68 Knots Read online

  “Dinner is served,” Arthur announced with a flourish as they entered the main cabin. He carried a large bowl of spaghetti, and Crystal had a box full of plates and forks.

  Seated at the head of the table, beneath a banner that read “Discipline is the heart of a focused life,” McKinley scowled. “You’re twelve minutes late, and all you’re serving us is spaghetti?” he said. “You call that a meal? Get up on deck, both of you. If that’s all the effort you’re going to put out, then you don’t deserve to eat. Go on! Get out! We’ll eat your lousy spaghetti, and tomorrow I’ll lay down some cooking rules.” He glowered at the crew and the counselors sitting at the table. “You people are pathetic, and it’s my job to straighten you out. I intend to do exactly that.”

  Arthur and Crystal stood silently just inside the cabin door.

  “I told you to get out!” McKinley shouted, leaping to his feet. “Get up to the deck and sit there. Jet, you go with them and keep them out of trouble. Go. Now!”

  The cooks dropped the food and plates on the table and scrambled up the gangway, Crystal muttering a dark curse aimed at McKinley. Hoon Yin followed them out, shaking his head. McKinley sat back down at the head of the table.

  “Now please pass me the spaghetti,” he said to the others with a warm fatherly smile. “After a great day of sailing on this beautiful coastline, I’m hungry.”

  That evening, the air turned chilly, and the lowering sun cast a small path of gold across the waves. The Dreadnought was anchored on the northern side of Burnt Island at the mouth of Muscongus Bay. Lights glimmered from cottages along the rocky beaches on the mainland to the north, and Allen Island to the west blocked much of the flicker and glare from the popular vacation settlement of Boothbay Harbor. Tucked away from the noise of cities and traffic, the ship settled into a quiet evening peace.

  Crystal and Arthur sat on the forward deck, watching the sun and talking quietly. Hoon Yin lingered nearby, not saying a word.

  “This is bullshit,” Crystal said, her hands clenched in tight fists. “This asshole doesn’t have the slightest idea about what he is doing, and we’re all getting fucked because of it. I feel like swimming to shore and screwing this whole project.”

  “I don’t get it,” Arthur said, leaning back against one of the storage lockers on deck. “I mean, I know we’re supposed to be learning how to control our lives and make smart decisions—at least, that’s what my father said when he sent me here—and maybe McKinley is acting this way on purpose for some reason. But I don’t see how we’re supposed to make smart decisions when we’re not allowed to make any decisions at all. All we do is try to figure out the stupid orders he keeps shouting at us.”

  Arthur thought for a moment. “Let’s try to figure that out,” he continued. “Maybe this is some kind of test. Maybe there’s something we’re supposed to learn or do or something, and when we do, he’ll stop treating everybody so badly.”

  “Bullshit,” Crystal said.

  “No, really,” Arthur persisted. “Maybe we’re supposed to organize ourselves and present McKinley with a reasonable, clear set of requests. Maybe he wants to see whether we’ll react like spoiled teenagers or like rational adults. Maybe we’re supposed to set the real rules for this trip—you know, so we take responsibility for making sure things get done, but we also set up rules for how to treat people. Maybe we’re—”

  “Maybe not.” Hoon Yin quietly eased himself onto some vinyl mats. Like the other counselors, he was just a few years older than the teenagers in the crew. He wore his black hair in a casual sweep that made him look thoughtful and at ease, and he spoke in a quiet voice. “What you’re saying makes sense, but it isn’t right. The other counselors and I have been on board for almost three weeks, getting the boat ready for the cruise. McKinley’s been like this the whole time—sometimes really nice, sometimes really obnoxious, but usually rude, arrogant, and selfish. He seems to enjoy pushing other people around. He threatened to fire me once because I wouldn’t call him ‘Commodore.’ We all thought that he was just desperate to get everything ready to go, that he’d lighten up once the campers arrived. But here you are, and he’s just as bad as ever. Today was disgusting. He insulted people, he bullied, he shouted, and he dished out those stupid demotions to nearly everyone on board. I don’t know about the other counselors, but I’ve had just about enough of it.”

