The Pitt 147-pounder had heard everything we were saying, but he hadn’t said a word. He won his first two bouts, but he lost in the quarterfinals, where he appeared to be permanently lost in his own thoughts.

I didn’t wrestle badly in the semifinals, but the Cornell kid was better. It was a close match, but I gave up the first takedown and could never catch up. I don’t remember if the Cornell kid won the weight class, or if he lost in the finals to a kid from Lehigh or Penn State. In a wrestling tournament, you’re pretty much thinking only about yourself. By losing in the semis, I could still have placed as high as third or fourth, but I lost my first consolation match (the following morning) and was thereby eliminated from the tournament.

My opponent was an Army boy—a home-crowd favorite of those military academy cadets in gray, leaning over the mats from the wooden track above the gym. A consolation match can be a free-for-all. Both wrestlers have already lost once; there’s the feeling that you have nothing to lose. My last match in a Pittsburgh uniform was a high-scoring one; as Coach Dearborn had forewarned me, a free-for-all wasn’t the kind of match I would win.

The snowshoer was observant enough to notice how much better I’d become as a wrestler. He also observed that I didn’t care if I lost my match against the kid from Army. I wanted to lie down with my head in my mother’s lap; I wanted Zim to see me lying there, with no place to put his head. “I’ll come see you in Vermont, you know,” I told my mom. “You can’t teach me to ski—not again; we’ve already tried that—but I’ll come see you and Molly, anytime you like. You don’t have to invite Zimmer to come see you, or are you starved for company?”

“Oh, don’t be jealous, sweetie—you’re my one and only!” my mother cried. “Zim is only invited if you come, too.”

I didn’t care if she taught Zimmer to ski, but I suppose I sounded a little jealous when I told my mom that I didn’t want to see Zim with his head in her lap—not even if he broke his neck skiing into a tree.