Flat Water Tuesday

by Ron Irwin

  Connor hunched over in his seat and looked down the port side of the boat for a second, then turned around and felt the rhythm of those strokes as they pulled his torso gently backward. I sat there breathing hard, crouched over my oar, which I balanced on my thighs and held down lightly with my palm, getting ready to have Ruth feed us into the bow pair’s cadence.

  The command came down. “Stern pair, join in, hands only, on three,” and she counted and I looked up directly into the fine white hairs on Connor’s neck and we slotted into the cadence. The boat slowly picked up speed. Ruth leaned from side to side, watching the oars, measuring catches.

  And part of me wasn’t there. Part of me wanted to be in my single scull, doing the same exercises, feeling the smaller boat run out on its own steam. I rowed with only my fingertips, feeling the motion of Connor’s back and arms. Ruth leaned out, watched our oars on the starboard side, exhaled. “Carrey, follow Connor. Get the oar out of the water faster. Quick catches here. C’mon.” Another exhale into the microphone. “Okay. Add the bodies in three…” and in three strokes we were bent at the waist, rowing awkwardly with stiff legs, holding the sliding seats in place by bracing with our thighs. I felt each stroke in the cables of muscle running down my spine and into my pelvis, crunching my guts together. The sound of the launch buzzed to a greater speed and the boat was moving fast enough so I could feel the force of the air parting before us.

  “And moving into half slides.” Upon the command the launch behind her growled louder and Channing came up the stern to watch what happened next. The port-side rowers had to match each other perfectly. Same with the starboard. In addition, both sides had to be in unison. But the only way an oarsman could tell what his mates on the other side of the boat were doing was to literally feel what the body in front of him was doing, and to glance over the moving bodies at the stroke.

  Channing would have seen us for what we were, four precocious kids in an expensive boat wearing motley weather gear for about ten cents’ worth of crappy weather. He would also have figured we were fast as hell, or could be, and when Ruth had us move to full strokes you could hear the oarlocks straining against the riggers as we knifed up the river. I could feel the power, feel it like you were holding down a gear on a locomotive, one of the Canadian Pacific Freight trains that used to slide over the Black Rock Canal bridge back home during morning practice. That boat was barely in control at resting speed. It had taken five years of rowing in the Black Rock Canal for me to be leaning back into the late winter wind in this boat. It was only four hundred miles away, but really a world apart.

  “Carrey, lengthen,” called Ruth, and she said it evenly, without the usual biting tone of command, so that I knew she was doing it for my sake as the launch came up the river off the starboard of the boat.

  “Carrey, follow Connor’s lead,” Ruth repeated, more urgency in her voice now.

  We were cruising at an easy twenty-four strokes a minute and I lengthened my stroke.

  “Slow on the last phase of the stroke, Carrey,” Channing commanded. “Don’t dump, you’re not in a single. Ruth, check Connor’s rating. I have him all over the place, don’t rate him over twenty-five, do you hear me?”

  I followed Connor for the two strokes it would take Ruth to read his rating through the computer. “Twenty-four, Connor, good.” Pause. “That’s twenty-five, not so good. Hang in there. Easy. Carrey, you’re rushing Connor. Slow it down you two, this is just one practice.”

  I could feel the sweat starting under my hat.

  “Carrey, dig into this,” Ruth warned. “Jumbo, baby, don’t slack up out there, we’re going to be watching you next.”

  Channing was standing in the launch now, the sound of the motor an incessant buzz. Connor had lengthened enough, I guessed, but Channing stood there in silence, glowering at the erratic rating. It was now uneven enough so that I could feel the boat’s catches get weak and sloppy. “Ruth, make Carrey watch the rating.”

  “C’mon, Carrey.”

  Channing’s voice now, irritated, “You’re going to pull this up to full pressure now. Full pressure any way you want to do it, coxswain, and then it will be fifty strokes to see how you can sustain it. Full power.”

