Rexton William Bader

The quiet comes gradually. Sound by sound. First the pop-pop-pop coming from the heavy bag slows and dies. Then the clinks from the weight benches. Finally the foot-and-back slaps from the makeshift ring’s canvas die out. 

The large, dimly lit, dusty wrestling gym is now utterly quiet.

Jason has just entered. But not alone.

He makes his way to the opposite end of the gym. He nods hello to the Johnson brothers, who’ve stopped working holds on each other. Jason’s footsteps are now the only sound to be heard. The Johnson brothers aren’t even paying attention to him. Nor is Shawn Diamond paying Jason any attention, nor Kelli Kenzi, nor Greg Miller, who owns the gym. None of them seem to see Jason at all.

Back at the door, sitting in his wheelchair, with a brace around his neck, and with bandages wrapping miscellaneous parts of his plump anatomy, and with his trusty-though-dented oxygen tank strapped close by, is none other than Rexton William Bader.  And every eye in the room is on him.

Jason watches over his shoulder, walking, as the would-be wrestlers slowly creep toward Bader, like a horde of zombies inching in. He can’t help but smirk. They used to do this kind of thing–or something like it–whenever he himself entered. This can only mean one thing: Rexton William Bader has become a superstar.

At the far corner of the gym, which the wrestlers over the past few months have turned into a playground of second, third, and fourth-hand toys, Jason finds the baby in his playpen. The Baby. He who, as yet, remains unnamed. Jason sweeps him up into a hug and the baby cheers and grabs excitedly at Jason’s face. Jason closes his eyes and kisses the boy on his forehead. This is the only real emotion Jason allows himself these days. He loves the baby. He loves the baby completely, and has no qualms about showing it. And the baby reciprocates.

When no one is around, Jason will speak to the baby. In all other corners of the world, Jason has boiled himself down to a machine whose purpose is violence. But with the baby, he is still a human being. And, what nobody realizes–what Jason himself does not quite realize–Jason is rebuilding. He’s growing with the baby, one emotion at a time. He’s starting over.

For a long, long moment he exists only with the baby, his eyes closed, experiencing their bond. He hears someone say, “I can’t believe it’s really you,” to Bader, back by the door, but it doesn’t shake Jason’s moment. 

It’s only when he opens his eyes that the real world returns, a world in which there are more entities than just himself and the child. Because when he opens his eyes, he finds that they–Jason and the baby–are not alone. Greg Miller has moseyed over.

Jason nods hello.

Greg says, “Quite a situation you had at ReVival.” He looks overtly at the scab that has not quite crusted away from the gash on Jason’s head, which came courtesy of Hayes Hanlon. Greg looks back at the door where his students are making smalltalk with Bader. To Jason, Greg says, “Someone’s gonna get hurt in this, mark my words. Real bad.”

Jason nods. The baby grabs a handful of his beard and gives it a tug. Jason smiles all the more, closes his eyes again, and takes another few seconds to enjoy the moment.

Greg says, “One of these days, when you start talkin again, first thing you’re gonna have to tell me is who that guy is.”

That guy.

Rexton William Bader.

##

LATE 2024…

The meeting was held in the basement of a baptist church. The room smelled strongly of coffee and faintly of piss. Every night of the week this church held support meetings for one group or another–Alcoholics Anonymous Mondays, Narcotics Anonymous Saturdays, and so on. On Wednesdays, the basement housed meetings for those suffering with traumatic injuries, along with their families, which was called simply, Survivors. And Jason had gotten word that a man named Randy Banwin came semi-regularly to these meetings, though, unlike most participants, he never shared his story.

But Jason knew his story.

In the last days of territory wrestling, Jason’s Canadian hometown had hosted a number of smalltime wrestling events. Jason rarely attended these wrestling events, but he was made well aware of the goings-on in the local wrestling world by the other children at his school. And, at Jason’s school, every child’s hero was Randy Banwin.

Randy W. Banwin. In the mid-to-late 1980s, he was set to take over the wrestling world. He was a physical specimen, a larger than life personality, flamboyant, American by birth but he went to Canada for a few years–the years Jason remembered him–to make a living and sharpen his skills. He had all the tools. He then returned home to Illinois around 1989, and signed a major wrestling contract, which would undoubtedly have propelled him to worldwide superstardom… if the Gulf War hadn’t popped up. Randy, still in his mid-twenties, volunteered to serve.

All the tools, it turned out, except one: time.

