Sarah Court by Craig Davidson Page A

drill sergeant, the
sooner you structure your child’s life to befit future
growth, the better. I rose to anger hearing my girl
recount the litany of lackadaisical activities she was
now permitted in her mother’s custody.
    “I dug yesterday.”
    “Dug for what, Abigail?”
    “Treasure?”
    “My dear, there’s no treasure in your mother’s backyard. You’ll dig up a lump of petrified doggy
doo. You’d enjoy discovering that? Let’s go for a bike
ride.”
    “Can I have an ice-cream sandwich?”
    “Your mother lets you eat ice-cream sandwiches all
day? Have an apple. Nature’s candy. Can’t have you
turning into a Flabby Abby, can we?”
    “What’s a flabby?”
    “Flabby’s fat. Fat Abby. Big Fat Abigail.”
    I never dreamed my daughter might compete
as a strength athlete. “Female bodybuilder” conjured
images of mustachioed Olympians from coldwater
republics galumphing through the Iron Curtain with
mysterious bulges in their weightlifting costumes.
But Abby was freakishly strong.
    This discovery had been made in my next-door
neighbour’s backyard. A surgeon, Frank Saberhagen,
whose serpentine decline kept pace with my own.
Everything
between
us
became
a
competition
so it was no surprise we’d race each other down
the drainhole. Our first conversation had been
emblematic
of
our
confrontational
fellowship.
I’d spied rolls of uncovered, browning sod in the
backseat of his Cadillac El Dorado and chummily
asked what his purpose was. “Oh, wouldn’t you like
to know,” was his reply. Our troubled friendship
was forged upon that rocky foundation. I never did
discover what he did with that sod.
    This particular afternoon we were drinking
“Flatliners,” the good doctor’s signature concoction,
while his son Nicholas roughhoused with Abby.
    “Up the tree, Nick.”
    Saberhagen forced his son—who would go on to
be an amateur boxer good enough to get plastered
by future pros while never earning a dime for his
pains—to climb the maple daily. Supposedly it
developed his fast-twitch muscle fibres.
    “Dad, come on.”
    “Don’t give me that, buckaroo.”
    “None too sturdy, doc. Had it sprayed for Dutch
Elm?”
    “What are you,” he asked me, “a tree surgeon?” He
swayed to his feet and kicked the maple as if it were
the tire of a car whose purchase he was considering.
“ Solid .”
    “Your father is a stubborn man, Nicholas.”
    “What’s wrong with my taking an interest in
your improvement?” Saberhagen asked his son. “Mr.
Burger is clearly uninterested in his daughter’s.”
    “Why—because I refuse to send my firstborn up
your arboreal deathtrap?”
    “The tree’s a metaphor. Life is challenging but
what can you do? Watch others climb to success,
forever peering up at the treads of more ambitious
shoes? Life requires gumption. Good old-fashioned
balls.”
    A dig at my Abby. Cursed to trudge through life
bereft of said apparatuses.
    “You slug. Abby can do anything Nick can.”
    Saberhagen scoffed. “She’s got a pudding belly.”
    Her mother’s fault. Those goddamn ice-cream
sandwiches! I’ll admit too many Flatliners had cut my
mental age into halves, or in all likelihood quarters.
We somehow found ourselves in his garage where
Frank welcomed us to the First Annual Saberhagen
Pentathlon.
    “Saberhagen
Pentathlon?
Why
not
BurgerSaberhagen?”
    “My garage,” he reasoned.
    Our debate was derailed by the appearance of
Clara Russell, in a wheelchair, at the base of Frank’s
driveway. Awhile back one of her “boys” had hotwired
Saberhagen’s Cadillac, along with Wes Hill’s boy
Colin. I remained in the garage while Frank chatted.
Mama’s sheepdog barked. Frank’s corgi kicked up a
ruckus behind the garage door.
    “Welcome,” Frank said upon his return, “to the
Saberhagen-Burger pentathlon. First event: vertical
jump.”
    He proclaimed a busted rake the “Measuring
Stick” and, holding it at a