High Tide at Noon (23 page)

Like a triumphal procession they turned along the road for home. Lights streamed down across the meadow toward them.

In the entry the boys peeled off their spray-soaked jackets and wet rubber boots. Owen was through first and into the kitchen, shouting, “Ahoy the house! Where's my darlin'?” Philip said over his shoulder, “I'll dig up some slippers for you, Alec,” and he too had gone. Presently their voices came out from the sitting room, where they were telling Donna about the boats.

Kitchen lamplight streamed into the entry, on Alec bending down to pull off his boots, across his damp soft hair, so different from black Bennett hair; and on Joanna, standing against the outer door, wondering why she didn't go into the house with the others.

The silence in the entry became an audible thing. Joanna's face burned, but her hands were cold, she thrust them hard into her pockets. In a moment she must say something, but what could she say? If only Alec would get his boots off, so she could go by him into the kitchen. Anybody would think he was being slow on purpose . . .

Her voice felt scrapy and unfamiliar. “Did you break any fingernails out there tonight?”

“Fingernails?” asked Alec. He straightened up and looked down at Joanna as if he had never seen her before. Then, with one swift motion, he shut the kitchen door, and in the sheltering blackness of the entry he took her into his arms.

His lips were warm and firmly gentle against hers. Gentle, but the touch of them sent a great tide of thanksgiving over Joanna. This is it, she thought, and her arms went around him. It seemed as if she could never get enough of the good clean smell of him, the wiry strength of his body, his arms tightening around her, and the way he put his face against hers.

She felt the deep thudding of his heart as they stood thus, and hoped passionately that he could feel hers. There was no word between them, nor any need of words; for a long time they stood together, with no speech or movement, until they heard Owen come whistling across the kitchen.

Without haste or alarm, they kissed and separated; Alec opened the door, and they went in.

A
T DAYLIGHT
, J
OANNA HEARD
O
WEN
stirring in his room, next to hers, and on a quick happy impulse she dressed and went downstairs. She opened the back door to let Winnie out, and stood for a moment looking across the point at Schoolhouse Cove, and the black loom of the Eastern End woods against the sky.

The world was tranquil and gray in the pale clear light; the scattered spruces on the point were etched black on a sky that would soon be flushed with the color of wild roses. Joanna stood on the stone doorstep and took a deep breath of the cool air, at once fragrant and salty. It was so still that the gulls' eternal chatter on the ledges came to her ears with sharp clarity, and the sparrows' sleepy twittering in the wild pear trees was loud and sweet.

The glow that had lain all night against Joanna's heart spread through her body until she seemed to feel its radiance go forth from her like actual light. Here in this entry, with the familiar oilclothes and rubber boots . . . She shut her eyes and lifted her face, remembering with an aching happiness his hard young cheek so warm against hers, the way their hearts had beat together.

She heard the tairs creaking under Owen's feet, and went back into the kitchen, discreetly shuttering her face. When he came in, she was building a fire.

“Hello,” he said on a yawn. He noticed nothing, too intent on plunging his head into a basin of cold water. Joanna put the teakettle over the rising blaze and measured out the coffee, brought eggs and cream from the cold cellarway. Owen toweled his head vigorously, subdued his wet black hair, and presented a glowing countenance to his sister.

“How about some light here?” He lit the lamp on the table, and Joanna shrugged. “I was going to let the sunrise in.”

“You and your sunrises!” Owen grinned at her. “I wonder how Alec's old tub got through the night.”

Alec
. She loved the very sound of it; it evoked him before her with his quiet smile, and the way his hair grew, and the feel of his arms tightening around her. She said, level-voiced, “Did the
Old Girl
have any holes knocked in her?”

“Couldn't see a damn thing. Oh, she's built to take it, that one.” Vital, healthy, smiling, he sat down to his breakfast and Joanna forgot for a moment her own personal delight to half-wonder if this was the sullen, tormented Owen who would have struck down his brother yesterday. He looked as if there were nothing to cloud his universe—the universe that stretched over and around them now, the sky tinged with the delicate hue of sun-ripened apricots, the sea turning faintly, silkenly blue.

