Chapter 4 — Fall Cruise

Mr. 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

from Kennebec Academy in a very short time. The fair wind and tide shot Esperance down the river at an inspiring rate and past abandoned Fort Popham at the mouth. “What did they want to build a fort for down here?” asked Jock. “Who do they think they’re goin’ to shoot?” “That fort,” said Jerry, “is Maine’s most sincere compliment to the navy of the Confederate States of America. It was built to protect Bath from Confederate raiders.” “Did any of them ever show up?” “Sure did!” broke in Allen. “In 1863 the Florida captured vessels up and down the Maine coast. In one of them, the Archer from Southport, Lieutenant Read sailed right into Portland Harbor at night, captured the big, fast revenue cutter Caleb Cushing. In the morning, when they saw that she was gone, the mayor of Portland and the collector of customs commandeered two steamers, armed them with brass cannons, and chased after the Cushing, which hadn’t got far in the light morning breeze. The U.S. lieutenant, who had been captured with the Cushing, threw overboard the key to the powder magazine so the Confederates could not defend the ship. Read set fire to the Cushing and fled with the men in small boats. He and his crew were captured by one of the steamers and the Cushing blew up. So Fort Popham was built and Boothbay, Wiscasset, Rockland, and a lot of other ports were fortified.” “Where’d you get all that?” asked Jerry. Allen, who had been carried away by the excitement of the scene off Portland, came back to the present. “Oh…we had a history teacher in Bath who told us about it and I found the whole story in a book by the Maine Historical Society. A guy named Hale wrote it up.” “You went to school in Bath?” asked Jock.” Have you always lived there?” “Yeah. My Dad is a draftsman at the Iron Works.” “How come you go to Kennebec instead of to public school?” “Cap Milliken knows my Dad. Cap used to be a boss rigger at the Iron Works you know, and he brought me down to see Mr. Sawyer once, and I came.” “Are you glad you came?” asked Jerry. “Yeah, I guess so.” Shot out of the river mouth by the tide, they stood off to sea, by the red and black buoys, the dark green weedy ledges, and the rugged cliffs of Seguin Island, now brown with withered grass and dark with spruce. Outside, lifting to the gentle heave of the offshore swell, they saw far to the northwest the peak of Mt. Washington, lifting sharp, blue, and incredibly high. They turned east, passed the nun on Tom Rock, had a leisurely lunch in the dying breeze, and lay becalmed on a silky sea outside the mouth of the Sheepscot River. “We might start the engine and poke along to the eastward,” said Jerry, “but the last time I tried her, she wouldn’t start.” “What’ll you do if you need her in a hurry?” asked Jock. “If I need her in a hurry, I’ll fix her in a hurry. How about that pie? We ought to sample it to be sure it’s safe to eat.” “It’s your boat,” said Jock. “Where’d you stow that pie?” Jock wasn’t used to doing nothing when there was something to be done, but the mid-day sun was warm without being hot, the gentle motion was soporific, and the pie was very attractive. There didn’t seem to be any great hurry. Five miles astern lay Seguin and the islands at the mouth of the river. The broad Sheepscot stretched away to the north, the shores patched with the roofs of summer cottages and punctuated by the lighthouses at Hendrick’s Head and The Cuckolds. A lobsterman hauling traps off Newagen alternately gunned and idled