  Arthur looked him in the eye.

  “What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

  Hoon shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to do it soon.”

  Sometime after sundown, when the sky turned black and sparkling and the air carried a chilling breeze, McKinley ordered the counselors to run a rope down the center of the deck. He made the campers take a vinyl mat and sit on it on the deck. He took a deep breath, grinned with his pipe clenched between his teeth, and gestured at the night sky.

  “You campers will sleep out here, under the beautiful Maine stars,” he said. “The four boys on the starboard side, the four girls on the port.” He hitched up his belt and took a puff of his pipe. He paced as he talked, his sloppy gait showing no signs of sea legs. “The counselors will sleep below in the mess room, and I’ll sleep in the captain’s quarters. I do not expect to be disturbed. I will open the door to the forward compartment for just a few minutes, so you all have the chance to use the bathroom before I lock up for the night. Any questions?”

  Arthur raised his hand. “Where do we get blankets and things?”

  McKinley glared, his clenched pipe and sloping cap looking comical. “You will address me as ‘Commodore’ whenever you speak to me. Is that clear?”

  Arthur shrugged and nodded.

  “Counselors,” McKinley snapped, his eyes suddenly dark and angry, “issue the sleeping bags.”

  Hoon and the other two counselors opened several large wooden boxes mounted on the deck. They pulled out a haphazard collection of old sleeping bags, all different sizes and shapes, all different colors, all different degrees of decay. Some were small and bulky, some were threadbare, some smelled strongly of mildew and rot. The counselors tossed one bag to each camper.

  “Sleep in these, on top of the mats,” McKinley said. “Make pillows out of your extra clothes.”

  “Excuse me, Commodore,” said Logan—“Marshmallow”—brushing his shaggy red hair out of his eyes. “My sleeping bag’s totally disgusting. I mean, I think some kinda new life-form has hatched in there, and it has athlete’s foot. Do ya have any others I could use?”

  “Do I have any others?” McKinley barked. “Do I have any others? Listen to this guy! He doesn’t like his sleeping bag! It doesn’t suit him. He thinks it’s disgusting! Well, Mr. Marshmallow, that’s just too damn bad. These were the best sleeping bags I could get on the lousy payment your parents paid for this trip, so you’re just going to have to live with it. Understand?”

  The campers were silent.

  The counselors were silent.

  “Good,” McKinley said. “Go use the bathroom. I’ll lock up in five minutes.”

  The next day—Sunday, June 10—was no better. McKinley continued to jab his orders at people, hurling curses and insults whenever he perceived anything out of place, and then suddenly offering kind and helpful advice. When one camper let go of a line she was supposed to tie off, she was ordered to sit at the dining table for the rest of the afternoon. When another took an unscheduled break from scrubbing down the foredeck, he was told to forget about dinner that evening. But when “Bunny” Marietta failed to scramble at McKinley’s command to drop the anchor, he patiently showed her how to work the winch and set the anchor properly. Later, when “Marshmallow” Logan tossed a sarcastic joke at McKinley, his sleeping bag “privilege” was revoked for the night, leaving him to face a frigid night shivering in the Maine air.

  “You can sleep in your underwear, for all I care,” McKinley snarled. “That should teach you some respect.”

  The following day was even worse. McKinley
docked the counselors a day’s pay “for controlling the campers so badly,” and he issued half rations for everyone at dinner. Greg “Fred” Anderson, the tallest and strongest of the counselors, got into an argument with McKinley about a punishment inflicted on the campers, and it looked for a moment like he was going to swing a fist and knock McKinley over the side. Instead, Anderson turned and stormed away, and McKinley aimed his attention at some other crisis.

  And so it continued, with McKinley shouting and pounding his fists, dispensing punishments at the slightest perceived infraction, and then offering warm and supportive comments at unexpected times. He also spent increasing amounts of time—hours at a stretch—locked in his quarters below. He said he was doing some planning and laying out the course, but nothing ever seemed planned, and the course seemed to change without notice. The only clue anyone could gather was the squeaky yump-yump-yump of the toilet flushing. The crew began to hear that sound often.

