up "Phil," because Phil's usually the answer to things.
I got zero out of twelve. A buzzer kept going off down below, and after a while I started to enjoy it. It's nice to have music while you work.
They lowered me down, and DJ rolled his bicycle over. "Laundromat," DJ said. "Number eight."
"Which one was that?" I said. "Hot dog. Breakfast. Eleven days," DJ said.
I thought about it. "Tad?" I said.
DJ looked at me for a long time. "Laundromat, it's you," DJ said. "It was your name."
That hurt a little. I'd have gotten it if they'd used a picture. Later I found out I was also the answer to who fell in the lake first, so two of the twelve questions were about me. Nobody else in the house got two.
Phil went last. He got twelve out of twelve in under four minutes, part of it upside down, because his harness slipped. That made him the Power, which means he was safe for the round and got to nominate somebody for the Hole. The whole house clapped.
I clapped the loudest. I'd been coaching Phil on memory for weeks, mostly by forgetting things so he'd have to remember them for both of us.
"You were great," I told him. "I could see you using my system."
"What system?" Phil said.
"Exactly," I said. "That's how you know it's working."
Phil was the Power, so he nominated first. He went over and asked Leroy Carrot if it was okay to nominate him, which isn't how it works. "Sure, man," Leroy said. "I could use the exercise." So Phil nominated him and apologized four times.
Then the house voted for the other spot. One by one, everybody stood up by the fire pit and said a name and a reason.
"Dale," Clara Maria said. "Because it's Dale."
"Dale," Zach said. "It's Dale."
"Dale," Les said. "For all the obvious reasons, which I'm happy to list." He listed them. There were nine, and the seventh one was just "Look at him."
After a while people stopped giving reasons and just pointed.
When it got to Hollis, he stood up, tore a page out of his ledger, and held it up to the fire pit so everybody could read it. It was mostly numbers. At the bottom it said, Interest. "Dale," Hollis said.
I wasn't upset. Two trips to the Hole in one season is something most rookies only dream about. Mostly in nightmares, I guess, but those count.
"Laundromat. Leroy," DJ said. "See you in the Hole."
The game was Sit-Out. It's called Sit-Out, but you stand. You stand on a beam about as wide as a shoe, and you hold perfectly still, and the first one to move or step off loses. I asked why it wasn't called Stand-Out, and nobody knew.
Leroy's famous for this game. He can hold still for hours, and he says the trick is to think about nothing. I'd never tried thinking about nothing. Usually I'm thinking about something, like lunch, or how to get out of something.
DJ said, "Go!" and we both froze.
For the first ten minutes I was locked in. Leroy stood across from me, smiling, perfectly still. A moth landed on his nose, and he didn't even blink. I thought, This guy's good. Then I thought about moths, and what they eat, and then I thought about which hot dogs were left in the fridge.
After that, I don't remember anything.
According to Phil, around minute forty, I stopped moving entirely. My eyes closed and my mouth fell open a little, and I made a soft whistling sound. Phil said he'd never seen me hold that still, not even when somebody's asking who finished the milk.
I'd fallen asleep standing up. I'd never done that before. It was my first moment of total calm in forty-six years, and it happened on a beam, on television.
Leroy watched me for a while, and then he started to laugh. He laughed until the beam shook, and he stepped off into the sand and gave me a thumbs-up I didn't see. "Can't beat that," Leroy said. "The man's at peace."
"That's the Struggle," DJ said.
They had to wake me up. Phil shook my arm, and I said, "Five more minutes," and DJ said I'd already won, so I could have them.
I woke up a two-time Hole winner. Leroy shook my hand on his way up the ramp, and he was very gracious about it. I told him he'd been a worthy opponent and almost had me, back around the moth.
Then I went to bed. Strategy takes a lot out of you.
Two nights later, Mark Short went into the Hole against Hollis. The game was Hallway Shove. You push the other guy down a padded hallway until he rings the bell behind him.
Before it started, I went down and gave Mark a pep talk at the edge of the sand. I told him Hollis was strong, but I'd seen Hollis's weakness up close, and it was money. Mark asked how that helped. I told him I didn't have time to explain, and I went back up to my spot.
I coached him the whole game. "Lower!" I yelled. "Higher! Use your hips! Use his hips!" Then I yelled, "Think about money!" which I meant for Hollis, to distract him, but Mark looked over, so I guess it went to the wrong guy.
Mark gave it everything. But Hollis is a frighteningly competent man, and he pushed Mark down that hallway slowly and politely, the way you'd return a shopping cart. The bell rang, and everybody went quiet.
Mark got up and dusted off his knees, and he shook Hollis's hand. Then he started up the ramp, and he shook every hand on the way. Every vet. Every rookie. The cameraman. A guy holding a light, who had to switch hands.
When he got to me, he stopped. "Make friends, kid," Mark said.
I'd prepared a speech, just in case. I'd been working on it for two days, in the shower. I told him his legacy was safe with me. I said I'd carry it into the second half, and the Final, and possibly a memoir. I said people would remember the name Mark Short, because I'd keep saying it in interviews. "Mark Short," I said, to get started.
"Sure, kid," Mark said.
He patted my shoulder and kept walking. At the top of the ramp he turned around and waved his hat, and everybody cheered, even Hollis. Hollis wrote something in his ledger first, but then he cheered.
On the way back, I told Phil that Mark had gone out exactly the way I'd taught him, with dignity. Phil said Mark was on this show for twenty years before I'd ever heard of it. I said that's how long it takes some people.
Back at the house, Mark's bed was already stripped. I stood in the doorway of the vets' room for a while. He'd told me about forty stories this season, and I'd listened to maybe two of them. Now I kind of wanted to hear the rest. I don't know. I missed him a little.
Then I went downstairs and ate a hot dog.
The next daily was an eating relay, and it felt like the producers had finally started reading my mail.
They split the house into teams of four. Each runner ran a hundred yards to a long table, ate one plate of local food, and ran back to tag the next person. A judge in a white coat stood at the table with a clipboard to make sure you finished.
The food was the local specialties. There was a blood sausage. There was a cheese that had been buried in the ground for a year, on purpose. There was a soup with a whole fish in it, looking up at you. And there was a gray cube, and the card next to it just said, Ask Later.
I got the cheese.
People had been standing at that table making faces for ten minutes. Zach chewed his sausage so angrily the judge took a step back. I sat down and ate my cheese in four bites, and then the crackers that came with it, and then the parsley, and then the little paper flag that said what kind of cheese it was.
"That's done," the judge said. "You can go."
"I'm not done," I said. There was another plate right next to mine with a sandwich on it, so I ate that too.
It was the judge's lunch. He was very nice about it, eventually.
I won my leg by more than a minute, which was the biggest lead of the day. Then I had to run back. I'd eaten about three pounds of food by then, so I didn't run back so much as drift back in the right general direction, and then sit down in the grass. Zach had to come get me and drag me the last twenty yards by my jacket, yelling the whole time.
Our team came in last.
The winners got to pick prizes off a table: sunglasses, a fleece blanket, a box of chocolates, a gift card for a ski shop. And right in the middle of the table, for some reason, there was half a coconut. Nobody knew why it was there. A production assistant said it was probably left over from some other show.
I wasn't on the winning team. But everybody was fighting over the gift card, and nobody was watching the coconut, so I put it in my jacket. I don't know why. My hand just did it. Sometimes your hand knows things before you do, usually about free things.
