Flat Water Tuesday

by Ron Irwin

  Connor came back and set something next to me. “That’s called a metronome.”

  I tried to keep my voice from sounding winded. “I know what it is. Did you steal it out of the music department?”

  “No, from the chapel. Father Davis uses it to keep time on the piano, or used to, to get an even count. Like, twenty-eight beats a minute.”

  “Or thirty-five.”

  “I’m setting it at twenty-eight for now. You worry about pushing down on the oar handle, releasing, and moving your body forward just before your knees come up. That’s it. Those inches at the release are where you’re losing the beat and losing your length.”

  “We should go to the tanks and do this.”

  “They’re locked. It doesn’t matter where we do this. I’m talking about six inches of movement. Be quiet and concentrate. Just think about doing this correctly.” He set the small weight and the metronome began to tick over, a hollow, tinny sound.

  “You stole something from a chapel, Connor, so you could improve your rowing. A chapel. This cannot be ignored.” I tapped out the shaft of the lamp, leaned back, and it was a strangely familiar sensation. The pull at the back of my legs was deeper, and I almost felt the motion of the boat.

  “Do you want to make this team work or not?”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “I’ve told you. Just a few inches on your release. Like you’re doing right now. If you do that, then we’re not losing anymore races this year. We’re winning. But you need to trust it. You keep wanting to get the oar out of the water and charge up the slide. I can feel you back there, just hacking away.”

  I followed the beat, and then he reset the metronome to a higher cadence. Even sitting on the floor of his living room I started to miss strokes. I felt it. “How much longer do I have to do this?”

  “Until you know what you’re doing. Stop being impatient, okay? I’m going to tell you something, Carrey. Channing knows a high rating isn’t the answer. He’s right. We can hit a high rating but we don’t need to. I’ve been hitting those high ratings for him for years now. Years. Ruth won’t let us go past thirty-five strokes per minute again.”

  I nodded absently. I could feel myself falling into the cadence. The metronome ticked away until I didn’t hear it, just felt myself slide into its rhythm.

  “Look, you’re doing it. You’re following it just fine now. Anyone can do it. But you need to trust it.”

  I stopped, held the oar out at the release and followed through. I was sweating hard. Connor looked at the arm of the metronome, then at me. “The boat is fast, Carrey. Ruth panicked against Dover and you were rushing the release. But it’s fast.” He paused. “If you wait just half a second when you tap the oar out, you and I will drive this boat over the limit.”

  “How do you know? How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m sure. You know it, too. The others will feel the power and catch on. If you just wait, the boat will lift out of the water with each stroke. It’s not a matter of showing you what to do. It’s a matter of you trusting what you have to do. That’s it.”

  “I’m going to have to take it on faith.”

  “And you’re going to have to trust Ruth. She’s the best coxswain you’ll ever meet.”

  “I have to trust Ruth! I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You didn’t trust her against Dover. You jacked our rating sky high, twice, not Ruth. What happened to trusting the cox to control the boat? And you were the one who told her to take off her shirt. Not me.”

  “You didn’t stop me. You blamed her for the Dover Race, too.”

  “Okay, I know, I blamed you both. I was mad at you for taking the rating up and at her for not calling you on it.”

  “So we both need to trust her. After the race I went over to Middle Dorm and left her a note. I tried to say I was sorry, but she needs to hear it from you. Why haven’t you spoken to her? She expects me to be a bastard. She doesn’t expect it from you.”

  “Believe me, I’ve tried speaking to her. She’s totally blowing me off.”

  Connor sat in front of me, leaned back until he was at the oar’s release. I copied him, tapped out the lamp and waited that millisecond before he moved his torso forward. I followed through and we paused for the strokes and then the recovery until we were leaning back, mirroring each other. “Let’s hit thirty-five for five minutes. If you can do it here, you can follow me in the boat. I guarantee it.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  He twisted around and looked at me. “Rob, trusting something that doesn’t feel right is not simple. You’ll either do it or not. But if you don’t try it, we’re dead. That’s what’s simple.”

