Chapter 28
The town is so small that I’m with my team by our designated meet-up spot next to Belpagna within five minutes. Emilia waves me over, and I notice she’s wearing her own newly crocheted Cassero bandana from Nico.
Martina leads us in a round of warm-ups, and it feels good to slip back into my competitive athlete skin.
It’s been so long since I’ve been on a team.
And even though this random hodgepodge may not count in the way other teams I’ve been a part of did, being surrounded by so many expectant people still gives me the dose of adrenaline I’ve always thrived on.
I’ve become familiar with the rules, since Emilia has explained them to me fifteen times already.
The race is a six-hundred-meter sort-of circle around the center of town, starting and ending in Piazza Garibaldi with its ornamental fountain.
The six teams are broken into three pairs races (since the streets are too small to accommodate more than two barrels at a time).
Then the two semifinals have the three winning teams plus the one losing team who had the best time in their first race.
And then there’s a final race between the last two teams standing.
In our practice runs, I’ve already gotten used to the slopes, zags, and bottlenecks of trying to push a barrel through an old stone city.
I know it’ll be different under pressure, but I’m at least familiar with the feel of it.
While the men do the circuit twice, the women only do it once—so two of our teammates will take the lead, then they’ll switch off about two hundred meters in, and then Emilia and I will bring up the end.
Everyone’s said that each leg is usually around a minute and a half, so we just have to push really hard for ninety seconds and hope it all goes to plan.
And then do it two more times if we’re lucky.
Once we’re done warming up, we all walk to Piazza Garibaldi, and it starts dawning on me that I might’ve underestimated this race.
The whole town (and all of its environs) is out, multiplied tenfold from the crowd at the kids’ Palio this morning.
The edges of the streets that contain the race have barriers up, so people can stand behind them and cheer.
Everyone is decked out in the colors of the different rioni, waving flags of every possible size.
Our team is wearing matching shirts, and all the Cassero people scream extra loud as we walk by.
A giant screen has been erected on the side of the piazza—I guess to show the action as it literally barrels along out of sight.
When we get to our starting line, everyone quiets down as the main referee explains the rules once more in Italian.
He points out the twenty-five other referees (and explains what I think are all the various ways to get time penalties), and then it’s the moment for everyone to take their places.
For this first round, Cassero is racing the Borgo team.
Since we’ll take over the last leg, Emilia and I will start by running behind the first handoff team, all following behind the barrel.
“You ready to bring honor to Cassero?” she asks with a grin.
“If I’d known you’d have a complete personality transplant around this race, I would’ve opted out,” I tease.
“Come on,” she says with a nudge. “This is the right kind of ridiculous.” I can’t help but grin back at her.
It’s true. I never could’ve imagined I’d find myself racing a painted barrel while a couple thousand people cheered me on for a town I’d never known before a few months ago.
But it’s everything I love about competition—camaraderie, fun, pushing yourself, adrenaline, reaching a goal.
It’s hard not to think that my love of competing has been missing lately: that steady drumbeat of knowing you have a job to do and pushing yourself harder to do it.
We get into our places, and I burst forward when I hear the gun shoot off.
Our team rolls ahead of us, and we follow, cheering, encouraging, and (me) trying not to laugh at the absurdity.
Every inch of the road is covered with people shouting and clapping.
Our barrel runners get to the first curve slightly ahead of the Borgo team.
But they get a little stuck on the turn, and Borgo slips in front of us.
“Andiamo!” Martina shouts at them as they finally manage to round the turn.
Then the two who have been rolling swap out, and Martina and her partner Gessica are off.
They’re making good time and rolling along quickly, but it’s not quite enough to get ahead.
With the barrels, there’s a clear tactic to roll as close to the middle as possible so that the other team would have to move over to go around you and waste time (but without going into their lane and getting a time violation for impeding).
While I hate to admit it, the Borgo women are mastering that approach beautifully.
But I’m already visualizing the sloping curve of the clock tower, where I know we get to take over. I’m hoping we can use the momentum from the awkwardness that a turn has to go past them.
Martina and Gessica even it out at the curve just as we’d hoped, and they jump out of the way. Emilia and I are up.
Gloves on, heart pounding, sweat already glistening, we’re ready.
It’s an awkward thing, rolling a barrel while people shout all around you.
It’s too low to push straight ahead, so you’re always sort of squatting and running.
You’re using arm strength to push it hard, but you don’t want to push it so hard that it gets away from you.
And you have to communicate with your partner well enough that you’re pushing together and not running into each other.
I can’t help but think it would’ve been so much easier to not have gotten this involved and to be just another Cassero person shouting on the sidelines.
But I’m in it now. Our practices the last few weeks have served us well, and it’s clear that having been a rower does have some advantages—being tall and lanky would help regardless, but the mental game of repetitive motion and pushing through the sameness is something I’m used to.
Not to mention that I’ve always been able to block out noise and get into a rhythm.
So it’s not as smooth as I’d like, since nothing ever is the first time you really do it, but we’re pulling ahead the more I get myself into that zone I’m so used to.
