by Gerard Doran
The westerly breeze slowly drifted down from the Ross farm and spread across the water, creating a slight headwind as they rowed up the pond. It gave the crew a chance to cool; Watt had been relentless with his calling. He and John had decided that more time on the water would help the crew improve its speed. Today, the spin seemed to go on forever. It was a dizzying ordeal, and the men found it hard to conceal their pain. John could tell the run in the boat was improving, but time was getting short. They had only a few weeks to improve their speed. Nugent had begun to complain that some of the spins were too long, that the men were getting more blisters than usual. The boat’s speed was not what John was used to—it was less than it should be. What was the remedy? They needed to change something. He got out of the shell slowly and went to the boathouse with the rest of them.
“We need to meet at the liver house on Sunday,” said Watt, leaning against the rail, filling his pipe with tobacco. “There’s time left to improve, but you got to want to get better.”
The crew sat with their backs along the boathouse wall, their exhausted faces looking up at Watt. John let his gaze drift away across the pond. He was tired and his body hurt. He got up and walked out of the boathouse to the public well beside the penitentiary wall, put his head under the spout, and pumped the water over him, drinking it as it ran by his mouth. He drank until his body felt cooler, and then he sat down on the grassy bank. Leaning back, he watched the clouds tumble in the sky above him. He closed his eyes.
“John Whelan. Mr. Whelan, is that you? Are you all right, man?”
There were spots in his eyes. John blinked to clear his vision. He searched for the voice and saw a grand carriage tackled up to a chestnut mare a few feet away. I must have fallen asleep, he thought. A man was sitting in the carriage. There was a black bag at his feet. John shook his head and leapt to his feet.
“Dr. Rendell, sir. I was waiting for my wife to come by and take me home. We were rowing.” He walked over to the carriage, reached up, and shook the doctor’s hand.
“How’s the rowing? Not much time left before the big day.”
“We’re working hard. Real hard, but we can’t seem to get a good run in the boat at the end of the spins.”
“I hear Torbay is rowing some quick times in practice. So says Sissy Snow, our parlour maid. I do believe her brother has an interest in the races.”
Sissy Snow—she was Mike Snow’s sister. John arched his body to stretch his frame. He grimaced.
“Have you hurt your back?”
“No, sir, not really. Traps have been full lately. I’ve been doing a lot of hauling.” John shrugged. “It’s nothing, sir. We just rowed around the pond twice, with no breaks.”
“Why don’t you come and see me at the hospital tomorrow? I’ll have a look at you, just a quick exam. No charge.”
John’s face felt stiff. “I’m not sick or nothing, Dr. Rendell. You don’t have to bother with me.”
“Trust me, John, I’m not going to poke at you. Not much, anyway. Let’s say five o’clock. Try to get some rest this evening.” The doctor smiled reassuringly at John, then clucked to his mare and turned her onto Boathouse Lane. He quickly disappeared up the steep incline sheltered by lush maples.
“Try to get some rest this evening.” John grinned. He had animals to tend to and a trap lead to mend. Perhaps he could put the lead off for one more day. There was too much at stake now, and he knew his body wasn’t right.
There were the poor, the very poor, and the ones no one cared about at all. Where did these people get enough food to eat? Kate wondered. They had no farms, no gardens. She directed Prince toward Water Street and its many shops, away from the slums of Carter’s Hill and Haggerty Street with its unpainted shacks and unkempt children. She said a short prayer as she drove Prince away from the stink of the gutters in the summer heat, the rancid odour no longer subdued by colder temperatures. A fine layer of coal dust hung over the west end, a layer of filth above the city. She was looking forward to getting out of it all, to heading east to the lake to get her husband, and then going home to the blessed country.
“John, if you’re going to see Dr. Rendell, you’d better get cleaned up, my son, and I mean cleaned up.” Kate stood in front of him with a towel and a bar of lye soap. “You’d best head down to the Big River and have a wash. Unless you wants me to haul out the tub.”