It rode in my jacket all through dinner, warm against my ribs. It felt like destiny.
It also might've been the cheese.
I sat down on the stool, and the little red light came on. I told the camera about the eating relay, and how I'd eaten a flag, and a man's lunch, and he was fine with it, eventually.
Then I explained my strategy for the second half. It took a while. I made a lot of it up as I went along, but that's how the best strategies get made.
Then I took out the half coconut and held it up next to my face, so they'd get it in the shot. "This is a coconut," I said. "Half."
Glenn's voice came out of the little speaker. "Where'd you get that?"
"It came to me," I said. There was a pause. Then Glenn said, "Dale, do you have a plan?"
"Yes," I said. The speaker didn't say anything. Glenn was waiting. I could hear him chewing something out in the van.
"It's a secret," I said.
"From who?" Glenn said.
"From everybody," I said. "Including you. Including me, a little."
There was another pause, a long one. "Hold the coconut up again," Glenn said.
So I held it up. I held it up for about ten minutes. Glenn said they had plenty, but I kept holding it a while longer, just in case.
Glenn called me out to the van and told me I'd been picked to shoot a promo for Ruckus, the sponsor's energy drink. He said they'd looked at everybody in the house and picked me. I asked him why. He said I was "authentic."
Ruckus tastes like a battery licked a grape, and it makes your left eye twitch. I'd had eleven that week, because they're free.
The line was, "Ruckus, for when it gets real." Glenn wrote it on a card and held it up next to the camera, where I could see it.
On the first take, I said, "Ruckus, for when it gets weird." On the second take, I said, "Ruckus, for when it gets real weird."
On the third take, I said, "Real, for when it gets Ruckus." On the fourth take, I said, "Ruckus," and then I forgot the rest, so I just nodded for a while.
On the fifth take, I opened the can first, for realism, and it sprayed the lens. On the sixth take, I said it perfectly, but I said it to the guy holding the light.
On the seventh take, I said, "Ruckus, for when it gets real. And when it doesn't, also Ruckus." Glenn said not to add things. On the eighth take, I drank the whole can to get into character, and my eye started going so hard I had to hold it shut with one finger.
On the ninth take, I said, "Ruckus. When it's real, you get it." On the tenth take, I said it exactly right, and everybody cheered. Then I said, "Was that it?" while the camera was still rolling.
On the eleventh take, I was tired. I looked into the lens, held up the can, and said, "Ruckus. For when you're near a lake."
I don't know where that came from. I wasn't near a lake. Well, I was, but it wasn't in the shot.
"That's the one," Glenn said.
I told him the tenth one was right. He said the eleventh one was "more Dale." I couldn't argue with that. Nobody's more Dale than me.
He gave me a can for the road. My eye's still going.
For the first time all season, my vote mattered. Phil explained it to me. The house was split right down the middle, and I was the only person nobody had counted yet. Usually they count me as the person they're voting for.
Johnny Apples found me at the fridge, eating a hot dog, and put his arm around me. "Rook," Apples said. "You're my guy. Here's the play." Then he told me the play. It had one name in it, and it took him about fifteen seconds.
"I'm in," I said. "That's my guy," Apples said, and he took one of my hot dogs on his way out.
An hour later, Les Hillmann found me in the boot room. Les loves explaining his plans out loud, so he drew this one on the foggy window with his finger. It had a different name in it, and arrows, and a box labeled Phase Two. He talked for twenty minutes. Halfway through, the window cleared up, so he breathed on it and kept going.
"Do you follow?" Les said.
"Completely," I said. "I'm in."
"Good," Les said. "Don't tell Apples."
So I went straight back to Apples and told him Les's whole plan, the arrows, Phase Two, and the part where Les breathed on the window. Apples listened, grinning. "Thanks, Rook," Apples said.
Then I went back to Les and told him Apples's plan, which was a lot shorter. "Fascinating," Les said. "Thank you, Dale."
They both thanked me. That's what it's like to have the deciding vote. People thank you all day long.
That night I told Phil about it. "Dale," Phil said, "you told each of them the other one's plan."
"I kept everybody informed," I said. "That's leadership."
"Now they both know you'll tell," Phil said.
"Right," I said. "So nobody can say I'm hiding anything."
"That's not a good thing," Phil said.
"It's a great thing," I said. "Name one other person in this house who isn't hiding anything."
Phil thought about it. "You," he said.
"See?" I said. Phil didn't have anything to say to that, which is how I knew I'd won.
Before I fell asleep, I went over both plans in my head to keep them straight. Apples's plan had a name in it. Les's plan had a different name, and arrows. I couldn't remember either name. But I remembered the arrows, and that's the part that does the work.
I was resting behind a canoe down by the lake when PT Tambourine took Phil aside. I rest behind that canoe a lot. Nobody asks you to do dishes behind a canoe.
They stood at the edge of the water, about ten feet away, and PT talked so quietly I had to crawl closer. I got right up against the canoe and pressed my ear to it, which didn't help, because it was a canoe.
"Buddy," PT said. Then something I couldn't hear, and then "a long time," and then something about grip. Phil stood there nodding with his hands in his pockets.
Then PT's voice went from a mumble to a roar, and it echoed off the mountain, and some ducks left. "You're the real deal, buddy!" PT said. "You hear me? The real deal!"
Phil said, "Thank you." He said it very quietly, like a man carrying a full bowl of soup. PT put a big hand on his shoulder, and the two of them stood there looking at the lake.
I knew right away what was going on. PT knew I was behind the canoe. He had to. My shoes were sticking out. So when he said "buddy," he was looking at Phil, but his voice was going right over Phil's shoulder, at the canoe.
It was a message. PT and I are rivals, so he couldn't say it to me directly. He had to send it through Phil, in code.
Later I found Phil out on the porch. "PT was talking to me," I said.
"He was talking to me," Phil said.
"Through you," I said. "It's a code. He can't say it to my face, because we're rivals."
"Dale, he said my name," Phil said.
"That's part of the code," I said. "Names are the first thing they put in a code."
"Does PT know you're rivals?" Phil said.
"He doesn't have to," I said. "That's how deep it goes."
Phil looked out at the lake for a while, with a look on his face I hadn't seen on him before. I think he was proud. I told him he should be. It isn't every day you get to carry a message from PT Tambourine to me.
I asked him to carry one back. Phil said he'd rather not.
For one night, I was the most powerful man in the house. I know because I counted the house, and everybody else was split right down the middle.
Apples had four votes and Les had four votes, and then there was me. In politics a man like that's called the swing. I decided to go by The Swing, with capital letters, because once a thing has capital letters, people have to use it.
I explained it to the fridge, since the fridge was already open. "A swing goes both ways," I told it. "Nobody knows which way it's going to go. Not even the swing." The fridge hummed. I took out a hot dog as a sign of respect, and then another one as a sign that I could.
All week people had been nice to me. Zach said good morning, and Les let me hold one of his pens for most of an afternoon. Clara Maria looked right at me for two whole seconds and said, "You're definitely a plant." She'd never been that warm with me before.
Phil found me sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the open fridge. He had his journal out. "What are you going to do at the Huddle?" Phil said.
"I'm keeping my options open," I said.
"There are two options, Dale," Phil said. "Apples's name or Les's name."
"Then I'm keeping both of them open," I said.