his distant engine. Two late summer yachts lay becalmed off Boothbay; another, sails furled and engine running full bore, steamed by inside on a course for the Sisters, Cape Small, and eventually, no doubt, for Florida and the islands. Offshore to the southeast lay more islands: grassy, brown Damariscove, sprucegreen Outer Heron, and White Island, its bright granite cliff gleaming in the sun. There didn’t seem to be any necessity for doing anything in a hurry, and it had been a hard week. Jerry, with a cookie tin of pastel fragments, was making color notes on a sketchpad while the boys demolished the last of the pie. “If you had to draw a picture of right now, Allen, what would you draw?” asked Jerry. “I dunno. How do you draw a picture of nothin’? We’re standing dead still.” “I used to think so,” said Jerry, “but we’re not, you know. We’re tearing to the eastward as our planet spins at about 500 miles an hour. So are the Sheepscot and The Cuckolds and Seguin and the sea and the shore and the whole state of Maine and everything but the sun; and we’re all leaving that behind us.” “We’re going around the sun too,” said Jock, “but we’re not leaving that behind us. Just going around and around and around. If we are 95 million miles from the sun and if we went in a circle, we’d be going 3 1/7 times 2 times 95 million miles in 365 1/4 days. I can’t do that in my head.” “My calculator’s on the shelf over the chart table.” Jock was back in a minute. “She choked on it but probably it is about 70 thousand miles an hour, allowing for the earth’s orbit being elliptical and not circular.” “And the whole solar system is going somewhere in a hell of a hurry too, isn’t it?” asked Jerry. “I guess so. Anyway, we’re spinning and revolving and rushing off God knows where and the only sure thing is we’re not standing still. And the tide is beginning to flood up the river so count that in too.”

During this mathematical excursion, the distant islands had lost their brilliance and turned a smoky blue. A sharp hard line of dark blue had appeared on the silky sea to the south, and the mainsail swung gently to the port side, not yet tightening the sheet. Within a minute, the sheet tightened, Esperance heeled gently, a ripple spread from under the bow, bubbles swept astern, and the tiller came alive under Jock’s hand.

“Head for the lighthouse on The Cuckolds, Jock, while I trim the main sheet. Allen, pass me that jacket on the starboard bunk and take those pastels below when you go. Just set them on the chart table.” When next Jerry went below to write up the logbook, he found Allen’s pastel of “nothin’.” Green and blue nearby blended, faded, off to a very light blue. The blue met a band of almost-white deepening toward a darker blue. This simple progression of blending colors was a calm day. Jerry with delight tucked it carefully into the back of the logbook. As Esperance rounded the bell buoy off The Cuckolds and headed for Ram Island Light, its crew began to feel that the day was ending although the clock did not yet say 4:30. Allen felt it first, like a shiver. He wondered why the light was so yellow, the colors so much brighter, the shadows suddenly so much sharper than they had been in the summer. Jerry went below for the pastel tin again and Jock speculated that with the sun south of the equator now, twilights were longer because the sun approached the horizon at a gentler angle. Thus the air filtered out more of the sun’s strength, left the light weaker. As they passed close to Ram Island, each noticed with a different quality of delight the shadow of the mainsail’s peak sliding across the barnacled rocks and leaping up against the lighthouse, standing with its feet in the water, ablaze with sunset. But before they had ghosted through the ledges at the mouth of Little River and anchored among the lobster boats, the approaching night was climbing the eastern sky, the sea had turned a cold and slaty bluegray, and the spruce trees on the hill to the west were black against a yellow sky. As they rounded up to anchor, Jerry spoke in a subdued voice that fitted the evening. “Drop your jib, Jock. The downhaul is on the cleat under the port rail.” Esperance swung into the

