Chapter 21 — Crew

Anyone who thought Billy Edwards was enduring an unhappy winter at Kennebec Academy would have been far wide of the mark. Edwards, Cluett, Henry Phillips, Alec Horton, Tim Feineman, Geordie Melton, Butch Hummelman and a shifting constellation of others took their classes as they came and dropped them at the bell. They played pick-up hockey on the pond, threw snowballs, chased each other through the halls, rough-housed in the Common Room, played video games, skied stiff-legged down the hill behind the gym, read comic books and talked and talked. With Geordie’s father’s shotgun they murdered a rabbit and tried to cook it in the wet woods. They devoured the remains partly steamed, partly smoked, partly burned and mostly raw. They complained loudly about the school food, declared it unfit for human consumption, but never missed a meal and left on the plates not enough to bait a hook. They perpetrated on the faculty the age-old tricks involving water, chalk in the erasers, pencil sharpener shavings in the window shades, a strategically placed alarm clock. They put a live mouse in Alice’s desk drawer, but the mouse escaped before she opened the drawer. A grand plan for introducing a stuffed skunk at a dance was aborted by an alert chaperone. They tolerated the academic life, but occasionally a spark caught tinder. Alec discovered chemistry, generated oxygen supervised from afar by Mr. Colburn, and burned a wad of steel wool to the delight of the observers. An experiment with aluminum powder, ferric oxide and magnesium was halted just short of an incendiary bomb. Henry Phillips liked algebra, really understood it, and devised horrible word problems for Mr. Marvin. Mr. Marvin caught Billy’s attention by requiring him to come regularly for extra help in math. He led Billy slowly and logically through the first steps in algebra. Billy seemed to understand it but quickly forgot what he had learned the week before. The relationships of numerator to denominator, term to factor, and one side of an equation to another could not compete with Kipling. The compelling rhythms of the romantic poetry and the fast-moving sympathetic short stories held him in the library for hours. For the most part the older boys paid little attention to the ninth graders, but the dark days of winter roused a few sadistic natures. It suddenly became very funny for no discernible reason for one to ask another a question and on getting the answer to intone in loud and scornful tones, “Cut the Crap” and knuckle the victim twice on the muscle of the upper arm. Many ninth graders bore painful bruises. One night after study hall Walter Edgehill on a routine patrol of his upstairs hall found Butch leaning over a washbasin coughing, blowing his nose, wiping his eyes in obvious distress and trying not to cry. “What in the world happened to you, Butch?” “They gave me a whirly.” “What’s a whirly?” “They put your head in the pot and flush.” Walter, outraged, burst into the hall, opened doors, conducted an inquisition. At length he tracked down the perpetrators, who declared that Butch was a little wise-ass and asked for all that he got. On being asked for the fiftieth time to “Cut the Crap,” Butch had answered,” And leave you headless, craphead?” and ran. He was caught at the dead end of the hall and whirlied. However, the knuckle on the muscle went on. “What day is it?” “Tuesday.” “It is not. It’s February 3! Two for lying!” Two for laughing, two for wearing mittens, two for asking why, two for nothing. Two more for nothing.

Billy, among others, got his share too. He snatched one hat too many. “Turkey” Morrison ran him down, enveloped him from behind, grabbing him behind both knees, and doubled him up, squeezing him so he couldn’t get his breath, then carried him thus, crowing and gasping to the big tin trash barrel at the end of the corridor and stuffed him in, butt first. Billy could only wiggle his legs and flap his arms helplessly until Johnny hauled him out, incidentally and not entirely unintentionally capsizing the barrel and kicking the contents around the floor. Let them clean it up. Not our dorm! On one memorable Saturday, Gus Cunningham and Alice took Billy, Johnny, Alec, and Butch to Camden skiing in the Snow Bowl. Billy wasn’t very good at it and Butch had never seen skis until he came to Maine, but with Alice and Gus to get them started on the beginners’ slope they learned fast. Alec and Johnny took the tow to the top, zigged and zagged with Christy and snowplow turns. Alice and Gus disappeared up the cross country trail and returned to find the boys had all tried too much, had got thoroughly soused in snow and entangled in their skis but had emerged unhurt. They all feasted exorbitantly on coffee and cocoa, hamburgs and French fries, and returned to school in the dusk tired, and only lightly salted with French.

