“Indeed,” Logan called back, wiping the hair from his eyes. “Lovely red nuns, one with a gong. Care for a closer look?”
Turner smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it. Shall we say counterclockwise around, the first one back to the breakwater wins?”
Logan smiled. “Winner buys dinner for everyone?”
Turner put on a mock frown. “Again!” he pouted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were just mooching.”
Logan put on a mock frown of his own. He turned to Joy. “What do you say, Captain?” he asked. “Up for a race?”
“If you are,” Joy said uncertainly. She didn’t feel entirely confident as the decision-maker, but she didn’t want to squash the crew’s fun.
“Awesome!” Logan said. “Hey, everybody—battle stations!”
The crew of the Dreadnought was in place in seconds. They had weathered fierce storms, internal bickering, bad food, weird drinks, and unsettling romances. There was nothing they couldn’t do together.
Dawn scrambled to stand next to Joy. “We need to jibe,” she whispered.
“Okay,” Joy said. “Please prepare to jibe, everyone!”
“Ready!” Arthur yelled.
“Jibe ho,” Joy said. She turned the wheel cautiously.
The Dreadnought turned its stern across the wind. The crew hauled on the sheets and let them out again, positioning the sails with a smart “Pop!” Before the Elkhart crew had finished rinsing their cappuccino cups, the Dreadnought was tacking through the waves toward the first marker.
The large wooden Dreadnought—even with all her heritage, her years at sea, her spirit, and her crew—was no match for the sleek fiberglass Elkhart. Turner was an able skipper, and he timed his tacks with experienced precision. The Elkhart slowly gained on the Dreadnought.
“Are we going to let them win again?” Arthur shouted as he pulled in the mainsheet.
“Hell, no!” Jesse shouted. He joined Arthur and pulled the sheet even tighter, his multicolored biceps rippling as he strained against the rope. The Dreadnought picked up a bit of speed. It rose and rocked through the waves, heeling sharply in the wind.
Joy held onto the wheel tightly. The ship cut through the waves as it sped toward the buoy.
“Joy,” Dawn said. “I think we should come about now and get farther to the right. That sound good to you?”
Joy shrugged. “If you say so,” she said. “Ready about!” she called.
“Ready!” the crew shouted back in unison.
“Hard alee!” she shouted, turning the wheel to move the ship’s bow across the wind.
The Dreadnought’s bow cut a graceful arc across the wind. The boom crashed across the decks—and everyone ducked without looking up. The sails puffed out crisply, and Arthur and Jesse hauled on the mainsheet. Crystal and Marietta tightened the foresheet.
“Turner’s still gaining!” Dawn shouted. “Joy, try to cut him off at the buoy!”
Arthur glanced up from his mainsheet position and shook his head. “We don’t have enough room,” he said.
Joy checked the positions of the buoy and the gaining Elkhart. “Arthur’s right,” she said. “We won’t make it. We need to know where the wind is strongest. It’s our only hope.”
Crystal kicked off her shoes. “I’m going up,” she said. “I’ll tell you where the wind is.” She grabbed the ratlines and swung out over the water, her feet landing lightly on the rigging. She scrambled to the top of the mast as though gravity were powerless to pull her down. She shouted directions down to Joy, and the Dreadnought picked up speed.
“We’re almost at the marker,” Arthur called back.
“Ready about!” Joy shouted.
“Ready!” the crew responded.
“Crystal, hold on tight,” Dawn called.
“Hard alee!” Joy yelled. She spun the wheel sharply counterclockwise. The Dreadnought pivoted around the buoy, and the sheet crew let the sails swing wide. The ship passed within a few feet of the Elkhart, which was still traveling in the original direction and just beginning its turn.
“Impressive,” Turner called over, saluting. “Very impressive. You’ve been practicing to become sailors.”
Dawn grinned. “We are sailors, Captain,” she shouted back. “And we’re winning.” She turned to Joy. “We need some kind of magic,” she said quietly, “or he’ll pass us on the next jibe. We can’t stay ahead of him at this pace.”