  “I’ll do it.” And I meant it.

  * * *

  “Ruth, wait for me.”

  Of course she ignored me. She had ignored me since the Dover Race. She’d made sure to abuse me on the water, but a silence had hung between us in the boathouse and now again in chemistry, the last class of the day. Students were filing out of the sulphuric labs into the warm hallways and outside into the bright sun. Ruth didn’t even look back at me as I tried to catch up with her. She could move surprisingly fast when she wanted to, even carrying that heavy leather bag of hers and wearing the regulation-length skirt and shoes they forced the girls to wear. I finally got next to her and she still refused to even look at me, managed to increase her pace so I almost had to jog along beside her.

  “Listen, Ruth. Wait. Please. Just hear me out. Give me five minutes of your precious time, okay?”

  “I’m busy, Rob. Do you understand? I’m busy.”

  “You are not. That was the last class of the day. Practice isn’t for an hour. You have five minutes.”

  “You have no idea how busy I am when it comes to you, Carrey. Go away.”

  But she slowed down just a little to hear me out. We were headed for her dorm and I gently took her elbow and guided her away, toward the island in the school parking. The trees around the school were bursting into a furious green and the omnipresent cut-grass smell was overpowering. It was Monday, the day before the Warwick Race and the kids who saw us walking together made way. Some of the freshmen high-fived both of us as I tried to steer her someplace where we could talk. She didn’t look at me but she didn’t pull away from me either.

  We crossed the quad in front of the Schoolhouse and then passed the dining hall toward the back sports fields. The tennis courts were a giant circuit board of fenced-in red and green and white in front of the squat, gray tennis club. Some kids were already out there, warming up before practice, and I could hear the thwack of the balls being hit from player to player in what looked like lazy, slow-motion strikes. I had never been here, never knew that the clubhouse had a solid Plexiglas front behind which were comfortable-looking couches, a widescreen TV, soft drink machines, and pale wooden tables. The room had the privileged smell of tennis balls, and the walls were lined with rows and rows of framed pictures of kids in white, holding rackets.

  “Ruth, I’m sorry about what happened after the Dover Race, I really am.”

  She set her mouth, looked out at the courts, back at me. “Right, Rob. You’re so sorry yet you didn’t even say anything, let alone do something. None of you did. I really thought you guys had my back. Especially you.”

  “I was so furious because we had lost. I wasn’t thinking straight. What can I say? I was wrong. I know it.”

  “And you’re the last one to apologize to me, you know. Even Connor’s apologized. But not you.”

  “That’s not fair. I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me all week, Ruth, you know I have. I’m apologizing now, okay? I really am. I should have done something. I blew it. I always blow it.” I wanted her to get away from the glass, but she was immovable. I swung my backpack down onto one of the pedestal tables, unzipped it and pulled out a small, tight bundle; her rowing shirt. I handed it to her like a folded flag of surrender.

  She took it from me, shook it out. I couldn’t read her exp
ression. “How did you get this?”

  I didn’t answer her question, ashamed to admit that the Dover cox had left it behind, disgusted by our behavior. I wished I could tell her that I had come to my senses once she had walked away, had taken it from him to give back to her, but I had not. Instead I could only promise, “No one will ask you to do it again.”

  “No, they will not. Because we’re not going to lose again. Especially not tomorrow.” She opened up her satchel and pulled out a notebook, flipped through it while she nibbled the end of a piece of her hair. I had rarely been alone with Ruth when she was in dress code. Her dark hair hung loose over her collar and she looked amazingly well put together. She found what she was looking for, a carefully compiled graph of dates and times. She pointed at yesterday’s date, the Sunday that Channing had insisted we get back on the water after torturing us all Saturday morning. “Look at this. The boat really started to pick up in the middle of practice, but we started out ahead anyway.”

