The Rivalry (12 page)

Susan Carol reread the letter three times, getting a little angrier each time. And just a little bit scared.

She forwarded the email to Stevie and called him immediately.

“Miss me already?” he said, answering the phone.

“Go read your email,” she said.

“What’s up?”

“Just go read! I’ll wait while you do.”

“Okay, okay.” She could hear clicking and then Stevie saying, “Whoa … whoa … WHOA!

“Gee, Susan Carol,” he said, finally done reading. “Usually I’m the one to shoot off my mouth and get in trouble.”

“I know, that’s why I called—I figured you’d know what to do.”

“Honestly? I usually do nothing and it blows over.”

“But how can I say nothing? Did you see what he said? He called me a liar and said I’d committed libel and threatened to sue and—”

“Hang on, hang on,” Stevie said. “The guy is clearly an idiot. Anyone who saw the game or the replays knows the officials screwed Navy. He’s just trying to cover that up by complaining about you.”

“And I suppose you’d be this calm if it were you they were calling a liar?”

He thought about that one for a second. “No, probably not. I’d be furious, like you. But then I’d also have you to calm me down.”

“I guess. But, Stevie, people are going to read this and believe him.”

“Maybe a few. But not anyone who saw the game. And certainly not anyone who knows you.”

Susan Carol had to admit to herself that she and Stevie were spoiled. They’d gotten used to having people tell them how talented they were. This was the first time someone had publicly called her out on a story.

“So, you don’t think I should respond?”

“That I don’t know. See what Bobby and Tamara think.”

When she spoke to them the next morning, Tamara was philosophical.

“Oh, Susan Carol, I’m sorry. But letters written by angry people are a part of the job. Harold Neve is writing so he can show all his referees, not just Daniels, that he backs them up when they get criticized.”

“Even when they’re wrong?” Susan Carol said.

“
Especially
when they’re wrong,” Tamara said. “Listen, you’re going to get
hundreds
of these in your career. People are going to call you names, they’re going to call you a liar, and sometimes they’re going to say things about you that are completely untrue.

“I once wrote a story about a basketball coach who showed me a letter in which the president of his school promised to raise money to renovate and modernize their gym. When the story came out, the president told the coach if he didn’t sign a letter to the editor saying no such letter had ever existed, he’d be fired.”

“So what’d he do?”

“He signed the letter, then sent a copy of the president’s original letter to my boss so he’d know I had it right, which was incredibly decent of him. But still, everyone who read the letter to the editor thought I’d somehow made the whole thing up.”

“Wow,” Susan Carol said. “I’d have wanted to kill that president.”

“I did want to,” Tamara said. “But you have to understand that when you tell the truth, there will be people who don’t want to hear it. This is one of those times.”

Kelleher took the phone then and said, “Really, Susan Carol. Don’t sweat it. Harold Neve wrote almost the exact same letter about me eleven years ago. I wrote about that line judge who robbed Navy of certain victory by incorrectly moving the ball up a yard and giving Notre Dame a first down in the last minute. Neve wrote a letter questioning my integrity, my manhood, my breeding—everything. He never addressed the fact that his guy screwed up. This is the same thing. Notice he says nothing about the two calls, just that you’re a bad guy for pointing them out.”

Talking to them all made Susan Carol feel a little better. But only a little.

It seemed to Susan Carol that Thanksgiving Day would never end.

The only good news was that she and her mother would be leaving after dinner to drive across the state to Charlotte. One of the most important age-group swim
meets of the early season was being held there on Friday morning, and Susan Carol would swim her two butterfly events—the 100 and the 200.

But she spent a lot of the day ducking her two obnoxious cousins and a busybody aunt.

She tried to hide out in the family room with her father, watching the Lions take their annual Thanksgiving mauling—this time from the Bears.

Her dad truly loved football. He had worked for a while as the team chaplain for the Carolina Panthers, and he ran clinics and support groups for people with all kinds of sports addictions. Susan Carol thought he was good at it because he understood—at least a little—how they felt.

But she couldn’t even watch football—bad football at that—without flinching every time a ref’s whistle blew.