Phil asked which one I was going to say out loud. I told him I'd decide when I heard what I'd said. He wrote that down, and then he crossed it out so hard the pen went through the page.
"They both think you're voting for them," Phil said.
"That's the beauty of it," I said. "Everybody's happy."
"Until the Huddle," Phil said.
I told him that's what makes the Huddle exciting. Then I offered him a hot dog. He said he wasn't hungry, so I ate it for him. A powerful man can afford to be generous with other people's hot dogs.
Before bed I practiced my new name in the bathroom mirror. Les came in to brush his teeth and asked who I was talking to, and I said, "The Swing." Les just nodded and kept brushing. He didn't even ask a follow-up question.
It's nice to finally be understood.
Hollis found me in the lodge laundry room, sitting on a dryer. I go there when I need to feel at home. It's warm, it hums, and nobody expects anything from you, except to get off their laundry.
He had his ledger with him, and a pencil behind his ear, which is how you know a man's here on business. "Let's talk about the Huddle," Hollis said. "Vote the way I vote, and I'll knock a hundred dollars off what you owe."
A hundred dollars is a lot of money. At Hollis's rate it's twenty-five hot dogs, or it was on Tuesday, but he'd changed the rate twice since then, both times in his favor.
But I'm a negotiator, and a negotiator never takes the first offer. You don't take the second one either, usually, because by then they've stopped making them.
"Counteroffer," I said. "I vote the way you vote, and you knock off nothing. But I keep quiet."
"About what?" Hollis said.
"About the thing," I said.
"What thing?" Hollis said.
I didn't know yet. In a good negotiation you leave a blank, and the other guy fills it in himself, and it's always worse than anything you could've come up with. That's why I'd left the whole thing blank.
"You know what thing," I said.
Hollis didn't blink. Then he opened the ledger, licked his pencil, wrote something, and turned the book around so I could read it. It said, Discount offered, declined. Under that, it said, Meeting, fifteen dollars.
"What's the fifteen for?" I said.
"My time," Hollis said. "And you're sitting on my laundry."
I got off the dryer, and I'll admit his laundry was still warm, and very nice to sit on. Every sock was rolled into a little ball, all exactly the same size, lined up in rows like eggs. That's the kind of man you're dealing with. A man like that doesn't need a jet ski, he needs a second ledger, just for socks.
Halfway up the stairs, I thought of the thing. I'd tell everybody that Hollis rolls his socks into matching balls. It wasn't a great thing, but it was a start, and I could hold it over him until the right moment came.
I found Phil on the porch and told him right away. A secret like that's too good to keep.
So that was gone.
I'd been to a lot of Huddles, mostly as the answer, but this was the first one where I was the question.
DJ Lavender rode up to the fire pit on his bicycle at sundown and leaned it against a log. "Rookies. Vets," he said. Then he looked right at me. "Laundromat." I nodded back. With DJ you don't need a lot of words. He's only got about nine, and he gives me one of them every time.
The Power had already nominated Les that afternoon, so the house just had to vote in the other spot. Apples had a name for it, and Les had a name for it, and both of them were looking at me. So was everybody else, which is the first time that had ever happened without me falling into something.
Apples wanted me to go first, because he said it would set the tone. Les also wanted me to go first, because he said it would collapse the uncertainty. I agreed with both of them, which is what I'd been doing all week, and it had worked great so far.
"Laundromat," DJ said. "Name and reason."
I stood up. I'd been carrying both plans around for days, along with the reasons, and the reasons for the reasons, and some notes I'd written on a napkin and then eaten. Apples's name was right there. Les's name was right there too. I opened my mouth, and the two names ran into each other, and my mouth just grabbed the only name it was sure of.
"Dale," I said. "Because he's the easiest."
I'd heard so many people say it that it just came out. It's like when somebody says "Enjoy your meal" and you say "You too."
Nobody said anything. The fire popped once. Out on the lake a duck quacked, and then it stopped, and it didn't start again.
DJ looked at me for a long time. I looked back at him so he'd know I was confident, and then I looked at my shoes so he'd know I was humble.
"Laundromat," DJ said. "That counts."
"Can I give a different reason?" I said.
"No," DJ said.
After that it went fast. Zach said, "Dale. He asked." Tori said, "Dale. It's already on the table." Hollis said, "Dale," and wrote something in his ledger. Clara Maria said, "Dale. Obviously." Phil said a different name, very quietly, and then he stared into the fire for the rest of the night.
I want to point out that nobody had to vote for me. Every one of them could've picked somebody else, and every one of them picked me. You don't get that kind of support by accident, except the first one.
"Laundromat. Les," DJ said. "See you in the Hole."
Les shrugged and wrote something in a little notebook. He looked happier than I'd seen him all season, which is how a man looks when he knows he's in for a real fight.
Everybody stood up to go inside. As he walked past behind me, Johnny Apples said one word, very quietly.
"Wow."
I think he was impressed.
The day after the Huddle, Brianna and Phil tried to help me, which I thought showed real initiative on their part. They set up a card table on the porch and dumped out a jigsaw puzzle, to get me ready for Puzzle Panic. I thanked them, but I said no. "I'm an instinct guy," I said. "If I think about a puzzle too much, I'll lose my instinct for it."
"What's your instinct?" Brianna said.
"Push hard," I said. "Then push harder."
Brianna looked at Phil. "He means it," Phil said, and he started turning the pieces face up.
So I sat on the porch railing and supervised. Somebody has to keep an eye on the people who are thinking, so they don't overdo it. Phil sorted the edges into one pile and the sky into another, and Brianna did the corners. I had a hot dog in each jacket pocket, in case things ran long. Also, the pockets kept my hands warm, and the hot dogs.
After a while I got up to say something nice to Brianna. I'd been thinking it over for three days, and I'd decided the timing was finally right. But Brianna looked up first.
"Dale," Brianna said, "whatever this is, no. But thank you."
"I didn't say anything yet," I said.
"I know," Brianna said. "I'm saving us both some time."
That was the fourth time. But I noticed she'd said "thank you." That's a door. It's not open yet, and it might be locked, but it's definitely a door, and I'm a patient man.
Then Phil found the last edge piece, and they both cheered. Phil said something to her I couldn't hear, and Brianna laughed so hard she had to put her head down on the table.
I asked what was so funny, and Phil said, "Nothing."
"Is it me?" I said.
Brianna was still laughing. "Yes," she said.
I nodded. It's good for people to have something to bond over, and I'm happy to be that thing. Phil doesn't make friends easily, so really, I'd introduced them.
They finished the puzzle in an hour. It turned out to be a lighthouse. I'd have guessed a boat, because of all the blue, which shows you my instincts were as sharp as ever.
I ate both of the hot dogs, for focus.
The night before Puzzle Panic, Johnny Apples came down to the rookie bunk room. Vets never go in there. They say it smells like wool and fear, but that's mostly Phil's towel.
Apples sat on the end of my bunk and put a hand on my shoulder. "Rook," he said. "You're my guy." I told him I knew that.
"And you're going home," Apples said. Then he patted my shoulder twice, got up, and left.
I lay there and thought it over. He'd said two things, and the first was good, and the second was bad. When you put a good thing next to a bad thing, they cancel out, and you're left with nothing. So, mathematically, Apples hadn't said anything to me at all. That's Apples for you. He never gives anything away.
