High Tide at Noon (48 page)

“Don't be so dumb, Jo,” Owen protested. “Even if you stay here, it won't do any harm to hold on to that property. Cripes, we don't want the Birds to have any more foothold than they've got now!”

Joanna shook her head. “They can't do any more damage than they've done already. Look, if you boys and Father get together and pay off that money, you put yourselves in a hole, and it's coming winter.”

“Jo's right,” said Philip. “We'd better see how the winter comes out. May be a good one, with plenty of hauling days, but it's just as likely to be tough. When you get just about two hauling days a month, you have to live on what's in the sugar bowl.”

Stephen said thoughtfully, “Well, Joanna, if you feel like that about the house, we'll wait a while. No hurry.”

“Sure, we can get it back any time. Simon loves a nickel like his right eye, the bastard,” said Owen. “I'm going down and pump out my boat. You coming, Phil?”

The four boys went out, and Joanna was left alone with her parents. Donna was quiet, as she always was, but her joy at having Joanna back showed in the way a certain taut anxiety had left her face. They washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen together, while Stephen stood by the window smoking, looking out at the ledges that were buried under tons of white water.

“I feel sort of funny,” Joanna said hesitantly, “coming back like this in the middle of a storm, walking in and turning things upside down, instead of coming when you wanted me.”

“When
we wanted you!” exclaimed Donna. “Don't you think we've always wanted you back up here where we could keep an eye on you?”

Joanna felt a queer constriction in her throat. Golly, was she going to cry? She hoped not, because she had to tell them now, these two beloved people of hers; Donna humming to herself as she polished lamp chimneys, her eyes as clear and youthfully blue as ever, though her tidy brown head was feathered with gray at the temples. And Stephen, giving her a swift, twinkling grin . . .

She took a long breath and said, “Well, it's not just me you've got to keep an eye on.”

The silence was immense. She felt her face burn scarlet. Why didn't they say something? Were they too busy thinking about the mess their only daughter had made out of life? Oh, this was a shabby homecoming for a Bennett woman. She wished she could drop through the floor.

And then she met Donna's eyes, and Donna's broadening smile. “You've taken long enough to get around to tell us,” she said. “I was wondering when you'd get ready.”

“You knew!” Joanna accused her. “You knew all the time!”

“Well, only for a little while,” said Donna modestly. Stephen, on his way out to the shop, put his hand on his girl's shoulder and gripped it hard. Donna said with radiant mischief, “You know what I've been doing? I've got out all Stevie's baby clothes, and now that you've told us yourself—well, I can bring them into the open and put them out to air.”

Joanna did cry, then.

O
THERS BESIDE THE
G
RAYS LEFT
the Island that fall. The Areys, who had always boarded the teacher, decided suddenly to spend the winter ashore; Mr. Arey had enough laid by to put his traps on the bank, and Mrs. Arey was ailing. The teacher—new this year, since Miss Hollis had reached the retirement age—was sent to Pete and Stella Grant. Pete was the school agent, and it was up to him to keep the teacher anyway, the Island contended stoutly.

Miss Adams was a slight, timid-eyed girl just out of Normal School and rather terrified at the prospect of living all winter on an island twenty-five miles from the coast. She was also startled, Joanna guessed, at the array of frankly admiring young men lined up on the wharf when she arrived. A young slip of a schoolmarm coming out to Bennett's was something that hadn't happened before in their lifetime. It looked as if there'd be compensations for winter weather and the steadily dropping price of lobsters.

As soon as her chum, Mrs. Arey, left on the important business of being under a doctor's care, Nate Bennett's wife developed an astonishing array of complaints for one who had always been so offensively healthy. One day after she had just left Stephen's house, while the room seemed to echo her saga of headaches and hot flashes, Donna said quietly, “Mary wants to get off the Island. That's what all this is leading up to.”

“Uncle Nate won't go!” Joanna flashed back. “He's never gone off in the winter! She can't make him go.”

“Can't she?” Donna smiled. “You know what an afternoon of Mary and her headaches does to us. Suppose you had to listen to it day in, day out, like Nate. Maybe you'd do anything to stop it.”

