Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Reese
Yesterday afternoon, I stood in a parking lot next to a planter with somebody’s cigarette butt in the dirt and listened to Carmine tell me the compliance office had finished its review at four o’clock.
My designation registration has been corrected in the university system, and my eligibility for this weekend stands. Sable Ridge certified me in good faith on documents it had no reason to question.
That’s the good part. She gave it to me first on purpose.
The rest took about ninety seconds.
The conference has entered a finding that a student-athlete competed for two seasons under a registration that didn’t reflect her designation.
The finding doesn’t allege intent on my part.
It doesn’t have to. The remedy under the bylaw is a competition bar, and the bar runs one full season from the date of the finding.
I’m a junior.
One full season from now is my senior year.
“I want to be clear about what that means,” Carmine said, “because you’re going to want to be sure before you decide anything. You’ll race tomorrow. You will not race again.”
I asked her one question.
“Does it apply to coaching?”
“No.”
Then I said thank you, which surprised both of us. I hung up, stood beside the planter until I could trust my face, and went inside to play cards.
The final is at two-ten this afternoon.
We’re in lane three. Middle of the course, protection on both sides, and the only reason we’ve got it is that we came second yesterday instead of fourth.
Northridge is in four. The crew that beat us is in five, which nobody can explain to me, and their coxswain spent breakfast telling anyone who’d listen that the wind would sit down after noon.
It doesn’t.
At eleven, I go out to the fifteen-hundred-meter mark by myself and watch the water for twenty minutes. The wind is coming across from the west bank in gusts with about forty seconds between them, putting a lump on the surface that’s going to punish anyone who shortens up.
That’s useful. It gives me somewhere to put my hands and a problem to solve, and for twenty minutes I’m not somebody who’s been told she gets one more race.
At noon, I eat half a sandwich with Bo watching me do it. He doesn’t say anything about the other half, which means Gray has probably talked to him.
At one-fifteen, I go find Bennett.
He’s at the trailer alone with a clipboard he isn’t reading. There’s an expression on his face I can’t place.
I’ll be able to place it tomorrow.
“Coach.”
“Callahan.”
“Wind’s holding across from the west. Gusts about every forty seconds through the middle thousand.” I hand him my notes, since he’ll want them for the record. “I’m going to start us one beat lower than the semi and take the middle long. If they want it early, they can have it early.”
Bennett reads the page twice.
“You’ve been doing that for months.”
“Doing what?”
“Handing me the plan after you’ve already made it.” He gives the notes back. “Thirty years I’ve had coxswains ask me what I want. You’ve never once asked.”
I wait for the rest.
“You’ve never once been wrong either. I’ve never told you that, and I’d like it said before this afternoon.”
I look down at the page in my hand, since I don’t have anything useful to say to that.
Bennett saves me from trying. “Go row your race.”
At one-fifty, we carry the boat down.
I’ve done this two hundred times. Hands on, split to shoulders, walk it, down to waist, roll and set. Eight men, a shell, my own two hands on the gunwale, then the sound the hull makes when it goes into flat water.
Best sound there is.
I’m hearing it for the last time.
I let myself have that thought for about a second before I put it away.
Cameron’s the one who notices. He always is.
“You’re quiet.”
“I’m working.”
“Okay.” He steadies the bow while I climb in, and when I’m settled he says, without looking at me, “You’ve got your face on.”
“Cameron.”
“Not telling. Just letting you know I can see it.” He gives the bow a push. “Go win the thing.”
We paddle out.
The last twenty minutes before a final are the longest part of any season. We do a build, two starts, and a short piece at race pace. After that, there’s nothing left to do and eleven minutes to do it in.
I take us to the start early and let them sit.
“Water bottles. All of you. Now, not in five minutes.”
Eight men drink.
Down the boat, Zane lowers his bottle. “Hey, cox.”
“What?”
“Do the thing.”
“There isn’t a thing.”
“There’s a thing. You do a thing before finals.”
“I don’t.”
