68 Knots (2 page)

“I am Howard McKinley,” he said in a booming voice. “Welcome to my Leadership Cruise. As you know, you're here to learn how to lead. How to take charge. How to command respect. And I'm going to teach you. You've met the counselors—Jet, Grille, and Fred. They are here to help
me
. They will explain some things, but you are not to rely on them for things you can do yourselves. They are your guides, not your nannies. Any questions so far?”

The campers stood in a loose cluster and blinked up at their so-called leader. They didn't say anything.

“Very well,” McKinley continued. “There are eight of you—four boys and four girls. It's a tradition on board the
Dreadnought
that everybody goes by a nickname. You may call me ‘Commodore.' Now stand in a straight line, and I'll give each of you a brand-new
Dreadnought
nickname.”

The teens shuffled into a lazy line. McKinley took a clipboard from Fred and made a show of consulting it. “Which
one of you is Dawn FitzWilliam?” A girl with a ponytail and a red baseball cap raised her hand. McKinley marched over to her and looked her up and down. “Baseball cap, eh? From now on, you will be called ‘Shortstop.'” Dawn smiled awkwardly. She didn't seem to love the new name.

McKinley continued. “Who is Joy Orejuela?” The girl who had been praying on the bow lifted her hand. She had olive skin and dark hair. “Orejuela—that's a Spanish name, isn't it? Good. We'll call you ‘Chiquita.'” Joy started to protest, but then she decided against it.

“Who is Crystal Black?” McKinley asked. A girl with very short blond hair, a tight t-shirt, and no shoes looked him straight in the eye.

“I am,” she said in a defiant tone. She crossed her arms.

“Hmm,” McKinley said, looking her over. “Tight, wiry, probably good at physical stuff. We'll call you ‘Spider.'”

“Whatever,” the girl said, not dropping her gaze.

“And the last girl,” McKinley said. “Marietta Mathis. Must be you.” He ogled the gorgeous girl that Arthur had noticed earlier. “Not bad. Not bad at all. We'll call you ‘Bunny.'” Marietta just rolled her eyes.

He went on to hand out nicknames to the boys. Jesse, a towering boy with rippling muscles, became “Hulk.” His little friend, Bill—a nervous, scrawny boy with large black glasses that kept slipping down his nose—was now “Squinty.” Logan, a chubby boy with a goofy grin, became “Marshmallow.” And Arthur's clean-cut good looks earned him the nickname “Boy Scout.”

“Now that you all have proper
Dreadnought
nicknames,” McKinley announced, “it's time to get to work. We have another few hours of daylight left, and I suggest we make
good use of it. Counselors, assume your positions. I will take the helm from here.”

McKinley shouted some commands, and the counselors leapt to work. They pulled on ropes and showed the campers how to tighten the sails and fill them with wind. McKinley turned the ship's wheel, and the
Dreadnought
once again nosed into the heavy waves.

As Arthur struggled with a tight rope, pulling with all his strength against the stiff wind, he noticed that sailing was different with McKinley at the helm. The counselors had tried to teach them the basics of sailing, but McKinley simply shouted orders. It was as if he expected the campers to learn everything about sailing in one afternoon. Still, Arthur thought, I didn't come here to be treated like a kid.

“Spider! Let out the jib!” McKinley hollered. Crystal, still barefoot, jumped over to a rope and began to ease it out. McKinley sighed loudly enough to be heard over the wind. “Jet, show Spider what the hell the jib is. And you there! In the stupid shirt! Uh… Marshmallow.” He pointed to Logan McPhee, a pudgy sixteen-year-old who wore a tie-dyed T-shirt with the words “Bohemia Rules” across the chest. “Sheet in that main!” McKinley muttered a curse. “Do I have to spell out everything? Pull on that rope! P-U-L-L—oh, forget it. You there, Hulk, grab that rope and pull on it. Good. No, wait! Let it out! LET IT OUT!”