Excerpts from a letter to Mr. Edwards from the guidance director in late February, including comments from teachers:

“... Billy has a very weak background in English grammar but reads imaginatively and participates enthusiastically in class discussion ... Billy’s study of history is desultory at best. If he would give more attention to the text and less to his comrades, he could do much better ... His social adjustment is proceeding well ... Billy is still weak in the fundamentals of mathematics but with regular extra work is gaining slowly ... seems to have mastered the metric system at last and is taking some interest in laboratory work … should seek help when difficulties arise ... if he would work harder, his grade would improve ... has been liberated from French 1 pending the formation of a new class suited to his level of mastery ... confident that his native intelligence will assert itself if not pushed too hard.”

Peace, Andy Andrew Sloan, PhD. Guidance Director

Mr. Edwards was in Los Angeles on business when the letter arrived. Mrs. Edwards read it, sent Billy a box of homemade cookies, and put the letter on Mr. Edwards’s desk, where it was snowed under beneath a blizzard of bills. In what he called his “over-emphasis room,” Mr. Whitmore, crew coach, and Jock Peterson, captain, were going over a school list. Around the walls just under the ceiling ran a frieze of framed 8 x 10 pictures of Kennebec crews for the last twenty years. Here hung, under glass, an ancient Yale rowing shirt taken from the back of a Yale stroke in a regatta long past. A silver medal won at the American Henley hung on a faded ribbon. Cups and bowls engraved with names and dates stood on bookcases. A twelve-foot sweep oar with Princeton colors hung over the window. A bronze medal from a recent Head race lay in its velvet-lined box in front of a photograph of its owner rowing a single shell. The coach had been – still was – a strong, skillful, active oarsman and looked the part. “We seem to have enough strong backs and weak minds to move three shells anyway with some big new boys coming up, but what about coxes, Jock? Poole is too big now. We might turn him around and make a stroke of him for the fifth or sixth boat. He has big feet and is sure to grow. Martin graduated. That idiot Merton is going out for baseball and wasn’t much anyway, and that leaves the first four boats coxless. “We might move some of last year’s coxes up from the lower boats,” suggested Jock tentatively.

“We still have Phillips, a smart kid if a bit on the heavy side, and Joe Hanson might still be small enough. What about new boys?” “Let’s go down the list.” They came to Edwards, William T., Jr. “He might be a possibility, sir. He isn’t too big and seems bright and quick. Lives in Chelsea House.” “We might have trouble with him. Been failing math and doing extra work with Marvin. Hanshaw probably won’t let him row if he’s failing math.” “Joe Rotch and Sam Reed live in Chelsea House. They might be able to boost him along a little in math. And Mr. Cunningham lives on his floor.” “Well, he’s a possibility. Who else do we have?” They came to Hummelman. “Jock, who or what is Cecil Oscar Hummelman?” Jock laughed. “Butch, they call him. He’s a great little kid. Came just after Christmas and lives in McFarland House. He’s small and quick as a flea. He’d be great if we could get him. Want me to try?” With a flicker of his eyelid that belied his words, the coach warned, “Now, Jock, you know that all the coaches have agreed that there is to be no recruiting of athletes. We must not urge anyone to go out for crew, especially anyone who might be an asset to another sport. Exert no pressure Jock; offer no reward. But I can see no reason why you should not inquire concerning his inclinations toward spring athletics.” Thus it happened that one day in the latter part of March, Butch, in hot pursuit of Alec, was halted in mid flight, jerked off his feet, by the long strong arm of destiny. As he hung breathless on that arm, his feet off the ground, Jock Peterson asked, “Hey, kid, you want to be a cox?” “What’s a cox?” asked Butch when Jock had set him gently on his feet. “The little guy who sits in the stern of a shell and steers. Try it. You’ll love it. Come down to the boathouse tomorrow at 2:30 and wear your warm jacket. Be there!” And thus it further fell out that the next day, one of those March days that hints of May, Butch, weighing 105 pounds, found himself sitting in a very fragile boat 45 feet long, just over a foot wide, with less than 1/8 of an inch of plywood separating him from the frigid Kennebec. Most of what he could see consisted of the broad shoulders and deep chest of Jock Peterson, 185 pounds of mature young man. By looking around Jock’s knees, Butch could see something of the Kennebec ahead and two oars to starboard and two to port, one of which was in Jock’s strong hands. Behind Jock sat three other behemoths, one of whom was Joe Rotch. Jock spoke gently to Butch. “Just do what I tell you, now, Butch, and we’ll go for a boat ride. Say. ‘Set it up.’” “Set it up,” quavered Butch. “Ready All” “Ready All” “Forward” “Forward” “Row” “Row” The shell leaped under Butch as Jock and the crew caught the river, threw their weight on the oars, and drove forward. They slid aft and again all four hit the water together. Again the shell leaped under Butch, and again. The shell seemed to absorb the life and energy of its crew, life and energy that seemed to flow through Butch like an electric shock. It was the most exciting feeling Butch had ever had. The slow whisper of the slides as the crew reached for the water, the “click-slam” of the oarlocks on the catch, then that exhilarating rush, the swash of the oars leaving the water, the slowing glide of the recovery and again

