Taking the Bump

By Malakai Hayes

The phrase ‘taking the bump’ had been a concept long used in the mind of Charlie Dean; when he slipped up as a kid, he’d have to ‘take a bump’ from his old man’s belt. He often thought, albeit cruelly, that an italicised version of the phrase should have taken the place of his childhood photos. Or, alternatively, if he was ever to inscribe his own headstone, it would be CHARLIE DEAN: DIED TAKING THE BUMP. 

Oddly, he had never been afraid of dying. Not because of any real death wish he’d had in the past, although plenty he had, but because he had been raised Catholic. He’d eventually become agnostic enough to lower his expectations for life; Charlie had none, good or bad. It was a symptom of a childhood split between a permanent trailer home and an apartment block full of pill pushers. It was a little funny the way his parents thought the other was the antithesis of parent-material when, when all was said and done, it was Charlie who got the blame for the dissolution of a broken marriage. He thought, in a twisted sort of way, that his life now was just a reflection of the one he already lived. 

He enjoyed pain. Enjoy was a light word for something he couldn’t quite go without; Charlie needed the sense of taking a bump to feel any sort of peace with himself. It was his version of normalcy. His version of rolling his mother over to stop her from choking was rolling himself out of the wrestling ring to land on the mat. The choking was losing, and Charlie was not a loser. 

Wrestling had called to him like a siren as a kid. Perhaps the one good memory he had from his Dad’s getup was the fact they had a television. Sport was a safeword, the one thing that didn’t remind him he’d rolled a household full of bitter silence. Like a sandtrap, his Dad seemed to envelop the surrounding cushions, leaving Charlie crouched in front of the TV. His fixation was met with encouragement from everyone around him; his father considered himself somewhat of a wrestler by the standards of the 70s, and had tapes upon tapes of matches.

Now that Charlie himself was being taped, it wasn’t the same. Backstage, he and his Dad would sometimes exchange words. Light ones. Perfunctory little ‘how are you-s’ that drove Charlie mad.

Charlie pulled open his locker door, shoving his bag inside. His chest heaved, and his body ached like it had been slammed against concrete. When he reached for his towel, a familiar figure in the corner of his eye made him pause.

“Good match,” his Dad muttered. 

His father leaned against a locker, puffing his chest out as if the mere act of showing up to Charlie’s big event was a feat worthy of praise. As if the man hadn’t been absent for half his life, save for drunkenly stumbling through his bedroom door.

“I’m surprised you even came,” Charlie muttered, focusing on the task of rubbing himself down to avoid standing in a personal puddle of sweat. Better men would embrace their father. He was too sweaty to be a better man. 

The older man shifted on his feet uncomfortably. He was fidgeting with the cracked leather of his belt - an old nervous habit Charlie remembered from his childhood. “The business, mate. I’ve been busy.”

“Business my ass,” Charlie spat back. He shoved his locker door closed as if to emphasise his point. “You’re practically a blue-collar cliche, Dad. No business but selling shit to kids.” 

“As if you’re any better,” his father croaked in response. There it was: that familiar defensiveness that ebbed and flowed with every conversation. 

Charlie pictured the phantom sting of the belt he was fidgeting with. The crack of the buckle as it came whistling down. It had always just been business with him, hadn’t it? As far as Charlie could remember, business had been everything from dirty women in their loungeroom to men with pimples on their arms offering up their servitude for another fix. Business this, business that. Business meant a million different things in the million different moments from his childhood. 

When he examined him - when he truly looked at his father, who was standing like he was worth millions of dollars - he found that he no longer held much animosity towards him. Just a little bit of fear, and a bone-deep weariness that mirrored his own. 

“Go home, Dad,” he sighed. Charlie didn’t want to think about him. After a good day of taking ‘bumps’, having the real thing next to him was strangely anticlimactic. He craved nothing but to shove the old man six feet under. 

His father opened his mouth to say something. Perhaps, with a change of heart, he didn’t. Maybe Charlie blocked it out. It was radio silence, whatever it had been.

Charlie turned his back on the man and busied himself with shoving shirts into his locker. The sound of metal was a familiar sound - this was his domain now. This was his locker and he had signed a piece of paper saying so. 

“It really was a good match.” 

Charlie paused again. His fingers tightened around the ratty old shirt he was halfway done shoving back into his bag. “I guess it runs in the family, the whole punching people thing. Makes me wonder why you didn’t just box or something.” 

The older man sniffed. “Never was much into that stuff.” He shifted his weight to one foot, his hand in a permanent halfway state between holding a cigarette and reaching for one. “Too ‘much rules.” 

“It’s many,” Charlie said simply. His words were devoid of malice. Just the truth - nothing more, nothing less. 

There was a tightly coiled string of resentment etched in his father’s face. “Never was much good at that stuff either. Though I wasn’t good at anything, was I? Least of all being a father.”

Slowly, Charlie released the intense grip he had on his gym bag strap. His fingers uncurled one by one, until his hand was limp at his side.

“You were a terrible father.”