In the Same Boat

by Holly Green

The bumblebee woman is there again in a red wig and a mermaid costume, seashell bra and all.

  A few hours later at Cuero, she’s dressed as a nun.

  Cully actually gets out at Cuero and sits onshore and eats an oatmeal cream pie. It’s our surprise snack at that checkpoint. I want to die of shame. This will get back to Dad whether Allie is watching or not. Stopping makes us look tired. And weak. If we have to take rest breaks during the day, how can anyone expect us to make it through the night? And I can’t say anything because Cully’s words will never stop ringing in my ears.

  I don’t have to do this with you!

  I am completely dependent on him. And this is how he wants to run the race.

  It sucks.

  Sitting in the boat, waiting like this, might be the most un-Scofield thing I have ever done.

  6:07 P.M. SUNDAY

  The current has slowed down. The sweepers and log jams are becoming more frequent. Sometimes we paddle around them. Sometimes find a hole to paddle through, like threading a needle. Once we get out and portage, but only as a last resort.

  The sun hangs lower now, but it’s still so damn hot. My palms and fingers sting with blisters. I’m eating and drinking, but my stomach still hasn’t settled. I’m afraid everything is going to come back up. We pass empty railroad tracks and a few small houses along the river, and a parking lot half full of RVs. A couple of kids are swimming in the shallow water of the river. Their parents sit in camp chairs on the shore. It’s hard to believe that people are still doing these things. Hard to believe anything exists outside of this race.

  I’m weaker than I was at this point last year. I’m with an inexperienced partner. And with every stroke we’re getting closer to my DNF with Dad. If the second night took Dad and me out last year, what will it do to Cully and me? What if it’s worse? I would give anything to fast-forward past it.

  If I’m right, we’re about a third of the way between Cuero and Thomaston Bridge. My body is heavy. Each arm is like a dead branch. My feet are river rocks. I think that’s why, when we’re dragging our boat across a sandbar, I don’t protest when Cully says he wants to have a pee standing up.

  I sit my butt down on the soft sand and close my eyes, counting my breaths and listening to the splatter of Cully’s pee hitting the sand ten feet away.

  After thirty hours on the river together, I am so over caring about Cully’s penis.

  When we’re on the water, I know everything going on with his body. I can see from his stroke that his left shoulder hurts more than his right. When he puts his paddle down, I know from his back and his arms whether he’s reaching for water or a snack or getting ready to pee. I know from the way his hips sit when his mind is drifting and when he’s focused on the river.

  And I know from the slowing of his stream that he’s just about done over there. As I stand, ready to carry the boat to the water, something pokes me in the butt. More pokes—no, they’re stings. The stinging is everywhere. I swipe wildly at myself, shaking my butt, my feet dancing, my heart pounding, the name almost ready to erupt from my mouth.

  “Fire ants!”

  I jump over the boat and splash into the water, yanking at the waistband of my shorts and tights, kicking up silt and mud. I crouch in the shallows and pull everything down. My bare butt and lower back are bumpy with ant bodies. I sweep my hands all over, brushing them off. The water gives almost no relief, but after a minute, at least the ants are gone. I close my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths to slow my heart down.

  Muffled laughter brings me back. Cully stands ankle-deep in the water, biting his cheek to keep from falling into a full-blown laughing fit.

  “You okay?” He barely gets the words out before he has to bite his cheek again.

  I reach down, sink my fingers into the oozy mud, and fling it at him. It splatters across his shirt and neck. He turns away, and the next mud ball gets him on the back. It’s a nice distraction, until he flings water at me with his paddle.

  I close my eyes for a second. Everything stings.

  “Put the boat in the water,” I tell him, because the last thing I want is our boat covered in fire ants.

  Cully drags the boat away from the ant bed and pulls something out of the front.

  “Stand up. Dry off,” he says, and I’m half-sure he wants to throw mud at me, but he seems sincere.

  I hitch my wet clothes up over my butt as best I can in the water and stand. I lift the back of my shirt and shake it up and down for some airflow. It doesn’t stop the burn but it’s a distraction. Cully squeezes a tube. I catch a whiff of something medicinal, and then his warm hand is on my lower back, rubbing cream all over my bites. “Hydrocortisone,” he explains.