"Phil," I whispered. "Did you hear that? He came all the way down here just to say nothing to me."
"I heard," Phil said, from the bunk underneath me.
"That's respect," I said.
Phil didn't answer. He was lying on his back with one hand in his pocket, turning something over and over. I could hear it click against his keys. I figured it was a cough drop. Phil's always got a cough drop. He's had one in that pocket since Wendleton, and he's never offered me any, which I've noted.
I asked him if it was a cough drop. "Go to sleep, Dale," Phil said.
So it was a cough drop. If it wasn't, he would've said so.
I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I kept thinking about the puzzle, and Les, and the way Les explains everything out loud while he does it. Then it hit me. I'd just listen to whatever Les said and do the same thing, only faster. It was so simple I couldn't believe nobody had thought of it before.
Down below me, Phil was still turning the cough drop over and over in his pocket.
He must've been nervous for me.
The Hole looked nice that night. Somebody had raked the sand smooth and turned on all the lights on the poles. It's always good to see a place make an effort for you.
The house stood around the rim, looking down. Les and I stood in the middle of the sand, each of us in front of a wooden frame with a little pile of puzzle pieces beside it. DJ Lavender stood between us. "Puzzle Panic," he said. "First to finish stays." Then he told us we could look at the pieces for one minute before he said "Go," but we couldn't touch them.
Les looked at his pile, and right away he started talking. Les always talks when he thinks. It's mostly for himself, but anybody nearby is welcome to it.
"Six pieces, two of them mirror images," Les said. "So the trick is the corners. You lock the big L in first, and the rest has to fall in around it."
I looked at my pile. I saw six pieces, and two of them looked the same. "Big L first," I said, so he'd know I'd been listening.
"Your pieces are different from mine," Les said.
I didn't know that was allowed. So I went to my backup plan. When something doesn't fit at home, I hit it with a shoe. That's how I got my medicine cabinet shut, and it hasn't opened since, so I've had to start keeping my medicine in the sink. I took off my right shoe and held it up, ready.
"Laundromat," DJ said. "No touching."
"I'm not touching," I said. "The shoe's touching."
"Put your shoe on," DJ said.
I did, mostly. I left the back of it folded down, so I could get it off again fast.
Les kept talking. "Then the long piece goes across the top, flipped over," he said, "and after that it's basically over." I nodded. I'd decided to flip everything, since flipping was working so well for him.
DJ raised his hand. Everybody leaned over the rim. I bent my knees like a sprinter, which is wrong for a puzzle, but you never know.
"Ready," DJ said.
That's when somebody started walking down the ramp. It was Phil. He came down slowly, all the way to the sand, with his hand closed tight around something small and gold. His knees were shaking. Phil gets nervous in front of a crowd, even a crowd of eleven people he eats breakfast with.
DJ lowered his hand. "Laundromat," he said. "Sit down."
The game never happened. I'll explain the whole thing later, because it's complicated, and a lot of it's about rules.
Back at the house, I told everybody what they'd missed. "I had it," I said. "I was going to flip everything and then shoe it. Les knew it, too. Another five seconds and he was done."
Phil was sitting on the couch, and his hands were still shaking a little. "That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
"You were on the ramp," I told him. "You had a bad angle."
He'd had the best angle in the place.
Here's what actually happened, as best I can tell, and I've asked around.
Weeks ago, in the last daily before the Shake-Up, the show hid a gold token somewhere in the course. I don't remember much about that daily, because I got disqualified early for eating part of it. Phil kept going. Phil found the token, put it in his pocket, and didn't tell anybody, including me, his best friend and coach.
That token was the Lifeline. DJ explained it to the house down in the Hole, right after Phil walked onto the sand. "Lifeline," DJ said. "Pulls one player out of the Hole. Before Go." Then he looked at me. "Laundromat. You're out."
The rule is, if somebody gets pulled out, nobody else goes in that round. So the whole Hole was cancelled, and Les got to climb back out too. Les just shrugged at Phil and said, "Good move." He didn't seem upset at all. He picked up his puzzle pieces and took them inside to do by himself, for fun, which I respect, because it means he was scared to do it in front of me.
So Phil had carried that token around for weeks, in his pocket, clicking against his keys every night under my bunk.
That was no cough drop.
Back at the house, I found him in the kitchen. "Phil," I said, "thank you. I'm going to pay you back."
"You don't have to," Phil said.
"I want to," I said. "I'm going to get you a hot dog. A good one, from the very back of the fridge, where they're the coldest."
"Okay," Phil said.
So I went and got a hot dog from the very back of the fridge. Then I ate it, because I was standing right there, and I was hungry from almost winning. I meant to get him another one, but by then it was late, and he'd gone to bed.
I lay awake for a few minutes that night. I thought about Phil finding that token and holding on to it for weeks, never using it on himself, just in case I ever needed it someday.
There was something there, something big. I could almost see what it was.
Then I fell asleep.
I sat down on the stool, and the little red light came on.
"How does it feel to be saved?" Glenn said, through the speaker.
"I wasn't saved," I said. "I was drafted. Phil looked around the whole house and picked the best player he could find. That's what a draft is."
Glenn didn't say anything. I waited, and the light stayed on. When a man stays quiet like that, it means he wants more, so I gave him more.
"You want to know about the coconut," I said. He didn't say no.
So I told him. I told him how years ago I borrowed a jet ski from a man named Hollis and returned it to the bottom of Lake Wendle. I told him how I tried to pay Hollis back with half a coconut, which he didn't want, so I took it back, which he didn't like either.
Then I told him how at the eating relay I saw half a coconut on the prize table, just sitting there, and I put it in my jacket. Some things feel like destiny, and some things just feel like they're not nailed down. With a coconut, it's both.
"It's under my pillow now," I said. "Phil says it's attracting ants. I say they're just curious."
Nothing came out of the speaker.
"I've got a feeling about it," I said. "Like it's going to be important someday. Maybe as money. Maybe as a cup."
Then I heard a click. I think Glenn had set down the walkie.
"Glenn?" I said. The little red light stayed on for another ten minutes, so I told it the whole thing again, slower.
Glenn called me out to the van, which only happens when something big's about to happen to me. Last time, it was Clara Maria calling me a plant.
The van smelled like coffee and wires. Glenn was sitting in the dark in front of about forty little TVs. On one of them I could see myself in the kitchen, eating a hot dog. It was a rerun. I'd already eaten that one. Glenn turned around in his chair. "Dale," Glenn said. "Good news. You made the Final."
I sat down on a cooler, which turned out to be full of sandwiches for the crew, so I sat on it carefully. "I knew it," I said. "When did I make it?"
"Just now," Glenn said. "The Final has a rookie quota. Four rookies have to go up the mountain."
"And I'm one of the four best," I said.
"You're one of the four left," Glenn said. "Every other rookie's gone home. It's you, Phil, Hollis and Brianna."
I nodded, because it's the same thing, really. If you're the last one standing, then you're the best one standing, because the others are sitting down somewhere, at home, watching you stand.
"You've worked hard for this," Glenn said, and he smiled at me. I'd never seen Glenn smile before. It was a lot of teeth, but they were warm teeth. I told him I really had.
Then he reached under his desk, pulled out a whole case of Ruckus, and set it on my lap. "For you," Glenn said. "On the house."
"Is this a bribe?" I said.