the “click-slam” and lift of the catch. When big Jock reached toward him, hit the oar with all 185 pounds, his whole body emanated controlled physical force. Never had Butch been so close to such power. “Pull on your starboard rudder line on the recovery, Butch, and keep us near the bank and out of the tide,” said Jock, quite unexcited. Butch realized he had a responsibility, found he could steer to keep in the lee of the bank and make it easier for his crew. This was heady stuff for a little boy from Lemon Blossom, Florida, who had lived most of his life on the run from “big kids.” Jock coached him gently up the river, gave him the orders one at a time to turn the shell around. Then, “Take her home, Butch.” “Ready all. Forward. Row,” commanded Butch. He was not playing a part now. He was really doing it. He piloted the boat back down the river, avoiding a drifting pulp log, and as he approached the float, “Way enough.” The four big kids stopped at his command. Coached again by Jock, he got the boat alongside, the crew ashore, the boat back on the rack, the oars in their places. Wiping the salt off the varnished shell with an old towel, he was warmed to overhear Jock tell the coach, “He’ll do. He’s a bright kid and he’ll learn fast.”

However, Billy Edwards sitting in the stern of the third shell with Sam Reed at stroke ahead of him had a very shaky start. Gus Cunningham, coach of the third and fourth crews, had led Billy through the ritual commands of getting the crew and himself into the fragile shell, had warned emphatically of the danger of touching the bottom of the boat with hand or foot lest the planking split, letting in the cold Kennebec. Gus had pushed them off from the security of the float and they now drifted in the tide of the cove, the boat feeling very tiddley under them, for although Sam and Ted Murphy at stroke and 3, the two after oars, had rowed last year, the bow pair were new to the sport. Gus ranged alongside in an aluminum outboard motorboat. “Oars flat on the water, hands over your knees; sit up straight.” The boat steadied. “Port, lower your hands a little; starboard raise them.” The boat tipped to port. “Now the other way.” The boat tipped to starboard. “Now set her up straight on her bottom. You see that the balance of the boat depends entirely on the oars regulated by the height of your hands. Lower your hands and the boat tips toward your side. The balance is in your fingertips. “Now, stern pair to row. Bow pair, oars flat on the water and keep the boat set up. Ready, Forward, Row. ... Easy Sam. No power yet.” Sam and Ted bent their knees and let their seats roll aft. “Square your blades and drop them in…Now, lean back easy. Arms, back and legs all together and lift the oar out. Again. Billy, steer out into the river, but keep near the shore out of the tide. Pull on your starboard rudder line to go to starboard.” The boat slowly crawled out of the cove. “Way enough.” The stern pair stopped. “Set her up. Stern pair balance the boat. Bow pair to row.” Suddenly the boat felt tiddley again as the inexperienced pair in excess of zeal, dug their oars too deep or almost missed the water with a great splash. “It’s no use to try to get your oar out at the end of the stroke by pulling into your lap, Mark. Remember when your hands go down, your side of the boat goes down. Pull straight through and lift the oar at the end of the stroke. And Billy, come starboard and miss that great tree coming down on the tide.” It was a long, chilly afternoon for Billy, but by the end of it he found that he could make the boat go where he wanted and could tell by watching the oars how to help the boys keep the boat balanced. Sam helped by telling him the proper commands although he got exasperated, because the boat was always down to port, his side, although Ted on the other side declared it was always to starboard. After several practices, the crew learned to set the boat up at least part of the time and to row all four

