“Do you realize how much you’ve taught me this summer?” Arthur asked.
“Isn’t that what special summers—and special friends—are for?”
“Do you think we’ll ever spend a summer as wonderful as this?”
“No,” Dawn said. “Not unless we’re together.”
They hugged again, parted, and walked toward the crowd. Dawn’s father gathered her up and hurried her away from the reporters. She glanced back at Arthur, and then she was gone.
Arthur walked up to his father and stepmother. He held his hand out to his father, man to man, handshake and nod and understanding.
It didn’t happen.
“What the hell were you thinking?” his father screamed at him, ignoring the offered handshake. “When we get home, young man, you’ve got one hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
Arthur stopped walking and stood tall. “No, Dad, I don’t,” he said in the same solid voice he had used with Fernandez.
“What?” his father asked. The new wife drifted off into the crowd. “Don’t tell me you think—”
“Dad,” Arthur said in a firm and gentle voice. “This is important. There have to be some changes between us. You sent me here to gain some maturity, some authority, some sense of command. Good call, Dad—it worked. And it’s working now. If you want to talk with me—with me—I’d be happy to chat with you all night. But if you want to lay down one of your lectures, if you want to talk at me all night, if you want to play the Authoritative Dad role and have me play the Subordinate Son role—then forget it. If that’s your plan, tell me now and I’ll just keep on walking. You’ve done a lot for me, Dad, but you don’t own me. Whatever happens between us from now on, Dad, it happens between men. Between adults. I made some mistakes—some big mistakes—and I’m prepared to do community service for them. But stop treating me like a child. If you want to talk things over, hear about how my summer went, maybe tell me a little about your life—then I think we should find someplace comfortable and start talking. But I don’t want your lectures anymore.” His gaze never left his father’s eyes. At last, it was the elder Robinson who blinked.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” the elder Robinson said. He tried to suppress a reluctant half-smile as he appraised his son, tall and tan and strong. Then his expression sharpened. “You still have a lot of explaining to do.” He turned and walked down the dock with his son—toward the car, toward the mainland, toward the rest of their lives. He didn’t put his arm around Arthur’s shoulders. He didn’t walk especially close to him. But he was working to understand all the things he had learned about his son in the past forty-eight hours.
And Arthur walked slowly, with confidence, with the kind of centered calm that experience and courage and self-reliance can bring. He let the silence blossom, unconcerned about filling the time with idle chatter. The time would come soon, he hoped, for long bouts of serious talking.
Suddenly Arthur felt someone grab his shoulder and pull him around. It was Dawn, with a beautiful smile and a tear on her freckled cheek. “One last goodbye,” she said. She threw her arms around Arthur—and stared deeply into his eyes. Arthur stared back. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t move. Arthur felt the universe peel away. He said nothing at all. They just gazed deeply into each other’s minds, letting their souls intertwine in an intimate and spiritual embrace. Arthur wasn’t aware of the passage of time or the position of the sun or even his own breath. He just let himself open to her eyes and felt her open to his. The world stopped turning, and nothing on Earth mattered to him at all.
At last, he became aware of the people around him once again, and he noticed off in the distance a young man watching them. He seemed oddly envious, and after a moment he broke away to follow his own path. Arthur smiled at Dawn.
“True feelings never end,” he said. “I’ll be with you soon.”
Then Dawn’s father returned and took her arm. She disappeared into the crowd once again.
And so they were gone. The Plunder Dogs had become, in an instant, part of the scattered world of teenagers and their dreams. They would cross paths in the courthouse, perhaps, and then try to stay in touch, but most of them would let it drop after a while. Only a few would keep the bonds strong forever. Arthur had no doubt that he would keep the promises he had made—to the others and to himself. He walked with his father toward the black Lexus SUV.
And bobbing gently at dockside, trim and clean and old and proud, the Dreadnought waited quietly for her next assignment. The Maine breeze rustled through her rigging, and the late-summer sun warmed her decks. The ice would come soon. But after it would follow longer days and open waters, beckoning with promises of new adventures and a few more chances to sail.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL ROBERT EVANS is an award-winning, associate professor of journalism at Indiana University, teaching courses in magazine writing and editing, among others. He focuses his research efforts on indigenous media movements, having spent a year in the Arctic on a Fulbright Fellowship, working with Inuit videographers, and three months in the Australian Outback working with Aboriginal radio and video producers. He is currently working on media issues involving North American native groups.
Evans was a magazine editor in Massachusetts for thirteen years, and his freelance work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. Author of a book on magazine editing published by Columbia Press in 2004, he has two other books on journalism under contract. 68 Knots is his first novel.
Michael, his wife, and his two sons split their time between homes in Bloomington, Indiana, and New Hampshire.
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