Chapter 4 — Fall Cruise
M
r. Jerome Benson, czar of Kennebec Academy’s art studio, was a mountain climber, a bicyclist, and a seaman of almost unlimited energy. On this brilliant Saturday morning in late September, he had invited Jock Peterson and Allen Poole for a weekend on his thirty-foot sloop Esperance, now lying alongside the float in Kenniston’s Cove. The float had been built for the boathouse in which were kept the school’s rowing shells and several dinghies, but it was locked up at this early hour on Saturday morning. Later in the day Cap Milliken would probably open up for a few scullers or sailors. Now the ebb tide had started to run. There had been a light frost the night before and the gentle northwest breeze set adrift red and yellow maple leaves on the quiet sunny water of the cove. Jerry, clad in khaki pants, a green and black checkered wool shirt and a visored cap, stood in the hatch contemplating with distaste an empty carton containing various paper and plastic bags, the wreckage of his early trip to the supermarket. The sun was warm on his back and he had no great zeal for waste disposal. Down the steep path in a hurry came Jock Peterson, crew captain, a tall, strong, mature eighteenyear-old with a cheerful open face. He swung a zipper duffel bag in one hand and a suit of yellow oil clothes in the other as he took the boathouse steps two at a time – he had been up and down them almost daily for years and sometimes in the dark. “Come aboard, Jock, come aboard. Have you seen Allen Poole? He’s coming with us if he hasn’t bought himself a detention for not checking in some place.” “I saw him just getting out of his mother’s car. He’s right behind me, Mr. Benson.” Don’t you ‘Mr. Benson’ me aboard of here! Afloat, I’m “Skipper” and don’t you forget it again.” “Right, Skipper, you told me that last trip. Here comes Allen.” “Just get that damned box of trash out of my sight, will you, Jock, and we’ll get out of here right away. Chuck your gear below. You can stow it later. Let’s get the mainsail on her.” Jock cranked up the sail on the winch while Jerry slacked the sheet so the big mainsail flapped idly in the gentle breeze, the reef points pattering. “Stand by your jib halyard, Jock. Is your bowline clear? Where’s Allen?” Allen Poole, a weedy, angular youth of sixteen, had stopped halfway down the steps, looking past the sail, across the calm cove where two small sailboats and an outboard were moored, up the blue Kennebec to the far shore all spangled with fall color against the nearly-white clear sky beyond. He had seen fall before; but each day was unique to him, a stunning surprise when it came, not because he had forgotten falls gone by but because he remembered them. “Shake a leg, Allen.” Allen stepped aboard and handed Jerry a paper bag. “Right side up with care.” “It’s hot. What is it? Where’d you get it?” “I happened to be coming through the kitchen this morning on the way out and Ma said she had a pie that she and Dad couldn’t handle without me and she figured it would do us more good than it would her.” “Good news! I’ll set it where it won’t get wounded if we get into a battle with this northwest wind. There’s more of it outside.” When Jerry came on deck again, they cast off, the tide swung them away from the float, Jock set the jib, and the fair northwester carried them around the point, into the main current of the river and very far 18