Joy nodded. “I know,” she whispered urgently. “I hope Crystal can help us, but I don’t want to ask her about the wind until the Elkhart makes its turn. The flapping of its sails might keep them from hearing what she tells us.”
Dawn nodded, impressed. “I’ll let you know when,” she said, watching the other boat. “Wait . . . wait . . . ready . . . .now!”
“Crystal!” Joy called.
Standing on the rigging near the top of the mainmast, Crystal scanned the water ahead. To port, the waves were rolling and smooth. To starboard, they chopped into angry foam. She pointed to the right. “The wind is over there!” she shouted. “To starboard!”
“Okay,” Joy said. She turned the wheel clockwise.
A moment later, BillFi climbed up from below, holding tightly to the rails as the Dreadnought crashed through the waves.
“Wrong,” he said.
Joy looked at him. “No comprendo. I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘wrong’?” she said.
“The wind,” BillFi answered. “We should go to the port side. Definitely the port. To the left.”
“Crystal is up in the rigging looking at the waves,” Joy said. “She said the wind is to the starboard. You were sitting in the cabin. How could you know what to do?”
“You’re right,” BillFi said softly. “I was below. You’re right. But I know that the waves to port are calm, and the waves to starboard are choppy. Calm to port, choppy to starboard. I know. I also know that in a few minutes, those calm waves to port will be hit by a blast of air. Warm. Out of the southeast. Warm air. I don’t know why I know this. But I do. I really do. The gust won’t reach the starboard waters for several minutes—enough time for us to leave the Elkhart behind for good. Behind for good.”
“But I can’t steer us toward calm water!” Joy said.
BillFi nodded. “Then we will lose the race,” he said.
“Look, I’m . . . I don’t . . .” Joy said. “Please just go back below.”
BillFi didn’t leave. Dawn stared at Joy. For the next sixty seconds, the only sounds that could be heard were the wind in the rigging and the gurgle of the Dreadnought’s wake. Astern, the Elkhart was twenty yards away and closing.
“Turn harder to starboard!” Crystal shouted from above. “Now!”
“See?” Joy said.
“She’s telling you what she sees,” BillFi said. “I’m telling you what I know. Turn to port. I’m telling you what I know.” Fifteen yards astern, the Elkhart began to creep to starboard, chasing the higher wind.
Joy shook her head. “I need some help here. God will tell me what to do.” Holding the wheel with her left hand, she dug the coin out of her pocket and spun it smartly on the deck. Dawn and BillFi watched with her as the coin twirled—Saint Francis, Saint Christopher, Francis, Christopher, Francis—and then with a tiny wobble, the coin lurched through a drainage hole in the deck and plummeted into the sea. Joy screamed. Time froze for a petrified moment.
“I need that!” Joy cried. “I need it to help me decide what to do!”
Dawn put her hand on Joy’s shoulder. “I think,” she said, “God wants you to decide this one on your own.”
Joy, her face pale at the thought of her precious coin—her decision-making connection to her Lord—fluttering slowly toward the sandy muck at the bottom of the ocean, looked straight into BillFi’s eyes. “You better be right,” she said. Then she turned to Dawn.
“Tell your sea goddess to kick up a storm,” she said. “We’re heading toward calm water.”
She spun the wheel hard counterc
lockwise.
“No!” Crystal yelled. “Starboard!” Joy didn’t answer.
For a long moment, the Dreadnought stalled in a faint breeze. The Elkhart, still pressing to starboard, drew even and began to pull away. The Dreadnought slowed to a near stop.
“Oh, no!” Joy cried. “We could have won, but instead we’re sitting here like a rock. We had the lead, and we might’ve kept it if we had stayed in front of the Elkhart. But no. I dropped my coin overboard, and then I—”
“Here it comes,” BillFi said.
“Que? Here what comes?” Joy asked.
“The wind,” BillFi said softly. “Tell Crystal to hold on tight.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Joy said.
Dawn smiled. “Hey, Crystal,” she called up, “BillFi says you better hold on tight!”
“Aye!” Crystal called back.
