by Ron Irwin
I wound back and whacked at the ball, missed entirely. Wadsworth laughed, “Again! Again!”
I connected with the ball on my fourth try, and it was more of a slapshot than a drive. Still, the ball streaked off into the darkness.
Into outer space. Gone.
Perry cheered. “Slice! Dude, slice!” He teed up another ball, a blue one this time. “Fore!”
After three false tries, I slapped it again. I dropped the driver, stood back on my heels and watched the ball bounce in impossible parabolas down the main drive of the school. When was the last time I smoked pot? I looked at the bag of glowing balls, chose a martian green one, pitched it into the darkness where it sailed toward the river and abruptly disappeared.
Wadsworth picked up the driver, launched a red ball into the gloom. It traced the green trail mine had left behind. “You need to relax, Carrey. Just slow down your slide in the boat. Your recovery is way too fast. Just chill. Then Connor will be happy. Channing will be happy. The boat will be faster. It’ll be all good.”
I picked up another red ball, whipped it far out toward the science building, where it bounced along the roof in cheerful zigzags. “It’s not like I don’t want to.”
Perry accepted the driver from Wads and bent over a glowing golden orb. He drew back, smacked it, and it beelined toward the water, then abruptly arched upward into the stars. I watched in amazement. A quantum leap, a defiance of gravity. Perry glanced at me. “You have nothing to lose.”
“Rowing in the four is different than rowing in the single.”
“Ya think? Damn. That’s deep.”
Wadsworth claimed back the driver, stood back and consulted the heavens. “Of course it’s different. It’s way faster. And you’re not in charge. But the key to speed in the four … is … following.”
“Following Connor might be the problem.”
“Connor is … wise, dude,” Wads said.
Perry giggled. “Yeah. Like, you know. Wise.”
Wadsworth set up a purple ball, blasted it into the purple horizon. “If you just relax for one race, we’ll go faster. It’s that easy.”
“But, we have no idea how to make you do that,” Perry added.
“Nope. No clue.” Wadsworth sighed. Teed up a glowing, ice blue ball. Drove it all the way back to Superman’s fortress.
27.
Ten miles away from Fenton, I parked the Jeep outside one of the pizza/bar/coffee places that dot that area of New England. I walked into the small shop and found it almost empty. It was the kind of spot you frequented as a prep school kid, serving the gamut from milk shakes and sodas to pizzas, hot dogs and hamburgers to pasta to bogus vegetarian meals and salads to desserts with names like “Mac’s Surprise.”
I ordered a cup of coffee at the counter from a young woman wearing a flannel shirt that reached her knees, which looked like bumps sticking out of legs packed into tight black leggings. She had long, tired brown hair and sausage fingers and chatted perfunctorily with the cook through the serving window as she stood at her post in front of the register. She was wearing gaudy running shoes, incongruously, and as I paid I thought about what Connor would have made of her had we stopped by a decade and a half ago. I imagined the casual names we’d have used to describe her, the snobbery of the rich and the beautiful when having dealings with the poor and the plain. She smiled at me when she gave me my change and I smiled back. “You going to the reunion?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the third person who came in today. Two other guys came in and ordered beers. They looked like they were getting ready to have a good time over there.”
Or they were bracing themselves, I thought.
She told me to sit down anywhere and I chose one of the two booths, sat looking out at the hard packed gravel drive and the dark road. She served the coffee with the same brilliant smile, and I sipped it, accepted a refill and sipped some more, looking out at the road, knowing just what the soft shoulder would feel like when you ran down it early in the morning.
I had made decisions at that school. Decisions that were with me now and would remain with me. I had decided, for instance, that no matter what I did in college, and in life, I would do nothing that required me to work on a team, or in any kind of team environment. I would never work directly under an authority figure, either, or select a job where I had to compete head to head with others. Documentary filmmaking fit the bill for this. As far as I was concerned, it was not really a collaborative effort. I could choose what projects I wanted to work on and was in charge of my own shoots. Even when I worked with Carolyn, I had her create the final cut for me from my scripts. The people I filmed, when I did film people, were small and distant figures down an eyepiece. You can film terrible things when your mind is fooled into thinking it’s happening on TV.
I lingered over my coffee. The woman behind the register disappeared into the back. I thought, seriously, of ordering a beer, and knew if I did I wouldn’t leave the place.
One thing that people in my industry had to learn in order to get ahead was how to be nice. They schmoozed, they took meetings, they traded contacts, they beamed each other and shot each other e-mail. Carolyn was a great connector, she was good with people in a way I could never be. Being unable to deal with people, even with people in my own profession, certainly meant I would never go big-time, would never run my own production company or get a contract for a really serious string of shows.
I would not make much more money than my father did, and that had irked him. I’d be small-time, like he was. Unlike him though, sooner or later I’d have to find a job that didn’t beat my body up so much, and I had some options to do so. I could write, or teach. I had taught before, after Carolyn had forced me to do it, given informal talks at small colleges and film schools about the business, short presentations at film festivals. The first time I had done this, I had realized something I had not known before: Teaching is a lonely pursuit. The podium acts like the viewfinder, and the faces in the class seem to meld into each other. You prepare the talk, you give the presentation, you take the questions and move on. I was attracted to the idea. Teaching would allow me to be my own boss, in a manner of speaking. The more you taught, in a strange way, the more disconnected you became from your charges.
