Carie had brought along her mail and was reading some of it out loud to Jackie and a couple of other rowers who were at Tommy's, none of whom had been lucky enough to get any letters of their own. The men's coxswain and the women's coxswain at Wisconsin had gotten married, and the coach had gone to the wedding and gotten all excited and jumped up and down, Carle announced. Mail gets to be very important when there's nothing at all to do except row and eat and sleep and row again--no T.V., no radio, no way to cook a meal, no mobility, no way to get away from people. Jackie was complaining. "You're dependent on others--I hate that."

The talk turned to the eternal subject, rowing, then to someone who'd been injured and had to drop out, then to Maggie.

"I have no sympathy with that kind of thing." Carle said, shaking her head. "My attitude is, you either make it or you break it."

"Yeah," Jackie agreed with vehemence. "It's her own fault. She should have known what she was capable of, she should have worn gloves or something. And you don't go crying to the coach or any of that stuff either. I mean, you can't go crying to the coach saying I have my period today and I don't feel well--I could have done that, I have my period today. But you don't, you just go out there. It's a kind of macho thing, really."

"Really, you just can't have sympathy with that kind of thing." Carie seemed to be trying to explain, to soften the harshness. "This is the big time--well..." She paused and looked at Jackie for confirmation. "Yeah, this is the big time, and you have to know what you're doing. You either make it or you break it."

* * * * * *

It had been a quiet afternoon in Eliot House, with just a few people hanging out in the courtyard and most apparently napping. Maggie's door had had a sign on it all afternoon that said "Sleeping," but at about 4:10 Harry Parker had knocked on the door and gone in. At about 4:20 he had emerged.

Now, at 5, he was standing on the pier at Newell waiting patiently for the joking and the chatting to subside so he could get down to business. Soon there were ten women sitting quietly on the bench, and he had their attention. He began quietly, in his deep, sonorous voice.

"I've...spoken to Maggie, and I...told her she won't be with us." He paused, scanned the group, and gave them a quick smile. "I guess now I can congratulate you all, and I guess now you can relax a little too. I'm sorry this past week has been quite as full of tension as it has. I just...wanted to give Maggie a chance and...see if she was capable of helping us."

The group was quiet, attentive. Parker continued, "Now I guess the question is when the boat will be settled. I guess the question I have for you is whether you'll be comfortable with having not eight people settled, but having ten of you all capable, and at some time I'll tell you what I think will be the best setup." He paused, seeming to sense the dissatisfaction. "If that proves to be too unnerving. I'd be willing to settle it. But that's my inclination right now." The group nodded, signaling their acceptance.

"There'll be no more seat-racing for a while"--Parker flashed a grim little smile--"but we might just want to look at a question or two." Scattered, hisses and some laughter broke the tension in the air. Carie Graves, who was sitting on the ground, started wriggling her six foot one inch frame. "I think a spider just crawled up my pants," she explained. The laughter spread, and the attentive silence was over. Questions were being directed at Parker from all directions, questions about the future. What about breaking the time standard? What kind of a boat would they have in England? How much time would they have to practice in it?

As the group broke up to get the boat ready, the atmosphere was relaxed, happy, almost festive. Chris Ernst, who seemed to be the team joker--the T-shirt she was wearing said "Slippery When Wet...isn't everybody?"--was keeping up a running commentary on the process of preparing the boat. At one point she came in making a low whistling noise by blowing through her hands, and soon everyone was sputtering through their clenched fists.

Lynn Silliman, the coxswain, who is only 16 and looks like a 13-year-old blonde-haired, pug-nosed tomboy, had seized the water bottle the crew takes out on the river and was impishly squirting Carie, who looked to be about twice her size. Lynn is obviously younger than the rest of the group, whose average age is 23--when Lynn saw Parker's son George reading a comic book called The Inkumans, she grabbed it and asked with keen interest, "Oh, have you read Swamp Things?"--but no one seems to notice the age gap too much, and today her mood was obviously in keeping with that of the team, Soon everyone was squirting everyone else.

Even when the boat had been heaved into the water, in an orchestrated response to the orders Lynn had barked out, the clowning around continued. A frisbee flew out from the direction of the boat house and looked seriously in danger of hitting the water, before Nancy Storrs made a deft catch and tossed it back. It went straight up, curved, and landed splat in the river. Everyone groaned. "Okay," Nancy said, "do I jump in now or later?"

But soon the frisbee was retrieved and the eight was on the water--eight pairs of knees bending up, eight oars gliding through the water, eight bodies pulling back, the whole thing working like a smooth, strong precision machine. The boat sped up the Charles, leaving behind Jackie Zoch who had been told to go out on a pair this afternoon.