The wind slammed the sails. The Dreadnought heeled sharply and nosed down into the water. Her bow seemed to snag on a running wave. Then the ship stiffened, gathered the new gale into its system of power, and shot forward like a world-class sprinter. The next waves were mere murmurs beneath her hull; she cut through them with ease. The deck hummed with vibrations from the rigging, and unseen beams creaked and limbered in adjustment to the strain. The surge toppled three members of the crew, sending them sprawling backward and sitting abruptly on the deck. BillFi didn’t move—he was quite ready for the wind’s arrival—and in the rigging, Crystal tightened her usually casual contact with the lines.
On board the Elkhart, Turner looked over at the Dreadnought just in time to see her leap ahead in water that had been calm just an instant before. “What the hell!” he shouted. He snapped out a few orders—tighten that halyard, let out that sheet, ready the spinnaker—but nothing mattered. His ship, lolling along in a pleasant breeze, was powerless to catch the gargantuan Dreadnought with a full head of steam.
The finish wasn’t close. The Dreadnought thundered into Rockland Harbor, and Joy turned her smartly into the wind. The crew, leaping to the task with the get-it-done speed of experienced sailors, lowered the sails and stowed them below. The anchor dropped with a confident splash. By the time the Elkhart tied up alongside, Joy was leaning casually against the wheel.
Turner looked impressed. He nodded solemnly and raised his martini glass in salute to the victors.
Dawn smiled at Joy. Then she turned. “Hey, Arthur—let’s make one heck of a banquet!”
Dinner that night on the decks of the Dreadnought was the most elegant meal the crew had ever put on. The storage chests were covered with sheets, sails—anything that would pass for tablecloths—and each one gleamed beneath small flickering candles. Candlewick Imports, Freeport. Eight dollars apiece. Arthur was actually glad the crew had bought them.
For the first course, the two crews enjoyed crackers and artistically sliced vegetables, offered with both a hummus and a bleu cheese dip by waiters BillFi and Jesse, although the Elkhart crew was somewhat unnerved by Jesse’s homemade tattooing. The colorful lines now covered every inch of skin that could be seen, including his face and even his eyelids, and he drew strange and unsettled stares as he wandered among the crowd with his tray of hors d’oeuvres.
Everyone was scattered throughout the main, fore, and aft decks, standing in small circles, leaning against the rigging, staring out to the moonlit sea, or clustered around the candlelit tables. Ishmael even ventured out on deck, staying close to Jesse and keeping an intent watch for dropped bits of seafood. Once the glasses had been filled, Turner called everyone together on the main deck and offered a toast.
“I offer these friendly challenges because they put a bit of spice into life,” he said. “And I believe that spice is important. But it should be noted that until today, only one ship had ever beaten us, and it was a Navy vessel full of hot-headed cadets. I raise my glass to the fine crew of the Dreadnought. The sea is a talented teacher, and you have learned her lessons well.”
All on board raised their glasses in salute, and BillFi, after a quick drink, busied himself with the capture and demise of a fly. Despite the ruse, however, he could feel Arthur’s stare. When he looked up, he saw Arthur raising a glass to him in salute. BillFi nodded, raised his own glass again, and finished his wine.
The clanging of a ladle on a pot signaled the start of dinner. Marietta and Logan ate with the Elkhart’s first mate, a middle-aged cousin of Turner’s who owned a large chain of movie theaters across upstate New York. Named Elwood Richardson at birth and called “Woody” since his college days in the late 1970s, he was a meticulously flat-stomached man who wore a meticulously tailored outfit consisting of a blue blazer and a light-blue shirt over khaki chinos and leather Top-Siders. He meticulously combed his hair over his bald spot and meticulously hoped no one would notice. Marietta found him attractive in a moneyed sort of way—wealthy, stiff, flattered by a young woman’s attention. Also at the table were the Elkhart’s cook, a somber man with tense features and nervous habits; the meteorologist, a loud and bawdy woman who delighted in shocking the people around her with off-color words and foul puns; and the “rigging mate,” a nine-year-old boy whose title and position were manufactured to give him a place on the boat. The group chatted and laughed at the meteorologist’s tales of the strange and irreverent characters she had met at sea.