“Suzy Q, you need to stop brooding about that letter,” her father finally said.

She sighed—he could always read her.

“Do you believe what you wrote is true?” he asked.

“That’s the thing. I keep second-guessing myself. They were terrible calls. There’s no doubt about that. And I believe they should admit they got it wrong and not just dodge the blame by attacking me.” She paused. “But I didn’t really mean to accuse them of cheating, not literally. I was so mad when I wrote it, and I kind of thought the editor at the
Post
would cut out the harshest bits.…”

“But he didn’t?”

“No, Matt Rennie said I’d really nailed them and that they deserved it.”

“Hmm. I don’t know what to tell you, then, sweetie. Next time, try not to write in anger. Words are powerful things. And they can be used to hurt as well as help.”

“Kinda like penalty flags …”

“Huh,” he snorted. “Yes, with great power comes great responsibility.…”

“Now you’re making me Spider-Man!”

“You could do worse than to be a protector of the innocent.”

They both laughed, and Susan Carol did feel better.

“Dad,” she said a while later. “Say a ref really was cheating—how would he do it?”

“Susan Carol. Don’t decide they’re guilty just because
you
feel guilty for accusing them.…”

“No, really, just hypothetically. I know you know about this stuff from your clinics.”

“Well, hypothetically, I guess a ref could cheat by trying to affect the score of the game. There are lots of different ways to bet on football. The most obvious is to just pick the winner—but usually that involves odds. For example, if you wanted to bet the Bears to win straight up today, you’d probably have to give about five-to-one odds. That means if you win a dollar, the person you’re betting with wins five if the Lions win.”

“What else?” Susan Carol asked.

“Most people bet with the points because there are no odds involved,” he said. “In this game, the Bears are favored, I think, by six and a half points. That means if you bet on the Lions and they lose the game by six points
or less—or win, obviously—you win the bet. If the Bears win by seven points or more, the people betting on the Bears win. Sometimes a few points either way could make a big difference.”

She nodded. “Okay. I know about that. I hear people say they’re ‘taking the points’ all the time. But I also hear people say they bet the ‘under.’ What’s the ‘under’?”

He smiled. “You need to know everything, don’t you? An ‘over-under’ bet is based on the total number of points scored in the game. The bookie—the person you place the bet with—sets the lines, the point spreads, all that. If he sets the ‘over-under’ number at, say, fifty points, then you have a choice: you can bet the ‘under,’ and if the two teams combined score fewer than fifty points, you win. If you bet the ‘over,’ and they score more than fifty points, you win.”

“What if they score exactly fifty points?”

“It’s a push—a tie,” her father said. “No one wins, but the bookie collects the fee you pay to make the bet—usually ten percent.”

“So the bookie is fine with a tie, then, right?”

“Absolutely. The bookie always finds a way to win. Which is why it’s better not to bet. Along with it being illegal in most places.”

Aunt Catherine poked her head in the door. “Football time is over,” she said. “Time for dinner.”

Dinner seemed to take forever, especially after Aunt Catherine decided she didn’t think her brother’s blessing was “adequate.”

“I think we should be more thankful than that, don’t you?” she said.

“I thought he was plenty thankful,” her mom said.

“And I’m plenty hungry,” her dad said.

Susan Carol was in the car with her mom, getting nervous about her swims the next morning, when she got a text from Stevie:
When u r done w/dinner call me
.

She called right away.

“Bobby just called,” he said.

“On Thanksgiving?”

“Big sports day. Plus, he always works, you know that. Anyway, he said one of his political buddies has a source inside the White House who says there’s talk about canceling the president’s appearance at the game.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah, and guess who Bobby wants to try to find out what’s going on from the Secret Service?”

“Why us?” she said, not even bothering to answer the rhetorical question. “He’s the one who’s friends with those guys.”

“He thinks we’re less threatening.”

“I guess we are,” Susan Carol said.

“Well, I am, anyway. I know some officials who feel pretty darn threatened by you.”

“Not funny!” Susan Carol said—though it kind of was.