Randy came home in a wheelchair.

Most of Randy’s story, Jason got through his years in the wrestling business. True historians of the industry would talk about Randy W. Baldwin as the Could-Have-Been that nobody knew, as if knowledge of him awarded you an invisible badge, which afforded you the right to lord it over other know-it-alls. How exactly he’d gotten injured remained a bit of a mystery to Jason, as he’d heard at least three versions of it. All anyone agreed on was, these days, he was bound to a wheelchair. And not coping well.

So when, in late 2024, it occurred to Jason that he might do well with a wrestling manager– since he himself was not exactly Mr. Personality these days on television–Randy came to mind. He could pass Randy off as a childhood hero, after all. And who made a better manager than that?

Jason, of course, was still talking at this point. So he made a few phone calls to wrestling journalists and offered them behind-the-scenes tidbits at PRIME in exchange for information on Banwin’s whereabouts.

Which ultimately led Jason to this church. Four Wednesdays in a row, because Banwin didn’t show up the first three. But Banwin was there tonight.

Because these meetings invited the family of the injured persons, Jason had no issue blending in. There were maybe twenty-five people in the room on this particular Wednesday, and several of them–family, Jason presumed–had no visible injuries. Maybe a dozen, like Banwin, were confined to variously complex wheelchairs.

“The thing I want most,” one of the wheelchair-bound men said, sitting at the front of the room, “is hope.” They called this sharing. “It’s been so long since I’ve had that.” He’d said something similar last week, Jason remembered. Now he paused and looked down at his useless lap. “But lately, I think I’ve found it. Or at least something. I met these people–doctors and scientists–and they say they’ve got this treatment? More of a technology. Something with cloning and stem cells. They think that within a few years they’re going to be able to implant, like, new muscle and nerve-endings? A lot of it’s over my head. But like growing it new.”

Jason watched Banwin, several seats away. Banwin seemed to hear nothing. One of the stories Jason had gotten was that he’d been charged with some sort of assault a few years ago, and part of his probation terms was attending meetings like this.

Banwin remained a large man, at least in frame, but his arms looked frail to Jason–he had a powered chair that required no arm-strength–and his neck was all cords. But Jason didn’t need a manager with physical prowess. He needed personality. And if Banwin had maintained even a fraction of the charisma he’d had as a young man…

“I just feel so blessed,” the man at the front said, his eyes full of tears. “I get to invest in a technology that will better the lives of people like me. And like many of you. We can rebuild ourselves. This technology might well make me whole again, and it might make me a lot of money too.”

Jason couldn’t help but believe the poor guy had gotten himself swindled.

But then the man said, “But even if it doesn’t. Even if it’s all just bullshit. At least it’s given me a little bit of hope. You know? And I can’t put a price on that.”

And, for about the thousandth time in his life, Jason felt like a complete asshole.

##

From the opposite end of the warehouse gym, Jason watches Bader soak up the adoration of the young wrestling students. They ask about his time as a young wrestler, back when his legs still worked, and how it must have felt to have the whole world, at least for a time, at his fingertips. Jason pulls the baby close. The baby nestles in and speaks gibberish. Jason almost responds, but then remembers Greg Miller nearby.

Eventually Jason hears Bader tell the students, “Hey I’ve got all day to regale stories to you about my youth, but for right now I really gotta talk to Jason over there. Make some plans, you know. Me bein his manager and all. That’s what we do. Plan.”

And then he begins wheeling his way across the long concrete floor.

Greg Miller, watching all of this with Jason says, “Seriously. What the hell is this guy supposed to be?”

But when Bader gets close, Greg, ever the cordial host, extends his hand and bows low to be at eye level with him. “Pleasure to meet you. I hear you were quite the up-and-comer back in your day.”

“Yeah I was a real fuckin sensation,” Bader says. Then he looks up at Jason. “Hey we gotta talk somewhere.” He looks back at Greg and adds, “Somewhere private.”

Jason shrugs at Greg before gesturing toward another corner of the warehouse where there is a small kitchen built off Greg’s office. Bader nods at it and, without so much as another look at Greg, wheels off. 

Greg shakes his head, saying, “Nice guy.”

Jason pats Greg on the shoulder. Then he hands over the baby.

The warehouse kitchen is no bigger than a small bedroom, but it’s equipped with a sink, a fridge, a couple of shelves, a tiny table, and, most importantly, a coffee-maker. And, by the smell of it, someone has recently brewed a fresh pot. 