  “Give me that.” I grab the tube from his hand and pull my tights and shorts down in the back.

  His eyes drop before they go wide and shoot back up to my face. “Whoa!” he says as he whips his body around, but I am so beyond caring if he sees my butt. Getting the cream on my bites is all that matters.

  “Here,” I say when I’m done with the cream. He puts a hand out behind him and takes it. Gingerly, I pull my shorts and my tights back up, trying not to disturb the medicine. It’s not instant relief. Not by any means. But it’s an improvement. “You can look at me again.”

  He pivots back around.

  But it turns out, he can’t quite look at me after all.

  His cheeks are red, and I don’t think it’s from the heat. His hair is wild, with a faint glow from the sun. It’s a darker shade than when we were kids, but I still like it. His hands open and close, like they don’t know what to do with themselves.

  There’s a tug in my chest, like we’re connected by a string.

  The afternoon after my appendix ruptured, I lay in my hospital bed, bored to tears. Dad and Tanner had left an hour before, Mom wasn’t there yet, and hospital TV sucked. Soap operas. Gross. I had nothing to do. I couldn’t even sleep because I’d been in bed all day, and the nurses said I would have to spend a whole extra night there.

  Dad and Tanner had brought the game Operation as a kind of joke, and we’d had a good time playing, but after about fifteen minutes of operating on my own, it lost its shine.

  Everything was worse because I was supposed to go with Cully earlier that day to pick out his new puppy. His aunt had neglected to fix her golden retrievers soon enough and had seven puppies on her hands. As much as I disliked Johnny Hink, at least he didn’t deny his son a dog. Cully’s mom had shown me pictures of the litter on her phone. It was just a pile of tan fluff with eyes and ears and tails. You couldn’t see where one began and the next ended. I wanted to get down on the floor, right at the bottom of that fluff pile, and take a bath in it.

  Instead I was here, propped up in this bed, by myself. Why hadn’t Dad and Tanner at least brought me a book?

  A voice drifted in from the hall. Mom. “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

  She walked through the door. Cully peeked around her shoulder. I sat taller in the bed, excited to see my friend. Excited to hear about his puppy. Cully’s wide brown eyes went from me in the bed to the IV still attached to my arm, up the tubes to the saline bag hanging off a stand, and all the machines behind me. His throat bobbed up and down.

  Mom stepped aside, revealing the rest of him. He cradled a black duffel bag with mesh sides. Mom put a hand on his shoulder, urging him forward. “It’s okay. She’s going to be just fine.”

  I didn’t like how he looked scared of me. How he stared at me like I was fragile. With my family, I was the littlest. The baby. But with Cully, even though I was a year younger, I was brave and strong.

  Mom closed the door to the room behind her. Cully took a big breath before he stepped toward the bed. The bag in his arms moved on its own. He scrambled to keep from dropping it.

  What on earth?

  “I brought you something.” He pulled the zipper back a few inches and a furry golden head squeezed through the hole. Its little black nose sniffed as it turned its hea
d from side to side, taking in the room. The bag squirmed more. Cully held on tighter. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

  “You brought your puppy! Can I hold it?” I exclaimed.

  “Shhhh,” Cully said. “We snuck him in.” He pulled the zipper open and placed the puppy on my bed.

  The rest of the puppy’s body was just as fluffy as his head. He sniffed the blanket in excitement. His whole body wagged with his tail.

  “Careful with your IV,” Mom said, joining us at the bed as the puppy moved up to sniff my hands.

  I picked him up and brought him to my face. We touched noses, then I pulled him to my chest and hugged him, rubbing my cheek across his soft fur.

  “What did you name him?”

  “I named my puppy Scout. She’s a girl,” Cully said. “I’ve been calling that one Mazer.”

  I liked the name Mazer. It made me think of the corn maze we’d done at a farm one time, and the dog trotting ahead, leading the way. It made me think of adventures we would all have together.

