Page 140 of Final Drive

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.