“I'd put a pillow over her face in the middle of the night and stop it for good,” said Joanna. “Mother, Uncle Nate wouldn't know what to do with himself ashore! He won't go.”

But he did go, at last, his dark Bennett face deeply lined and impassive as he boarded the
Aurora B
. Mary was blooming. They were going to live with Rachel and her husband during the winter. Jeff and Hugo would keep bachelors' hall at the farm, and tend the milk. It turned out that they ate most of their meals up at the big house, and spent most of their evenings there, those evenings when fall was deepening into winter.

It was a bad fall for herring, and the bait problem would arise before the winter was out. Those who'd laid down plenty felt duty­bound to sell to those who went short, and then they shortened themselves. And sometimes you couldn't get more for love nor money.

Joanna heard all about this, and other ins and outs of lobstering, in these long evenings. She'd sit with her feet on the oven hearth, her sewing in her lap, and listen, while they sat around smoking and talking and drinking coffee after Stephen and Donna had gone to bed. Her brothers would be there, Jeff and Hugo, the Sorensen boys. Maurice and Pierre came up from the Eastern End with Charles.

They talked about everything: boats and women and engines, radio, the movies someone had seen the last time he went ashore, the Island and the Islanders, the world, the things they'd like to do in it. Their talk ranged far and wide, but it always came back to the immediate and urgent problems of living. It always came back to lobstering.

“Jeeley, the damn bugs been readin' up on birth control,” Owen grumbled. “We hold off all summer so's they can shed and breed, and what do we get for it? Just about enough to take us out and to haul the next time!”

“I'd give plenty to know what makes good years and bad ones,” Nils said slowly. “Must be they follow different routes when they come in from deep sea. Now they're having a swell year up around Isle au Haut. But the last year or so they've been tapering off around here, all the time.”

“It's the kelp,” said Mark. “You get the best lobsters in the pots you set where there's plenty of kelp. Well, the kelp's almost gone from around here.”

“Oh, you and your kelp can go to hell,” said Owen rudely. “You don't know a thing about lobstering. Not the way it used to be, a few years ago.”

“Strikes me none of us know,” said Nils dryly. “My grandfather says that when he first came here you could go down to the beach at low tide and pick lobsters out of the rockweed, the way the kids get crabs now. This place was crawling with 'em. And look at it now. What makes it? That's what I want to know.”

“I've heard about that too,” said Philip. “Well, either we've caught 'em all, or it's like you said, Nils—they're coming in by a different route. Maybe sometime they'll hit the Island again—”

“I'd hate to be hangin' by the neck till they do,” muttered Hugo. It was very late, and he was half-asleep in his corner. Jeff had gone home an hour ago. They had all gone except Nils and Hugo, who now murmured plaintively, “It ain't bad enough to have no lobsters, no bait, and no money when you do get 'em, but my God, no women!”

“I thought you were making time with the schoolmarm,” said Philip. “Been up at Grants' every night for a week, haven't you?”

“So's that grinnin' critter over there!” Hugo jerked his head at Owen. “And he can outsit me every time, damn his hide! He don't have to get up at five every morning to milk a couple bitchly cows. I wonder if there'll be a woman he'll let me keep to myself.”

“You want to polish up that technique of yours, son,” Owen admonished him paternally. “It's a mite rusty, ain't it?”

Hugo swore at him, long and brilliantly as he pulled on his boots and put on his mackinaw, climaxed his recital with a cheerful smile at them all, patted Joanna on the head, and went home. When he had gone, Philip said around his pipe, “Good kid, Hugo . . . Nils, anybody been bothering you lately?”

Nils gave him a sharp blue glance and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his fair head yellow under the lamp. “What makes you say that?”

“It's most likely my evil mind,” Philip drawled, “but when I came under the Head yesterday Simon Bird was right spang in the middle of your string. When I came up alongside he was hanging head down over the stern with a gaff—said he'd got his wheel fouled in one of your warps.”

“Well?”

