Chapter 33. Fisher
I’m not a praying man, but I’m doing my damnedest to call upon some sort of entity the whole way back to Spunes. For all that she’s given me this summer, I have to try to come through for her, somehow.
The start time comes and passes while the map time says we’re still two hours away.
“Maybe it didn’t start on time,” Sage says. “You never know. Maybe there were, like, delays of some kind.”
“Happens all the time,” I say optimistically.
But the remaining drive doesn’t get any less tense.
We don’t have wet suits, but we’ve got all our minimally required gear, at least. I fishtail onto the launch point road, an hour and fifteen minutes past the first round of start times, and park directly in front of the entry gate.
“You’ll get towed!” Sage cries.
“By who?! Everyone’s here.”
“Valid point.”
We fly out of the cab, throw on our vests as we go, and work to untie the boat.
Sage drops it from her end when the crowd parts.
Still on the beach are Ian and Cassidy, one of Walter’s nephews and his husband, and three other teams I recognize as people from around Spunes. Patty Munty and Wren are standing up to their knees in the water. Indy comes walking up to us from somewhere off to the side.
“The competitors from out of town already all started,” she says. “We couldn’t get them to stop. But we got everyone else to wait.”
“To be fair,” Patty says, “it wasn’t that hard. They all wanted to wait.”
“Once Indy told them everything that was going on,” Sam adds.
Sage lets out a weepy laugh and throws her arms around a bright red Indy. I swallow stiffly and nod my thanks to everyone. We get our canoe slotted into a spot at the starting line and make the rounds shaking hands and giving out more grateful hugs.
Sage doesn’t hesitate to thank Ian or Cassidy, either, because of course she doesn’t. She’s too full of grace, my lovely girl. I decide to treat her actions like her advice and offer him my hand, too.
“Appreciate it, Ian,” I say.
He meets my eyes and shakes my hand with a nod. “Yup. Needed another chance to beat you, anyway,” he replies.
I laugh and clap him on the shoulder before I swing back to the boat.
We get our paddles set how we need them and look at each other once more. Disheveled and in regular clothes and shoes, with the same shared determination between us. I lunge forward and give her a firm, quick kiss.
“Let’s fucking row, Byrd,” I say.
Patty makes her way to the small dock, megaphone and bright orange starting gun in hand.
“Ready,” her saccharine voice shakes through the speaker. “Set. GO!”
We slam off the shore, but it is an instantly wobbly start. I slip and nearly topple us to the side, and Sage gets her paddle tangled up with one of the checkout boys’ from the grocery market. We chaotically work our way through the initial scramble and manage to secure ourselves a position in third.
The fatigue is already so much heavier, though, only thirty minutes in. I am painfully aware of the leaden feeling in my muscles, the fugue in my brain. Days of shitty meals and sleeping on foldout hospital chairs and in an unfamiliar hotel bed are making themselves known. I can hear it in Sage ahead of me, too—frustrated noises slipping through her breathing.
Still, we push on. I dig my paddle into the salt water, flex and pull like my life depends on it. Until we accidentally bump into the back of the second-place team, and a burst of energy has us clumsily overtaking them.
We’re approaching the corner that leads us down the home stretch, with Ian and Cassidy at least two canoe lengths ahead. I can see them going all out, too, their whole bodies rising and falling in heavy strokes. But this is when I remember one of my late-night conversations with Sage, lying in the sunroom under the stars, and talking philosophically about how futile it is to live your life constantly comparing journeys.
“You just gotta row your own damn boat,” Sage had said.
So, we do. And we do our best. We keep in time with each other and stick to our practiced technique.
We row our own fucking boat and ignore the rest.
And when we gain the inside corner on them, they get flustered, faltering and flailing. But Sage and I keep steadily surging on, bright buoys marking the finish line a meadow’s distance ahead.
There are the actual prize-money winners already being celebrated on the beach, but this is still our race.
Ian and Cassidy are a steady presence in my peripheral vision, but I keep my eyes trained forward on Sage and the sea.
When we win by a few measly feet, Founder’s Point erupts. Everyone that I know from town is waiting for us on the sand, having driven over from the starting line if they weren’t already here. It looks like Sage’s high school students showed, too, loads of teens with various signs that say things like MISS BYRD IS HOT, and FUCK ’EM UP, MISS BYRD. Walter rips off his shirt and spins it above his head like a helicopter. Wren and Patty are hugging and sobbing in celebration. Venus and Athena Cirillo run into the water and start splashing around in glee. Hairstylist Bea holds a tablet in the sky with Silas on FaceTime. When we bring the canoe to shore and footslog hand in hand out of it, Martha O’Doyle crashes forward and wraps her arms around us both. Even the construction crew from Starhopper is here, applauding and whistling.
Indy and Sam make their way through the crowd, too. Indy’s hug is especially tight.
I can clearly pick out the audience members who are not from town by the looks of dumbfounded concern on their faces.
It is the most ridiculous, ludicrous, small-town, corny scene.
And it’s one of the great honors of my life to be a part of it.