"It's a thank-you," Glenn said. "You've been a great story."
I asked him if I'd be a story on the mountain too. He said he hoped so. He said he had a feeling I'd be the story of the whole Final.
I carried the case back toward the house. It was heavy, and the cans sloshed. I thought about how far I'd come since the first day, when nobody here knew who I was. Now the man in the van knew my name, and he'd given me twenty-four drinks.
When I looked back, Glenn had already locked the van door and closed the little curtain. In television, that's how they say goodbye.
I'd miss him too.
The Final started with a gondola ride, which is a little room on a wire that goes up a mountain. They don't tell you the wire's the only thing holding it up. You figure that out on your own, about halfway up.
There were nine of us left: Johnny Apples, PT Tambourine, Daycee Clerk, Clara Maria, Tori Bargain, Hollis, Phil, Brianna and me. We all fit in the gondola, as long as nobody needed their elbows. I stood by the window so the cameras could get my good side, which is the side facing away from the drop.
PT sat next to Phil, and he's so big the gondola leaned a little toward him the whole way up. He put one huge hand on Phil's shoulder. "Buddy," PT said, so quietly I almost missed it. "I'm proud of you."
"Thanks, PT," Phil said, and his eyes got wet. Phil's eyes get wet at a lot of things. I once saw it happen during a nature show about worms.
I was standing right there, so I figured PT was proud of me too. You don't say a thing like that in a tiny room full of people and only mean one of them.
"Thanks, PT," I said.
PT looked at me for a second. "Sure, buddy," he said. That pretty much confirmed it.
At the top, DJ Lavender was waiting beside a whiteboard, with his bicycle leaning against a tree. I hadn't seen him on the gondola. I decided not to think about it.
"Rookies. Vets," DJ said. "The Final." Then he explained it like a tour guide. On day one, you run uphill through the snow to a checkpoint, where there's a table of local food, and you have to finish your plate before you can leave. On night one, you sit on a stool in the cold until sunrise, and you can't fall asleep. Day two, you cross a lake. Day three, you do a puzzle at the summit, run down to the finish line, and go home.
The prize money is a million dollars, split up by where you finish. First gets the most. Last gets less.
"What does last get?" I said.
"Laundromat," DJ said. "Don't be last."
That sounded like a vote of confidence to me.
I looked down at the valley. The house was down there somewhere, with the hot tub and the pool table and the fridge. I couldn't see it from up there, but I could feel the hot dogs waiting.
That's what I'd be running for.
Every great team needs a closer, the guy you bring in at the end when it really counts. I decided that was me, and that from now on my name was The Closer.
Before the start, Johnny Apples pulled me behind a snowmobile. "Rook," he said. "You're my guy."
"I know," I said. "I'm The Closer."
"Sure," Apples said. "Listen. I need you to slow down Daycee at the start." I asked him how he wanted me to do it.
"However you want," Apples said. "Just get in her way. She's the fastest one out there."
I told him I'd take care of it. A closer doesn't ask a lot of questions. That's why he's the closer, and not the guy who asks the questions.
I thought it over while I stretched. I could stand in front of her, but Daycee's very good at going around things. I could talk to her, but she doesn't talk much, and she might just leave in the middle. Then I had it. I'd tie her bootlaces together. It's the oldest trick around, and the oldest ones are the oldest for a reason, which is that they work.
I waited until Daycee bent down to stretch. Then I crouched down behind her and got to work, and it was so cold I had to take off my mittens to do it right. I tied a really good knot, and then I tied a second knot on top of it, to be sure.
When I stood up, Daycee was about ten feet away, stretching next to Clara Maria. She'd moved a while ago, and I don't know when. I looked down at the laces I'd tied. They were mine.
Apples was watching me, and he was smiling. "Perfect," he said.
"I can fix it," I said.
"Don't," Apples said. "You're doing great." Then he walked off to stretch.
I bent down to untie the knot, but it was a really good knot. I'd tied it to last.
Up at the starting line, DJ Lavender raised his hand. That's when I noticed I only had one mitten.
"Go!" DJ said, and everybody took off up the hill except me. Pacing is very important in a long race. A lot of people forget that and go out fast at the start, with their legs.
It took me about a minute to get the knot undone. It was a really good knot. Then I spotted my other mitten, lying in the snow about six feet behind me.
I reached back for it, and my boot slid. Then my other boot slid, to catch up with the first one. I sat down hard and kept going, backward, down the hill on my back, like a guy on a sled who forgot to bring the sled.
I went past the snowmobile. I went past the camera crew, and one of them waved. "Looking good, Dale!" he yelled. I waved back with my bare hand.
I slid about a hundred yards. It was the fastest I'd moved all season, but in the wrong direction, and they don't give you credit for that. At the bottom I hit a snowbank. Most of me went into it, and only my legs and one arm stayed outside, to keep an eye on things.
It was quiet in the snowbank, and kind of peaceful. Somebody outside yelled, "Dale, are you okay?" and I yelled back, "I'm pacing!" Then I thought about staying a while. Then something started chewing on my boot.
It was a goat, a white mountain goat with a beard and yellow eyes, and it was eating my laces. I figured that was fair. They'd caused a lot of trouble already that morning.
"Hey," I said. "Those were tied." The goat kept chewing. "I'm in a race," I told it, which didn't seem to matter to it either.
The goat didn't care. It ate one whole lace. Then it ate the mitten I'd gone back for, and it looked at me like it was waiting for the next course.
I climbed out of the snowbank. I had one mitten, one lace, and snow in places I'd never had snow before, like both ears. Then I started back up the hill. My boot kept coming off, so I'd take two steps, stop, and put it back on. The goat followed me the whole way, a few feet behind, in case I dropped anything else. "Go home," I said. It didn't. It's still not clear to me that it had one.
By the first trail marker, everybody else was gone. A cameraman standing there told me I was last by about a quarter mile.
"That's the plan," I told him. "Let them wear themselves out up there."
"Sure," the cameraman said, and he wrote something down. I could tell he was impressed.
I was pacing myself perfectly.
Nobody had ever waited for me on a mountain before, so when I saw Hollis standing at the switchback, I got a little choked up. I thought maybe he'd come back down to help me.
"Four thousand dollars," Hollis said. "Plus the meeting fee."
He held up the ledger. It was frozen solid, and the pages wouldn't open, so he'd written the total on the cover in marker, in big numbers, so I could read it from a distance. The goat read it too, and then it tried to eat it.
"You came back down the mountain just to tell me that?" I said.
"I didn't want you to forget," Hollis said.
"I wasn't going to forget," I said. "I've got a great memory."
"You voted for yourself," Hollis said.
I didn't have an answer for that. Some things are personal.
Hollis checked his watch. Then he tucked the ledger inside his jacket, turned around, and ran up the trail. He wasn't jogging, either. He was really running, hard, with his elbows. Way up the mountain, I watched him pass one person, then another, then a third, until he was just a dot with a ledger.
I'm not even mad. I admire a man like that. Most people can barely do one job, and Hollis was running the Final and collecting a debt at the same time, in the snow, uphill. Back home, I've seen guys get fired from one job for sitting down too much.
I decided to try doing two jobs at once myself. I'd run up the mountain, and at the same time I'd think about strategy. I took two steps and thought about strategy, and then I fell over into the snow, and the goat sat on me.
One job at a time.
