68 Knots

by Michael Robert Evans

  Crystal rolled her eyes and turned back to scan the sea.

  No sign of the whale. Fifteen minutes passed, with all eyes searching across the waves. Sometimes the wind caught the top of a wave and sent some spray flying, causing shouts and excitement on board the ship, but again and again the plumes dissipated into false alarms. Half an hour passed, then an hour. Crystal kept the ship moving in large, slow circles, hovering around the area Joy had described. Arthur felt a bit deflated; the daring rescue he had foreseen wasn’t working out.

  The wind scattered another wave top, and everyone pointed and called out. Crystal turned the boat toward it, certain it would be another mirage. Then, about twenty yards off the port side of the boat, the whale surfaced and blew a misty gust into the wind.

  Logan saw it first. “There it is! Wooooo-wooooo! Right here close to the side! Right over there!” he shouted.

  The whale took a breath and dove, but Logan got a good look at it.

  “I don’t think the net’s, like, stuck on the bottom or anything,” he said. “I think it’s just wrapped around the whale—ssssssp!—like a straightjacket. It looked like a lot of it’s caught in her mouth, and the rest is totally tangled across her back and around her tail.”

  The crew watched closely for the whale to surface again. Five long minutes went by.

  “Off to starboard!” Dawn called out. “A long way off!”

  Crystal turned the boat to the right, and Logan confirmed the sighting. The whale dove again, but it surfaced just a minute later—another half of a mile out to sea.

  “Come on, whale,” Dawn whispered. “We can’t help you if we can’t catch up with you.”

  The Dreadnought made good time across the water, and the distance between the ship and the whale dwindled. The crew could see the black marks on the underside of its tail when it dove. “Look at that beautiful tail!” Dawn exclaimed. “Those marks look like an ibis beak. Come on, Ibis! Help us out!”

  Ibis was swimming hard, but the net seemed to slow her down considerably. It also seemed to tire the whale; the time between surfacings was getting smaller.

  Then Ibis swerved; she headed straight toward the islands off the mainland. Crystal shouted, “I’m turning the boat!” and spun the wheel hard to port. The ship veered to the left, and the sails crashed from one side to the other. Crystal heard something snap high above, and she saw the sails on the forward mast tangle in their own rigging.

  “Oh, shit!” she shouted. “I’m turning it back! Damn it!”

  She spun the wheel hard to starboard, and the sails swung violently across the decks again. This time, the forward boom hit Logan in the chest, knocking him far over the railing and into the sea.

  “Logan fell overboard!” Marietta screamed. “Stop the boat!”

  “How the fuck do you stop a sailboat?” Crystal cried out. The crew could see Logan’s head above the waves, getting smaller as the Dreadnought whirled away.

  All hell broke loose on the deck. Some of the crew pulled hard on lines, thinking they would make the boat go faster. Others let lines out, thinking the same thing. Arthur shouted instructions, but no one heard him. Crystal turned the boat dead into the wind, causing the sails to luff and flap wildly. By the time someone thought to throw a life jacket overboard for Logan, the ship was already half a mile away from him.

  Then Crystal turned the ship off the wind, and the Dreadnought began to gain speed. It was aimed directly at Logan. The crew could see him swimming awkwardly in the frigid water, his red hair bobbing just above the waves, and nearly everyone on board shouted instructions to him in an incomprehensible babble of voices. When Logan was just a few dozen yards off the port side, thrashing and scared, Crystal turned the wheel sharply, hoping to point the bow upwind again and bring the ship to a stop. Instead, the Dreadnought cut a wide arc through the waves, leaving Logan behind once again.

  Except this time, someone had thought clearly. While the ship was bearing down on Logan, Dawn had pulled the dinghy alongside and climbed down the ladder. Just before Crystal spun the wheel, Dawn cast off and rowed toward Logan’s desperate splashing. As the dinghy drew close, Logan lunged and grabbed the side. His light-brown eyes, now bloodshot, were wide and panicked. He panted and whined as he hooked one pale leg over the edge of the boat and tried to lift his pudgy body inside. Dawn stowed the oars and grabbed his shirt. A moment later, gasping for air, Logan lay in the bottom of the dinghy. His T-shirt was torn, and his belly was scratched and bleeding from its scrape over the side of the boat. Dawn sat quietly as Logan struggled to regain his composure.