“How are you doing, now that the letter is in print?” Stevie asked.

“Okay, I guess. I didn’t mean to say they’d blown the game on purpose, really. But man, those were bad calls! I don’t know how they got it so wrong.”

“Well, shake it off; you’ve got a big meet tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Good luck. I hope that piano doesn’t land on your back.”

“Thanks for bringing it up.” She snapped the phone shut.

Susan Carol had smiled when Stevie mentioned the piano, because she knew he was showing off his newfound knowledge of swimming. He had actually tried to learn more about her sport and had mostly patiently listened to what he not-so-patiently called her “geek talk” about it.

The scariest event going for any swimmer was the 200 butterfly. The 400 individual medley was exhausting, and you could really, really hurt swimming the 200 in any stroke because it wasn’t a pure distance event or a pure sprint event. But there was nothing quite like the 200 ’fly.

Butterfly was the only stroke in which it was possible for an in-shape, seasoned swimmer to not finish. You had to get both arms out of the water at the same time
and
get your body up out of the water far enough to complete each stroke. If you ran out of gas, it was entirely possible that you would not be able to get your arms out of the water at the finish. It was not an uncommon sight to see a butterflyer—even a good one—almost come to a stop five yards from the wall.

Every butterflyer who ever lived had a story about it. The lingo was, “Ten yards out, the piano landed on my back.”

Stepping onto the blocks the next morning for the 200 ’fly, Susan Carol wasn’t thinking about the piano. She was thinking about keeping her stroke as smooth as possible, making sure not to over-kick the first 150 yards. She’d broken a minute in her 100 ’fly, which was a good sign this early in the year, and now she wanted to make sure her 200 ’fly was just as solid. She wasn’t looking for spectacular—not in November anyway.

Susan Carol looked to her right, saw Becky Asmus, and reminded herself to ignore her once they were in the water. Susan Carol was tall and lean. Becky Asmus was built like a linebacker and so strong that no one in their age group could come close to her. An ideal time for Susan Carol in this race would be about 2:10, maybe 2:12. Asmus would be closer to 2:00. Susan Carol wanted nothing to do with her.

For one hundred yards, Susan Carol swam perfectly. Her stroke was smooth, and she was about a body length behind Asmus. She was a little surprised during the third fifty when Asmus appeared to be coming back to her. And even more when they were just about even at the 150-yard turn.

Either Asmus was swimming the slowest 200 ’fly of her life, or Susan Carol had picked up her pace a little too much during the third fifty. Sure enough, she began to feel her arms tightening as she hit the wall at the 175. Asmus,
predictably, was pulling away. That didn’t bother her. The way her arms felt as she came up out of the last turn did.

KICK, she screamed to herself, knowing that was the only chance she had to keep from going vertical. She could see the flags ahead of her. If she could just get there, she could put her head down the last five yards and dive into the wall. But her arms were gone. The piano had landed.

STAY LEGAL was her new mantra the last ten yards. She did—her arms barely getting above the water. By her unofficial count she needed nine strokes for the last ten yards. Normally she needed nine strokes for an entire length of the pool.

She finally hit the wall and pulled her goggles up to look at the time. Her heart sank: 2:16.79. She had still finished second in the 13–14 age group, but the time made her want to punch something. Which she did, pounding the wall with her hand.

Coach Brennan put an arm around her when she got out of the pool. “The third fifty …”

“I know,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “We won’t talk about it now. Just make sure you get in the water and work hard on your own the next few days while you’re away.”

She nodded. She went into the showers and burst into tears. No one, except another butterflyer, could know how much that piano hurt.

B
y Saturday, Susan Carol had mostly shaken off her bad swim and the letter to the editor. Or at least put them in the back of her mind. She was too busy to brood. Stevie was running down the schedule for their afternoon at West Point.

“The team practices at three o’clock. We’re seeing Coach Ellerson in his office at one thirty, and Tamara’s talking to the superintendent at two. We’ve got to write some kind of story, maybe two, for the Sunday papers after practice. They’ll really start gearing up the coverage in the Sunday papers.”