by Ron Irwin
Even though I was something alien and new to the team, at least I could earn acceptance in the traditional ways respected by rowers. But Ruth, the first female coxswain of the God Four, had to forge her own way into that rarified world. No other sport at Fenton had girls competing equally alongside the boys. We would be the closest thing she could call friends, but even once she was valued as a full-fledged member of the team, she remained something of an outsider. While I could wander over to West Dorm to shoot the breeze with Jumbo or play cellar soccer with Wadsworth after study hall, Ruth was literally not allowed that closeness with us as teammates. The boys’ dorms were off-limits to girls after dinner, our rooms always forbidden territory for members of the opposite sex. She made that exclusion seem utterly natural, a privilege she bore with grim pride. I admired her for that and always thought of her more as a quiet ally than a buddy or even a girlfriend. She had been swallowed whole by the crew but had still managed to stamp her own identity upon it.
I’d look for that kind of independence in the women I met after Fenton, and would find it in Carolyn. In the five years I lived with Carolyn, I never once thought she’d want to share her life with anyone but me. But I always felt I was competing against that instinctive solitude.
* * *
Autumn began to turn relentlessly into winter at Fenton. Every morning I would open the curtains in my dorm room and bathe in the symphony of color that the fall brought to the valley. Those millions upon millions of turning leaves marked the end of the season. The brilliant colors in the cold light against those gothic buildings and the darkening grass seemed at once beautiful and forbidding. Real cold was coming soon but the leaves held against it. Route 7 was a flaming tunnel of overhanging leaves. They blew across the practice fields in golden red swirls, sprites searching for summer. They floated down the river in pockets of yellow and brown and gathered in huge, inviting piles all around the campus. The boardwalk began to smell of arboreal decay. For the first time, I felt that a significant portion of my life was ending, and that the ending was natural.
I knew that I had started falling for Ruth just a day before the strength testing for the God Four really began. I had run along Route 7 to the boathouse and was stretching in the drive when I saw Ruth and Connor walking across the field by the river. Connor was on the riverside, bundled up against the cold in a long camel coat and a plaid scarf and boots, kicking leaves as he went. Ruth was dressed almost identically, her long, black hair streaming behind her and ubiquitous leather satchel slung across her body like some kind of armor. The leaves scattered across the fields glowed ethereally in the half light of the afternoon. The whole tableau was like a glimpse into another world I was not meant to see. A mirage of privilege.
The two of them might have been speaking about anything but it seemed to me, looking at them from a distance, that they were commiserating. They could have been talking about rowing. Or New York. Or Paris. Or how to arrange a private flight to Cape Cod, or possibly just about the video showing in the dining hall that night. But seeing them from two soccer fields away I felt an exclusion that I had never felt in my life. Fenton would be the closest I’d ever come to an existence they took for granted, to everything I hadn’t even known was there to aspire to. Rowing had brought me here, washed me up against these people and given me that blushing afternoon when I watched my two teammates walking beside a darkening river. It was a day, I am sure, of no consequence to them, but it is one of my strongest memories of the school.
As they shrunk into the distance I wondered if there was anything between them, then pushed the thought away. I still had to beat Connor on the bench pull test. Acknowledging the idea that there was something else he could take from me was not going to help.
* * *
The bench pull station is a marvel of Inquisition engineering.
It’s a thick wooden plank, shaped like an ironing board mounted on stout wooden legs. You climb up on the bench and lie facedown, your chin against the grooved, bitten, blood-and spit-stained tapered edge of the wood. The board is narrow enough so your arms hang on either side. If you drop your hands down your fingers just touch the floor and your shoulders are fully extended.
You reach down and pick up a seventy-five pound bar. You are meant to pull the bar all the way to your body and knock it against the bottom of the bench. Any pull that doesn’t knock, doesn’t count. If you lift your chin from the bench at anytime, the pull doesn’t count. If you lift your feet from the bench, the pull doesn’t count. Everytime you pull the weight up into the plank, it jolts your stomach and bashes the wood into your jaw with a dull thump. That Saturday we had five minutes to produce as many pulls as possible. Seventy-five pounds isn’t very heavy for an oarsman. It’s deceptively light. I could reach down and crack the bar into the bench ten, fifteen, twenty times before the task became difficult.