gentle breeze. “Let go your main halyard, Allen, and watch out for that winch handle or it’ll crack you one under the chin.” The mainsail collapsed in a clash of slides. Jock eased the anchor to the muddy bottom. Esperance settled back, snubbed on the anchor rode, and rested. The boys quickly tied up the sails, feeling the chill and the gathering dark. They dove below to the welcome light and warmth of lamps and a stove on which a pressure cooker already jiggled and hissed. After supper had been cleared up and Jerry had rigged a lantern in the starboard rigging, he took out a jackknife and a piece of soft pine sawed out in a shape that would become a cormorant standing with wings spread and began to bring the bird out of the block. “How come you’re an art teacher?” asked Jock. “I mean, you’re so good at being an artist making birds and paintings and plaster figures and all wouldn’t you make more money just being an artist?” “I’m not an art teacher!” The answer carried more feeling than the question seemed to warrant. “An art teacher is a contradiction in terms. A teacher is a miserable wretch, shackled to schedules, always writing reports, taking attendance, reporting grades, correcting the fools, punishing the rogues, and herding naturally indolent and amoral youth on to the educational escalator from which he will step a genteel and conforming member of a society devoted to the admiration and perpetuation of its own virtues. An artist can’t be a teacher.” Jock was caught flat aback by this passionate answer to his well-intended question. “Well, what are you, then, when a bunch of us come into the studio?” “I’m sorry, Jock. I didn’t mean to blow you out of the water. I’m an artist in residence. The school gives me a room big enough so I can share it with others and provides us with almost unlimited materials. Most of the people who come in were born blind and have been blind most of their lives. I try to help those who want to see. When they have learned to see, they will want to talk. I can’t tell them what to say, but I can help them to say it in color, in line, in clay or plaster or wood if they can’t say it in words.” “What do you mean, ‘born blind’?” “Not literally, of course. Mathematicians and lawyers are so depressingly literal! Take Fort Popham. You had a visual impression of it when we passed it this morning. Now that Allen has told you why it was built, you ‘see’ it more clearly. You still don’t see it very clearly, but look at it again tomorrow when we go home. See what makes it look the way it does. How do the shadows lie in the empty gun ports? Are the corners really square? What makes them look square?” “Why not just take a picture of it?” “Because a photograph would not show the foundation of fear on which it stands or the ironic pride of a flag of a united nation flying over an abandoned fort dedicated to the killing of its own citizens or the long shadow of history stretching across Popham Beach where gaudy umbrellas shelter bikini-clad sunbathers. Do you begin to catch a glimmer of Fort Popham?” “Perhaps a glimmer. But I did see the shadow of the mainsail jump over Ram Island Light.” “What would you give it? A-? Would you like me to write an official comment on it?” The cormorant was taking on character under the blade of Jerry’s knife. Allen watched the tiny shavings spiral into the bucket set to catch them. “Another thing -- a teacher has to pretty near teach everyone the same thing like, say, logarithms. But we each see things differently. I notice that you saw the sunset light on the islands in terms of astronomy and physics while I saw a color that is so rare and changes so fast and whose change is so necessary to its character that it is impossible to put it on paper. What did you see, Allen?” Jerry guessed that Allen had not thought much about what he had seen, but that he had seen it. He was intellectually and emotionally and sensuously soaking up every thought, every feeling, every impression that came to his mind. Jerry knew that he was taking a chance of embarrassing him, of breaking him away from his mood, with a direct question, but he took the chance, hoping to start Allen on the creative process of bringing some order out of the chaos of his impressions.

Allen paused a moment. “What I have seen all day is winter. I began to see it before school started. I saw it this morning, and I see it gaining on us all the time.” “Pretty good!” exclaimed Jock. “I feel that way too. It’s closing in on us every day.” Jerry tossed Allen the little cormorant. “Keep it for a souvenir of today, Allen.” Allen looked at it carefully, felt its shape, and buttoned it into his shirt pocket. In the night, the wind came in from the south, swung Esperance back against the ebbing tide so the dinghy bumped gently alongside. On deck to clear it, Jerry knew Allen was right; for Orion, ruler of the winter skies, blazed at him from the southern sky. The next day, homeward bound, it was a different world. After a breakfast under a warm and hazy sun and a half hour in the entrails of the engine with file and screwdriver, Jerry pushed the starter and felt a rush of satisfaction as the engine caught and ran smoothly. “That’s been on my mind. I thought those points needed a touch of the file. Couldn’t have been much wrong with her, but now she runs better than new. Let’s go sailing.” The wind was picking up steadily, damp and chilly from the southwest. Esperance at anchor moved rhythmically to the gentle roll that penetrated from outside where the sheltering ledges were breaking in the growing chop. “I imagine we’ll see some water flying around today. The time to put on your oil clothes is before you get wet.” Jerry tossed Jock’s oil clothes out on deck and found a suit for Allen. Then they set sail, hauled the anchor and beat out of the narrow passage. Outside, with the tide running hard against the increasing wind, a steep chop was building. Esperance tucked her rail down close to it and drove ahead, throwing fans of spray over her weather shoulder, spray which rattled on oil clothes and streamed down the deck.

