come out of the media room adjacent to the coach’s office. His junior teammates were gathered around him chuckling. Dayton walked down pool side to be near where Jack was warming up and addressed him.
“I know how much you love your father’s music,” he said to Jack, “and I think this song is apropos for you guys today.”
Jack stood up in the water listening to the music, overlooking Dayton, and then shook his head as if to say you don’t know what you’ve done. “Dayton,” he said, looking at his smug teammate, “you’ve pumped me up big time.” After that, he dove under. His back submerged with such power Dayton’s smirk disappeared, replaced by an expression of irritated concern.
After warm ups, Coach Ross assembled the swimmers near his office. “I’ve decided to alter the medley somewhat by putting the breast stroke last.”
Jack understood exactly what the alteration meant. He and Dayton would go head-to-head one last time.
Then Coach Ross walked, clipboard in hand, down the side of the pool to the far end where the starting blocks stood. Jack watched. The relay was ready to begin. The coach surveyed the fifty meter pool that lie before him, its water still calm. His assistant coaches would officiate. He had directed one to the middle of the pool and one to the dividing wall at the far end. Then he told the swimmers to take their places.
Above the pool, lamps spread the entire length, radiating heat and light. Jack glanced at the line of swimmers before him as they passed directly under the lamps heading to the starting blocks. They looked illuminated. Flashes of their Duke blue and white swim trunks stood out as they moved. The entire natatorium seemed aglow and a palpable energy suffused the air.
Jack stopped as if to take it all in; perhaps conscious of the fact he was looking at his 2001 team for the last time. He looked briefly up at a banner behind him. It read Duke Men’s Team-2001 Big East Champions. Then he turned back toward the pool. He heard the coach announce, “Swimmers, let’s go.”
The relay teams lined up, Jack included. Juniors took lane three, seniors lane four.
The back stroke would go first. The swimmers involved entered the water. Coach Ross checked his officials and then raised the starting gun. Bang, the race was on.
Indiscriminate cheering came from the sides of the pool from underclassmen who looked on with admiring zeal as they watched the junior back-stroker immediately pull ahead. After the first hundred, the juniors were ahead by half a body length. The second leg commenced with butter fliers bolting out from the blocks into churned up water, their arms flying out, up, and over in syncopated unison down the fifty meters where the swimmers dipped into their turns at the wall before blasting back up, all the while kicking, arms turning, and the junior lead growing to a full body length.
Then the third leg, free stylists set free into the water, their streamlined elegance returning some measure of calm to the hitherto agitated pool. Bulleting down and back, they raced faster with this more graceful stroke. But now the junior was not able to sustain the half body length per every hundred lead set in the first two legs. So that coming into the last leg of the relay, the juniors would have to settle for Dayton having just over a body length lead on Jack. Dayton waited to watch his teammate touch the wall and then launched out. Then the senior touched and Jack was in.
He had stood atop the block like an artist’s sculpture of the perfect swimmer: V-shaped, finely wrought, powerfully contained. But when the touch came he uncoiled, exploding off the block, instantly enlivening the race. His long muscular body glided over the water before perfectly piercing a calm pane of it, like light going through glass. Underneath the water for what looked like a third of the pool, his arms pressed against his sides and extended down to his straightened knees, he torpedoed toward the far wall before breaking the water’s surface without resistance. Then he pulled his body in the shape of a cross, the ideal consequence of a beautifully performed stroke.
Dayton fought to hold his lead but where he fought, Jack flowed, the water yielding to his masterly stroke. In a steady, powerful rhythm, Jack surged onward, gaining on Dayton. His kick was so powerful he covered greater distance with every surging stroke. He was a demonstration of the ultimate breast stroke rhythm: pull, breathe, kick, glide . . . pull, breathe, kick, glide . . . gliding powerfully up toward Dayton. So that while Dayton still held the lead going into the wall at the turn, time turned with Jack favoring him going into the last fifty. Dayton fought the water and the clock as Jack, almost breathlessly, came on. One body length from the lead was gone. And then by mid pool in the last fifty, half again of the junior lead disappeared. And there Dayton might as well have stopped for looking back. He turned to see where Jack was and that was all.
The juniors on the side of the pool numbly witnessed the dissolution of a sure thing. Jack took one deep breath and returned Dayton’s glance with a kick and glide that brought him side by side with his rival. And then it was as if Jack had found another gear, as if some invisible motor ignited inside him to propel him. He broke ahead in a surge that didn’t fade. Power gliding to the wall Jack touched first, a half body length ahead of Dayton, setting a school record for his split.
“Christ,” Dayton yelled, coming out of the pool. But Jack didn’t get out. He swam back and grabbed one of the Duke flag lines flying over the pool. Then with flag line in hand, he did an exhilarated lap around the perimeter of the pool, the blue and white flags trailing behind triumphantly, seniors cheering in delight, juniors awestruck, underclassmen swearing to God to be like Jack. Chant-like, the underclassmen passed the name among them as if they were passing a word made flesh: Jack.
Out of the water at last, Jack was raised up by the jubilant seniors and admired by the entire team. Even the juniors were amazed. Coach Ross cut short the adulation, but he too reveled in the result.
“Seniors, line up,” Coach Ross said, “Team, meet them.”
Everyone knew the drill. The senior swimmers formed a line facing another line made by the rest of the team. Then one by one each underclassmen swimmer went down the senior line touching elbows with the seniors like fish touching fins, all the while cheering Duke . . . Duke . . . Duke . . . until after the last underclassmen touched the last senior all hands rose in a wave, like a swimming stroke, up into the air and then down again, and in unison Duke Blue punctuated the finish.
After pitched emotions subsided to a more down-to-earth level and the aura of spectacle gave way to post meet banter, several senior and junior swimmers exchanged competitive jabs going back to the locker room, Jack not among them.
“You guys won for one reason,” Bob Evans, a junior, said to some seniors, “Jack.”
Dayton, who was next to Evans, cringed at his remark saying sarcastically, “Praise be to Jack.”
His voice smacked of envy and Evans responded, “Dayton, you sound sour. None of us could have held Jack back today. He was just too good.”
Dayton peered at Evans. “Yeah, well I guess I forgot that while I swim in water, he walks on it.”
Jack had joined the others now and heard Dayton’s remark. He raised his head, his jaw firm, and its muscles stiffening into an expression of reluctant consideration for someone whose ego had been bruised.
“Dayton,” he said, trying to console the perturbed junior, “I’m sure next year, you’ll get my record.”
“Oh my God,” Dayton said, “not only do you crush me but you have to be nice about it. You’re both a strong and kind God. Is that right, Jack?”
“Dayton,” Evans said in disgust, “you’re a terrible loser.”
“Stay out of it, Evans. I don’t like being patronized by Jack is all. We all know the truth. There’s no way I’ll get his record next year. Just like there’s no way Jack will get to Wall Street without an MBA. I won’t ever be the swimmer you are, Jack. But I’ll be damned if I don’t get to Wall Street before you. I’m taking a full year of MBA courses next year, did you know that?”
Jack looked at Dayton with a kind of hopeless dismissal, as if to say you just can’t be nice to some people.