But everyone on the team wanted to go for at least a hundred pulls. If you went out too fast, lactic acid built up in your muscles and within a minute your shoulders felt as if they were on fire. I have seen kids who started out with sixty pulls in the first minute drop to thirty in the second, ten in the third, and then lie there, red-faced and straining, unable to move the bar at all for the last two minutes.
Connor and I filed into the basement of the boathouse where two bench pull stations had been set next to each other in the erg room. Connor was slated to take his test right next to me. Like an opera singer trained in the arias of torture, Ruth was drinking lemon tea for the sake of her precious voice. She had a yellow legal pad on the bench before her. Channing was simply waiting, idling away the time, drawing on his immense reserves of patience. The basement was cold; all the steel in the place made it look and feel like an industrial storage locker. I stripped off my down coat, my hat and gloves, threw them in the corner. I was wearing my sweat suit for the test. Connor, in a Russian bearskin hat only he could wear without looking ridiculous, had on his trau and FSBC sweatshirt under his charcoal coat and plaid scarf.
“Good to see you two,” Ruth said. She looked different in an atypically tight red sweat suit I had never seen before, though I knew better than to make any sort of comment. She held her white Styrofoam cup in both hands as if praying to whatever pagan god evil little coxswains worshipped. She regarded us through the steam. Connor began to exhale heavily, stretching his arms to stuff oxygen into his muscles. I did the same. Perry would compete against Wadsworth next, but the two of them had been told to wait upstairs. Members of the lesser orders would file down later.
Channing gave us a few moments while we wheezed and puffed in the concrete gloom, then spoke. “Gentlemen, I would like to see you both go over a hundred and seventy pulls today. I will count for Mr. Payne. Ruth will count for you, Robert. Is that acceptable?” It was not a rhetorical question. “I’d appreciate some competition,” he added and smiled his yellow, carious smile. Connor rolled his neck, shoved his sleeves up over his forearms. Ruth carefully set her tea on the floor and unhooked her timer that was clipped to the waistband of her sweatpants. “Okay. Five minutes of fun and diverting entertainment. Let’s see what you guys can do.”
Channing stepped away from the stations, his hands in his pockets. He had a magical way of disappearing into the scenery when the pain began. And the more grueling things were set to be, the more pleasant the man became. I could have sworn he was humming to himself.
I straddled my station and gave my arms one last shake before lying down and reaching to the floor for the bright steel bar. I lifted it with loose fingers, testing. I rested my chin on the end of the board and inhaled the icy air. I pressed my legs together and looked to my right, straight at Connor. Connor got into position, regarded me without interest, his eyes dull. I took three more deep breaths, felt the cold settle into my lungs.
Ruth squatted down into our line of vision. “You guys both ready?”
Connor moved his gaze straight ahead, his eyes blank pools. I grunted out an affirmative, felt my neck stretch
as I tried to talk, my head heavy on my jaw.
“Both of you know that you can’t move your chin or your legs. You have to connect with the bar every time, then go back to full extension of the arms. No getting up. No quitting. Five minutes.”
I took up the weight and waited for the command.
Ruth shifted her feet. “Ready? Let’s go!”
I drew the bar up to my chin, bashed it into the board under my jaw with a jolt. I dropped the weight and began counting off a cadence in my head. One—hit. Two—hit. Three.… I tried to knock the bench lightly to conserve power.
Connor was hitting his board with the regularity of a machine gun. I filled in the spaces between each of his hits. Hit—hit. Hit—hit. Bang—bang. The sounds knocked around the inside of the boathouse. The room sounded like a workshop where clumsy joiners had been assigned iron mallets to pound planks apart for kindling. Channing cleared his throat. “Thirty seconds.”
Ruth’s voice cut through the racket, “Let’s go, Carrey. You missed that one. You have an even twenty, don’t miss again.”