Channing must have liked that as well.
* * *
I tied into the single my father made for me, clamped down the sculls and concentrated on breathing hard. I was still allowed to use it on the condition I had Channing’s permission, which I did not. As I pushed off and tapped the boat into the current I watched the winter detritus from far upriver float down the exact middle of the bed. Old logs, dead trees, clumps of grass, and mud that we called “clong”, all tossed aside by the brown water that moved now with resolve and strength. It was still cold out, the cold could hang on until May even, but it was a good cold. I worked into the piece, thinking about gaining length as I rowed down the river toward the town bridge. I could smell it as I approached—wet winter steel—and I looked back to see it and align myself. The darkness below it came on quickly and as I passed under, I glanced up at the support beams and cross-bars, took two more strokes, and ran out.
“Solid rowing.”
Channing’s voice startled me and I looked sharply to the shore to see nothing but the banks sloping into the water, covered in leaves. Then I looked up on the bridge and there he was, his elbows on the railing. I brought the scull to an awkward stop. “You have a weak recovery, Carrey. You’re pulling the blades out too soon. You do it in the four as well.”
“I’m working on it.” I looked up at him.
“I’ve told you all week, all year, that your recoveries have to change if you want more speed.”
“You can judge my recoveries from up there, too?”
“I can, yes.”
I rowed away from him, left him there watching me. He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted down across the river. “You’re bringing your hands too close t
o your body, and hunching over to pull the oars from the water. Fool.”
I ignored him, rowed all the way down the river until it bent. From the bend you could get in fifty more strokes and then the river dammed up in front of the covered bridge and you had to turn around. I spun the boat and thought about my hands being too close to my body. I leveled them out and flattened and pulled. I rowed back up the river and when I turned the corner I checked my line and then looked up at the bridge. He was still up there, waiting. I turned back and settled into the oars, twenty fast strokes.
“You’re rowing like you’re strapped to a bowling ball,” he called. “You have short strokes.”
I carried on rowing and as I got closer I could hear him muttering to himself. “Bad stroke. Bad, bad. Good stroke, good one, good. Bad. Bad.” He coughed. I slipped back under the bridge and rowed a further fifteen strokes before stopping. He shaded his eyes when I did. “Look at the Harvard man, hunched over his oars.”
I laid my oars flat on the water and felt the current push me away from him. I turned the oar, palmed some water with my blade and pulled, gently, running out beneath him.
“Go ahead. I want to see one perfect stroke, Carrey. Just one.”
I came up the slide slowly and turned the sculls until they dug into the river, set the blades and snapped off a stroke into the current, leaning back and tapping the sculls out of the water. I moved five meters down the river and quickly turned to see what was coming at me. Channing watched for a moment and shook his head. “You pull with your lower back. I’m not sure how you stay on your feet after a race. And you duck your head. How on earth are you so fast on the water?”
“Luck.”
“It’s not luck. It’s power. It’s strength. Do you think you’ll have it forever?”
I shrugged. “Long enough.”
“You have no discipline, Carrey. You row like you’re chopping wood or sawing or laying down track. Power is cheap in this world, Carrey. Very, very cheap.”
I looked up at him and snapped off another stroke. He shaded his eyes again, watched, shook his head again. “You look like you’re doing a job.”
“It is a job.”
“It’s not. Not a soul will pay you.”
“Rowing this way has got me pretty far.”
“Roll forward on the slide. Do it.”
I rolled forward and the boat began to rock in the current. Balled up at the end of the tracks I was vulnerable, my arms spread out over the water.
“Chin up, now.”
He was right, I was looking down at the bow deck. I looked up and felt my spine settle into my back, the bones pile into one another, connecting, and the muscles in my forearms stretch out.
“Get those blades off the water and hold them. Then turn the oar handles and don’t bend your arms until I give the command.”
For one second I was free and balanced over the water while I turned the blades over the current. Poised this way in space, I could place the oars exactly and when they cleaved the water, I pushed with my legs and fell backward, my arms burning to pull into my body. He waited for a moment and then said, finally, “Row,” and my arms bent and the oars came into my chest. I might have gained a foot of run. My body felt taller, stronger.
He nodded as if finding resolution to some debate he’d been having with himself. He looked down from the bridge. Deep inside the structure you could hear drips of water falling hollowly.
“There are scullers older than you and faster and less likely to do idiotic things. Harvard wants to see rowers who have the ability to bring magic into a team. That’s what they are looking for. The only thing you have on your side is youth and power. If you do not progress, you’re nothing.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m your advisor. I’m advising.”
“Tell me about the picture on the wall of your house, Coach.”
“What picture, Carrey?”
“The newspaper photo. You at Gales Ferry, rowing against Yale.”