together, sometimes for as much as four strokes with their oars off the water on the recovery. Billy listened to everything that came out of the big end of Gus’s megaphone, thought about it, used it when Gus was not alongside, and shouted blame, shame, and encouragement from the cox’s seat. During the second week on another balmy day, when Gus came alongside and leveled his megaphone at the crew, Billy was surprised to see Alice driving the launch. She smiled and waved to Billy, but Gus, with his usual air of colorful frustration, appeared to pay no attention to her. “Sit up straight, bow. Sit up! Your back bends like Robin Hood’s bow. Don’t grab your oar as if you were trying to choke it to death. Loosen up. Relax your hands or you’ll tie your forearm muscles in knots and get wicked blisters ... Bow pair, easy now. Together. Square up your blade, number 2 or it’ll dive straight to the bottom of the Kennebec and you’ll catch the father and mother of a crab. Now lift the blade out of the water at the finish. Don’t drag it out – lift it. Your wrist should arch up a little at the finish. Drop the arch out and lower your hands and the blade will rise out of the salty Kennebec like Diana from her bath.”

After twenty minutes of this barrage, Gus turned to Alice. “Let’s go chase the fourth boat and leave Billy to pilot the Pride of Sagadahoc back to the cove. And Billy, try to get that tribe of monkeys to row more or less together.” As Alice gunned the motor and swung the stern around, she waved to Billy and called, “Courage, mes bràves.” Before spring vacation, Butch and Billy had learned enough to manage the shells and to coach their crews on many of the fundamentals. The crews responded to their cox’s enthusiasm, treated them not like the ordinary run of “little kids” but as special little kids, with a growing respect and affection. Dressing in the locker room after a chilly practice, Jock noticed a bruise on Butch’s right arm, turned him around to look at his left, all green and yellow. “What’s that, Butch? Knuckle on the muscle?” “Yeah,” said Butch, laconically. “Kids in McFarland House, huh?” Butch didn’t answer. However, when he came out of the gym on his way to his room to get his book for the late afternoon class, he found his crew waiting for him. They didn’t say much as they walked together toward McFarland House, Jock leading, Joe on Butch’s right, Jody on his left and Mac Smith behind. They crowded through the door together, up the stairs, marched Butch the length of the hall and back to his room. Most of the doors were open, the occupants getting ready for the last class. The oarsmen left Butch at the door of his room and departed. Gus was delighted with his third boat, kept Sam at stroke and Billy at cox and talked rowing in the dorm, in class, wherever they met. And then came spring vacation. Billy beat the term reports home by two days. Mr. Edwards in eruption was something to behold, but when the safety valve had blown and his bearings cooled, he called Billy before him. “English C+, History C, Science C-, Algebra D+, Special Conversational French Satisfactory”, he read. “Billy’s social adjustment is satisfactory although he is perhaps more ebullient at times than is entirely acceptable. Academically he is improving, and if he is encouraged to find his own way, I am confident that his native intelligence will lead him in the right direction.

Peace, Andy Andrew Sloan, PhD. Guidance Director”

“Son,” declared Mr. Edwards decisively, “this has gone far enough. If the school won’t show you the way, I will. Here is my old algebra book, which got me into Yale. If you can do the problems in SmithFagin, you can do any problems. Start at the beginning of the book and do 10 problems from each exercise

ten per day; and have them ready to show me when I get home at night. “Now, Conversational French must be a fancy name for nothing. There is only one way to learn French and that is to learn what the words mean. Here is a pack of cards with French words on one side and English words on the other. Learn ten of these each day. Learn them; don’t just look at them and go away. And each day go back over the ones you have learned before. That way you can pass any exam they give you. I did.” It was a long, long vacation in Mamaroneck, New York. The school to which the boys returned in April was quite a different place from the slushy, soggy scene of mud time. Grass was already green in sheltered places. Crocuses starred Ruth Floyd’s flowerbeds, and the tulips she had planted the day of the Penobscot football game were spearing through the ground just raked of dead leaves. The treetops had lost the spiky look of winter and were cloudy with new buds. Robins gathered on the football fields and a gentle breeze lifted the red and yellow folds of Captain Kenniston’s house flag at the masthead of the tall flagpole. But soft as the breeze was, it still had an icy edge.