“Well, when I first laid eyes on him he didn't look to be fouled, unless he'd got his fingers tangled up with one of your buoys. But he certainly got shed of it quick—I saw it fly overboard.”

“I figured that was it,” said Nils. “Or else the lobsters have got educated, and know how to get back out of a trap.” His blue glance was unclouded and cold. “Well, Simon's hauled everybody else on the Island—I knew it'd be my turn sooner or later. Can't figure out why, though. I haven't been doing any better than anybody else this fall.”

Joanna looked across at him, and her hatred of Simon, something that was always ready to surge up in her like the comber that rears without warning over a hidden shoal, rose now. She knew why Simon was hauling Nils. A week or so ago when she'd been coming back from the shore, she'd met Nils on his way to the house. They had walked along together, past the beach where Simon and Ash were painting Ash's boat, and Simon had seen them. He probably knew, too, that Nils came up to the house almost every evening.

It came to Joanna with something of a shock that Simon really believed what he'd said that night . . . “You got used to havin' a man around, you know what it's like, and you'll be lookin' around for another one pretty soon . . .” Her disgust burned her face and thickened her throat, as she sat there quietly sewing, with the young men's voices around her. He'd think that about her, a woman with a baby coming in January; a woman who'd loved her husband in a way she would never know again, or want to know again.

Simon had trapped Alec and hounded him, played on his weakness till Alec with one vast final effort had freed himself—only he had never completed that freedom. He had died too soon.

Hate was wrong, hate was evil, hate was a poison. But she had reason and right to hate—

“What are you going to do about it?” Owen demanded, and she started violently. But of course he wasn't speaking to her. He was watching Nils eagerly. “You better do what I did—cut him off. Cut off the whole bunch.”

Nils smiled. “I haven't got the Bennett luck. I'd be hauled again—right into court. Nope, I'm shifting that string next week, anyway, out toward the Rock, and I'll watch him if I have to keep right on his tail.”

“They're all acting up,” Mark said. “Nathan Parr says he knows somebody's after him, and all he can think of is Ash. Ash was hanging around the camp shooting off his mouth one day, and Nathan told him to shut up and git, so Little Blisterbelly's got to get even.”

“Every little bit helps.” Philip looked a great deal like his father. “Not enough to have storms and tides and no money, no bait, no lobsters, to contend with, but we have to have the Birds. Like fleas on a dog.”

“Well, there's such a thing as washing a dog with flea soap,” said Joanna violently, “and drowning the fleas!”

The boys looked at her with startled amusement. “Darlin' mine, we can't take that crew out and drown them. That's plain murder,” said Philip.

“But you could get rid of them, couldn't you? Clean them off the Island?”

“How do you want to do it, Jo?” Owen put one foot on the stove hearth and looked down at her with brilliant black eyes. “What's your idea?”

“Run them off. It's been done on Brigport.”

“That's Brigport for you. We've never copied them yet, and we never will,” said Philip quietly. “We can't run a man and his family off when they own their place and their shore privilege. We're supposed to be civilized over here.”

Joanna put down her sewing and looked around at them. “Listen,” she said. “Maybe there's such a thing as being too civilized. Maybe there's such a thing as being
soft
, when all you can think of is cutting off a few traps, or just shaking your head about it. Traps don't matter to the Birds, they can always get plenty more. Lift 'em right out of another man's string if they feel like it. And you scare them for a little while and then they start up again. The Island's bad enough off this winter without having them on it.”

She looked up at Owen, sure at least of his agreement. But to her angry disappointment, he shook his head. “Nope. Can't do it, Jo. Phil's right about that—there's a law.”

“I don't think you were always so careful of the law,” she said scathingly, and two stains of color spread on Owen's brown cheekbones. He looked angry as he lit a cigarette.

“I suppose you're afraid to do anything, too,” Joanna said to Nils.

He smiled at her. “Do I have to tell you right off? Can't think about it a mite?”

“That means you won't do it.” She shrugged. “All they can do on this Island is chew, and never lift a hand to help themselves—except the Birds.”