Chris Crutcher - Whale Talk

Chris Coughlin watches him with anxiety you can almost feel. Icko walks over and puts a hand on Jackie’s forearm. Mott says, “Hey, man, them fuckin’ jackets are ugly anyway.”

Jackie gasps for air, convulses again, shaking his head.

“Naw, really,” Mott says, “they are.”

“It’s not the jackets,” Jackie says, doubling his word count for the season. “It’s…”

We wait while he works to catch his breath.

“It’s…I don’t know what I’m going to do when this is over. I never belonged to…anything. I was never on a team, never chosen for…” He stops, breathes again. “When I got on this team, I couldn’t believe it. I kept wondering when you guys were going to find me out and make me leave. The reason I haven’t said anything all year was so you wouldn’t notice me. I didn’t want to bump anything, you know? It’s like when there’s a mean dog, you just stand there and hope he doesn’t see.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head from side to side. “What happens when this is over? God, what am I gonna do?”

Icko grips Jackie’s shoulder. “You’re gonna do whatever you have to do to keep this alive,” he says. “We ain’t a mean dog. Right now, you’re gonna get up and help T. J. swim this race. Then we’re gonna order some hella pizza, as you guys say, an’ have us a goddamn victory party.”

“Hell,” Mott says, “none of us could swim worth a shit. We’ll find somethin’ else we can’t do worth a shit an’ turn out for that in the spring. Wanna coach a rugby team, sir? Then, hell, come summer, maybe we’ll turn out for Little League.”

Because I qualified fourth in the two hundred, I don’t have an inside lane, but I kept myself out of fifth and sixth spots, so I’ll still be close enough to see the leaders.

Warm-up feels good, my stroke powerful. This is it. I’m planning the race as I swim, accelerating into my turns and coming out of them as if on a sling.

Ray Roscoe warms up two lanes over, and we’re gliding through the water stroke for stroke. For a brief second I wonder-if everything goes just right, could I take him?

The guys line up low on the bleachers, waving their towels in support. Apart from Tay-Roy, they look wounded, once again handed second-class citizenship. I hate Benson; I hate Barbour. Those assholes set us up-man, they have to have it all-and all of a sudden I have new resolve for this race.

The starter calls us to the blocks-“Swimmers, take your marks.” The starting gun pops and I am stretched out over the water, surging with the adrenaline my fury creates.

The ride home is a trip. We stay long enough to collect my hardware and say good-bye to some of the other swimmers, then load up the Winnebago, stop in Issaquah long enough to take on a cargo of pizza and soft drinks, and get out on I-90 for the four-hour trip home. In the foothills of the Cascades rain begins, turning to snow as we climb toward Snoqualmie Pass.

Simet tells Icko to please not wreck the Winnebago, since we are laid out in it like our first college apartment, and it would be hard to explain to the state police why no one was strapped in.

“Won’t have to explain it,” Icko says. “We’ll all be dead.”

Dan explains to Chris that no one is really going to die, and though Chris doesn’t understand one word in five, he has learned to mine Dan’s tone for the meaning to his sentences. Chris Coughlin is no dummy.

It’s quiet at first, and I believe I’m not the only one thinking about Jackie’s words. He said what the others were afraid to say, that the worst thing about being a loner is getting the chance not to be, then having to go back. I don’t want to talk about endings; this whole thing feels too good to do it only once. I say, “Coach, what are we gonna do about the letter jackets?”

Simet says, “We’re gonna wear ’em with pride.”

“We know how ,” Mott says. “What we wanna know is if.”

Simet turns his captain’s chair around to face us. “Those guys made an agreement,” he says. “They can’t wait until we’re gone, and then go back on it. I’ll take this right out of school and into court.”

Whoa.

Jackie stares out the window. For him the jackets mean nothing. It’s being here. I lean over and put my hand in the middle of his back. “Don’t worry, buddy. We got good times ahead. You ever play any roundball?”

“At home in my driveway,” he says. And then, quietly, “By myself.”

“Well, start working on your jumper and get ready for evolution. We’re gonna rise out of the water to the hard court. Hoopfest, here we come.”

“T. J., I’ve seen you play. You don’t want me on your Hoopfest team.”

“I’ve already won Hoopfest. I mean, look at these assholes,” I say, waving my hand grandly over the premises. “We looked pretty different in swimming gear; imagine us in basketball stuff.”

Jackie probably doesn’t believe me, but I’m dead serious. I see us as a team of role players, very different from other three-on-three teams I’ve put together. There’s a challenge here. I look at Mott, can’t decide whether I like the idea of a one-legged psycho swimmer better than a one-legged psycho hoopster. But that’s for early summer. If we can’t turn them around on the letter jacket thing, I say we go with Mott’s idea of rugby for the spring. Or maybe Australian-rules football.

I walk into the Athletic Council meeting ready for the worst. Simet has shamed them into calling an emergency meeting by accusing Cutter High’s male coaching fraternity of cowardice-that’s the word he used-for the recall on our letters while we were out of town, “attending the State meet, for Christ’s sake.” Now they’re not only pissed off at me, they’re pissed off at my coach.

Barbour asks what I’m doing there. “He’s not a member of this council,” he says. “This is the Athletic Council.”

Benson tells Barbour to cool it but agrees. “T. J., you don’t have any business here.”

Simet says, “He’s here as my guest.” It must not seem worth the fight to Benson, who lets it ride.

We sit at the long, rectangular wooden table in uneasy silence, and Benson calls the meeting to order. Since it’s an emergency meeting called for a specific purpose, he tells us, there is no reason for formalities. “Let’s get to the business at hand, which is the council’s taking another look at the letter requirements for the swimming team. As you know, Coach Simet and T. J., we took a vote last week and agreed that there needs to be a reassessment.”

Simet says, “I am aware of that, and I believe there is some question as to whether that was a ‘legal’ vote.”

“It was decided on by a quorum,” Roundtree says. “That’s the democratic process.”

“The democratic process,” Simet says, “doesn’t include waiting until the opposition is out of town to make decisions. I’m going to make this short. I’ve reviewed the original charter for this council, which goes back to 1955. There is not one piece of paperwork that gives this council the power to dictate the letter requirements for any sport. It has been true, without exception, that the coach of the sport sets the letter requirements for that sport. I will challenge your power to do it differently in a court of law if I have to.”

There are protests and veiled threats, all of which go past Simet as if he isn’t in the room. The council decides to discuss it with Morgan, and possibly the school board, before making a decision.

“You have no decision to make,” Simet says. “This is entirely out of your realm of control. You should know I’ve consulted an attorney.”

“Who said what?” Benson asks.