I lowered the weight, yanked it up to my chin. There was a sharp stab of heat in my upper back now. I went back to banging away, intent on making forty good lifts before Connor. I moved my head until I could see the bar. Bang. Bang. Hit. Hit. Thud. Thud. I shut my eyes to it.
“That’s a minute and you’re on thirty-five, Carrey,” Ruth hissed. “Wimp.” I vaguely heard Channing uttering venom at Connor, standing over him as he lay prone, laboring away.
The sharp points of heat were expanding like two big, white spiders stretching their legs over my shoulder blades. My muscles were stiffening. I would drop the bar to full extension, then pull up. Drop, pull. But I couldn’t tell where it was on its ascent anymore. The upper part of the motion was lost in a dead numbness.
“One minute fifteen, Rob, and you have thirty-nine, don’t you lose me.”
Connor was juddering away on his side, an even series of bangs. I tried to block him out but because I couldn’t resist, opened an eye and peeked over as I pulled the bar to the wood. Connor’s hair had fallen in front of his face. I could hear him grunting with every hit. Ruth jammed the watch in front of his eyes, then mine. “We’re twenty-five seconds into minute number two boys, now you get this going. Connor has forty-seven, Rob has forty-three. Go! Now go!”
Nearly halfway through the second minute, the danger minute, the panic minute. I kept the pace even, fell into step behind Connor again. I heard him grunt in displeasure as I echoed him for thirty seconds, then hammered out two quick ones, ruining his concentration.
“You’re up, Rob. Fifty-eight to fifty-six. Don’t let it get this close, you take him. You don’t lose by one stroke, ever, not at this school. Now go. Two minutes down and buried.”
I snapped off two quick ones and tried for a third, missed. The bar came within an inch of the board and dropped. I took a breath and pounded in two more, then fell into a slower step behind Connor. Thud—thud. Pause. Breathe. Thud—thud. Pause. Breathe. Thud—thud. Then Connor pushed through three fast ones and waited for me to fall out of step. He was following me now, answering every hit with one of his own. I was losing count of how many lifts we had. The fat, white spiders had sunk their fangs into the middle of my shoulders and were digging the hooks of their legs into my sides and the center of my back. The long veins standing out of my pink biceps were filled with blue poison. I took a deep breath and pounded into minute four.
“One ten on the dot. Connor, you’re at one thirteen, two up on Rob. Finish this,” Channing growled.
“Hear that, Rob?” Ruth asked me. “Coach says you’re fading. Now show him you’re not.” I saw Ruth’s sneakers move as she looked over at Channing. She was duck-toed, I realized, and for some reason that was immensely amusing.
I had fallen into step again behind Connor, tongue between my teeth. Nothing existed except the prospect of beating him. I was only one behind now. I dropped the bar, spread my fingers, and willed the aching poison to move away from my arms. I cocked my head and picked up the bar again, slapped off two, three, four. The clusters of bones in my wrists were expanding and contracting with each pull, the long bones of my fingers stretching apart from one another as I brought the bar up into the wood.
Then Connor coughed and dropped his weight.
Ruth laughed. It was shrill, horrible. “He’s losing it. Carrey, you are one up. Fifteen seconds more of this minute and you have him. Give me three more and this minute is history, and that’s one … and that’s two … and … lift it, lift it, c’mon, don’t you die on me, that’s it. Three.” Ruth thrust the watch in my face again. “Four-oh-one. One fifty on the dot. Now, last minute.”
The bones in my hands weren’t springing back anymore. As I pulled I felt my vertebrae crunching together. Blue, toxic blood from my arms washed over the deadened muscles. I closed my eyes, banged off three, four, ten.
Connor had recovered and was rapping them out on his side. Channing barked out, “Connor you are at one sixty-seven. You can do this. Carrey’s exhausted.” I slammed the bar up to my chin, the two fistfuls of muscle in my shoulders contracting and colliding. The bar was coming up unevenly now. The sound of metal hitting wood became frenzied.
I was favoring my right arm. I felt the juices in my elbows freeze and each time I dropped the weight I felt the tendons on my forearms begin to tear. The spiders on my back were heavy now.