  I had gone on the water both days with the single aim of copying Connor perfectly. Saturday had passed without Channing making one comment about my efforts. The entire practice had been nerve wracking. I found myself biting the inside of my mouth to keep my recoveries slow and I knew Connor was exaggerating his releases for my benefit. On Sunday my determination seemed to start paying off. Within a few minutes of that morning practice Connor and I were matching each other stroke for stroke. Watching from the stern of his boat, Channing followed us wordlessly down the river again. The boat had not felt faster to me, but it had felt lighter.

  But, as usual, Ruth had kept track of all the times, and I saw that each piece we had rowed on Sunday was incrementally faster than the one before it and definitely faster than any on Saturday and the week before. Ruth absently reached into her bag and snapped open a hard case, slipped her sunglasses on and looked at me. “At first I thought the current of the river might be helping us, and then I realized that you had found a way to follow Connor. I kept waiting for Channing to say something but he’s not going to and I know why. He thinks you’re doing it unconsciously and if he comments on it, you’ll stop. I can’t see why it’s working but it’s working. So keep doing it. I’d love to know how Connor finally convinced you to stop rowing like a sculler and start following him.”

  “I went and asked him for help. I don’t want to lose this race, Ruth, just as much as you and the others don’t.”

  “The times are fast. Channing might not trust them. He might not want to jinx this. Or he might think you’ll get cocky and screw up if you know the boat is flying.”

  I gently pushed the notebook away. “The times don’t mean anything now, Ruth. Just tell me how it feels. How does the boat feel?”

  She thought. “It feels like you guys are rowing together. It feels fast. It feels like you know there’s nothing to lose.” She hugged the notebook to her. “Channing wants to meet us an hour or so before the race. He’ll be going over all the equipment tonight and will give us last-minute instructions later. Speaking of which … we’d better head back. I need to eat something before practice.”

  “Warwick beat Brooks Academy.”

  “I know. By three boat lengths. I didn’t even look at the times. But they were rowing on their lake—we have a current here and they won’t be used to it.” Kids were walking toward the courts, would be invading this weird club soon. “In just over twenty-four hours it will all be over. It won’t matter anymore.”

  “I know.”

  She let me hold her hand and we walked the whole way back to her dorm in complete silence.

  29.

  It was raining steadily as Channing spoke to us before we laid hands on the boat. We were in the wooden meeting room next to his office where I had been inducted into the team all those months before. The small, round windows were thrown open to the mountain and overlooked the palatial tent that had been erected that morning, inhabited now by nervous parents, somber members of the Board of Trustees and pink-faced alumni of all kinds and ages ranging from the eager, recently graduated to the jaded, middle-aged-running-to-fat, to the seen-it-all-stooped-and-wrinkled, all helping themselves to drinks at the bar.

  Channing had plotted the race on the blackboard and led us through every stroke. When he was finished, he looked out a window and motioned for us to come to the sill and watch the Warwick team walking their pale blue boat down to the dock, their coach and assistant coach striding assuredly behind them. There was squat, psychotic coxswain Cooper, barking orders. There was Brickman, huge and ominous in the three seat. The infamous Warwick crew—subject of our collective obsession for so long. As they stripped down in preparation for battle, I could have sworn I saw Cooper look directly up at us, although I doubt he had the vantage to see us.

  Channing pointed with contempt. “Look at them. Take a good look now because I do not want any of you glancing over in the boat during the race. There they are, four arrogant young men and that disgrace of an individual they call a coxswain, the one who crashed an Empacher shell at the Head of the Charles two years ago. Look down upon them, all of you. Look upon them from a vaunted height.”

  Connor glowered menacingly out the window but I couldn’t help noticing how impossibly thin and frail he seemed compared to Brickman. The rain suddenly blew into the room, blew out. Next to Connor, Wadsworth stood angular and awkward and Perry looked massive and unwieldy alongside Chris. Ruth hovered pale and ghostly just behind me, her mirrored sunglasses on despite the utter absence of sun. We contemplated the Warwick team, the ease and confidence with which they flipped the boat into the water, their size, their disregard for the rain, the arrogant way they ignored the small band of Warwick supporters clapping and cheering for them. All five of them were wearing identical white baseball hats to ward off the rain.