  Ruth’s voice barked through the loudspeakers loud enough to flag us awake. “All right, you heard Channing. We’re keeping the same rating but you will build to three-quarter pressure in three and then full pressure on my count.” She paused exactly two strokes to let that sink in and I heard somebody wheezing on each inhale and realized it was me; the boat had already started to speed up when Channing had handed down the command to Ruth.

  “Building in three to three-quarters, and that’s one…” and the speed began to pick up immediately. But now there was something else. Something uncontained. “That’s two…” I threw all of my concentration into following Connor. But I knew I was off, and I was throwing the others off. “That’s three. And we’re on three-quarters pressure, thank you.”

  Connor muttered something to Ruth and Ruth spoke into the microphone, “Slow those damned slides, guys. Especially you, Carrey. Slow them right down, you dorks. Twenty-four. We are not building the rating.”

  The boat was moving good and strong but we were all crashing into the stern on our recoveries. Every stroke you could feel it, almost see it in our wake, a slight jerk to the stern from all that loose human freight shifting backward. “Slow down, Carrey. Nice and easy, apply full pressure in three and I want all of you guys to hold it together on this one. And that’s one…”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Channing pull a stopwatch from his coat. He was looking behind the boat, at the distance between the puddles, then marking where we began.

  Ruth counted to three, and on each count you could feel the strength of the boat and the incredible effort we were using to keep it together, to keep things from falling apart. We were literally pushing against our own backward inertia.

  Channing finally swore, his voice cracking across the water through the megaphone. “Goddamn it, Carrey. Goddamn it to hell—slow that slide down. Slow it right now.”

  Ruth sighed into the microphone. “You heard it. Slow on three.”

  Channing watched awhile longer. “What is Connor’s rating?”

  Ruth clicked in, waited another stroke. “Twenty-six.”

  “Carrey, you are not following Connor. Don’t look out of the boat, Carrey!”

  I grit my teeth, willed myself to fall into pace behind Connor. It was a matter of inches. A reflexive dip of the oar I just could not execute with Channing right there and four hundred pounds of human meat rolling around behind me. My seat banged up twice against the slide. I finally fell into place with Connor for ten strokes and the boat began to lift out of the water. Channing watched us impassively, and then my blade shoveled into the river and the boat shuddered while I pried it out. Connor glanced to port. “Get it together, Carrey,” he whispered, and I swore back at him.

  The launch stopped buzzing next to us and fell back. I moved my head enough to see Channing drop the megaphone and sit back down, steering the boat with one hand and staring at me with what looked like hatred. He then turned the throttle and sank back behind us, glaring at us all in frustration. Ruth didn’t turn in her seat, just breathed into the microphone and said, “That’s it. Wayne-up on three,” and on three the oars came up out of the water together and turned. The boat glided down the river on its own momentum until we had the command to touch the oars to the water and roll the boat to a halt.

  Ruth put her finger on the mike and exchanged glances with Connor. Then she leaned out of the boat to send me a withering stare. I could barely look back at her. Channing had found the weakness in the boat—the almost invisible distance between Connor and me that I was unable to close—and had zeroed right in on it. Connor’s head hung between the twin axes of his shoulder blades, his hair wet and porcupined out. He looked to his right at the coach’s launch, which had come up next to the boat and was idling, drift
ing with us. Channing was studying a clipboard, making us wait. He finally looked up from his numbers quickly, as if remembering we were there. “Terrible rating and short spaces. Your time for that piece was absolutely unacceptable. Do you realize the racing season is upon us? We row against Dover next week! You have ten more power pieces to go today. Spin the boat.”

  * * *

  I got lost twice cutting up New York, blanked out the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. And by the time I got there I knew I was either going to tear the steering wheel out of the dash or scream. So I decided to scream. Just screamed my head off the whole way across the bridge, and by the time I was driving upstate I was shaking. My heart was writhing, and I was sweating. And something else: I had the eerie, sinking sensation that I had forgotten something important. I did a mental inventory of what I had packed, listed to myself the equipment I had brought, ran over in my mind every box I had loaded out of the freight elevator. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the feeling was overwhelming.