After the switchback the trail went straight up, which I felt was a design flaw. Mountains have had millions of years to get flatter, and they just haven't bothered.
I was resting facedown in the snow when I heard footsteps behind me. That surprised me, because I was in last place. Nobody's supposed to be behind last place. That's the whole idea of it.
It was Brianna. She'd stopped at the first-aid tent to tape a blister, and now she was coming up the hill steady and calm, like it was a staircase in her own house.
She slowed down next to me. "Dale," she said. "You look pale."
"It's my winter coloring," I said. "Women like it."
She dug in her jacket and held out a granola bar. "Eat this," she said. "You need it more than I do."
I looked at the granola bar. Then I looked at her. I've been on two reality shows, so I know how it works. A woman doesn't hand a man her granola bar halfway up a mountain unless she's thinking long-term.
"Brianna," I said, "I accept."
"Great," she said. "It's oats and raisins."
"I want you to know I'm not taking this lightly," I said. "My place isn't big, but it's above a laundromat, so it's always warm. And you can sit in the laundromat for free all day, as long as you look like you're waiting for something."
She was already twenty yards up the hill. She waved without turning around, which I took as shyness. I kept going with my acceptance anyway, partly for the cameras and partly because I'd worked hard on it. I covered my consulting practice, our future together, and how I'd want the wedding catered by whoever stocks the fridge at the house. By the time I got to the honeymoon, she was over the ridge.
The goat from the snowbank came back down the trail and stood next to me. It looked at the granola bar. "Forget it," I told the goat. "This one's an engagement ring."
Then I ate it in two bites. It was a short engagement.
The eating checkpoint was a wooden hut halfway up the mountain. You could smell it from the switchback. So could the goat, which turned around and went home.
I'd been worried about being in last place. But when I came around the corner, nobody had left. The whole field was sitting at one long table outside the hut, staring at their plates. Apples was there, and Daycee, Clara Maria, Tori, Brianna, Hollis and Phil. Only PT was gone. He'd eaten his plate in four minutes and then apologized to it.
DJ Lavender was standing at the head of the table with his arms folded. "Laundromat," DJ said.
"DJ," I said. I gave him a little nod, the way two professionals do. He'd already explained the checkpoint to everybody else, but he explained it again just for me, which I took as a private tour. Every finalist gets one plate of local food. You can't run on until your plate is clean. Clean means clean.
Then he pointed at a rule card nailed to a post. The card said, A competitor may not leave the checkpoint until his or her plate is empty. There was more under that, in smaller print. I didn't read it. I'd already found the part with food in it.
My plate was waiting at the end of the table. There was a smoked eel, whole, with its face still on. There was a loaf of something called blood bread, and a pickled egg the color of a bad knee. On the side was a cup of dark liquid that nobody could identify, including the man who'd poured it.
Next to me, Tori was chewing with her eyes shut. Clara Maria was glaring at her egg like it had challenged her to a rematch. Apples was smiling at his eel for the camera, and you could see it was costing him.
Something came over me then. I'm not a fast man. I'm not a strong man, and I don't remember things, as the memory wall proved. But put a plate of free food in front of me and I become a different person. Actually, I become the same person, just a lot more of him. For the first time all season, I felt like myself.
"Is there a time limit?" I asked DJ.
"No," DJ said.
"Is there seconds?" I said.
DJ looked at me for a long time. The wind blew snow off the roof of the hut and onto his head, and he didn't move.
"Laundromat," he said. "Eat."
Phil's plate was different from everybody else's. It was a pile of fermented shellfish, mostly clams, in a gray juice, with shrimp heads on top still wearing their whiskers.
Phil was sitting very straight with his hands folded. He wasn't eating. He was breathing through his mouth and looking sad, the way he looks when a student calls a frog gross. I'd already finished my egg and my eel, and I was halfway through my blood bread and feeling great.
"Phil," I said, "are you going to eat that?"
"I can't," Phil said. "I'm allergic to shellfish. You know that." I did know that. I've known it for years. But a man can't keep every fact in his head at once, especially on a mountain.
"Dale," Phil said, "I need to ask you something."
"Ask me after," I said. I'd already reached over and taken a clam. It had a nice sour bite to it, so I took another one.
Phil watched me for a second. Then he slid the whole plate over in front of me without a word. Normally I don't trust free food that somebody pushes at you. But I made an exception for Phil, because he's my friend, and because it was shrimp.
Apples was on my other side, still working on his eel. "Rook," Apples said, "how are you doing that?"
"There's a strategy to it," I said. "You don't taste it. You think about something else."
"Like what?" Apples said.
"Other food," I said. "Or money. Or which way the vote's going. That's what I'd think about if I were you, because I'm a swing vote, and you'll want me on your side."
"There's no vote," Apples said. "It's the Final."
"That's what they want you to think," I said.
I ate Phil's whole plate. Then I licked it, because the card said clean. A man in a parka checked it, nodded, and wrote something on a clipboard.
"Thank you, Dale," Phil said. His voice was a little thick.
"For what?" I said.
"Section four, paragraph two," Phil said. "A competitor may eat for another competitor."
"I know," I said. I didn't know. But I've noticed that if you say you know something, people stop explaining it.
The man in the parka waved Phil on. Phil stood up, squeezed my shoulder, and ran off up the trail. Only PT was ahead of him. Apples put down his fork. He watched me pull my own plate back and start in on the rest of my blood bread.
"Rook," he said. "You're my guy."
He'd said it to me a lot that season. But this time he wasn't counting anything. He was just looking at the empty shrimp plate, the way you'd look at a dog that drove a car.
"I know," I said. That time I did.
Then the rest of them finished, one by one, and left. Even Apples went, wiping his mouth with great dignity. I still had my cup of mystery liquid. I took my time with it. You don't rush a meal like that. It might be the last free one for a while.
I left the checkpoint in last place. But I left full.
The overnight station was a row of wooden stools in a field of snow. You sat on your stool and stayed awake until dawn. If you fell asleep, they gave you a time penalty in the morning, which I felt was them admitting the stools were comfortable. I liked the stools right away. They were just like the stool in the Confessional, and I'd done some of my best work on that stool.
By the time I got there, everybody else was already sitting in a row with blankets on their shoulders. There were little lights on poles, so the cameras could tell who was blinking.
PT was next to Phil, keeping him awake with stories. He'd start every story in a low mumble, so quiet you had to lean in. Then he'd get to the good part and roar. "And then, buddy, I pulled that log out of the mud with my teeth!" The whole row would jump. Even the cameraman jumped. It was the best plan I've ever heard for staying awake, and I want to be clear it was mostly mine, because I was sitting near it.
I sat down on my stool and folded my arms. I told myself, Think, Dale. Stay sharp. That's the last thing I remember.
I had a dream about the hot tub. In the dream I was finally allowed in it. There was a new rule card, and it said, Dale may use the hot tub as much as he wants. At one point PT roared about a cargo net, and in the dream it was just the jets coming on. Nobody asked me to leave. Not even the card.
When I opened my eyes, it was light out and my stool was empty. I was lying in the snow next to it, wrapped in a blanket, with somebody's mitten under my head. A woman with a clipboard was standing over me. "Two-hour penalty," she said.
"For what?" I said.
"You slept the whole night," she said. "From about the second minute."
It was the same thing that beat Leroy at Sit-Out. My body knows when it's time to rest. It just doesn't check with me first.