The school clicked into high gear at once. Classes continued as if there had been no vacation. There was some confusion in the gym and locker rooms as spring athletic gear was distributed, but before the chilly dusk shut down, runners pounded around the track, and the thump of the hove shot, the crack of the bat, and the slap of leather on glove was heard in the land. On the river, the first four boats coxed by Butch, Henry Phillips, Billy Edwards, and Joe Manson, were quickly manned and pushed off. Coach Whitty Whitmore, impressively tall, well-built, gray-haired, carried his single shell over his head down the ramp to the float as if it weighed no more than a cigar box, set it afloat and pushed off to coach the first two boats. Some said he did it to show off. Untrue, although his motives were mixed. He did it because the spring made him impatient to get on the water, because he liked to see if he could keep ahead of his first boat for a short piece, and principally because, sitting in a shell himself with two oars in his hands he could demonstrate body work and blade work far better than he could in a launch. Gus Cunningham in baseball cap, football hood, heavy pants and felt-lined boots pushed off in an outboard with a manager at the helm, knowing that April winds have a keen edge and icy salt water quickly draws the heat from human feet through the thin skin of an aluminum boat. Cap Milliken with a dozen boys of various shapes and sizes in the boathouse began sorting them into crews for the fifth and sixth boats and leading them slowly and carefully through the traditional procedure of launching a shell. Despite the balmy start, fickle April brought on three days of cold northeaster with a spit of snow in the air and the river so rough that rowing was out of the question. When it cleared, practice resumed with Coach Whitmore now in a launch. With him rode the Headmaster. He had sprung himself loose from paper work, as he often did, to see for himself how his educational machine was running. On this day he had a hidden reason for visiting the crew. The coach followed the first two boats as they rowed up the river in the quiet water under the west bank. Bodies moved fore and aft with a steady, easy rhythm accented by the sharp rap of the coxes’ toggles on the bang plates and the click-slam of the catch. Astern came the third and fourth boats with Gus alongside. He had persuaded Alice to come along and hold the stopwatch and clipboard for him. His crews were rowing the same easy stroke but a little raggedly with less snap on the catch, an occasional swash as someone washed out and frequent cries of “For God sake set it up.” Gus leveled his megaphone. After fifteen minutes more, Coach Whitmore, alongside the boat ordered, “All right, Jock, let’s try ten power.” Butch called, “Three to get going and ten power. A-one, a-two, a-three” and on the following recovery, “Power ten. Hit it.” Jock reached within inches of Butch’s nose, hit the catch hard, followed

through with awesome power, snapped the oar cleanly out, and grabbed for the next stroke, the crew right with him. The shell lifted under Butch, seemed almost airborne. Each stroke added more speed. Bubbles sang under the thin planking. “…9 ... 10 …Way enough.” The shell coasted, slowed, perfectly balanced with the oars off the

water.