“You absolutely do,” Beckett says. “You get all flat and terrifying and say something that makes us want to die for you.”
“That’s concerning on several levels.”
“But you admit there’s a thing.”
“No.”
Zane points his water bottle at me. “Do the thing.”
I sit in the stern with eight men in front of me and the west wind moving across the course. I have no idea how many minutes of my career are left, only that I can count them now.
I press the button on the cox box.
“Two things. First one’s technical. The gusts are coming every forty seconds through the middle, and the lump is going to make you want to grab it. Don’t. Long and patient through the rough, and I’ll tell you when.”
Nobody moves.
I look at Gray, then past him down the boat, all the way to Cameron in the bow.
“Second thing. I’ve coxed forty-one races.
Every one of them, some part of me was managing something else.
My designation. Suppressants. My parents.
An investigation. A reporter. A man with a credential.
” My voice tries to move on me, but I get it back where it belongs.
“There is nothing left to manage. It’s all out.
Everything anybody could use against me is public, and I’m still sitting here. ”
Bo makes a low sound somewhere in the middle of the boat.
“This is the first race of my life where the only thing in front of me is two thousand meters of water. So I’m going to enjoy it, and you’re going to give me the best twenty-four strokes of your lives at the start.
Then you’re going to be patient for a thousand meters, and then we’re going to take it. ”
“Yes, ma’am,” Zane says.
A few of them laugh.
Good. That’s enough.
The starter calls us into position. I make the last adjustment, settle my hands, and watch the flag.
“Attention.”
The boat goes still.
I’ve been asked a hundred times what a coxswain actually does. Nobody ever likes my answer, since on a good day I do almost nothing. I put a boat in a place and then I take my hands off it.
The horn blasts.
“Row.”
They give me the twenty-four.
I’ve never had a start like it, and I never will again.
Eight men who have spent nine days being investigated, photographed, grabbed, disowned, and put on a wire service pour every ounce of it into the first twenty-four strokes of a national final.
We come off the blocks a length up on the field in twenty seconds.
“Lengthen. Settle in two. One. Two.”
Thirty-three. One beat lower than the semi, exactly where I put it, and the boat runs out flat and long underneath me.
“That’s it. That’s the boat. Nobody touch anything.”
At five hundred, we’re half a length up on lane five and a seat on Northridge. The crew that’s been favored all season is sitting in my peripheral vision waiting for us to make a mistake.
At seven hundred, the first gust comes across.
The lump catches us on port and the boat rolls three degrees. Eight men want to grab at it, and I can feel every one of them try.
“Patient. Long. Let it come to you.”
They stay long.
The boat comes through clean. Lane five doesn’t, and we take two seats on a crew that hasn’t lost since March without doing anything except refusing to panic.
“That’s the race,” I tell them. “That right there. Every forty seconds.”
At eleven hundred, it starts.
I know what it is before it fully arrives, since I’ve had it three times now and the second before is always the same. The bonds come out of order. Jackson first, then Bo, then the rest of them at once, all of it piling into my chest with no shape to it.
I have four hundred meters of steering left before the sprint and a boat in a national final. I’m about to grey out in the stern.
I don’t call it. There’s no time, and there’s nothing anybody can do from where they’re sitting.
Instead, I take my hand off the rudder line for one stroke and put it flat on the gunwale.
The boat is there.
So are they.
The pack catches it.
I don’t know how to explain what happens next, and I’m not going to try very hard. Eight bonds arrive at the same time, but instead of piling on top of each other, they settle into place. Jackson at three, burning low. Bo underneath everything. Gray at the top of it with his eyes on my face.
Eight men in a shell.
Eight bonds behind them.
For the first time, they make sense.
The whole thing passes through me and takes nothing with it. Two strokes. That’s all it costs.
“Fifteen hundred,” I say, and my voice is fine. “Gust in ten. Hold your length. This is the one that matters.”
The gust comes right on time. We hold our length through it, the shell rolling under us but never losing its run. Lane five doesn’t. Their rhythm shortens just enough for me to see it, and this time there isn’t enough water left for them to fix it.
