I have to chuckle at Peter’s attitude, though. Throughout all my years fighting mixed martial arts, and out of all the coaches I’ve had in various fighting styles, none has ever been as frustrated with me as Peter is right now. But at least those coaches could say they helped me retire as an undefeated mixed martial arts champion. Who knew trying to learn how to play cornhole, my hometown’s official sport and unofficial obsession, would be the thing that finally proves me uncoachable?
“Peter, I swear I rarely work out these days.” I list items on my fingers. “I train my fighters, lead the seniors’ physical activity group, and go for the occasional run. That’s it. I never hit the weights. I don’t know why that muscle is still so big.”I mean, sure, I trained hard every day for the last twenty-odd years, and I’m naturally a big guy, but besides that, I have no idea.
Peter shakes his head, the disgust plain on his face. He slaps my stomach with the back of his hand and shakes his head. “And yet you’ve had no trouble letting your six-pack go.”
Technically, he’s both rightandwrong. I still have a six-pack. It’s hidden under a layer of well-deserved retirement fat, but it’s there. Now that I no longer have to worry about making weight for upcoming fights, I’m eating everything that wasn’t on my approved diet for all those years. So even though I’ve gained a little weight, all my muscle is still here.
“You’re tall enough that you should be able to drop the damn bean bag into the hole,” Peter continues. “With the wingspan you’ve got, you can lean forward and reach the board.”
An exaggeration, obviously. Regulation competition distance for a cornhole board is twenty-seven feet. At six-four, I simply do not have that kind of reach.
“You’re supposed to be some kind of undefeated champion and look at you. You can’t even throw a damn bean bag straight enough to get it close to the target. Hell, after coaching you these last few months and seeing the shit aim you’ve got, I bet even if you did lean over and touch the board, you’d still never get your bag anywhere near the hole. Where did that last one go, anyway?” His head swivels in a half-hearted attempt to find the missing bean bag. “And don’t you dare ask to use mine. You can’t even keep track of your own bag, so you’re nuts if you think I’d let you touch mine.” He clears his throat with a grunt. “A man can’t go sharing his bag with a guy who can’t take care of what he’s already got.”
I fight to hold back the chuckle rising up the back of my throat. I know firsthand how Peter feels about me giggling at his talk of bags and holes, so I know he won’t appreciate me calling out the unintentional dirtiness of his words. He takes the game of cornhole far too seriously for that. In fact, all of Tuft Swallow takes cornhole too seriously for that. It’s kind of a sickness here.Nevertheless, if I want to be taken seriously as an athlete by the people of my hometown, I need to up my cornhole game. That’s why I hired Peter as my coach in the first place.
A former world cornhole champion, and somewhat of a local legend, Peter originally wanted to be left alone in his retirement, but money talks. And I have lots of money to spend on this endeavor. I accepted his first price without question. I probably could have put in a call to Shemar Moore for some cornhole tips, but despite his recent successes with the American Cornhole League and the Superhole Championship, he is still a working actor and doesn’t have time to come to Tuft Swallow to coach the uncoachable. Besides, Shemar may be a champion cornholer, but he’s no Peter Harrelson.
“That’s what you get for leaving Tuft Swallow to pursue something as stupid as professional wrestling. You know that shit ain’t real, right? Bunch of grown men in tights dancing around, pretending to hit each other.” He scoffs. “And there isn’t even any singing to make it palatable. It’s like a Broadway show without the best part.”
I scrub a hand down my face and fight back a grin. When Peter starts sharing his thoughts on how professional wrestling is simply a crappier version of Broadway instead of an actual sport, I know the cornhole lesson is over for the day. No matter how many times I explain to him I’m a retired MMA fighter, and that mixed martial arts are, in fact, real, he refuses to believe it. In addition to that, I’ve explained to him several times that professional wrestling, despite the scripts and pageantry, is incredibly hard on the body, and requires extremely high athleticism, a lesson I learned firsthand when I did a guest spot on one the biggest pay-per-view wrestling productions ever aired on television. He just doesn’t want to hear it. If I’ve learned anything about my coach these last six months, it’s that, like it is to most Tuft Swallowers, to Peter, cornhole is life.
That, and he really likes Broadway musicals.
“Alright, Peter. Let’s call it a day. I’ve got a class this afternoon and I need to get out for a run before that. It has come to my attention that I need to lose some muscle, and some belly fat, if I ever want to improve my cornhole game.”
Peter scoffs, a scowl forming amidst the bristles of his unkempt beard and overgrown eyebrows. “You can’t even commit to a decent length practice. You’ll never get your bag near any holes at this rate.” Without a goodbye, Peter storms past my gym’s front desk, completely ignoring everything around him while continuing to grumble about my poor work ethic. The trainer I have working the reception desk today, just shakes his head and smiles as Peter stomps past, already accustomed to his near daily habit of storming out of here in a huff. He says Peter reminds him of a grumpy grandpa, and he finds the stomping endearing. I guess I kind of do, too.