“Sock it to her, Skipper. Drive her!” shouted Jock, exhilarated by the rush of wind and water. Their course for the mouth of the Kennebec lay almost dead to windward, a long beat. They worked up in the lee of the islands off Boothbay where the water was smooth and the wind puffy, then reached across the rough open entrance of Boothbay to the smoother water under the Southport shore, but there the shelter ended. They tacked and stood off to the southward as wind and sea increased. “Smoky sou’wester,” said Jerry, looking at the veiled sun, the graying day. The islands astern were dim silhouettes, and it was entirely too thick to see Seguin to windward. The shores nearby were forms, not colors and shaded off into dimness. The sea was gray, too, and the breaking crests only a dull white. A mile outside The Cuckolds, Allen, at the tiller, began to feel Esperance was laboring. Instead of thrashing cheerfully through the seas, she was charging them. Not just spray, but dollops of solid water drove over the bow and aft along both decks; no small part of it came airborne into the cockpit. Allen ducked for a big one. “Only a Maine man ducks a spray,” quoted Jock. “And I know why,” he added. “That stuff is cold!” “Warm as milk south of Cape Cod,” said Jerry. “I been there.” Esperance drove hard into a big hollow-faced sea and stopped short while it drained off her. She floated over the next and charged again. Her lee deck was under water most of the time now, and Allen felt that she was suffering. “’Bout time to reef that mainsail,” said Jerry. “What for?” asked Jock. “This is fun and we don’t want to slow up do we? Can’t she take it?” “She isn’t really going very fast,” observed Jerry. “She is making a hell of a splash but just watch those bubbles go by. Pretty slow. And we’re sagging off to leeward too. See the angle the wake makes with our course and that slick on the weather quarter? We’ll go faster and make less leeway and stay drier if we tuck in a reef. Sheet that jib down hard and take her while Allen and I get the main off her. Luff her when I call for it, and for God sake, hang on, Allen.” Allen and Jerry went forward, feeling rugged as they stood up to the weather. Jerry took up on the

topping lift, Jock luffed, and Jerry eased away on the main halyard while Allen clawed the sail down. Hove to under jib, the whole scene changed. No more charging, no flying spray. The motion was much easier; the wind seemed more moderate and the seas less menacing. They passed the earrings and tied in the reef points with cold, stiff fingers and re-set the sail. Now the sloop stood up to the wind, her rail just out of water, and rose to the seas instead of hurling herself at them. She seemed to pick her way skillfully between the crests. A lunch of bread and cheese and a mug of soup – which Jerry contrived to heat on a single-burner gimballed stove – brightened the scene. Seguin came out of the haze ahead, and as they approached the ledges off the Kennebec, the tide began to flood and the sea to subside. It was still very choppy off Pond Island, but once inside Fort Popham, the water smoothed out, the wind came only in heavy puffs, and with the flood tide under them, they swished up the river into Kenniston’s Cove and picked up their mooring. Jerry set the boys ashore in the dinghy and came back aboard to clean up, a chore he liked to do alone. With the lunch dishes washed, the reef shaken out and sails furled, lines coiled down, bilge pumped and the clock wound, he opened a bottle of beer to assist in the contemplation of a highly successful weekend. He had known Jock for two years, knew he was a good hand on a boat, strong, coordinated, and delightfully pleasant and open. His mind, inclined toward contemplation of material things and the reasons why they acted as they did, had been just what was needed to stimulate Allen. He was not surprised that Allen had had little to say, but he was sure that Allen had taken in a great deal, and that some day he would use it to say something deeply moving – like that line of blending color across the sheet in the back of the logbook.