Joy, Crystal, Arthur, and Dawn ate with Turner and other members of the Elkhart’s inner circle. To Turner’s left was his navigator, Jim Greenfeather, a young, ruggedly attractive Shawnee man who was attending the University of Maine. He had recently borrowed money from his father to launch a new enterprise in the Oklahoma oilfields, and he talked with excitement about the prospects. After Greenfeather came the Hennessey sisters, twenty-six-year-old twins who were slightly old-fashioned in appearance but who carried an air of mystery and depth, as though they had just stepped out of an old novel and were withholding a profound and magical secret; Garrison Chevalier, the Elkhart’s tremblingly sensitive “poet laureate”; and Heather Heath, an actress who had landed a few supporting roles in major movies and who had received some positive murmurs of critical and public attention.
The rest of the Dreadnought’s crew was scattered among the remainder of the Elkhart riche. At the head table, Turner smiled formally to Arthur. “So,” he said, “you’ve come a long way since we last met.”
Arthur nodded. “We’ve been sailing every day, so we were bound to get better at it.”
“But your captain,” Turner continued, raising his glass to Joy, “is not the same one I raced against last time.”
“We take turns being captain,” Joy said. “It seems important that we each get to see what it’s like.” Arthur smiled a halfway smile and took deep delight in the sparkle of pride in Joy’s eyes.
“Smart,” Turner said. “You don’t know what power and responsibility feel like until you try them on.”
Arthur nodded, and he raised his glass to Dawn.
As they ate, Turner told a long and lively story about his adventures in Borneo. “I took an extended visit there,” he said between mouthfuls of ham and scalloped potatoes. “Looking for new sources of timber. The jungle was dense, and the insects and leeches were all over us. I got a leech stuck inside my ear once, and we had a devil of a time getting it out.” He told them about hacking through the jungle with machetes, climbing slippery rocks as they worked their way up waterfalls, and encountering wild boar and enormous snakes. He told them about the people he met, the young native woman he had fallen in love with, the tearful departure at the end when she decided to stay with her family. Arthur listened attentively. He couldn’t tell how much of the story Turner was making up, and how much—if any—was true.
While Turner was talking about Borneo, Crystal and Jim Greenfeather, the young oil entrepreneur, slipped away from the table. They stood in the bow of the ship, talking in low whispers.
“I’ve been working on this oil project for two years now,” he told her, “and I think it’s finally beginn
ing to go someplace.” He paused and stared out at the moonlight. “So, what kinds of stuff do you like to work on?”
Crystal felt a solid wall spiral up around her. Nice try, but no dice. “Nothing,” she said. No one was going to catch her opening up. She was too tough for that. Too hardened. Too cool. She wasn’t about to—
She looked over at Jim. He seemed like a nice guy, and he was certainly good looking. Athletic. Energetic. Great smile. She shook her head. “I’m going to get some dessert,” she said, turning toward the tables and lights and conversations.
“Wait,” Jim said. “Don’t run off like that. What are you afraid of?”
Afraid! Crystal glared at him with blazing blue eyes. I’m afraid of nothing, she thought. Nothing at all. Who the hell does he think is? All I’m trying to do is keep out of some stupid, sticky relationship with some guy who—
Relationship. Isn’t that what I’ve been wanting? Crystal asked herself. Well, here’s a chance. So what’s my problem? Why don’t I just see what happens?
She took a deep breath. “I like to swim,” she said. She glanced at Jim’s face. He smiled gently. She took another deep breath and told him more about herself, her dreams, and the challenges she felt she faced.
After dinner, as the Dreadnought and Elkhart crews stood around on deck sipping champagne or ginger ale, Turner faced Arthur. “Tell me,” he said. “The last time we met, you explained that the fellow in charge of your sailing camp was down below and not to be disturbed. Surely he’s available this evening for some conversation with your guests?”
Arthur took a slow breath. “No,” he said carefully, “he’s still unavailable. He’s been rather reclusive for the past several weeks.”
“Reclusive?” Turner said. “Nonsense. Surely he’ll tolerate a quick hello. Please take me to him.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Arthur answered.
“Why not?”
“It just wouldn’t, that’s all,” Arthur said.
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