  After Logan’s breathing began to return to normal, Dawn asked, “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Logan said, his voice trembling. He rolled over awkwardly and pulled himself onto one of the dinghy’s coarse plank seats. “But I’ll be okay. Thanks for coming for me. I don’t know how long I could have lasted.”

  Dawn picked up the oars and began rowing back toward the ship. Crystal had aimed the Dreadnought into the wind again, letting it coast to a stop, but it still took two hours for the crew to bring the ship and the dinghy together again. Logan received a warm welcome and a mug of hot soup, and Dawn was cheered for making the rescue. Only Arthur seemed angry over the whole incident. He sat off to one side, staring out to sea.

  This was supposed to be a dramatic rescue, he said to himself. This was supposed to make the crew feel great. Instead, we almost got Logan killed. We sailed like idiots, and no one listened to me. Some leadership. Instead of me being a hero for saving the whale, Dawn’s a hero for saving Logan. Shit. I’m the captain. I’m going to have to take charge even more.

  Once the emotions of Logan’s mishap had settled down, the crew turned its attention back to the missing whale.

  Ibis was nowhere to be seen. The Dreadnought circled for the rest of the day, but the only spray they saw proved to be annoying false alarms. As sundown approached, Crystal pointed the ship toward a cove, and the crew dropped anchor.

  Over dinner that night—a delicious tuna-and-pasta salad with olive oil and herbs, courtesy of Joy—the conversation centered on the day’s misadventures.

  “This is why we should call the Coast Guard and quit,” Marietta said. “This whole idea is stupid and dangerous. We don’t know what we’re doing out here, and we’re going to get somebody killed.”

  “Look, things got a little fucked out there,” Crystal said. “I’ve never steered a big ship before, and I didn’t know what to do. But I’ll be damned if . . .”

  “None of us is experienced at sailing,” Arthur said in what he hoped was a reassuring and commanding tone, “but we had better become experienced in a hurry if we’re going to stay out here. I think we should do some kind of drill every day—a sailor-overboard drill, a swamped-dinghy drill, things like that. There are books in the captain’s quarters that will help us get started. We need to practice at this so we get good at it quickly. It’s the only way we’re going to survive out here. In the meantime, I think we should just forget about blaming each other or feeling guilty about today. Mistakes just mean we need to get better.”

  There was a long pause as people thought about Arthur’s words.

  “What about the whale?” Joy asked.

  “Either she’s still out there,” Arthur offered, “or she got too tired to swim and she drowned. Since we don’t know what happened to her, let’s keep our eyes open for the next few days.”

  That night, in the captain’s quarters, Arthur cut a rope into ten sections, each about three feet long. He tied knots into each line, and then nailed one end of each to the wooden wall alongside the bunk. The knotted lines dangled along the wall and swayed with the rocking of the boat.

  Sixty-eight knots. Each knot, a day. Each day, a chance at freedom and control. Arthur had counted the days until their parents would arrive on the dock in Rockland Harbor, ready to shake McKinley’s hand and take their children home. Each knot, a chance to prove himself. He hoped things would turn out all right
.

  With a sigh, he untied the bottom knot of the first line and crawled into bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SIXTY-SEVEN KNOTS OF FREEDOM LEFT

  For the next several days, Arthur ran the crew of the Dreadnought through a series of drills. They lashed grimy vinyl mats together to serve as a dummy, and three or four times a day, without warning, someone would hurl it overboard.

  Dawn had spent an evening reading a sailing book she found in the captain’s quarters, and she taught the sailor-overboard drill to the others. Each time, the crew tried to do it the same way. The helmsman turned the Dreadnought until it was sideways to the wind, sailing away from the “victim,” and the crew adjusted the sails. Then the helmsman turned farther, crossing the stern of the boat through the wind so the sails swung to the other side with a thud. As the crew let the sails arch farther out and fill with rescuing breezes, the helmsman held a course that brought the boat directly downwind of the dummy. With a sharp turn upwind and the sails tightened for momentum and then allowed to swing free, the Dreadnought eased slowly alongside the floating dummy. Some of the crew climbed down into the dinghy and pulled the dummy aboard, and with help, the “victim” was hauled to the deck for medical treatment.