“I know, I know. I’m heading to the river now.” He grinned. “I’ll be as clean as a christening babe when I gets back, don’t you worry.” He took the towel and soap from her and walked to the porch.
“I got to go over to me sister’s for a bit. What time will you be home?”
“I don’t know for sure. Probably about eight o’clock.”
The cold touch of the stethoscope made John flinch. Dr. Rendell moved the device around his torso, his face expressionless. Then he removed the stethoscope’s earpieces and took John’s wrist, holding the index and second finger of the other hand against it while he looked at his watch. He raised his eyebrows. “Turn over on your stomach, please.”
John lay on his stomach while the doctor probed his back from buttocks to shoulders and along each side of the spine. He made a bow of his body in response to the pain when the doctor’s fingers pressed the soreness.
“You may get dressed now, Mr. Whelan. It seems your lower back is strained.” Dr. Rendell sat down in his chair and stretched his arms. “Otherwise, you’re in very good health. In fact, I’m quite sure you have an athlete’s heart. Your resting heart rate is forty beats per minute. Mine is seventy, which is normal.”
John wasn’t sure what to say. The hospital was such a foreign place, and the doctor’s examination had unsettled him. But he was curious. “What do you mean, sir, an athlete’s heart?”
“I remember our conversation when you brought the young Cahill girl here in the winter storm. You said that when you rowed, the effort didn’t seem like work to you.” Dr. Rendell crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“That’s how I felt before my back started acting up.”
“At the lake yesterday, you said that the boat was not getting the run you think it should be getting, especially toward the end of the spins.”
“That’s right, sir. I can tell by the distance the wash from number two’s oar travels as it passes by the rudder. I’ve seen thousands of strokes go by me on number six. We’re not holding our speed. We’re not getting the distance.” John buttoned his shirt.
“When I was at school, I was a runner. The mile, actually. But I really didn’t like it. I couldn’t train like the others, who ran four, sometimes five miles each evening. They had to do that to build up their endurance to run a shorter distance faster. Athletes who train for distance events have to work hard over a much longer distance than that of the event they are training for.” He rose from his chair, took the stethoscope from around his neck, put it on the desk, and sat down beside it.
“Don’t let this go to your head, Mr. Whelan, but you’re an exception to the rule, physically. There are, however, five other men rowing that boat. It’s the overall strength and endurance of the crew that will determine if you win or lose.” He glanced at his watch.
“What do you suppose we have to do to get the boat up to speed, Dr. Rendell?”
“It’s quite simple. I think you know the answer.”
“Longer rows?”
“Yes, longer rows. You all know how to row. What you need is to improve your wind and your muscular strength.” He shook hands with John and opened the office door for him. “Your back should be fine with a few days’ rest.”
“I don’t get much rest, sir.”
“You’ll get less rest if you do longer rows. But sometimes you have to work with pain, as you know. Depends on how much the rowing means to you. Good luck with it, Mr. Whelan.”
How would
they get the long rows in, and where? Was it worth it? John went to the stable to get his horse. He had the five-mile ride back to Outer Cove in which to plan the next twenty days. He wished it were fifty miles.
Tommy stroked Prince’s mane and tried to coax him to eat the carrot he’d sneaked out of the bin, but the horse turned his head away, breathing heavily. “Come on, boy, have the carrot. You likes carrots.” The boy watched, perplexed, as Prince hung his head and started kicking at his belly. He suddenly sank onto the grass and let out a groan.
“Tommy, do you know where John is?” Kate shouted through the pantry window at the boy, who was in Prince’s pound.
“I believes he’s at the beach mending the trap,” Tommy called back.
“Go on down and tell him I have to go out of the house for a few hours.”
“I’ll go now, Aunt Kate.” Tommy raced off down through the meadow, running as hard as he could until he reached John, who was working under the stage.