  I finally had to stop to fill up the Jeep at the service station on the Hutch in White Plains, breathing as if I had run a mile. I got out of the Jeep and was engulfed by greenery, stood in front of the quaint stone building filling up my car and supporting myself against it at the same time. When I was finished I got back in and just sat there next to the gas pump, my keys in my hand, unsure if I could drive. I shook the steering wheel, then opened the door again, got out and walked to the grass. I steadied myself against a tree, forcing myself to breathe.

  Something was edging itself into my memory, a darkness. I closed my eyes, waited for it. Breaking through the river. Crashing helplessly into that black cold and feeling myself give way to it. The temptation to breathe in the water. I hadn’t thought about being in that river for years, but the sudden sensation of wanting to let go came back as I stood there. I had spent years scuba diving and had never thought about that fall through the ice, never thought about that hard feeling in my chest of the oxygen being used up and replaced with that desperate vacuum.

  I took a loud gulp of air, turned, and saw a teenager in a blue and red uniform standing next to my car, looking at me quizzically. I had left the door open and I walked back to it, nodded at him to show everything was all right.

  “You okay?” he asked. He was no more than eighteen, if that. Tall, gangling, his face a horror of acne.

  I nodded again. “Just needed to catch my breath.”

  He didn’t look convinced but he shrugged, walked away, glanced back at me before going back into the building.

  I couldn’t go to Perry’s memorial. No way. I was going to put these boxes in storage and just fly back to Cape Town. Only it was winter in South Africa now. Cape Town would be gray and blustery and damp, windy and then stormy. Working there would be a write off for the next few months. I considered going to Washington, DC, and meeting with my commissioning editor at National Geographic to nail down another commission. Now would be a good time to find something out west, or in Canada, or Europe. Even getting attached to a film team would do. I had no desire at all to go to Fenton, which was now only a little over an hour away and no longer just a memory but a looming reality.

  I rumbled the engine to life and pulled out from the shelter of the pumps, still dead set on rerouting to DC. And then I was confronted by a freak of nature: a mammoth pine towering over the other trees, far too narrow and perfect. A poorly disguised mobile phone antenna. I laughed out loud. Carolyn had pointed one out to me just like it when we drove through Arizona’s Painted Desert. She had been offended by its colossal absurdity, dubbed it a giant mascara brush, demanded that I stop the car—this car—so she could photograph it. She was furious, stood defiant by the side of the highway in her shorts and white tank top, snapping pictures against the never-ending motley hills. And with this memory I realized with gut-wrenching clarity what I had left behind in New York. I could still smell her hair and the Navajo sand. I decided to head north to Fenton. I couldn’t keep running away. She was right. I had to move toward something.

  SPRING

  25.

  We met the Dover School crew about five hundred meters before the start. As we warmed up beside them, Ruth’s voice came down a notch from its usual shrillness. It was serious but undemanding, cool and even—a perfect voice for us now. She sounded almost bored, her corrections to our techniques perfunctory. “Jumbo, nice and easy on the slide, niceneeezy. Good. That’s it.” Or, “Wads, get the oar out of the water, up and out, out, yeah, thanks.” The snap came back in the boat, that rushing feeling under us during the return.

  “Eyes in the boat, gentlemen, they are not there. Don’t look at them, eyes in the boat. C’mon now.”

  Mea culpa. She had caught me looking, watching their slow recoveries, their smooth drive. They were a strong four, dressed in scarlet racing shirts. It was hypnotic, their quick slide over the water, their release, as if the Dover boat was just gliding along, its every stroke kicking up a cool burst of speed.

  An icy finger pressed into my back while I rowed.

  The minutes ticked by. I wondered how long we had to prepare. No command was given while we tightened and practiced, even when the coach’s launch appeared. But finally, Dover glided down past the stake boats and backed up. We gave them time, then followed to our own stake boat. A freshman named Charlie lay prone on the tiny floating wooden island, his hands hovering over the water for the boat, his face red with concentration while we backed into him. I saw the coach’s launch ten meters up the river, and the shimmering water all around.