It was the boat that mattered most, not the women. They were brothers again when it was sea they must fight, instead of each other.

When they had finished breakfast, Owen put on his boots and Joanna walked with him down across the wet green meadow. A little breeze riffled Schoolhouse Cove and made a scalloped edge like white lace on the beach; the birds were active in the alder swamp at the foot of the meadow, and the first primroses were the color of sunlight on the brow of the beach.

The harbor lay before them, only slightly choppy now. The wind had risen rapidly until the tide turned, and now it was dying out as rapidly. Sigurd Sorensen's boat was passing the harbor ledges, and Joanna saw Nils dragging his punt down over the beach. Remembering Alec, she thought: This is how you wanted me to feel about you, Nils, but I couldn't.

They passed the anchor and had a full view of the harbor now. Alec's boat was high and dry, keeled over beside the old wharf. Owen looked out across the water and made a strange and furious sound.

“By God, she's gone!”

The
Old Girl
's mooring was empty. Brother and sister stared, all speech forsaking them, until Joanna said slowly, “But where is she?”

“Sunk, damn her!” he said between his teeth. “She must be! She did take in water, after all.” He strode down the beach, shouting at Nils. “Wait a minute, goddam ye!”

Nils grinned at him. “Got a big head this fine large morning?”

“Christ, my boat's sunk. Come on, let's get out there.” They pushed off, Owen at the oars. Joanna would have liked to have gone, but some new shyness kept her from going where Nils was when her own happiness should glow so transparently in her eyes. It burned steadily and sweetly within her, and she thought how irrevocable it was; the flame had been lighted, and even if he never again kissed her or held her against his heart, the flame would always burn.

She sat on an overturned dory and waited for the boys to come back. Presently they beached the punt, their voices clear in the early morning silence, and Owen came up toward her. His mouth was grim, but there was a curious taut excitement about him.

“Sunk, all right. Gone down clip 'n clean on her nose. She must have filled up in the for'd compartment.”

“Oh, Owen! What are you going to do?”

He laughed. “I'll do something, don't worry.”

“You'll have to get her up, and dry her out.”

“Yep, I'll get her up—and leave her in the marsh.” He grinned at her blank look. “I've got my plans made already, young Jo. First I've got to round up Alec.”

She stood up and took a deep breath. “Alec?” she said casually, and it seemed as if he must see the way her color grew. But he was lighting a cigarette.

“You know him. That long-legged gandygut you lugged home one night.”

“Seems to me I met him, once.” Joanna managed to look humorous without looking radiant, and they separated. Walking home, she wished it were she who was going to wake up Alec. She knew what it would be like to walk silently in the dew-wet grass, to go so quietly up the steps and slip through the door, to tiptoe through the cool bare rooms and come to the cot where Alec slept.

She considered this, her mouth curved with secret delight. Did he sleep on his back or his side or his face? Did he burrow down till you could see only a rough brown crest? Or were his arms flung above his head, his throat bare, so that he looked young and defenseless and remote?

And what would she, Joanna, do—now that she stood there? At the thought of his waking to her presence, she felt her whole body tighten in unbearable, exciting happiness. For she knew with her heart and soul what he would do. He would put out his arms to her and she would go into them.

Here was the house again, and Joanna, her face impassive, went into the kitchen to find Philip and her father washing up. She hurried with their breakfast, and waited until they were fortified with good coffee and bacon and eggs, before she said quietly,
“The Old Girl
's gone—sunk.”

Philip said at once, “I knew the rooster should've brought her in last night. But he's so cussed stubborn.”

“Where's Owen now?” Stephen broke in.

“Gone to find Alec,” Joanna answered.

“We'll get to work on her this morning,” Stephen said. “It's died down a lot—we'll have to get her up as soon as we can. At that, he'll lose plenty of good hauls.”

“And Closed Season in three weeks.” Philip was grim. “At the rate that boy's been hauling, this'll lose him a couple hundred dollars. He'll be broke all summer.”