After gathering up the cornhole board and tracking down all the stray bags I’d misplaced during the lesson, I change into my running shorts, grab my headphones, and head to the door. I’m about to head out on my run when Rhett, the gym’s manager, stops me.
“I know it’s technically Spring, but don’t you think it would be better if you wore a shirt on your run? It’s barely above freezing out today,” Rhett says with a pointed look at my naked torso. “And those shorts leave very little to the imagination. Are you trying to make the front page of the Town Flyer? Or maybe the Nosey Pecker?”
I shrug and shoot him a grin. “Sun’s out, guns out, baby,” I say, striking a bodybuilding pose. “Let them look.” If the busybodies who run the town’s official and unofficial newspapers want a picture of me in my little running shorts, who am I to deny them?
As I push open the gym doors, he yells after me, “It’s not the guns I’m worried about, man. You’ll poke an eye out with those nipples if you’re not careful.”
I bark a laugh as I pull my headphones on and run out the door.
My run takes mein a wide circle around Tuft Swallow proper, following the walking trails that are, as is usual for this time of year, packed with enthusiastic bird watchers. Despite Rhett’s concern over my lack of a shirt, I poke no one’s eyes out. Tourist season is starting, and some of the bird watchers recognize me, calling out “Odd Duck” and quacking as I run past. I’ll never regret my decision to move back here. The people around town aren’t impressed by me in the slightest, and the tourists aren’t much different. I haven’t been asked for my autograph once since I moved back six months ago. Sure, the bird-watching season is just getting started, and along with it, the influx of tourists, but if the people I’ve crossed paths with today are anything to go by, I’ll be just fine here.
Which is perfect, because I’m in this for the long haul.
When I retired from fighting and moved back to the town I hadn’t seen since I was fifteen years old, I did it with some very specific goals in mind. The first goal was to open my gym, which, I think we can all agree, is a goal I’ve met and exceeded. Put Up Your Ducks isn’t the biggest training facility in the country, but I’ve already had several up and coming future champs expressing their desire to come and train with me. The second goal, learning to play cornhole without embarrassing myself, is off to a rocky start, but it’s on track. I have a coach andI’m confident he can turn me into a halfway decent player. The third, amassing the largest collection of rubber ducks the world has ever seen, is going better than I expected. If the numbers in the world record books are accurate, I’m firmly in second place, and gaining. I should pass the current record holder later this year, if everything goes according to plan. The last goal is where I’m having some problems. It turns out finding someone to settle down and have a family with is more difficult than I expected.
I never had issues finding a date when I lived in Las Vegas. The only problem was, my dates weren’t really the kind of women who were looking to settle down with me. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice enough women who would have been happy to marry me if I’d planned to stick around the bright lights of Vegas, but as soon as I mentioned moving to a town as small as Tuft Swallow to start my own fight academy, well, they couldn’t move on to the next guy fast enough.
I don’t know why I’m having an issue here in Tuft Swallow. The women in this little town are as good looking as any of the women I dated in Vegas, but they have no interest in me at all.
I suppose that’s the downside to having the people of Tuft Swallow being so unimpressed by me. When they see my giant ass coming down the street, they turn the other way. Okay, it’s not that bad, but I’ve had no luck meeting anyone I’d like to take out, let alone anyone who I’d consider spending my life with. Because that’s what I’m looking for now: a partner.
I’m so distracted by my thoughts that when my run takes me off the trails and back into downtown Tuft Swallow, I’m momentarily lost. I slow down to take in my surroundings, and just as I get my bearings... I slam into something. Hard.
“Shit. What the hell just happened?” A woman’s voice reaches my ears, her confusion palpable over the sounds of clattering metal. “Oh no. Mr. Landon. Are you alright?”
When I look down, I’m shocked to see I’ve landed in the middle of a crime scene. Splatters of viscous red liquid coat the sidewalk, and a metal pot stands upside down amid the carnage, with another pot rolling into the street. A man wearing what may have once been a brown suit is also covered in the red liquid, almost as though he’s showered in it, and a woman in a white apron is fussing over him.
“Oh, Mr. Landon. I’m so sorry.” The woman’s curly black hair is tied in a knot on her head, splatters of the red liquid dotting the half-formed curls. “Promise you’ll send me the bill when you have your suit cleaned.”
Oh, that’s right. Before I slammed into a short human wall, I’d realized I was near the pizza place Rhett hasn’t shut up about for the last three months. I’ve been meaning to try it, but haven’t had the chance yet. My stomach growls at the scent of tomato sauce in the air. Maybe I should stop in now, since I’m already here.