  “You got two puppies?” I asked. I’d been asking for a puppy since our old dog died two years earlier. Now Cully had two. Maybe he’d let me borrow one sometimes.

  Cully looked at Mom.

  “This one is yours, Sadie,” Mom said.

  I froze in the middle of rubbing my cheek on his fur. Mom and Dad said a puppy was a big responsibility. That I wasn’t ready. I studied Mom’s face for some sign this was a joke, but there was no sign of joking in her smile. Or Cully’s.

  “Really?” Even I could hear the wonder in my voice.

  “Cully picked him out for you,” she said. And after another moment, “The whole thing was his idea, really.”

  I held Mazer up to my face again and looked into his dark eyes. He held his mouth open and his pink-bubble-gum tongue hung out. He tilted his head and everything went blurry with tears.

  7:57 P.M. SUNDAY

  “What kind of costume do you think that lady will have at Thomaston?” Cully asks when we’re back on the water.

  My bites itch and I’ve stuffed my ice sock down my pants, but at least it broke the tension between us. At least we’re talking again.

  “I don’t know. Butterfly?”

  “Too predictable.”

  “Yeah. I thought she was going to have a sexy theme going on until I saw the nun costume—maybe Supreme Court justice?”

  “Who says Supreme Court justices can’t be sexy?” Cully asks. “Did you know RBG was still planking in her eighties?” My stomach takes a hit at the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I have a Notorious RBG sticker on my laptop. I wouldn’t have guessed that Cully was a fan, too.

  “Goals.”

  “We haven’t eaten in a while,” he says. “You take your break first.”

  I don’t actually want to eat, but I put my paddle down anyway, because I like that we’re talking again. And because I know I should eat. Erica will check. My snack bag has a pop-top thing of canned chili, nuts, a protein rice ball Tanner and I made, an oatmeal cream pie, beef jerky, a Slim Jim, and Shot Bloks. The thought of eating any of it nauseates me. Where’s a banana when you need one? There’s a burning in my chest—heartburn, I guess. I pop a couple of antacids, take a few sips of water, and force down the cherry Shot Bloks. They’re the closest to Jell-O. That’s what my mom always made when I had a stomach bug.

  Cully asks me to talk to him while he takes his break, and I tell him about the time Mazer found a skunk den a couple of years ago. Dad said that a beer bath would get rid of the smell, but Mazer got loose and ran through the house. The entire downstairs smelled like skunk and beer for weeks.

  It’s the wrong story to tell, because I can still smell it. My stomach churns, and it doesn’t stop. Not when we duck under a sweeper. Not when we drag the canoe across another sandbar. Not when we steer right of the huge pile of graying logs that’s formed in front of one of the pylons that holds up Thomaston Bridge. The same woman stands at the top of the cliff-like banks with the rest of the spectators, wearing a dinosaur costume.

  A dinosaur. With giant purple glasses.

  Erica and Gonzo are in the water.

  “You didn’t tell me we’d have to climb down a rope to get to some of these water stops,” Erica says as soon as we pull up next to them.

  “Surprise,” I say weakly.

  Erica pulls the bag out from under her strap. “Pepperoni roll. Still warm,” she says.

  I have to eat it. It’s part of the unwritten contract we have during this race. And really, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. But a pepperoni roll sounds terrible right now.

  I bite into it and warm oil spills out the side onto my leggings. Gross. But I chew, and it’s cheesy and terrible and I force it down my throat. On the second bite, Cully opens a bottle of pickle juice. That vinegary smell hits me and my mouth fills with saliva. I clap a hand over it. I gag once, like a warm-up, before my whole body convulses. I lean over the side of the boat. Sour water and pepperoni roll pour out of my mouth.

  “Get her out of the boat.” It’s Cully’s voice.

  “Damn,” Erica says, backing away from me.

  “Banks are too steep here. There’s nowhere to put her,” Gonzo says.

  I retch again, and all I can think is that it’s nice my hair is already tied back in braids. My teeth chatter. I tremble. Tears fill my eyes. It’s like there’s a rock in my throat. Someone puts a hand on my back. Erica.

  I gag again. Throw up again. And again. Again, until my stomach is empty and I’m dry heaving and it hurts. Then I put myself back together. Sit up straight. Lift my head. Wipe my eyes, wipe my mouth, and shoot a snot rocket into the water. I’ve always been a snotty puker. My stomach aches, but the nausea has passed. For now.

  Erica’s hand is still on my back. Gonzo is right there, downstream of where I just puked, his eyes squeezed tight. His hands hover over the water.

  “It’s so warm,” he says. There’s barely a current between the boat and the shore to wash it away.

  “Here.” Erica pushes water toward him with her hands.

  “I’m so sorry, Gonzo.” I wipe my mouth again and dip my hand in the river to rinse it.

  He shakes his head. “It’s okay … Just use the other side of the boat if you need to do it again.”

  I nod, even though there’s nothing left. And anyway, we need to get moving.

  Gonzo puts his hands back in and splashes water on his torso.

  “Do you feel good enough to keep going?” he finally asks. The little bit of humor in him has washed away with the vomit.

  They want to take me out of the race.

  I try to catch Erica’s eyes, but they’re on Gonzo. “I’m fine. It’s normal,” I say, looking back and forth between the two of them, but they’re looking at each other. “My stomach’s better now. I can keep going.”

  What kind of silent conversation are they having? What have they been saying between water stops? That I’m weak? That I’m falling apart?

  That’s what Erica’s thinking. I see it in the way her forehead wrinkles and her jaw tightens when she looks at me. I’m far from invincible now.

  “It was just the smell of the pickle juice,” I say, like that can negate the vomit.

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Erica says.

  I turn my head to Cully, still watching me from the front of the boat. “Cully, please.” I’m tearing up again. And my voice … I hate the pleading in it, but it’s all I have. I can’t get pulled out of the race.

  His eyes go from me to Erica to Gonzo and then up high on the bank. But I don’t take my eyes off him. We’re past goulash. We’re past me trying to force my will on him with my stare.

  “Please.”

  His eyes come back down. “We’ll take it easy. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  I let out a huge breath. Cully’s eyes move back to the bank and I follow, past the guy climbing down the rope with his milk crate.

  There he is, towering over me, high up on the bank
. Dad. In his jeans and his plaid button-down and his orange hat like mine. His hands are in his pockets. His mouth opens, like maybe he’s going to say something; sprinkle Odyssey wisdom on us like fairy dust. But then it closes.

  Nothing.

  My dad is finally here.

  And he couldn’t have caught me looking weaker.

  8:22 P.M. SUNDAY

  “We should pull over and put the lights on,” Cully says.

  “Yeah,” I agree. My voice is scratchy. It’s like my throat is full of gravel.

  We don’t need lights yet, but we will. It’s sunset. We’re on a pretty straight stretch of river headed southeast, but even in this direction, some of the clouds glow an orangey pink. I’d meant for us to put the lights on at Thomaston, but with the vomit and with Dad watching me, and Gonzo telling me about small sips and small bites, lighting slipped my mind.

  There aren’t any sandbars around, so we pull over, river right, and I hold on to a low branch while I talk Cully through the lights. I take one of the small sips Gonzo prescribed. Grapefruit. I’m sick of all these flavors, but I take another. So far so good with my stomach.

  There’s a plop in the water from the front of the boat, and Cully’s hands go up to his head. “Damnit. Damnit!”

  “What?” I ask, because Cully is pulling his hat off and climbing out of the boat on the shore side. The boat shakes. My grip tightens on the branch.

  “I dropped the end cap to one of the flashlights,” Cully says, before he plunges down under the surface.

  My stomach sinks. The end cap completes the circuit. We can’t just duct tape the batteries in. I hold my breath until Cully surfaces empty-handed, wiping the water off his eyes. He sucks in a big breath before he goes back down. Again. And again. And again.

  “Let me try,” I say.

  “You’re supposed to be taking it easy.” His shoulders lift and his chest swells with another breath.

  While he’s under, I take off my hat and fumble with pulling my shoes off. My hands still aren’t working quite right. The rest of my body isn’t either.