It was not a pleasant prospect. Owen could go handlining or trawling to keep some change in his pockets, but until now summer had always been more or less playtime for him. Beyond the necessary repairing of gear, he considered it his right to spend his money as he pleased; he didn't stint on his work the rest of the year. And there was always more money to be made in September. But if there weren't any money in his dungarees, and if there weren't any chance of a fling on the mainland—Joanna's mind didn't have to go into details. She knew, just as the others knew, what it would mean.

Philip and Stephen went to haul, Donna came downstairs, the routine of the morning went on, and Joanna couldn't worry much about the
Old Girl
when the thought of Alec was a little wordless song that went on and on.

Before noon the kitchen was suddenly full of men. Philip and Stephen, not too discouraged about their traps, since most of them had been set to the east'ard of the Island; Owen, coming in arrogantly with an unmistakable aura of triumph around him; Alec, not saying much, smiling a little; Nils.

Stephen said at once, “Well, what are you going to do about your boat, son? She won't be fit for a while—you can take my boat to haul this afternoon.”

Owen didn't waste time with preliminaries. He said directly, “Thanks, Father, but I've got my plans made. I'm going out to Cash's. Alec's going with me.”

Donna said in a low voice,
“Cash's,”
and that was all.

“How are you going?” Stephen asked quietly. “You haven't any boat. Alec's isn't big enough.”

“What about Nils' boat?” said Owen, smiling. Stephen looked at Nils.

“So he's talked you into this, and I thought you had some sense in that yellow head of yours. Don't say anything—I know damn well it's all Owen's idea, from start to finish. Go out on Cash's with sixty­five pots, stay a week, haul three or four times a day, make stacks of money—maybe. If a storm drives you right back, you've lost gear, bait, and your expenses, besides maybe losing yourself. I'm not saying you wouldn't get back all right. But there's more men lost out by going to Cash's than those who've gained anything. That's a good boat of yours, Nils, I know that—”

Nils said quietly, “She's seaworthy.”

“She's a big boat, too—she'd probably carry a hundred pots out there, easy. I'll grant you that. But you've never lobstered on Cash's. Owen and Alec don't know anything about it either, except what they've heard of all the money you can make . . . if you're lucky.”

Philip said, “And maybe it's quick money, but it sure isn't easy money. You can take an awful beating in that shoal water.”

“Bill Clark's boat caught on fire last time he was out there,” Joanna volunteered. “He had to row home in a dory. Sixty miles. He lost his boat, engine, traps, everything.”

“He's one of those Brigport numbskulls,” Owen said impatiently. “They don't know anything. Nobody but a proper damned fool'd let his boat get afire. Listen, you can argue all you want to, but if everybody's said their five cents' worth, I'll say mine. We're going out to Cash's. We're going to get some of those lobsters that crawl around those ledges thick as flies in honey. And this summer I'm going a build me a boat.”

His eyes were aglow and his color was high, and the poise of his head was the poise of a colt's head when he is about to take the bit in his teeth and run.

Stephen shrugged. “Well, Alec, I hoped you'd have more sense.”

Alec shook his head, smiling. “I guess not, sir. Maybe it's a gamble, but everything is, to my way of thinking.”

Joanna liked his adventurous spirit, for it was adventure to go out on Cash's Ledge, where it was always rough except in the finest weather, and men who had never been seasick in their lives came back gaunt and white, sore from the ceaseless pitching and tossing, swearing that three thousand pounds of lobsters in five days wasn't worth wishing every hour of those five days that you could quietly die.

Stephen played his final card—toward Nils, who owned the boat that would go. “What about a storm? It's sixty miles home, you know. You'd leave your pots out there, and a lot of your lobsters. And you'd be risking that handsome boat of yours.”

“We've just had a good blow,” Nils said. “There'll be a spell of fine weather for a while.”

So they faced him, Owen defying anyone to cross him, Alec politely sure of himself, Nils not saying anything at all. But Joanna knew the obstinacy of his mouth. She glanced at Philip, who stood with one foot on the oven hearth, looking at Owen with indulgent amusement. She glanced at her mother, who didn't look up from her sewing. And at her father, who was saying: