by Holly Green
Shame we couldn’t finish together.
Shame.
Maybe that was supposed to make me feel better. But how could it, when I know how wrecked he is about not finishing? When I know that Mom just made him come say this to me?
His words are salt in both our wounds.
And I know it now, that next year it won’t be enough to just finish. I have to nail it.
ONE YEAR LATER
The sun glistens off Spring Lake. It’s the headwaters for the San Marcos River, surrounded by an honor guard of giant cypress trees with feathery leaves that shake in the breeze. This is where the race will begin tomorrow.
The grassy lawn around the lake buzzes with people dropping off their canoes and getting their boats checked by race officials who mark things like GPS trackers and life preservers and snakebite kits off their boat inventory lists. There are tents and folding tables set up for information and registration, and boxes of T-shirts for racers and bank crews, and for spectators to buy.
Doug Hammond, one of the race officials who paddled all through the nineties, clears our boat and wishes us luck.
Racers, all in jeans and T-shirts, begin pouring into a big open tent filled with a sea of folding chairs. Tomorrow we’ll all be in leggings and river shoes.
“Orientation?” I ask. It’s not like we’re going to learn anything new. None of the rules have changed from last year. But there’s free barbecue afterward. Hard to say no to that.
“I heard someone scouted the cut yesterday,” Tanner says. “We should find out if it’s open.”
“That would be a gift,” I say. He and I are planning a sub-fifty-hour finish, and taking a shortcut on the water instead of hauling our boat on foot past a two-mile log jam—a mess of branches and debris in the river so thick that you can’t paddle through—will go a long way toward making our goal.
For a couple of months, I hoped that I’d be doing all this with Dad again. That it would be the end of Dad getting that just-socked-in-the-gut look on his face every time he saw me. That his eyes would stop lingering on the scar just below my hairline.
But when I asked him if we could give it another try, his eyes drifted away from my face so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “I think my racing days are over.”
My heart crumpled.
At seventeen, I’m a year short of being able to race on my own. But Tanner didn’t much care for solo racing, so we rebuilt the cracked tandem and trained for half a year.
There’s a shrine to the Texas River Odyssey in my living room. The pages of the 1963 Life magazine article about the Odyssey hang framed on the wall. It’s the story that inspired my grandpa to race in 1964, back when you had to paddle past Seadrift, along the coastline all the way to Corpus Christi to finish. My grandpa swamped in the ocean and had to get rescued by the coast guard. But when Dad was old enough, they paddled it together and finished in Seadrift. Then Dad paddled with my grandma, and later with Mom. Below the framed article, finisher patches for everyone in the family are mounted on the wall. Every day I envision mine right there with them.
They’re the real Scofields, and I’m still on the outside, doing everything I can to get in.
We file into the tent with the other racers, and it’s a relief to be out of the hot sun. We’re surrounded by at least two hundred people. Maybe more. Over a hundred boats registered this year, and most will have at least two people. Some will even have six. We sit in white folding chairs set up on the grass, facing a small stage.
Doug Hammond stands at the microphone. The sound system makes one of those awful high-pitched feedback squeals, and then Doug’s gravelly voice welcomes us all. I listen to the first few minutes, and then I start reviewing the river in my head, because everything is the same as last year. Except that this year I won’t miss a beat. I won’t make a bad call. I won’t cause a wreck. I’m not going to choke.
I’m not going to choke.
In my head I paddle and draw and backsweep and we dodge other boats, and I’ve got us just about to Scull’s Crossing when Doug says, “I went myself to scout the cut yesterday. It’s a no-go. Not enough water to get through.”
I join the collective groan.
* * *
Tanner is already at a table with the Bynums by the time I’ve made it through the line with a brisket sandwich, coleslaw, and iced tea.
Awesome.
I glance longingly to where Ginny sits with No Sleep till Seadrift, a team made up of Molly and Mia Hernandez, Erin Davies, and Juliette Welsh, but their table is full. Anyway, I should probably sit with my partner, so I brace myself and head for my brother’s table.