No sooner than Jason enters the room, Bader says, “Hey close that fuckin door.”

Jason closes the door. 

“Aw Christ, I thought we’d never get alone,” Bader says. He immediately peels off the neckbrace and tosses it onto the table. “You have any idea how bad this thing’s been chafing me? I didn’t mean to be such a cunt out there, but Je-sus Ch-rist.” He scratches at his neck. 

Jason shakes his head like Bader’s an idiot for bothering with the neckbrace.

And Bader, as if he can read Snow’s mind–he’s gotten pretty good at that–says, “Hey I ain’t takin no chances. I’m tellin you, this pro wrestling bullshit’s a goldmine. All you dicks do is beat the ever-loving shit out of each other. And most of the time it ain’t sanctioned. That ain’t nothin but assault, the way I see it. And you know what assault is? Money.”

Jason squints dubiously.

“Hey I ain’t talkin about suing Hayes Hanlon or any of that small potatoes bullshit,” Bader says, working out the kinks in his neck. “He can throw me off as many entrance ramps as he wants. And don’t think I ain’t makin notes about pretty boy Nate Colton just standin there, watching the whole bullshit. It’s all going into my case files. Week by week, show by show. Give me another couple months of this and I’ll show any judge in the nation, with no wiggle room, that PRIME don’t abide by a single worksafe law. You wait and see little miss Lindsay Troy’s face when I slap that lawsuit on her desk. I’ll own that whole fuckin company before the year’s out. Watch and see. Hey. Hey did you lock that?”

Jason raises his eyebrows.

“The door,” Bader says. “Jesus you. What if somebody walks in here right now? Lock the door. Lock it. Christ.”

Jason locks the door.

Without a second’s hesitation, Bader pushes himself out of the chair and up to his feet. He stretches his spine one way and then the other before rotating his neck around and around. “Christ, Snow. Ugh. You got no idea how hard it is to sit in that thing all fuckin day. You should count yourself lucky that you get to walk around like that without risking a disability check.”

After a little more stretching and moaning, Bader pours himself a cup of coffee. Jason gestures for Bader to pour him one too. 

“So here comes UltraViolence,” Bader says while opening the fridge. He comes out with some cream and adds it to his coffee. Next he peels the fake mustache off his face and tosses it next to the neckbrace. Then, off comes the stars-and-stripes bandana, and with it (attached to it, in fact), the curly hair that pokes out. Bader, in reality, is bald as Jason. “I got a feelin the show’s gonna live up to its name once you get in the ring with Hayes and Colton.”

Jason sips his coffee and nods. Really, it’s Hayes he wants. But Colton has placed himself in the line of fire, and that’s fine by Jason. Jason is, after all, nothing but an instrument of destruction these days. When the baby’s not around. He simply turns off anything resembling emotion. Hayes is nothing to him but a minus-one, a debt that needs repaying, and Colton has made himself a complication in that repayment.

All Jason really wants is money. For the baby. In a lot of ways, he’s right back to where he began with his comeback. But money only comes with success.

Of course, Rexton William Bader doesn’t necessarily see it that way.

“If you can–I mean if you can swing it–maybe set one of them fuckers up to hit me before the bell rings. Like I said, anything outside of sanctioned competition, I can–”

Jason nods at the oxygen tank strapped to Bader’s chair. The tank is full of dents, most of which were earned by way of Bader cracking someone’s skull.

Bader rolls his eyes. “Hey, I’ve got a right to defend myself. Here I am in a fuckin wheelchair, and I’ve got full grown professional athletes threatening bodily harm. That’ll get you justifiably tanked in any courtroom in the world. Trust me. I’m gonna own this whole fuckin company come 2026. And the first thing I’m gonna do–after I award you the newly vacated Universal Championship, of course–is fire Hayes Hanlon. And I’m gonna show him a video of him throwin me off that fuckin ramp while I do it. Then I’m gonna make Nate Colton wrestle that big commie fuck–what’s his name?--in order to keep his job. But I’m gonna make him wrestle in a wheelchair! Then, once he’s gone, I’m–”

There comes a knock on the door. 

Then a voice–it’s Kelli Kenzi–saying: “Mr. Snow? Are you busy? The baby’s crying. For you, we think.”

Jason looks at Bader.

Bader sighs. “Oh for fuck’s sakes. You’ve got a fuckin baby? Really. Ain’t you like a hundred years old?” And on and on like that while he reconstructs his costume. 