  After a few days of training, the crew could retrieve the dummy within a few minutes. No crashing sails, no tangled lines, no panic. Just efficiency. McKinley might even have called it discipline. Arthur was pleased. At this rate, he thought as the dripping dummy was dragged onto the deck for the sixth time, we’ll become sailors yet. We just needed McKinley out of the way. I knew we could do it. I knew I could do it.

  They also practiced the “swamped-dinghy” drill, at Arthur’s insistence. Jesse, Dawn, and Joy volunteered to join Arthur in the first trial. Arthur talked Logan into participating as well; he wanted to help Logan get comfortable with the sea. After they climbed into the dinghy, they rowed a short distance away from the ship and put their feet on one side of the small boat. They put their hands on the other gunwale, with their butts in the air, and they began to rock. The heavy wooden dinghy responded grudgingly at first, dripping and complaining with waterlogged groans, but gradually they coaxed it into long swings from one side to the other. Then, with a loud whoop, they put all their weight on their feet and pulled the other side over their heads.

  The icy water attacked quickly, numbing their fingers and toes, turning vision white.

  “W-we have to practice this,” Arthur said, his low voice booming over the waves. “These temperatures would kill us if we didn’t do this well.”

  The five sailors, treading water and shivering with blue lips and goosebumped skin, counted off: “One! Two! Three! Four! Five!” If someone were unconscious or trapped underwater, the count would reveal the impending tragedy. Everyone was okay, so they rolled the dinghy back upright and flopped inside. It was still submerged and filled with water, like a giant wooden bathtub, its gunwales just barely touching the surface of the water from below.

  “Okay, listen to me and do what I say,” Arthur commanded, trying not to let his teeth chatter. “We all squat down in the boat, as far down in the water as we can. Then, when I say so, we all stand up quickly. The water level in the boat will drop, and that will give us a head start. Then we need to bail out faster than water comes in.”

  The others were skeptical, but they trusted Arthur. They lowered themselves in the boat until the water touched their chattering chins.

  “Now!” Arthur shouted. They stood up at once, the water level dropped, the dinghy shifted unsteadily to one side—and all five teenagers lurched against each other and tipped sideways into the ocean, laughing and splashing in a tangle of arms and legs and soaked clothes. The water seemed less cold now.

  They tried again. They slipped back into the dinghy, took their positions, and lowered themselves almost completely into the frigid water. Arthur gave his signal, and they all stood up—carefully, in the middle of the boat. The water level dropped, and seawater began to pour in over the sides. But the five of them bailed furiously, pitching water out with tin cans and bottomless plastic jugs, and within a minute or two, the sides of the boat were high enough to block the incoming flow. They scooped out the rest of the water and rowed the dinghy, damp but upright, back to the ship.

  “It works!” Dawn announced to the crew as she wrapped a towel around her dripping brown ponytail. “It’s cold, but that just helps us remember the beautiful power of the sea. Isn’t it wonderful? It all makes me feel so alive, so much a part of the great web of life on earth.” She smiled at Arthur, who shrugged and smiled back.

  Arthur continued to put the crew through drills for the next several days as they explored the coast of Maine. They became proficient at raising, setting, and altering the sails. They developed precision in their tacks and jibes, moving the bow or the stern across the wind to fill the sails from the other side. They learned how to coax speed from the wind, how to hoist and drop the anchor with ease, and how to set a course and hold it.

  With each passing day, the value of Jesse’s strength became increasingly apparent. He could lift overstuffed foot-lockers. He could raise the largest sail by himself. And he could row the dinghy with astonishing speed, invariably causing Logan to crack a joke about him pulling the Dreadnought so they’d make better time.

  Jesse was used to the teasing. He had been born strong, a tough and wiry baby who grew into a formidable and potent young man. He liked to wear tight T-shirts, because he enjoyed the expressions on people’s faces as they watched his muscles shift and pulse beneath the fabric.