“Fifteen seconds. Rob, you have one seventy. Go for six more and you’re over. C’mon. Don’t leave me hanging.”
Connor grunted. I glanced up through a blur of sweat and saw him lay into the bar, bring it crashing to the wood.
“One seven five, Connor, keep going. Dig in,” Channing intoned.
“You’re just about there, Rob. Go. Go,” Ruth said.”
But Connor was ripping the bar up to his chin now. I managed two more hits and time was up. I dropped the bar to the floor and took a long breath, the two fat spiders sucking on my shoulders resting with me. Ruth marked something on her pad and stepped away. I pushed myself up and looked over at Connor, who was still hugging the board like a surfer waiting for a wave. A thread of glistening spit stretched down from the end of his board to a round puddle on the floor. When he pushed himself up, I saw a pink stripe of blood across his chin and lower lip.
Ruth turned to Channing. “Rob was at one seventy-seven. I counted one eighty for Payne, is that right?”
Channing looked directly at Connor. “No. His back rose off the table for the last three. These two oarsmen are tied, dead finish.” Channing shook his head and then laid his dark eyes on Connor. “You looked like a fish out of water, Mr. Payne, flopping around like that.”
Connor looked down at the floor and wiped the blood on his face away with the palm of his hand. Two icy, sated spiders scuttled off through the lights dancing before my eyes as I hopped off my station. Connor tuned his back to me, breathing easily, rubbing his arms. I picked up my gear and left the room in that dead silence after nodding once to Channing and once to Ruth. I stood out in the adjoining weight room and wiped my face and eyes and adjusted to the dark, focused on the weak, white rays of late autumn light filtering through the grimy basement windows. It felt hot and prickly under my arms and at the base of my neck and in the back of my throat. I believed I might collapse, but the feeling passed. It was only hours later, that night, that I knew I’d be all right.
16.
I had been drinking for almost twenty years and I had never been a good drunk. But after my phone call to Carolyn from Zambia, and my frantic attempts to call her back after she hung up on me, I had gone down to the hotel restaurant with the intention of getting very, very drunk. I sat under the umbrellas around the pool at my own table, in the corner, by the tall wall that was meant to keep out the beggars on the street who you could hear shouting at the traffic. I sat in the sun and started out with scotch and sodas, which I drank one after the other until I was hungry, and then I ordered dinner—a
leathery steak and canned vegetables—and drank a few glasses of wine with that. I then moved to the bar and ran into a sunburned produce buyer from a chain of markets in London, and I bought him warm, oily martinis while I drank more scotch. The two of us hatched a plan to meet some of the leggy flight attendants who were drifting in and out of the lounge.
Later I would see a therapist, upon Carolyn’s insistence, after a drunken fight during which she had not only hit me, but had also managed to smash an entire set of dinner plates against a wall behind me, flinging them inaccurately at my head and then kicking me quite accurately in the shins. He would point out that binge drinkers like me have nasty habits of falling in front of cars, or driving cars into other cars. Binge drinkers have trouble with relationships because they make what he called “poor socially induced interpersonal relationship choices,” meaning they wind up sleeping with the wrong people. A man who routinely binge drinks forgets a great deal of what happens to him, but I have a fairly good recollection of the night when I was in the middle of a full-blown binge in the Taj Pomodzi Hotel in Zambia. The bartender thought this was fine; people came into his bar from all over the world and had no problem drinking all night, which is what I intended to do. The English produce buyer and I stayed there until eleven, by which time I was clearly and obviously very drunk. Stupidly, moronically, dangerously drunk. The women whom we had sent drinks to at the bar had left us long ago. The buyer finished his martini and wanted to go, too. I told him to stay. I reminded him, a few times, that I was buying. He shook his head and smiled. “Maybe you should go to bed, mate.”
I grabbed his arm and leaned over the bar, asked the bartender to pour this guy another shitty martini. The man removed his arm from my grasp and made a sign at the bartender. The bartender laughed and I smacked the bar with my open hand. “This isn’t funny,” I informed him. “I’m not sitting here alone.”