We’re close enough now that I can hear the shouts of everyone watching on the screen, and as we roll into Piazza Garibaldi, I can see that we only need to make the slight half turn around the fountain to get to the other side where the finish line is.
We stumble on the curve a bit, but we have enough of a lead that we make it up and roll across a full four seconds ahead of the Borgo team.
We collapse on the grass as everyone jumps and shouts around us.
“We did it!” Emilia says, flopping onto me with a hug.
“Well, the first round anyway,” I say, that rowing part of my brain never able to celebrate a heat when the finals are still looming ahead.
The next hour goes by in a blur. We watch as Fonti takes out Imposto (making our Martina particularly happy to be the last standing Martina). Mulinello gets beaten by Monumento, but since they have the fastest time of the losing teams, they get to make it to the semifinals.
There’s only half an hour between the races, and after a breather (and a snack that Gia shoved in my hands before wordlessly walking away), it’s time to go again.
Fonti had the fastest time, so they’re up against Mulinello for the semifinals, and they beat them handily.
We get set up for our race against Monumento, and this time it’s smoother for our whole team.
The curves have been resolved and we’re in the zone more, handing off smoothly and staying in an easy rhythm.
We beat them handily by fifteen seconds.
The sky has begun to darken by the time it’s the moment for the finals.
It gives the scene an air of seriousness and mystery while also, wonderfully, cooling the temperature a bit.
The cheering has only gotten louder, with more horns and music in the mix.
The crowd swells, as though even the people who skipped the first few rounds are ready to watch this one.
I’m grateful for the ramped-up energy. I’ve always fed on that kind of atmosphere.
And the buzz and the enthusiasm have put me in the zone to really want to win this now.
As I get into position, I spot Nico for the first time since I saw him at Pasta Fresca before the first race. He’s standing by the finish line, not drawing attention to himself, but when he sees me notice him, he gives me a wink.
I try not to react, but the side of my mouth involuntarily hooks into a small smile—our little secret a tether in this increasingly strange day.
But I’m not getting distracted. I’ve never let a man distract me in any work or sporting endeavor, and that sure as hell isn’t starting today, when I’ve got the pride of my entire district on the line right now. (Do I get too into competition? Who’s to say.)
I stand back as our leadoff rollers line up against Fonti’s. In rowing, there’s always a still before the race starts, but this drunken bacchanalia of nonsense doesn’t really allow for any of that pomp. Everyone is cheering so much that it almost drowns out the gun when it goes off.
Our women burst forward, and it’s neck and neck as they easily round the first curve, passing off to Martina and Gessica. But the barrel goes a bit wonky, and in their attempts to get it back, the Fonti team passes them.
My heart is pounding as we run behind them, waiting for the moment when Emilia and I will take over. The boisterous crowd is so loud at this point that the noise is ringing in my ears, and it seems like night is falling as fast as we’re moving.
We go around the last curve at the clock tower, and Martina and Gessica hop out of the way. It’s just me and Emilia and at least a two-second deficit.
But the atmosphere has charged me. And nothing gets me going more than starting as an underdog.
“Three, two one, push!” I shout in time as we make our first contact with the barrel.
If we’re pushing in sync, we move more in sync; timing our pushes makes me time my breathing, my steps, my focus.
So I keep shouting counts for Emilia and me to stay fully connected.
We’re on the heels of the final Fonti rollers, and I push myself just a little more, making myself go past the point of discomfort.
We’re gaining on them, and somehow, with that extra grit getting us back on track, as we approach Piazza Garibaldi, we’ve nudged in enough to be neck and neck.
And I can see the finish line. We’re so close and I’m so tired and my legs are burning from doing this three times in one afternoon and my back is sore from the weird bending required to reach the barrel.
But the win is so close I can taste it; I see the angle where we can do this.
Our advantage from being on the right side is going to give us the edge here if we time that half circle around the fountain right.
And because it’s the barrel that has to cross first, not the runners, we just have to push it at the perfect second to get the momentum.
We round the fountain enough where we’re straight again. “Push!” I shout one more time, and Emilia and I give the barrel a last, huge heave. That final burst of strength propels it, and our barrel rolls over the line only a second before the Fonti one does.
A sea of maroon and navy blue erupts. The referee is pointing at our barrel, even though I can’t hear anything above the madness of the mayhem.
Emilia and I are lifted into the air along with our teammates, and everyone is crowding around us and singing in Italian, and someone is throwing a ton of cheap glitter into the crowd and onto me and Emilia.
I’m sweaty and exhausted, but it feels so good, like a candle that burned brightly and melted down, and now all that’s left is stardust.
I grab Emilia’s hand in the air. “You didn’t tell me this would be so fucking hard!” I shout at her, grinning but still out of breath.
“I heard the hard is what makes it great!” she shouts back, beaming at me.
I snort a laugh. “Anita made you watch A League of Their Own, didn’t she?”
“Hell yeah!” Emilia laughs, her cackle punching through the air as this madcap night carries us off to celebrate.