“Oars down.” The coach came alongside. “Pretty good, but a little ragged still. Mac, you were shooting your tail. Get your shoulders on it before your legs. . The Headmaster had watched attentively. “Whitty, these boys ought to win a few. Jock Peterson looks like a first class stroke. Powerful and steady. What were they rowing? About 34?” It’s early in the season yet. My watch said 32. They’re coming, but I don’t want to push them too fast too soon and have them practicing bad habits.” “Whitty, would you mind going with the third and fourth for a bit? I’d like to see how they’re coming along with Gus.” They dropped back to watch Billy and Sam Reed’s boat rowing side by side with Joe Manson’s and Sid Blackington’s fourth boat. The crews, under the Headmaster’s and the head coach’s eye, sharpened up. Sam, in a low voice to Billy, “Get her set up Billy. She’s down to port all the time. Billy watched the oars carefully. “Port, finish high. Starboard hands low. Full reach, Ted. You’re missing water.” “That’s better, Billy. Now let’s put a little muscle on the wood and see if we can leave old Blackie astern. Easy now. No higher stroke. Just a little more power.” “Together. All together. Long and strong.” Sam put a little more weight on the oar, finished sharply. The boat seemed to go faster, but Blackie hung dead even. “We’re not together, Billy. I can feel it. Someone’s early.” Billy watched for three strokes. “Ted, you’re early. You’re trying to lift the whole boat. Together. All together.” Billy found himself even with Blackie instead of Joe. “I’ve got one seat. Give me another, “He leaned forward intensely as if to lift the boat ahead with the steering toggles. “Ease off, third boat,” hailed the coach. “This isn’t the Big Race. Row well, and get together.” “Your third boat stroke and cox are competitive people,” observed the Headmaster. “Sam Reed is not about to eat anyone’s wash. How about your cox, Edwards? Is he any good?” “Excellent. Bright, quick, and small. He doesn’t just sit there and yell ‘Set it up’; he finds out why.” “Glad to hear it, Whitty, but you may lose him. He is not making much progress in math and we may have to jerk him off the river and into softball to give him more study time.” “Hell, he’d be a dead loss at softball. Couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a shovel. He’s doing fine right here and we need him.” “If there was some way to give him a little K.I.P. in math, he might make it. He’s not stupid.” When he returned to the office in the late afternoon after stopping by the intramural softball diamond, he re-read Mr. Edwards’s recent letter. It was a combination of reminiscence and frustration: reminiscence of “the good old days” when education was tough and effective, and frustration at the apparent apathy and aimlessness of the modern teen-ager and the school that had failed to achieve the expected results. Mr. Sawyer replied:

Dear Mr. Edwards: I understand your distress as expressed in your letter of April 6, but apparently you do not understand that your old school has changed with the years as the art and science of education has advanced. Many attitudes and techniques, which were successful in the old days with some boys and very destructive to others, have been modified and improved. Our faculty consists still, I am glad to say, of some who learned their trade in those good old days and who since then have grown professionally. You will remember, for instance, George Hanshaw and Peter Floyd, neither of whom teaches as he did twenty years ago. We have also a number of younger enthusiastic teachers who have learned from their elders, both in formal university courses and in practice. We now have a guidance man trained in that art, who watches as well as he can the impact of the program on individual boys. He wrote you in February after a talk with Billy. You want Billy to go to college. I believe he will. Yet at barely fifteen, in grade 9, he is a long way from being a college man. It will take him three more years at least to acquire the maturity and discipline he will need. You cannot teach maturity and discipline by preaching at a boy. But put him among mature and disciplined people, give him tasks which demand a little more of him each time, and he may grow into a mature and disciplined person. This we are doing. Billy is responding well. Never despair, but give him time and encouragement. He is an intelligent boy; and in my experience, you can’t beat brains. Yale could be in his future yet. Stop in some Saturday this spring and watch him cox a crew. It is a revelation.

Sincerely, Benjamin A. Sawyer, Headmaster

The word of the sword of softball hanging over Billy went swiftly from Whitmore to Floyd to Cunningham to Reed and so it came to pass that one evening very soon after, Sam invaded Billy’s room after study hall. “Billy, let’s see your math homework.” “What for?” “Never mind what for! Get it. If you don’t shape up in math, you’ll get jerked out of our boat and sold to some intramural softball team. Let’s see what you did.” Billy grubbed in his notebook and handed Sam a smudged paper. “God, what a mess, kid. How can anyone read this?” Sam showed him how to lay out the problem neatly. You blew it right here. Plus times minus is minus. Like signs are plus. Unlike signs are minus. Don’t forget it or it’s off to softball.” Sam’s visits continued night after night. He did no actual homework for Billy, but he showed him the way. “When you get a mess of parentheses like this, start in the middle and get the first ones first. Nothing to it. Now you do it.” Later: “Look, dummy, you can’t cancel terms, plusses and minuses. You got to factor the top and bottom and then cancel factors. Cancel factors only or you’re out in left field.” One night they got into a problem about a boat rowing downstream and then rowing up. Billy had a sudden revelation akin to a religious experience when he realized that the negative velocity of the current applied to the positive velocity of the boat was a case of adding a negative number, and the whole confusion of positive and negative numbers shook itself out in his mind. Under the pressure of Sam’s insistent presence and the threat of softball, Billy’s native intelligence and growing maturity connected with Mr. Marvin’s patient teaching. Algebra began to assume a hazy logic, and then became possible, then tolerable, then a puzzle he could solve if he stayed at it. Softball faded astern.