  It was early one morning, five days into the voyage, that things began to change. The night before, McKinley had ordered the counselors to wake the campers at sunrise “to teach them some much-needed discipline.” He had given them a specific set of navigational directions heading roughly to the northeast, and so shortly after the sun’s arrival, the Dreadnought was crashing its way through the swells. His final order was that he was not to be disturbed until o-nine-hundred hours.

  At about nine o’clock, Greg Anderson, who seemed to function as the senior counselor, gave the helm to counselor Robin Merriman, who flashed a pretty, braces-filled smile. Anderson went below to wake McKinley. As the campers pulled on lines and polished the brass fittings, they could hear Anderson’s knocks and calls well up from below. It was clear that he was having little success. He returned ten minutes later and resumed his place at the helm. “Door’s locked,” he said. “I can’t wake him up.”

  The swells were larger than before, and Crystal, the camper assigned to bow watch, defiantly tightened her grip on the bowsprit. Every few minutes, a gush of salty water would crash against the bow and send torrents of foam slashing through the rigging and slamming against Crystal’s rigid body. “Bring it on!” she shouted to the sea. “Hit me with your best damned shot. You’re not knocking me off of here.” She squeezed the bowsprit between her knees and clenched the rigging in her hands. A wave rose and dropped on her like a wrecking ball. Her tight T-shirt was soaked, and saltwater streamed off her short blond hair and down her neck. “Is that the best you can do?” she shouted, shaking her head like a dog to clear the sting from her eyes. “Bring it on!”

  The wind had whipped into a gale by the time McKinley staggered on deck.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” McKinley shouted over the wind.

  “Storm, sir,” Anderson reported.

  “I can see that!” McKinley snapped. “Why the hell didn’t you steer us to a safe port? Now we’re stuck out here in the middle of the ocean with—”

  “With all due respect, Commodore,” Anderson said sarcastically, “I had no way of knowing the storm was coming. The weather radio is locked in your quarters, and I tried several times to get you—”

  “Don’t give me your excuses, Mister Anderson,” McKinley shouted. “You were at the helm. You were responsible. You should have—”

  At that moment, a huge breaker crashed over the rails and onto the deck, unleashing a torment of foam. McKinley and Anderson clung to the wheel as the water pounded against their bodies. When the wave passed, Anderson turned the wheel and pointed the ship toward the harbor.

  “You damn well better take us in!” McKinley shouted. “I’ll be below, writing up my report and documenting your incompetence!”

  McKinley dove down the gangway and disappeared, followed a moment later by the familiar yump-yump-yump of the toilet.

  That night, Arthur lay on his back, his damp sleeping bag pulled tightly up to his shoulders. The Dreadnought had been at sea for almost a week, and everyone was exhausted. If something didn’t change soon—if McKinley didn’t back off and start treating people better—Arthur wasn’t sure what would happen. But something had to change.

  Arthur stared up at the dark sky, brilliant with stars. This trip is sure weird, he thought. When his father had brought home the brochure for “Commodore McKinley’s Leadership Cruise,” Arthur had been thrilled. He knew he had no choice in the matter—whenever his father handed information over like that, it was always an order and never a question—but Arthur was delighted at the chance to learn some new skills and imagined the mental and physical toughness he would gain, improving his chances of getting ahead in the world. His father had pushed him to be the very best from the start, and Arthur was grateful that the future looked so very promising. “I have the greatest father in the world,” he remembered thinking when his dad gave him the check to mail off to McKinley. “With his help, I’ve got it made.”

  But this cruise didn’t seem like the right sort of thing after all. Arthur was puzzled. His father was rarely wrong. He would have made phone calls, checked references, verified that this cruise was the very best place for his son to learn how to function in a tough and heartless adult world. He was a successful attorney and businessman—one of the best in Albany—and he was not in the habit of making bad investments. He would have researched this cruise thoroughly. Unless he was in one of his busy times. When Mr. Robinson got busy, Arthur knew, family life sometimes took a back seat.