Tanner sits across from Hank and Coop, next to Randy. Hank and Coop have taken up one side, which means I get stuck on the other side of Randy, and it’s a squeeze. He isn’t fat, but he’s massive. I put my tea next to his Coke, pull the last empty chair a few inches to the left, and sit with my butt hanging a little off the seat to avoid Randy’s elbows. It’s like they’re epoxied to the table.
“Yeah, but what makes you think you can beat a six?” Tanner asks.
“What’s going on?” I lean past Randy to get a look at my brother.
Tanner shoots a skeptical look at his friends. “These three think they’re taking first place this year.”
“The last time a three-person boat won, none of us were even born,” I say.
“But we only missed first by ninety minutes last year,” Coop says.
“You gotta look at who’s racing this year to see it.” Hank leans half his body on the table. “We beat Conner’s boat last year, and he still can’t pace for shit. Half the Wranglers decided to solo this year, and the guys taking their seats are all novices. Your dad’s not racing. It just leaves Johnny’s boat.”
Johnny Hink’s six-man boat took first last year, and no matter what Hank says, I’m sure Johnny expects to win again. I glance again at the women of No Sleep till Seadrift. They’re good. So good that Hank shouldn’t count them out. If a six doesn’t take the top spot this year, I would love for it to be them.
“But Johnny only pulled together a three this year,” Hank continues. “Kraft just had knee surgery, so he’s out. Ryan’s wife said she’d divorce him if he missed seeing his baby born, so he’s not racing. And Greg just got sick of dealing with Johnny.”
Can’t blame him. The Hinks’ property borders ours, and I’ve known them for as long as I can remember. Even though it’s a truth universally acknowledged that Johnny Hink is a humongous asshole, he and my dad were actually friends once. They raced in the Odyssey together six years ago. I don’t understand exactly what happened between them on the water, only that by the finish, they hated each other and have ever since.
The Scofields and the Hinks are the ugliest rivalry in the Odyssey community. If we’re Hatfields, they’re McCoys. Most everyone who’s been racing for a long time comes down on one side of it or the other, and the Bynums are firmly in the Scofield camp. My dad used to race with both of the Bynum dads. They set some records together.
“Anyway, they’ve gotta take piss breaks every five minutes because their prostates are the size of grapefruits,” Randy says.
Randy is cousin to Hank and Coop and pulls like a monster truck with a paddle in his hands. Kind of acts like a monster truck, too.
Hank and Coop are brothers. Hank sits in the back and drives the boat, using pedals to control the rudder. He’s twenty-three, and the brains of the whole operation. Coop started racing when he was sixteen. He graduated from my high school with Tanner a year ago. He sits in the bow, setting the stroke, and is supposedly so tuned in to the boat that he knows who stopped to pee just by feeling how the boat changes.
“What kind of time are you shooting for?” Coop asks.
“Sub-fifty,” Tanner says.
“So you guys are really in it.” Hank’s eyes land on me. “Not planning to stop and rest?”
“Nah, man,” Tanner says.
Everyone knows Scofields don’t st
op to rest.
“Yeah, but …” Coop starts, but he doesn’t finish.
“Sadie’s got this,” Tanner says.
But the hush that falls on the table says that no one is convinced. It says that all they see when they look at me is how I made a mistake last year and got hurt. How I dropped out.
Then Randy picks a piece of meat off his plate and holds it up to my side. “Look, Sadie—ribs!” He cracks up.
I chew and swallow and force myself to act like I didn’t just get that stab-of-a-knife feeling.
“Dude,” my brother says. “Not cool.”
I echo that not cool in my head, because in the beginning, Tanner didn’t want to race with me this year. It took a lot of training to convince him I could make it to the finish, and I don’t need any of these guys putting doubts back in his mind.
Coop and Hank both shake their heads. All this protectiveness just makes everything worse.
Randy stares at his plate. “Sorry, Sade.”