  Feel something, I told myself.

  Anything.

  We rolled up the slides to the start, buried our blades in the water and the same breeze wafted down the river; the same trees waved and swayed on shore as they had over the days of unsuccessful practice. I reached out and patted the exact center of Connor’s back. “Good luck.” He nodded once, his eyes locked with Ruth’s.

  I closed mine, opened them.

  “Dover’s hand is down.” Channing was speaking into the bullhorn, casual at first. “Fenton’s hand is down. Both hands are down.” Now his voice boomed over the water, “Are you ready? Row.”

  I don’t remember the first ten strokes of the race. In my mind’s eye I can only see them as part of the roaring water around me. It must have been a standard start, though, no different than a thousand others we had practiced. I was dizzy, rowing with my mouth wide open at first, then with my teeth clenched and my lips drawn back. Ruth began to screech in the barbaric coxswain language of counting and commanding—harsh, guttural gibberish that meant something to some part of me, meant that we had taken them but by the end of the start they were coming back. We had taken a tiny lead, nothing to bank on, and they were holding us.

  Twenty, thirty strokes in and we hadn’t moved on them and they hadn’t been able to pull through us. We were two boats, practically dead even, roaring down the coarse, neither coxswain willing to risk a power twenty just yet. Ruth was leaning far out of the boat, jamming the rudder in short bursts. I noticed that her sunglasses had fallen down her nose, a comical sight. I might have smiled as I rowed.

  I realized the stroke was higher than we were used to when Ruth put in for a move, gave the command for a power twenty in three and I felt something sharp and warm move in my guts when she said it. “I want twenty power strokes to move, Fenton, in three. And that’s one … that’s two … that’s three … on this one.”

  Connor brought the rating up over the twenty and Ruth didn’t call him on it. Twelve strokes in, I felt my ears pop. The boat was in pain, running ragged and we hadn’t even hit the halfway point yet. Ruth hunched over in the boat, her head turning quickly to see what we had taken off Dover. “I have their deck, I’m sitting on their stroke. You’re going to give me that seat, Fenton. Three more out of this twenty and settle. Row for their stroke seat, Fenton. Take it now…”

  But we didn’t take their stroke seat. Once you had brought your coxswain even with the stroke of
the opposing team, you had an edge and Dover knew it. They were digging in, an ominous, quiet opponent, their coxswain’s voice not traveling over to us.

  Ruth leaned out and must have sighted the thousand meter buoy. “I want that stroke seat by the thousand meter mark, guys. I want them to bleed. You wanna make Dover bleed, don’t you?”

  She ordered another ten power strokes. I didn’t feel out of breath, just all the pain that comes from being out of breath—the heavy, leaden heat in my legs, the burn in my back, the pounding blood in my ears and the bite in my arms. The rating’s too high, I thought. We’re blowing it all just to take a seat before the halfway mark. We passed the red buoy without taking the seat. I prayed she wasn’t going to push for another power ten, and I started counting down in my head, just as Ruth would.

  Ten strokes after the buoy, and, just as I feared, “This is it, FSBC, another power ten to pull through them, in three. And that’s one … that’s two … and three … go.”

  Each stroke was torn from us; brutal, hard, fast strokes that felt like shocks. The boat lost its set for one stroke, and still we passed the thirteen hundred mark without giving Ruth her damned seat. The Dover boat began to pick up speed right beside us for the turn in the river and now I could hear the sound of their coxswain’s voice, counting out their set. Ruth had no choice but to demand another ten from us in response, ten more power strokes from a bleeding boat. I could feel the wind in my throat. “I want another power ten now, now, on this one…”

  No warning or countdown, just a sudden burst from the boat, the surprise attack. I had no idea where the power was coming from, where we found that store of energy for a third time. But still they held us off. There were ten strokes to go before the pink buoy that marked the last five hundred of the race and just before we reached it, Connor went insane by bringing the rating up to a thirty-nine, a rating that could leave us scraping the water right before the final sprint. And once again, Ruth didn’t stop him. I couldn’t believe it.