  Looking at that boat, I suddenly felt like throwing up. Each rower seemed taller, stronger, more intimidating than the Dover kids. And inside that tent somewhere, where jovial laughter rose up to us with the wind, was the Harvard coach. Students dressed in slickers and rain gear were starting to line the way to the water. There would be many more of them at the finish, crowded under the shelter of trees.

  Channing coughed. “They are no better than you. Their equipment is the same. They can be beaten. They can be beaten because they are so sure they cannot be beaten. They can be beaten because I have timed you for months now and in the last few days your times have been superior to any boat I have coached on that river. That same river that you know far better than they do, remember. Let them lose a second on a turn, let them fail to negotiate the new current, let them misjudge the wind—our wind—and they are done for. Look upon them and know that their confidence in themselves is misplaced.”

  He glanced at us, looked us over with a kind of crazed astonishment. “They know about John Perry, the strong giant on our crew from the football team. And, oh yes, they feel fear. They know about the indefatigable Chris Wadsworth, who like Connor and Perry, has rowed with us for four years. And they fear this experience, too. They have heard that we have scoured the earth and come up with a trump card in Rob Carrey, a recruit. They have no recruits. This eats at their imaginations. They are very aware that our coxswain is twenty pounds lighter than theirs, has never crashed a boat into anything, and knows their strategy as well as I do. And I can assure you that all of them know of Connor Payne and wish they did not.”

  He grinned suddenly, looking at the Warwick four as they ran their oars to the water, Cooper squatting and holding the boat to the dock. “They have not raced in rain yet, but we have practiced in the snow.” He lowered his voice and seemed to hiss. “This might be my last race against this particular team. And I have never felt surer of victory.”

  He glanced at the rafters, as if dragging up his own memory. “Fifteen hundred years ago, we are told, a small band of three hundred Spartans and seven hundred allies faced an invading army of two hundred and fifty thousand Persians. A spy was sent out by the invading king t
o scout them and was astonished to find them not cowering in fear at their imminent annihilation, but calmly sitting upon the ground combing their hair. The Persian king was informed that this meant that the Greeks were preparing for a fine battle. Incensed, the Persian king sent an emissary to boast that his army was so great that the arrows of his soldiers would blot out the sky.” Channing coughed again. “His Spartan opposite simply replied, ‘Then we shall fight in the shade.’” Channing turned to us. “But today we face enemies of equal size. We are fighting with home advantage, on a river we know by heart in difficult weather.” He looked at Ruth. “Use the current when it serves, Ruth. That team has never rowed on this river when it is high. It might look flat but the current beneath is significant as you well know and Brendan Cooper will misjudge it.” Channing put his back to it. “Just remember that you cannot control what they do out there. You can only control what you do. And understand that if you row your best race, they will not beat you. It is now up to you to find out what that race is. It’s time, Fenton. The die is cast.”

  And we proceeded down the stairs to the boathouse, where inquiring lines of alumni and students peered into the darkness while we unracked the shell and followed Ruth, who walked in front of us on stick legs into the warm rain, as if we were heading out to yet anther practice. Channing stood just inside the sliding doors and I glanced at him as we passed. He was looking not at the river, but at the tent and the fields and the school and the mountains beyond.

  The small crowd began to clap as we walked by. The rest of the school would be at the start, and vanloads of this group would follow down the road to the finish line as soon as we had launched. It was not a huge crowd, I observed. In the long buildup to this day it had often seemed as if the entire world would be watching, such was its import, but this was not the case. I forced myself not to smile, to focus on Ruth and pick my way carefully to the water, where we would line up against the lip of the dock, raise the boat over our heads, and flip it down to kiss the river.