“I know you’re sorry,” I say. “I’ve seen you paddle.”
Hank’s face splits into a smile. “She burned you.” Now the whole table is laughing. Even Randy.
Taking a joke at your own expense is the only way to belong with these guys. But I need more than that. I need them to take me seriously.
I know we can’t take first, but what if we still did really well? Like plaque-on-the-wall well. “We’re going to make the top five,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. Top five will erase last year from everyone’s mind. Maybe even Dad’s.
Tanner chokes on his water.
Coop’s eyeballs almost fall out onto his brisket. “Top five?” he says. “You know there are some really fast boats this year, right?”
“You’ve got to look at who’s racing this year to see it,” I say, echoing Hank.
Coop’s cheeks go pink, and he’s decent enough to look away.
But the whole exchange flies right over Randy’s head. “Plus, you should rest, so you don’t wreck again,” he says, like a big sack of stupid.
Hank looks like he’s going to garrote Randy. Then he turns to me. “I’m glad you’re in it one hundred percent.” He says it like I’m his middle-school sister. “Just sucks you guys didn’t get your number.”
Tanner pounces on the subject change. “We should have registered early. I can’t believe a couple of novices got our number.”
Scofields always race under the number 1964. It’s the year Dad’s dad first raced. We were wrecked when we didn’t get it. It feels like a bad omen.
“What number are you using?” Hank asks.
“Three-twenty-four. It’s our street number,” I say. It took forever to come up with another number that meant something to both of us, and it’s still no good.
Just as Randy puts his jumbo cup to his mouth, someone bumps him from behind and Coke sloshes everywhere. It’s so crowded here.
Randy groans and pulls at his wet shirt.
Brent Hink stands behind him, his weasel face cracked in a smile and his stupid shoulders shaking with quiet laughter.
Tanner spits the words out. “Eat me, Hink.”
“You eat me.”
Randy turns around, sees who hit him, and pushes his chair back into Brent, who stumbles. This could get really ugly really fast, because Randy is as hotheaded as he is massive.
“You better leave now,” Tanner says. He presses a hand flat on the table and rises out of his seat.
“Tanner!” I shake my head at him. The Hinks have it coming, and Tanner wants to be the one to give it to them. But getting in a fight today could mean an injury. It could ruin our chances tomorrow.
He looks at me and back to Brent. But he doesn’t sit down.
“Move along, Brent.” It’s Johnny Hink’s voice.
I turn around just in time to see him clapping a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. His eyes sweep the table and land on me. “This is no time to stir up the riffraff.”
We all watch Johnny and Brent leave. The entire table is like a stretched-out rubber band waiting to snap.
“Johnny was talking trash about you guys in the bathroom before orientation,” Tanner says when they’re well out of earshot.
Hank’s face is puzzled. “He was talking trash about the way we use the bathroom?”
I almost take back what I thought about Hank being the brains, until one side of his mouth twitches up and all that rubber-band tension is gone.
“Courtesy flush, dude,” Randy says. “Use the courtesy flush.”
It’s a terrible joke. But Coop’s lips press together, and his trying-not-to-laugh face is all dimples. And then Hank’s laughing, and Tanner’s laughing, and I can’t help but laugh, too.
When the laughter dies down, Hank looks from Tanner to me. “You guys should watch out for Brent and John Cullen, too.”
John Cullen Hink is Johnny’s son. He’s paddling for the first time this year with his cousin Brent, even though he never had any interest in racing back when we were kids. Back when we used to call him Cully.
“They were talking like they were going to bust out some old-school shit on your asses.”
“Old school like ramming our canoe?” I ask. That could do some damage.
Hank shrugs. “Just don’t be surprised if you show up tomorrow morning and one of them has taken a dump in your boat.”
The sky is wide open and blue as Tanner and I walk back to the other tent, where we left our boat. It’s an absolutely perfect summer day, and yet all I can think about is Brent or John Cullen fouling my canoe. It’s not too late to plastic-wrap it. Racers do that sometimes with their canoes if they’re worried about people messing with their stuff.
