‘Last piece,’ the coaches say. They have said this before every piece. You do not know how many pieces you have done, only that they have all been the last piece. You don’t know if they will ever end.
A rigger screams with every stroke. No one knows whose rigger it is. It could be yours. It could be three-seat’s. The coxswain doesn’t seem to notice. No one seems to notice. Except you: you notice, and you wonder if the rigger is screaming at you.
A wake comes from your side of the boat. Nothing made it. It just appeared off the flat surface of the water. It catches your oarlocks and washes onto the deck. ‘There’s a wake,’ the coxswain says. You knew there was a wake. There is always a wake.
You are in bow seat. You do not know if you are supposed to be rowing. You ask two-seat, and two-seat doesn’t know either. Neither of you row. The coxswain’s voice is crackly and indistinct, and you don’t know what it is saying. It is possible that you should be rowing. It is possible that you should never have stopped.
‘Ten more strokes,’ the coxswain says, and begins to count. Ten strokes go by. Then twenty. Then thirty-four. You have not yet crossed the finish line. You are no longer sure there is a finish line to cross. The coxswain keeps counting.
‘Is that like canoeing?’ someone asks. You cannot tell them apart from the others who have asked you. You think this face is different, but perhaps it is the same face again, and only the passage of time makes you believe it is different. ‘No,’ you tell the face. ‘It’s not like canoeing at all.’
There are not enough wrenches. There are never enough wrenches. Some days it seems as if there might be enough wrenches, but they disappear when you open the toolbox. Someone asks you for one. You have nothing to offer but a shrug and a handful of washers.
The shoes in the women’s boats are too big. The shoes in every other boat are even bigger. The men say they are too small, but you do not see how that could be the case. None of them fit you. Some of them are adjustable. They cannot be adjusted to fit. Some of them rub blisters into your heels. You pretend not to notice.
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