The “Hulk”—Jesse Kowaleweski—was the muscle-bound sixteen-year-old Arthur had met earlier. Jesse had said little since the ship left the dock, but he had tried to follow instructions whenever they were given to him. When McKinley said “pull,” he hauled on the line so hard that the
mainsail stiffened abruptly, and McKinley was caught heading too far downwind with a tight sail. As the Commodore cursed and pointed, the ship veered just a little bit, and the wind caught the other side of the sail from behind. The boom flew across the deck with enough force to smash a skull—and Jesse put up his hand. He caught the rocketing timber and froze it in midair. In one hand. The force would have shattered the bones of any other hand that rose in its path, but Jesse halted the boom without changing expression.

Everyone on deck stopped what they were doing and stared at Jesse. “Shit,” Logan said. “I want that guy on my side.”

McKinley blamed Jesse for the mishap, shouting in his face and “demoting” him from deck hand to cabin boy. “You'll sit at the foot of the table tonight!” he shouted. “And don't be so sloppy the next time!”

Jesse shrugged. Sitting farther away from McKinley didn't seem like much of a punishment.

By dinnertime, Arthur was confused. He could not make sense of McKinley. The “Commodore” was charming at one moment and abusive the next, and during the late afternoon he had demoted more than half the crew to cabin boys and girls. Conversation in the dining room was taut and brief. Everyone crowded around a long rectangular table in the center of a large room near the stern of the ship. Built into the walls were a dozen bunks; most were filled with bags and boxes of gear, but three were left clear for the counselors to sleep on.

The kitchen, or “galley,” was in the forward part of the ship, in a section that also contained the captain's quarters and the only bathroom. McKinley kept the door to this section locked during
the day—“You kids would just love a chance to raid the pantry, wouldn't you?”—but he unlocked it at 5:30 to let two of the “deck hands” start cooking. He chose Arthur and Crystal for the task.

“Have dinner ready and on the table at exactly eighteen-hundred hours,” he commanded. “That's six o'clock to you landlubbers.” Then he smiled broadly and winked at them. “This is the first meal of the first-ever Howard McKinley Leadership Cruise, so do a great job. I'm counting on you!”

Arthur and Crystal squeezed themselves into the dark kitchen, which was barely larger than a small closet. It was crammed full of dented pots, bent utensils, and rusty canned goods. Crystal and Arthur looked at the tiny kerosene stove and the battered blackened pans that swung from the ceiling, and then they looked at each other.

“This is crazy,” Arthur whispered, his low voice booming off the close walls. “Let's make something quick and simple and get out of here.”

“We'll make some friggin' spaghetti and hope McKinley chokes on it,” Crystal sneered. “Anyone who demotes me to ‘deck hand' can take his pipe and—”

“Spaghetti it is, then,” Arthur said with a smile.

Along one wall was a set of shelves so deep that Crystal had to stick her head into the dark spaces to reach the back. The shelves were stuffed with cans of all shapes and conditions—shining, rusty, dented, tall and thin, short and squat, pop-top and flip-top and the kind you open with a key. Most of them wore tattered labels, but many were bare. Crystal could see sardines, Spam, canned chicken chunks, gourmet mushrooms (badly dented), tomato purée, cream of broccoli soup, Vienna sausage, chipped beef, corn, pears, and random other foods. She pulled out several cans and handed them to Arthur.

Along another wall sagged a miniature sink with a hand pump, and next to it was the sheetmetal stove. Arthur read the faded instructions thumb-tacked to the wall and poured kerosene into the stove from a small oily can he found among several boxes of baking mix in an overhead cupboard. Then he opened a box of matches.

“This will either light up the stove,” he said, smiling to his galley-mate, “or it will light up the ship.” He touched a lit match to the pool of kerosene in the stove. The kerosene caught fire, and with some work, Arthur coaxed the stove into an impressive display of heat. No explosion.

“Oh, well,” Crystal said. “Maybe the next cooks will have better luck.” She smiled a tight, tough smile with thin lips and pointed teeth.

With pushing and prodding and kicking and swearing, they persuaded the water pump to cooperate, and at last, Crystal and Arthur balanced a pot of water on the burner and willed it to boil. They threw in a lot of spaghetti, and when it was tender, they drained it and dumped in the reddish-brown goo they found in several jars of ready-made sauce.

“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.”