Unlike when we arrived, the tent is now full of canoes and kayaks. Full of people and talk and laughter, too.
“I’m going to go look around,” Tanner says. “Wanna come?” My brother likes to see how everyone else kits out their boat. How they arrange their water bottles and bags for food and trash. He likes to talk to them about their lighting systems and all the gray foam we glue into our boats to hold everything in place.
“I’m just going to check a couple of things,” I say, not wanting to leave our boat alone.
“You can’t prepare away being nervous, Sade,” my brother says, but I ignore him and walk around the other boats to ours. It’s not just nervousness. John Cullen broke Tanner’s nose last fall. He’s wrecked other things, too.
I crouch low, inspecting the mesh snack bag attached to the inside of the canoe by my seat. I’ve already counted and recounted energy blocks and checked the flashlights and batteries a million times, but I check everything again. It’s all here. Everything is fine.
“What the hell, Hink? That’s our number.”
It’s my brother’s voice booming from across the tent. Crap.
I whip my head around. At the edge of the tent, Tanner is charging toward Brent, who turns around, shoulders back. John Cullen is right behind him, the sun shining through his orange hair, making it look like it’s on fire. My stomach churns, and it’s not because of the way he finally grew into his long arms or how his jaw has squared off or how he carries himself with this quiet sort of confidence. Every time I see him, it’s like being in the ocean, caught in the waves, getting hit over and over again with anger, sadness, confusion. Mostly anger.
“I didn’t know that was your number,” Brent says loud enough for the whole tent to hear. So loud that nobody would believe it’s actually true. Everyone knows that’s our number. It’s obvious that the Hinks took it to eff with us.
“Bullshit.” Tanner’s all puffed up, like someone hooked him up to an air compressor full of anger.
“Well, it’s our number, too. It’s—”
“It’s Brent’s IQ,” John Cullen says from over Brent’s shoulder.
Which is ridiculous, and not just because IQs don’t go that high. It could be the number of jelly beans in Brent’s head. But all I hear is that it was John Cullen’s idea to
take our number. Brent’s not capable of coming at us with anything other than rude hand gestures and insults to our mom. But John Cullen is.
I hate John Cullen.
So much.
“It’s not our fault you didn’t register it sooner,” Brent says.
“Doesn’t matter. The skills don’t come with the number,” Tanner says, still sticking his chest out like he’s inviting something.
He is inviting something.
He’s been waiting for this since last fall.
I zigzag around boats, trying to get to my brother. And I’m not the only one heading his way. Randy takes huge strides in the same direction, his shirt still wet with Coke.
“Low blow, little Hinks,” Randy says, still a few feet out from the argument.
“Did you just call me a little Hink?” Brent yells.
“Damn straight I—”
“We can’t do this. It’s just a number.” I step in front of Tanner and push back into his chest to keep him out of this.
“This is about a lot more than a number,” Tanner says.
I know he’s right.
I dig my heels in and throw my arms out to keep my brother behind me as I stare into Brent’s pointy face. Tanner’s feet stay planted, and after a long second, his body relaxes. “We’ll settle it on the water.”
“Nah,” Brent says, his eyes trained on Randy. “I need an apology right now for that little Hink shit.”
“Here’s your apology.” Randy holds out his meaty fist in a single-finger salute. He takes a step closer to Brent. “Now where’s mine?”
“I’ve got it right here!” Brent shoves his hands into Randy’s chest.
Randy shoves him back.
John Cullen tugs on Brent’s shoulders, trying to pull him away. Tanner and I do the same to Randy.
“Leave it, dude. You’ve got to race tomorrow,” Tanner tells Randy.
But Brent breaks free and shoves Randy backward into Tanner. Randy doesn’t fall, but Tanner lands on the grass.
Then Randy is chest-to-chest with Brent. “Screw you, Hink.”