##

When the meeting was over, Jason was among the first to exit the church. He waited in the parking for Randy W. Banwin to come out. That name had a ring to it, he thought.

Randy W. Banwin.

The night was cool. December in Illinois. Jason stood by his rented car in his leather jacket, his sweater’s hood up, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He could see just a little bit of his breath.

The church emptied slowly, as you might expect with Survivors. The traumatized and their families bled out into the parking lot with difficulty. Some of those not bound to chairs had terrible limps; others walked with canes. Family members slowed their paces accordingly, supported elbows, pushed wheelchairs.

Randy Banwin’s chair hummed. He had no family with him.

Jason followed him to his car.

“Mr. Banwin.”

Banwin stopped. His chair spun around in place. He looked up at Jason.

Jason said, “I came to see you.”

Banwin smirked. “Yeah, I'll bet. I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“Jason Snow,” Banwin said. “The man who came back from the dead. Twice, if I remember right.”

Jason nodded. “I guess you could say that. So you still follow?”

“Not by choice,” Banwin said. “Somethin you want from me?”

Before Jason could respond, a third voice entered the conversation: “Beautiful night, gentlemen.” It was the man who’d spoken earlier, at the meeting. The man who’d talked about hope.

Neither Jason nor Banwin said anything. They just watched him roll up.

“Let me introduce myself formally,” the man said when he was close. “I’m Jerry Smith.” He was bald as an egg. “Just wanted to say, I really am excited about this investment. It’s gonna change the world. And not just for us. People will get to just, you know, start over. My guys are taking calls every day. I’m so lucky that I got in early so I can–”

“Man would you get the fuck out of here?” Banwin said.

Jerry Smith smiled at him. “Sir,” he said. “I’m offering you hope.”

Banwin’s face twisted up. “You’re offering me bullshit. I know who you are. I know what you do. You think I ain’t seen you before? I’ve been comin here for years, man. And every so often you come in here peddling your hope. Christ, man. Ain’t no hope. Not for us.”

Jerry Smith smiled at Randy Banwin. “Well,” he said. “Maybe not for you.” Then he looked up at Jason. “How about you then? You got a few extra bucks to save the world?”

Jason eyed him for a moment. Then he shook his head.

Jerry Smith clapped his hands, still smiling brightly. “Well,” he said. “Then I guess you’re both just a couple of cunts.”

And with that, he wheeled away.

Jason watched him.

Banwin said, “Something you want, man? Or what?”

Jason looked down at Randy W. Banwin, this man who’d once been such a hotshot in the industry Jason himself eventually ruled, and hoped to rule again. If not for Banwin’s sense of duty, it’s tough to say how brightly his star might have shined.

But that wasn’t the man in front of Jason now. This man was entirely broken. Jason could see it in Banwin’s face. Hear it in his voice. There really was no hope here.

Jason said, “Sorry I bothered you,” and stepped away.

This whole time he’d been watching Jerry Smith. Smith had wheeled himself to the edge of the parking lot and then out onto the sidewalk. And then he kept right on rolling.

Jason left Banwin to follow.

A couple of streets over, Jerry Smith stopped at a little blue Mazda. And then, after a look to either side of himself–he did not spot Jason creeping up in the shadows–he got up out of the chair and opened the rear door.

And now Jason knew for sure.

“Hey,” he hollered.

Jerry, startled, fell back into the wheelchair and looked around.

Jason jogged up, a hand up non-threateningly. “Hey, it’s all right. I saw you.You can get back up.”

“I don’t know what you think you saw,” Jerry said, eyeing Jason. “I’ve been in a wheelchair since ninety-three. Ask the government who pays my disability checks.”

Jason closed the Mazda’s door.

Jerry held his hands up. “Hey I ain’t got no money.”

Jason looked the chair over. “I don’t want your money. I want to offer you a job.”

Slowly, Jerry lowered his hands. “I don’t need a job.”

“I’m a pro wrestler,” Jason said.

“You sure you ain’t a serial killer?”

Jason didn’t acknowledge that. “I need a manager.”

“You need a manager and you think I’m the guy for that job?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “I do.” He was sure of it.

“I don’t know shit about the pro wrestling business.”

“Good.”

“And I ain’t no fuckin tough guy. I’m in a wheelchair here. Legit, as far as the government’s concerned. I ain’t no wrestler.”

“I don’t need a wrestler.”

“No?”

“No,” Jason said. “I need a conman.”