“That’s it. Five hundred. Everything you’ve got left belongs to me.”
Gray takes the rate up before I ask for it.
In the months since I joined the crew, he’s never once anticipated me in a race. I’ve spent those same months training him not to, and he’s spent them trusting that if I want more, I’ll tell him. But I know what he feels through the boat right now. I feel it too.
I let him have it.
The rate climbs to thirty-six, and the shell comes with him. Northridge is starting to fall away on our starboard side, while lane five is still hanging on by less than half a length.
“Two hundred. Northridge is dead. Lane five is dying. Ten strokes and then ten more.”
The last five hundred of a national final isn’t something I can narrate, even while I’m sitting in it.
Everything gets too loud and too fast. The grandstand comes up on the west bank with hundreds of people on their feet, and the noise carries across the water until I can’t separate it from the blades or the cox box or eight men breathing in front of me.
Somewhere in that crowd is a man who drove eight hours to watch this and will probably be standing in front of a grievance committee by August.
For the first time in my life, I don’t look for him.
I have a job.
“Ten. Nine. Eight.”
The boat is flying. Not the way people say it when they mean fast. I can feel the hull come up and stay there, barely touching the water between strokes because all eight of them are moving together and nobody is trying to take more than the man in front of him.
“Five. Four.”
Gray’s face is three feet from mine, wrecked with effort, and for some reason that’s what cuts through everything else. Not the grandstand or lane five or the finish coming at us.
I’m going to remember his face for the rest of my life.
“Two. One. Through.”
We cross the line and the horn goes, but I don’t know if we’ve won. Not immediately. Lane five is close enough that for half a second all I have is noise and white water and Gray still pulling through the finish.
Then I see the board.
Lane three.
First.
A length and a quarter.
We just won the grand final of the American Varsity National Championship.
The announcer is saying something I can’t hear. My hand is still wrapped around the rudder line, and I have to remember that the race is over before I can make my mouth work.
“Way enough.”
Eight blades come off the water together, and the shell keeps running beneath us with all that speed still in it.
For a few seconds, nobody says anything.
They just sit there breathing while the boat carries us past the finish, eight men upright in their seats like none of them quite trusts what just happened.
Then Zane screams.
After that, whatever dignity Sable Ridge brought to the national championship disappears.
Bo is laughing too hard to get a word out.
Beckett tries to stand up in the boat, which is both physically impossible and a good way to put the newly crowned national champions in the water, and Tyler catches the back of his uni and hauls him down without taking his other hand off his oar.
Jackson leans back and looks straight up at the sky. Eli has both hands over his face.
Cameron is all the way down in the bow with seven men between us. He’s found a sightline through them anyway. Everybody else is losing their minds, but he isn’t smiling. He’s just looking at me.
I know that look.
He saw my face before we launched. He knows something is wrong. Maybe he even knows this was more than a final to me, although there’s no possible way he knows why.
I don’t care right now.
Gray leans forward over his oar until his face is close to mine. He’s still breathing hard, sweat running down his temples, and there’s a look on him I’ve never seen before.
“Out loud,” he says.
I laugh because I know exactly what he wants. “We won.”
“All of it.”
Something catches in my throat. I look down the boat at eight men who are still yelling over each other, then back at him.
“We won the national championship.”
Gray starts laughing.
Not the quiet thing he does sometimes when one of them says something stupid. He’s actually laughing, head down for a second, shoulders shaking, and seeing Gray Lockwood lose it in the middle of a racing shell almost gets me worse than the finish did.
I put my hand against the side of his face.
For a few seconds, I let myself look around. At Gray first, then the rest of them. At the grandstand and the finish tower and the lane markers stretching back over two thousand meters of water.
Forty-one races.
I don’t know how many thousands of strokes.
I know exactly how many I have left.
I pick up the cox box in both hands and press the button one last time.
“Let it run,” I tell them. “Take a look around. You’ll want this one.”