The 48th floor of a Manhattan high-rise was the last place he ever thought he’d find himself calling home. And yet here he is, stepping out of the lobby onto the private entry drive off of 57th St. He shakes his head briefly as the doorman asks if he needs to have his car brought around; it’s been two months and he’s only brought the car out of the garage twice. Pulling the hood of his gray sweatshirt up over his head and putting on his sunglasses, he starts his run, just another New York resident – concentrating on anything but the streets or the tourists or the mundane. At least that’s the image he’s trying to portray, rather than what he truly is – a North Carolina native who was never a fan of New York City and certainly never believed he’d live here.
It’s odd -- in two months, the charm of the city has started to seep into his Southern psyche. The constant background noise, the variety of people and restaurants and sights. The view from his apartment alone, Central Park West, is breathtakingly spectacular. Just yesterday, he found himself wondering what the Park would look like in fall. In fall? Another two or three months here? Really? If only there was something that could be done about the general smell…
His run starts to demand his attention. He turns off Broadway onto the Avenue of the Americas, wishing that, not for the first time, he knew the city better to be able to find a better running route. Running through Central Park isn’t the best way to keep a low profile, but so far so good. Just another difference between living in mid-town North Carolina and Midtown NYC. As he passes the Manhattan Mall, he sees a young kid point as if recognizing him. He just keeps pounding the pavement, lost in the music of the city and random neurons firing random thoughts. It won’t be long before the press finds him. If he had been more visible over the last year, more interesting fodder for a celebrity story, they would have tracked him down already. When they did, the usual questions would be fired at him over camera flashes: Why here? Why now? Why LEGION?
In time, he would come up with suitable answers. The honest truth? Because it is low-profile, for now. Because it’s not North Carolina. Closer to the core -- because he doesn’t know what else to do.
The last year took him around the world with no direction. After the debacle in Texas, he never even went back to his home in North Carolina, never tried to find answers to what happened to his old company. He cut ties completely, dropping his cell phone in an airport trash compactor in Atlanta after getting tired of the dozens of voice mail and hundreds of text messages, some from true friends, many from others trying to capitalize on his fame or to rub in his misfortune. From Atlanta to London and then out to the Cotswolds, until someone in tiny Stow-in-the-Wold had tipped off the press. From London to Gdansk, Poland, until summer faded and things turned cold on the Baltic. Singapore had been a nice stop, but despite the beauty it was too large, too public – ironic now, as the streets of New York City tower above. The islands just south of Papua New Guinea had been nice for summer below the equator, if you didn’t care to do anything except watch sheep graze.
He was in Costa Rica when the first call came. He had chosen the city of Caldera because cruise ships had forsaken it to dock at the newer port in Puntarenas – less chance of being noticed that way. As he came in from the beach, the landlord of his small villa stopped to let him know that a phone call had come for him. With his daughter translating, the landlord told him that the army had called for him – not the Costa Rican army, but somewhere else. He responded tersely, explaining that he had never been with any army. The landlord nodded before leaving him to return to solitude – he wasn’t being paid to ask questions. Every day for a week, the landlord and his daughter stopped by, delivering the message that an English-speaking man from the army had called trying to reach him.
Early the next week, the messages stopped, only to be replaced by a FedEx package. He started to throw the package away, before noticing the sender’s name and address. The return address was in Brooklyn, NY. The sender’s name: James Boyd. The company: LEGION.
Legion. Not ‘army.’ She had translated the best she could.
He hadn’t heard from Boyd in almost fifteen years, not since that brief appearance in ACW against… was it, Silverhawk? Ironsides? It had been part of a worldwide tour – his first. Unlike this one, he had gone to where the most people were guaranteed to show up: the UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Australia, then all points throughout North America. Boyd, and Charles Dunn, had been gracious then, thanking him for the appearance and even keeping in touch with notes here and there over the years. Sent flowers to Dunn's wife, after he had heard from Boyd that Dunn had died. He had considered going back to the later incarnation of ACW, but the timing had never worked out.
The Flatbush exit off the Manhattan Bridge pulls him back to his immediate surroundings. There has to be an easier route than going all the way into Brooklyn and then running back towards the river, but the extra mile or so would help keep the heart rate up. Running just west and then back north, the Brooklyn Bridge stands out with the Manhattan skyline behind it. No haze today, an almost perfect 75 degrees and the sun reflecting off the skyline and the East River. He slows down as he approaches Doughty St., pushing back his hood before pulling the hoodie off altogether.
Walking up the stairs to the entrance of the old cathedral, tapping the Legion sign with his left hand as he passes by it, he thinks of nothing so much as the first time he walked up to an old warehouse in a questionable section of Greensboro, North Carolina. As he pushes open the huge double doors, letting light stream into the Church of Fight, the butterflies in his stomach from twenty years ago are gone, but a tinge of anxiety remains for a similar reason. If you had asked him then, he would have told you he was a law student who wrestled, who wanted to try professional wrestling on the side and knew he had a lot to prove. If you ask him now, as he pushes the huge double door of the Church of Fight open, he’d tell you that he is what he has always been, a wrestler. And he has as much to prove now as he did then.
He climbs into the pony ring and begins running the ropes, measuring his steps so that he knows exactly how many it takes to get from one side to the other, knows exactly how much force he can add by hitting the ropes just like this. At twenty years old, he had marveled at doing the same thing in a CSWA ring for the first time. Twenty years later, a generation of experience in his aging legs puts him through his paces automatically, allowing him to soak it all in -- the feel of the ring through his feet and the ropes on his back, the smell of Brooklyn with the hint of years of oil soap and wax used throughout the cathedral, the diffracted light coming in through the stained glass, the closeness of the folding chairs and the balcony seating.
Twenty years ago, he began a quest to become the face of the CSWA. Twenty years later, Hornet runs the ropes in a new city and a new ring.
Hornet is LEGION.