“Uncle John,” he cried out, trying to catch his breath. “Aunt Kate sent me to tell you she’s got to leave the house for a while. But there’s something else, too.” He held on to one of the stage posts to steady himself. “Prince is acting strange. He wouldn’t eat the carrot or drink the water I took him. He’s lying down, and he don’t look good. His eyes are queer.” John dropped the mending needle, which fell on the beach rocks. He left the stage, with Tommy following close behind. As he approached the house, he saw the horse on his side in the pound.
“What’s wrong with him, Uncle John?” Tommy whispered. “Did a bee bite his belly?”
John shook his head. He climbed the fence and dropped down into the enclosure. Prince lay stretched out, his sides heaving. John knelt beside him, running his hands over the horse’s bloated stomach. Then he got up and climbed back over the fence and went in the house. Tommy was standing beside the stove, white-faced.
“Are you going to have to shoot him?” The boy’s voice was full of cracks.
John put his arm around Tommy. “Now, young Thomas, don’t go worrying yourself. I won’t harm Prince. I’m not sure what’s wrong. Maybe it’s something he ate. I needs to go to Middle Cove and see Phil Kinsella, he knows a lot about horses. Sure, he’s a seventh son of a seventh son, he can cure anything on legs. You come with me.” There was no time to contemplate fish, rowing, or anything else. He took Tommy by the hand and left the house.
* * * * *
Tommy held on tightly to Kate’s arm. They were looking out the window at John and Phil Kinsella, who had managed to get Prince to his feet. The horse was tied to the fence, his head sagging.
“What are they going to do to him, Aunt Kate?”
“They got to get some mineral oil into his stomach, to make him better.” She patted the top of the shaggy head beside her.
The horse screamed as the two men placed the tube in his mouth. Tommy covered his ears. Kate felt his small body tremble. She gathered him to her.
“Prince will be all right, Tommy. Uncle John and Mr. Kinsella knows what they’re doing.”
A large moth, drawn by the bright glow of the kerosene light, cast a dancing shadow on the tin ceiling of the kitchen. It fluttered its wings at the warm lamp, fell back, and started the whole process over again. Kate sat knitting next to the cool stove. The sound of the rockers on her chair barely broke the silence. John lay on the daybed, exhausted, his body in the same position as it was when he first lay down after Phil Kinsella left. A warm wind whistled in through the slightly raised window.
“John, can you hear me?” Kate said quietly. He stirred, shifted his body, and opened his eyes.
“Heavenly Father, what time is it? I must have drifted off.”
“You been sleeping for three hours.” She got up and laid the needles and yarn on the table. “You go on up to bed. I’ll put the light out and come right up behind you.”
The half moon in the clear summer sky trickled a small, dull light across the bedroom floor. The mattress was warm and soft beneath John’s tired body. He had walked Prince for hours up and down the field until the horse was out of danger. As exhausted as he was, there was still tension in his whole body from Prince’s brush with death. Colic could kill a horse as quick as that. Thank God for Phil Kinsella.
“What did Dr. Rendell have to say, John?” Kate blew out the candle on the night table.
“He said my back is just a bit sore, that’s all. It’s not me back that’s bothering me, Kate, it’s that man’s idea of how to make the boat go faster.” He reached his arm out and pulled her closer. “I’m too tired to explain. We got a crew meeting tomorrow evening.” He picked up her warm hands and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you after the meeting, if there’s not some kind of mutiny against Watt.” He sighed deeply. “If you got the windows of the house open, you’ll probably hear the yelling.”
Chapter
22
John whispered soothingly to Prince as he stroked the horse’s back and sides with the curry comb.
“That damn colic.” John turned around. Watt was standing just inside the barn. “I lost a good mare to it once.”
John motioned with his head toward the house. “Let’s go up and have a cup of tea. Tommy and Kate are gone to church, for Benediction.”
Watt grinned. “Maybe we should have gone, too. A few prayers might get us back on the pond a bit quicker.”