“It’s of another person, a long time ago. He’d have little to offer you.”
“I’d still like to know.”
“I appreciate your interest, Carrey, but I’m in the future business, not the past. And unless you keep your hands higher into your chest at the finish you won’t be rowing anywhere once the year finishes. One person alone cannot make that much difference, but two rowers, you and Payne, can. The four has the speed, it has the potential. Learn to exploit it.”
“There’s not much time left; only three days until the race.”
“I’m well aware of that. Use what you have, Carrey. Use what you have. You need to solve this problem. Now. Do whatever is necessary. And if I see you out in the single again without my say-so, I will kick you off the team.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you will learn to row with the others. Right now. You will think of nothing else. Or the Rob Carrey story will be over.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll see you and the others on the water tomorrow. And again on Sunday, immediately after chapel. I need improvement, Carrey. Get ready for two long days.”
28.
Later that evening I walked across the campus to the Rowing Cottage. It was two hours until lights-out and there was a movie showing in the auditorium, a band playing in the coffee room. A dwindling light still glowed over the mountains. I walked up the stairs and when I stepped into his living room, Connor looked up at me from the couch where he was crouched under a long brass lamp, carefully pulling tape from his fingers. He was dressed in an achingly white button-down Brooks Brothers shirt, khakis, and black loafers. He was also wearing wire glasses I had never seen on him before.
“Did you ever hear of knocking, Carrey?”
“We’ve got to get the boat to work, Connor. I need to be able to follow you on the water. I’m not able to do it.”
“Talk to Channing. He’s the coach. Every time I criticize your rowing I wind up getting insulted or hit.”
“Channing says if I don’t learn to row with you and the others I’m off the team, but I have no idea how to do it anymore. I don’t want to get dumped from the team, or lose the Warwick Race. If I can follow you, then Jumbo and Wadsworth will fall right into place behind me, and we’ll beat Warwick.” I waited. “But I just can’t follow you. I’ve tried everything. Even when I’m sure I’m doing it, I’m still off.”
“I could have told you that back in the fall, when we were rowing in the tanks. Wait a minute, I did tell you that.”
“I know. Channing bet on the fact that I was just as strong as you, but it’s not working.”
“You’re not as strong as me. Not quite.”
“Close enough.”
He looked at me for a few long seconds and I held his gaze. Then he nodded. “You’re losing six inches of finish with each stroke, pulling out of the water early and jerking the first two inches of your slide.” Connor held his hands in front of his face and tested his fingers, gingerly making fists. “The way you rush up the slide screws up my rating.”
“I know. I know. But how do I get the length? What do I need to do?”
He looked up at me over his glasses, a frighteningly mature look. “Are you seriously asking me? Me? Seriously?”
“Serious as cancer.”
Connor thought for a second. “Sit down on the floor.”
“What for?”
“Look. I’m going to tell you something. Something you need to understand. You’re a good rower. No. You’re a great rower. The best I’ve seen in four years, maybe even the best—”
“Outside of yourself, you mean.”
“Shut up and listen, Carrey. You have one flaw. When you’re sitting in the boat you have no flexibility in the last phase of the stroke. And it’s easy to—”
“But—”
“Are you going to sit down and listen or not?” His usual sarcastic tone was gone. He was confiding in me, and the earnestness in his voice was unnerving.
I sat down on the threadbare Persian carpet and looked up at him. “All right. I’m listening.”
“It’s easy to fix, but you need to trust me. What I’m about to tell you to do won’t feel right to you because you’re a sculler, which is why your hands are too fast, but it will work in the four.”
He stood, reached for the long brass lamp and unscrewed the linen shade which had stains on it—speckles of champagne or else something vile—from God knows what rituals. He set the lampshade aside, pulled the cord out of the wall, twirled off the dusty bulb, and lay the brass rod across my knees. I examined it. “This thing is supposed to look like a long piece of brass bamboo. What is it with rich people and fake bamboo furniture?”
“That’s supposed to be bamboo? I had no idea. It’s not like I go out and buy this stuff myself, Carrey.”
I held the lamp, and using the heavy base as a fulcrum, jiggled it up and down. It had almost the exact diameter of an oar.
“Lean back,” he said. “Tap the end down. Like you do in the boat.”
I obeyed, but I lost my balance, just a touch.
“See?” He sounded almost triumphant.
“See what?”
“You’re pushing the oar handle away from you already, sliding it out. Tap the oar out of the water leaning back.”
I tapped out, sitting on the floor, legs out in front of me, leaning back maybe one hundred and twenty degrees, looking dead forward. I felt the pull across the tight stomach muscles clinging to my ribs.
“Do it again. Ease it out of the water and take your time.”
“How many times do you want me to do this, Connor?”
“Until it looks like you know what you’re doing. Tap it out. Now. Right now while you’re leaning back.”
I tapped out and bent forward at my waist, just slightly. He shook his head, scratched it and looked around. Then he walked toward his bedroom, glancing down at me as he went. “Don’t stop.”
“Where are you going?” I was sweating from keeping my back at full extension, but my finishes were looking slightly better.