One foot in the single shell like a blue heron lifting off water, I pushed off from the dock and lowered myself into the seat. In twenty strokes I cleared the cove. In twenty more strokes, I was full speed on the racecourse. No basic progression through arms, arms-and-back, arms-back-and-legs. Flat-out explosion on the foot stretchers, the balls of the feet, the body compressing and releasing, catching the water and gliding, recovering, the hands crossing, then rising out to the catch, dropping in, and feet pressing everything I had, everything I wanted, against the stretchers. Five hundred meters and my lungs cramped. My rating at thirty-eight strokes per minute, the sweat starting down my neck, between my breasts.
At 750 meters, Alex Jeffers, the boys’ coach, passed me going the other way, halfway through his piece. His eyes glazed, his cheeks red and sunken, he was finishing. I was beginning. As we hurled ourselves in opposite directions, each body getting smaller, we gave one nod to the other.
Catch, release, my legs springing flat, my feet letting the seat roll back almost to the stops, I sprang. Sculling is repetition, legs driving the stroke, arms continuing momentum, each stroke an effort to overcome the body’s want: to stop, to sink, to split in two. At the end of the lake, I let my shell run. My blades out of the water, hands crossed in my lap, elbows out, my abs holding my back extended at an angle, the scull glided. Bubbles rushed the round hull, no other sounds. With oars as wings, I flew over the water until momentum slowed, and I tucked the oar handles under my arms, bent my knees, and slid my seat up the tracks so I could hug my knees. I was a ball on water. A woman in a single scull. Alone.
No matter where I looked for you, you weren’t there.
The cottonwoods made the air sticky, almost sour. The banks of the lake showed where water used to be. In late August, the banks of the lake were sharp drops in the mud. Little moved. First light spread into the far trees.
At the end of the lake, when first light made birches more yellow than white, I yelled, “Give. Her. Back.”