John grinned back at him and the two men left the barn. When they got inside the house, John put some water in the kettle and laid it on the stove. “I was talking with Dr. Rendell after our row on Wednesday. He’s some clever, that man.”
“Yes, b’y, he is.” Watt sat down and pulled his chair closer to the table.
“Remember what Sexton said about him last fall?” John leaned ahead on his chair. “He said the man knows about a lot of things. Well, Dr. Rendell told me something I suppose I always knew, but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”
The kettle whistled. John placed the loose, coarse tea in the pot and filled it with boiling water. “He asked me how the crew was shaping up, and I told him. I said that we weren’t happy with the way the boat was running. He said we needs to muscle up, get our second wind. How do you suppose we’re going to do that? We’re already walking to the pond three times a week, and rowing, too.”
“That’s what we got to figure out this evening, John. I’m not losing a regatta to Torbay.”
“Torbay rowed nine twenty in practice yesterday. That might get the crew on the go.” John looked out the window. “The McCarthys are coming down Slater’s Hill. We’ll have to skip the tea. Time to visit the stinky hut!”
Watt and John were the last to file in. Five long faces stared at them. Watt didn’t keep them waiting.
“Men,” he began, “I knows Quidi Vidi well. I knows the shore and the winds.” He took a gaff from the wall and held it out in front of him. “John knows the number of strokes it takes to get a boat from point to point around the pond. I knows the time it takes.”
He measured each step across the floor, jabbing the gaff into the rough wood as he walked. Then he raised it up and drove it into a beam. A loud thud echoed through the building.
“We needs to get in better shape or risk losing.” He kicked open the liver house door and pointed at the beach. “We’re going to row from there to Logy Bay every second day in a trap skiff, starting tomorrow.”
Nugent jumped to his feet. “You’ll row there without me.”
“Me, too,” said Dan quickly. The place fell silent, save for the trickle of water beneath the floor.
“Are you men, or aren’t you?” said Watt.
“I think you’ve gone cracked,” Dan shot back. “Me hands and arse are sore enough now. If we do row, what do we row in? You can’t put a racing shell on the sea.” The others laughed.
“Laugh if you wants,
” said John, “but Torbay rowed nine twenty yesterday.”
“How do you know that?” asked Nugent.
Watt tapped John on the shoulder. “Tell them how you found out.”
“Snowy told me. You all knows him—he don’t make up stories.” John looked at each of them. “They rowed last evening. Stake one, a perfect pond, about an hour after we finished. They had stopwatches. It’s no secret.”
“Tell them about the new boat, John,” Watt urged.
“I don’t want to hear about the new boat. How would rowing from here to Logy Bay make us better?” Dan stood up quickly, almost hitting his head on the low ceiling.
“Dr. Rendell,” John said. “The man who designed Bob Sexton’s new boat. He’s taken an interest in this crew. Don’t ask me why, but I trusts him and what he says. He knows how your body works, and how you can make it perform better.” The others sat still, listening. “You knows yourself you can’t row for a long time at the beginning of the season. You got to work yourself up to it. Rendell says we got to go longer and harder.”
“We’ve always rowed the same. Why the hell do we have to change now?” demanded Nugent.
“Torbay has rowed nine twenty, Jack.” Watt stepped into the centre of the floor. “If they better that time Regatta Day and we’re not faster, they’ll own the course record. Do you want them to get that record, the record Outer Cove has held for sixteen years?”
He closed the open door. “Here’s something else to think about. Consider the time it takes to get to the pond—you knows, walking or driving—and the practice itself. That’s three hours out of every day.” He searched his jumper pocket for a match. “We can row from here to Logy Bay in less than an hour and a half, and then you’re finished.”
“How do we get home from Logy Bay?” asked Boland. “I’m not bloody walking.”
Watt struck a match off the grindstone. He took a deep draw on his pipe, puffing until a blue haze clouded his face. “The Logy Bay people will help us. They’ll get us home.”