The rest of the field looked terrible. Their eyes were red and their faces were gray. Phil was swaying. PT had lost his voice and was roaring in a whisper. I felt amazing. I looked at the penalty slip and thought it over. Two hours is a lot of time. But a full night's sleep is worth more than two hours, if you do the math. I did the math, and it came out in my favor.
Best decision I made all Final.
In the morning a producer walked me out behind the stools to a camera on a tripod in the snow. There was no stool, so I stood. There was a walkie-talkie taped to one of the legs.
"Dale," Glenn's voice said. "How do you feel?" Glenn was down in the van at the bottom of the mountain. He calls that being on the mountain.
"Rested," I said.
There was a long silence, with wind in it. Then Glenn said, "You're more than two hours behind everybody. How do you feel about that?"
"Rested," I said.
"Are you scared?" Glenn said. "Angry?"
"Mostly rested," I said. "I'll be honest with you, Glenn. I've never been this rested in my life."
"Say it again," Glenn said, "but angrier."
He'd asked me that the first week, too. I still didn't know why. But Glenn's the professional, so I made a fist and squinted into the camera. "Rested," I said, angrier.
There was another long silence. "Okay," Glenn said. Then he forgot to let go of the button, and I heard him tell somebody else in the van, "He's rested."
I gave the camera a thumbs-up. Then I knocked the tripod over with my elbow, stood it back up, and gave it a second thumbs-up. You can't be too careful with television.
The lake crossing was a shallow inlet marked with little orange flags. The water came up to your knees, and it was the coldest thing I've ever touched. That includes the inside of the fridge at the house, which I'd climbed into once looking for mustard.
The flags didn't go straight across. They swung way out to the left in a big lazy curve, to keep you in the shallow part. I looked at that curve for a while. It seemed like a waste of everybody's time.
I could see the far flag straight ahead. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I learned that in high school, from the kid who sat next to me, who was copying off somebody else. "Shortcut," I told the cameraman. He said something back, but he said it from the shore, so it didn't count.
I walked straight out. The water was at my knees. Then it was at my belt. Then it was at my chest, and I had to hold my arms up like a man being arrested. I didn't mind. I was making great time.
Then my foot came down on nothing.
As I went under, I had a moment of perfect clarity. Back home I'm known for one piece of wisdom, and here was a lake proving it in front of a national audience. I didn't want to waste that.
"Lakes are deeper than they look!" I said, proudly, with about half of my mouth. Then the lake closed over my head.
It was very quiet down there, and very green. Something brushed my leg. I'm going to say it was a rope, because I don't want to talk about the other thing it could've been. I grabbed it and pulled, and something big and round came loose, and I rode it up to the top.
I came up holding a buoy. It was orange and about the size of a big pumpkin, with a broken chain hanging off the bottom. I'd owned it for less than a minute, but I already felt very close to it.
I kicked the rest of the way across on my buoy. I lost a boot, my hat, and most of the feeling in my legs. I also swallowed a fish, but only a small one.
When I crawled out on the far shore, somebody was standing there, perfectly dry, holding a folded towel in one hand and a ledger in the other. It was Hollis. He'd crossed an hour ago, the right way, and waited.
"Towel's twelve dollars," Hollis said.
"That seems like a lot for a towel," I said.
"It's a dry towel," Hollis said. "That's where the money is." I took the towel, and he wrote it down. Then he wrote something else down. When I asked what, he said, "The buoy's not yours."
I held on to the buoy anyway. We'd been through a lot.
The summit puzzle was at the very top of the mountain. I know, because I checked, and there wasn't any more mountain.
By the time I got up there it was dark. The puzzle was a big wooden board on a stand, with a picture of the mountain cut into forty pieces. There were nine boards in a row, and eight of them were finished.
A cameraman told me about Phil and Brianna while he packed up his gear. They'd done their puzzles side by side. Phil sorted his pieces by edge, and Brianna sorted hers by color, and they kept trading tips. They'd finished at the same time and run off down the far side together.
"That's my coaching," I told the cameraman. "Sorting. I've talked about it a lot."
"Okay," he said, and kept packing.
DJ Lavender was standing next to my board in the snow, holding his bicycle. I looked back down the trail I'd just climbed. It was steep and rocky, and in a couple of places it was a rope. Then I looked at the bicycle.
"DJ," I said, "how'd you get that up here?"
DJ didn't say anything. He rang the bell on the handlebars once, very quietly. I decided there must be a road on the other side. Later I asked around, and there isn't a road. I've stopped thinking about it, because when I do, I get a headache in a new place.
I started my puzzle. It went slower than I'd hoped. My fingers were cold, and every piece looked like a mountain, because they all were. At one point I took off my boot and tried to hammer a piece in, the way I'd done against Les. It didn't work any better on a mountain.
After about an hour I had one piece left. It was the very top, with a little flag on it. It didn't fit. I turned it around, and it still didn't fit. So I turned it upside down and pushed hard, and it went in, sort of. Now the top of the mountain was pointing down into the rest of the mountain.
I stepped back. DJ stepped up and looked at it for a long time. Snow collected in his beard. I could tell he was thinking hard about the integrity of the Struggle. "Laundromat," DJ said.
"It's done," I said.
DJ looked at the upside-down flag. Then he looked at the sky, and then at me.
"It's cold," he said. "Go."
I went. I was proud of that puzzle. Sometimes the mountain's the one that's wrong.
The finish banner was in a parking lot behind a ski lodge at the bottom of the mountain. By the time I got there, it was well after dark, and they'd already taken down half of it. It was hanging by one corner, so it just said, Ish.
A man was rolling up cables. Another man was stacking chairs. Somebody had left out a tray of cocoa, and it was cold, but I drank all of it on the way in. I crossed the line holding my buoy over my head. Nobody cheered, but I did hear a cable fall over, and that's close.
Phil was waiting right past the line with a blanket. He'd been standing there two hours. He wrapped it around me and the buoy both.
"Dale," he said. "You finished."
"How'd I do?" I said.
Phil told me the results in order, slowly and kindly. He's a teacher, so he's had practice.
PT Tambourine won. He'd crossed the line first, hours ago, and the crew cheered so loud they set off a car alarm. Daycee Clerk won the women's side. She'd finished so calmly that some people didn't realize she'd been racing.
Phil came in second among the men, right behind PT. There was real money for second. When he said the number, he said it quietly, like it might hear him and leave.
Apples was third. Phil said he'd taken it very well, in public. He'd shaken PT's hand and said all the right things. Then he'd walked behind the lodge and said some other things to a snowbank, at a volume Phil described as respectful but firm. Brianna came in second among the women. Hollis was fourth.
"And me?" I said.
"You finished," Phil said again.
"In what place?" I said.
Phil thought about how to put it. "After everybody," he said.
I nodded. I've thought about it a lot since, and here's how I see it. Last is just first, if you're coming from the other direction.
Then PT came out of the lodge with a medal around his neck the size of a dinner plate. He walked straight over and picked me up, buoy and all, in a hug that cracked something in my back that I think needed it.
"Buddy!" PT roared. "You made it!"
"I did," I said. "You did good too, PT."
He set me down, patted my head, and went back in to his party. Phil walked me in behind him.
I felt great. I'd crossed the line on my own two feet, mostly. I'd eaten two plates, slept a full night and found a buoy. I'm not saying I won. I'm just saying, add it up.