  But still, something was wrong here. Arthur felt like he was learning how to follow, not how to lead. And he wanted more than anything to lead. He always wanted to be in front, giving orders and making decisions and collecting the rewards. “If you fail, son, fail big,” his father had told him. “And then look people in the eye and tell them why it was actually a brilliant success. People forgive big mistakes, but they never forgive weakness.” How was he supposed to learn strength under McKinley? All he could do was follow orders and keep quiet and hope the “Commodore” took his rage out on someone else.

  The night sky was breathtaking, and Arthur’s eyes followed a faint dot of light moving slowly across the sky’s arc. A satellite, he guessed, but he didn’t give it much attention. He was listening instead to the few snatches of words he could make out from the argument below.

  “You listen to me . . . hired . . . address me as COMMODORE . . . fire you just as . . . .” McKinley’s tone was tense and angry.

  “. . . haven’t paid us anything . . . rude to Greg . . . no REASON . . . .” The voice belonged to Robin Merriman. Arthur smiled. She seemed to be holding her ground down there.

  “. . . orders . . . I have a job to do . . . I’ll be DAMNED if I’ll let someone . . . you can go to hell . . . .”

  After a few more exchanges, the air turned silent once again. Arthur looked across the deck. Most of the campers were asleep, but Crystal was looking back at him. She rolled her eyes.

  Arthur must have fallen asleep soon after. It seemed like just a few minutes later when he woke to a scraping sound on the deck nearby. The night was still dark, but he could see three people hauling bags to the side of the ship.

  The counselors. They carried their luggage to the ladder on the starboard side, climbed down, and shoved off in the Dreadnought’s wooden dinghy. A moment later they were gone—and Arthur guessed they weren’t coming back. He pulled his sleeping bag over his shoulders and wondered how much McKinley really knew about sailing a tall ship.

  The next morning, McKinley was strangely pleasant. He asked two campers to cook a large breakfast for everyone—anything they wanted—and at the table, he gave a quiet speech about how leadership means getting the job done even when people you counted on let you down. It would not be easy, he said with a soft smile, but together they could make it work. The campers exchanged suspicious and worried glances. Arthur seized the opportunity to flash a reassuring smile at the stunning Marietta.

  The day, June 14, was clear and bright, and a stiff wind blew steadily from the southwest. The
campers hoisted the mainsail, and the Dreadnought inched toward shore until she was close to land. Then Jesse, responding to McKinley’s polite request, jumped into the ocean and retrieved the dinghy, which was tied up at a small dock. McKinley set a course southeastward toward open ocean. He steered the ship past the last of the small islands hugging the coast, then he asked Arthur to take the wheel.

  “Just keep the compass heading at roughly 140,” McKinley said with a grandfatherly smile. “Two campers are on bow watch, so listen in case they see any rocks or lobster floats. Keep this heading until I ask you to change it, okay? Thanks.”

  He patted Arthur warmly on the shoulder, and then he squeezed down the hatch and headed below. A moment later, Arthur could hear the door to the captain’s quarters lock with an audible click.

  With the steady wind and easy sailing, the campers had little to do. Arthur held the course, and some of the others cleaned up the sleeping bags and mats. Mostly, though, the campers lay about the deck, talking and enjoying the morning, which seemed warmer and more pleasant without McKinley nearby.

  “Boy, this is totally the life, isn’t it?” asked Logan “Marshmallow” McPhee. He was pudgy and pale from long afternoons of video games and bottles of vodka smuggled into his bedroom, but the warm Maine sun was making him feel upbeat. He was talking to no one in particular. “Don’t you ever wish you were rich? I mean, really rich. You know—just decide one day to go for a sail, so you call up your personal secretary, and by lunchtime she has everything arranged. The boat’s been chartered, the food’s been catered, the bartender’s been hired, the company’s been invited, and the weather’s been dusted off and polished to perfection. The next thing you know, BOOM!, you’re sailing the North Atlantic. You look at a map, totally choose a destination at random, and set out. If the trip takes too long for some of your guests, you just fly ’em home from the next port. When you get tired of sailing, you hop a jet back home and hire someone to sail the boat back for you. Wouldn’t that be great?”