  He also liked to play the harmonica. He had an odd style, holding it vertically and sliding it up and down to get the notes. But he had mastered the technique through constant practice, done out of a sense of peace and comfort more than the discipline of a musician-in-training. The harmonica was a gift from his father; it had arrived in the mail on the day Jesse turned eight. Jesse had been enduring a slow march of gray days in the shelter in the Bronx while the paperwork was being completed for his acceptance into a foster home. The harmonica came in a small white box with a note that read: “To Jesse. Happy Birthday. Dad.” Jesse kept the note in his pocket for months after that, until it disintegrated into small damp wads of paper. He tucked the harmonica under his pillow, and he played lonesome tunes on it whenever he could. It was a sign that his father loved him, and it was the only such sign he had ever received. His father was living in Florida, married to—or at least living with—a woman he had met in Atlantic City. Susan was her name. Or Sharon. Something like that. Jesse’s mother had died so long ago, he couldn’t remember what she looked like, and his father had lived with a long line of women ever since. When he was seven, Jesse had been dropped off at the shelter after his father came back from a business trip to New Jersey. No explanation. Just “here’s your new home, kid.” The harmonica was the only message Al Kowaleweski ever sent. Still, he had mailed it. And it had arrived on Jesse’s birthday. On the very day. Jesse didn’t know why his father had left, but he took the instrument as a secret and powerful message that everything would work out all right. When the sun was setting and the air was still, he liked to sit on the bow of the Dreadnought and play soft sad songs about lost loves and vague yearnings.

  The Dreadnought was sailing comfortably across the mouth of Sheepscot Bay, venturing west along the Maine coast, with Logan at the helm. The date was June 18, and the summer was still young. Gliding gracefully around the bay were several other boats, mostly sailboats with sleek bows and stout sides, their white or red or rainbow sails vivid against the blue water and green shore.

  Logan spent his time at the wheel inventing silly ways to get attention. He declared, at one point, that scrawny little Bill Fiona should be called “BillFi” from then on, as though his name was BillFEE O-nah. Bill grinned and seemed to accept the nickname with pleasure. “It beats being called ‘Squinty,’” he said. “Definitely beats ‘Squinty.’” Logan also delighted in pushing the Dreadnou
ght’s bow toward the wind, causing the sails to flutter with a chaotic commotion. Then he would turn the wheel and let the sails pop full of air, just as though nothing had happened. It was just his way of passing the time and getting a rise out of the sunbathers on the deck.

  Marietta was on bow watch later that afternoon. She spent more time smoothing her hair and fussing with her bikini straps than looking out at the water. The sun was beginning to set when Joy asked her to gather the crew together on the deck.

  “We’re getting low on food,” Joy said, once everyone had gathered on the aft deck. The air was growing still and humid. Most of the sailors had traded their sweatshirts for tank tops and tees. “We have enough food to get us through another week or so, Dios mediante—God willing—but we’re going to have to go ashore for more supplies soon. I’ve made up a list of things we need.”

  “How about a little loaves-and-fishes action, Joy?” Crystal asked with an awkward grin.

  “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,” Joy quoted solemnly.

  “We still have the money we found in McKinley’s cabin,” Arthur said, his low voice carrying an air of authority. “About twelve hundred dollars. That ought to buy us a lot of food.”

  “But do you think we should go ashore?” Logan asked, flicking his ruddy hair out of his face. “What if somebody wonders what we’re doing? What if somebody asks us about McKinley? What if somebody—”

  “We need more food, Loser,” Crystal said, her hands on her hips. “So quit whining. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to go ashore.”

  “We’re also low on water,” Arthur said, “and our waste tank is probably getting full. We’re going to have to find a marina.”

  Logan sighed with a wheeze. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems kinda risky.”

  “I’ll find out,” Joy said. She fished a coin from her denim shorts, Saint Christopher on one side and Saint Francis on the other. With a smart flick of the wrist, she set it spinning on the polished deck. It twirled, flashing in the light, and when it stopped, Saint Christopher beamed his blessed countenance toward the heavens.