The party in the lodge had a cake shaped like the mountain. I ate the summit first, out of respect.
Johnny Apples came in late from behind the lodge, where he'd been talking to the snowbank. He'd changed into a clean sweater, and his grin was back. He shook hands all the way across the room, like a man running for mayor of the lodge.
I got ready. I'd been his guy all season, and a man like Apples wants to see his guy at a time like this. He walked right past me. He stopped in front of Phil, who was eating a slice of cake very carefully, over a napkin.
Apples put a hand on Phil's shoulder. "Phil," he said. "You're my guy."
He didn't say it the way he'd said it to me. He said it slower, and afterward he didn't look around the room to count anything.
Phil blushed all the way up into his hair. "Thank you," he said. "That means a lot."
I stood there holding my cake. For a second I didn't say anything, which, if you know me, is a long time. I'd heard it plenty of times. I'd just never heard it from the outside before. It sounded different from out there. It sounded like it was for somebody.
Then I worked it out, and I felt a lot better. If I was his guy, and Phil was his guy, then Phil and I were both his guy. That made us a pair. The Shake-Up had split us up, and here was Apples putting us back together, without even being asked.
I went over and stood next to Phil, so Apples could see us both at once. "We're both your guy," I told Apples.
Apples looked at me. Then he looked at Phil. Then he grinned, and it was a real one, the grin he doesn't use for counting votes.
"Sure, Rook," he said. "Why not."
Phil handed me half his cake. I didn't even ask. That's how pairs work.
The after-show was filmed the next day on a long leather couch in the lodge, in front of a fireplace that turned out to be real. I know, because I checked with my hand. All nine finalists sat in a row. They put me on the very end, next to a lamp, I think so the light would hit me best.
Each of us got a turn to tell our story. PT told his in a mumble, then roared the ending, and a woman on the crew dropped her coffee. Daycee told hers in three sentences, and everybody nodded. Apples told his like it was a speech at the unveiling of his own statue, and somehow it was charming.
Then it was my turn. I told it the way it happened. I came in as a rookie nobody had heard of. The vets were scared of me from day one, so they kept voting me into the Hole. I beat Tad. I beat Leroy. I was about to beat Les when the rules got in the way. I carried my best friend through a plate of shellfish, more or less on my back. I slept through a whole night on purpose, to send a message. And when the mountain was put together wrong, I fixed it.
"I don't want to say I saved the season," I said. "But I'd like it written down somewhere."
The room got quiet. Everybody looked at Phil. Phil was smiling. It wasn't a sad smile or a tired one. It was the one he gets when a frog he's been worried about turns out fine.
"That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
Then he leaned over and bumped my shoulder with his. "But I'd watch your version," he said.
That was the best review I've ever gotten. It was also the only one, but it was a good one.
When the cameras stopped, Brianna came over. I stood up and opened my arms wide. She stuck out her hand. I looked at it for a second, and then I shook it. She has a very good handshake, firm and dry, from all the kneading.
"Good luck, Dale," she said.
"You too," I said. "Let's keep in touch." She was already walking over to hug Phil.
I could see what she was doing. She was saving my hug for later.
Then DJ Lavender stood up in front of the fireplace. He looked at all nine of us for a long time. He looked at me a little longer, or I like to think so. "Laundromat," he said, and nodded. Then he turned to the camera. "That's the Struggle."
He got on his bicycle and rode out through the lobby.
The first thing I did back in Wendleton was walk into the Sudsy Duck and announce that I was home. There was one woman there, folding towels. She said, "Okay."
My appearance fee came two weeks later, in a big envelope addressed to me, care of the laundromat. I'd never been paid to appear anywhere before. Usually people pay me to leave.
I opened it at my kitchen table. Inside was a letter thanking me for being part of the Struggle, and a pay stub. The pay stub said the fee had already been sent, in full, to Hollis Brandt.
I read it three times. Then somebody knocked on my door, very politely, with a pen. It was Hollis, holding his ledger and a sheet of paper with my signature on it.
"Form nine-B," Hollis said. "Assignment of payment."
I remembered that piece of paper. On our third day in the house, Hollis came up to me at the fridge and asked for my autograph. I was flattered. Nobody had asked for my autograph since Exile Isle, and nobody had asked then, either. I signed it with a big swoop on the bottom. I didn't read it, because you don't read an autograph. That's the whole point of one.
It also turned out the address on page forty of my contract, the one somebody had already filled in for me, was Hollis's. He likes to cover his bases.
Phil told me later he'd seen the whole thing from the kitchen. He said he tried to warn me, but I was busy telling Hollis how to spell Tummins.
"How much was the fee?" I asked Hollis.
"Four thousand dollars," Hollis said.
"How much did I owe you?" I said.
"Four thousand dollars," Hollis said.
I thought about that. For a minute it felt like I'd been robbed. Then I saw it was the opposite. I'd paid off a debt with money I never even touched. It was the most efficient thing I've ever done.
Hollis drew a long line in the ledger with a ruler and closed it. "That covers the jet ski," he said.
I asked about the interest, the meeting fee, the hot dog handling and the towel. "I came in fourth," Hollis said. "I'll carry it." Then he went back down the stairs. I'd never seen him be generous before. It looked like it hurt.
I went to the window to watch him go. While I was standing there, a man on a bicycle came pedaling slowly down the street. He had tattoos and a beard, and he was wearing a sweater with snow still on it, which was odd, because it was eighty degrees out.
It was DJ Lavender. He didn't stop. He just looked up at my window as he rolled by. "Laundromat," he said.
I waved. He's a busy man, but he makes time for his friends.
Hollis came back the next morning. He knocked with the pen again and opened his ledger to the last page.
"One more item," he said. "Half a coconut."
Most men would've panicked. Most men wouldn't have had half a coconut. But I'd been carrying one since the eating relay, when I took it off the prize table for no reason. Something told me I'd need it, and it turned out the something was right.
I got it out of my sock drawer. It had been through the Final, a lake and the sock drawer, and it smelled like all three. I handed it to Hollis.
He turned it over. He knocked on it with his pen. He held it up to the light.
"That's a good half," I said.
Hollis wrote something down, drew a line under it, and turned the ledger around so I could see. At the bottom it said zero.
"We're square," Hollis said.
We shook hands. It was the first time we'd been square in years. He went down the stairs with the coconut, and I felt so light I had to sit down.
That afternoon I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and worked on a new nickname. I'd been on two shows now. That's a lot of shows for a man from Wendleton.
I tried "Dale Tummins, Reality Legend." Then "The Man Who Ate Two Plates." Then "Dale Tummins, Two-Time Television Personality and Consultant." Every word I added made it worse, so I took them all back off.
"Two-Show Dale," I told the mirror. It's short, and it hits the ear better.
Then the phone rang. It was Glenn. "Dale," Glenn said. "We've got a new show next season. Two people, one houseboat, one lake."
"How deep's the lake?" I said.
"Deep," Glenn said.
"That's my specialty," I said. "I've got a buoy."
"Great," Glenn said. "Bring your friend."
The last time he said that, I had to think about it. This time I didn't. "Phil," I said.
"Already called him," Glenn said. "He said yes for both of you."
I was a little hurt they'd called Phil first. Then I was proud of him, for being my friend.
I went down to the lost and found to pack some socks.