High Tide at Noon (57 page)

She was passing the old wharf now, and the boat shop loomed in the dusk. It was in the shop that she had said good-bye to Alec for the last time, in the red glow of sunset; she had knelt beside him, and had looked up to see the Coast Guard men coming past Jud Gray's half-built boat. It seemed to her that she remembered with a vividness that grew with time. Yet in June it would be two years since Alec died.

There was someone moving in the dusk down at the far end of the wharf, amid the usual clutter of hogsheads and traps, and she caught the tiny red glow of a cigarette. She left the path and went toward the glow. It could be her father, just starting home—he worked on his traps at the harbor now, instead of at home, in the barn.

But it wasn't Stephen Bennett who dodged out of sight among the hogsheads at her approach. She smiled and went after the fleet shadow, to corner it when there was nowhere for it to go but over the edge of the wharf into the water. It was Julian Yetton. He had got rid of his cigarette before she caught him.

“My golly, I thought you was Miss Martin!” he said with breathless relief. He was a scrawny and undersized twelve. Miss Martin had the right idea about stopping his smoking, but the wrong approach, Joanna thought.

“If you're that scared of her,” she said frankly, “I shouldn't think you'd take any chances about smoking.”

“My father sent me over here for some twine. I thought —” He peered at her through the grayness and said belligerently, “You gonna tell?”

“I've got more to do than carry tales,” said Joanna. “I'm in a hurry right now. But I'm not going to leave you here.” She steered him before her, a firm hand on his bony shoulder. “You get your twine and skip home.”

“You smoked when you was a kid!” He tried to twist free. “My pop told me —”

“Yes, but I stopped. See how weak you are? You can't get away. Soon as I found out how little and skinny I'd be if I kept it up, I stopped. And that's what the matter is with you.”

“Honest?” He squirmed around to peer at her again.

“Honest. How do you think you'll ever get to be as big as —” Not Marcus, because Marcus was undersized too. “As big as Owen? You want to be big like him, don't you, and sling traps around as if they were chips?”

Julian said with bravado, “Cripes almighty, smokin' a couple weasly cigarettes don't make all that difference!”

Joanna shrugged. “If you know so much about it, just wait and see. Anyway, I'm not preaching. I'm just telling you what'll happen.” They reached the path and she released him. He walked with her, unwillingly, as far as the anchor.

“G'night,” he said gruffly.

“Good night, Julian.” Her voice was pleasant and casual. “And listen, do your smoking away from the shop from now on. If I catch you again, with all that dry wood and shavings around, I'll pound you myself—in person. Catch on?”

“Yep,” said Julian breathlessly, and she heard him running along the boardwalk toward the safe lights of home.

She walked up through the marsh, the frozen ground ringing under her feet. The wind blew through the darkness, an unseen presence that stayed always with the Island. It was heavy with salt, and stinging with cold, but she loved it.

The lights of the house looked down at her, warm yellow and unwavering, and they kindled an answering warmth in her heart. As long as there was one gallant handful to stiver out the winter on the Island, as long as the lights still burned at dusk from the big house at the top of the meadow, the Island was all right.

*
*
*

There was a bad storm in March. For a week the wind blew like all the furies of hell, screaming, whistling, lashing the sea into chaos around the Island, crashing against the houses with a demon strength that made the sturdiest timbers shake. It blew trees down here and there; it wasn't safe to walk in the woods, for there was always a treacherous creaking and swaying far up among the tallest spruces. It blew out windows in some of the empty houses. Stephen, Marcus, and Owen went around the village with nails, laths, and glasscloth, and covered the windows that needed protection.

The gale came from the northeast, so the harbor was safe. But down at the Eastern End the most dilapidated fish house collapsed.

“Make good fire wood,” Jake said, and shrugged.

At last the storm blew itself out, but it was almost two weeks before the water subsided. The sun shone, and the sky was deceptively blue, the gulls thought it was spring at last and were noisy in the mornings; but far below them the sea tossed and moaned, day in and day out. The sound of it was always there, you grew used to talking through the muted thunder that increased as you neared the shore. In some places the surf was incredibly beautiful. Everybody went out to watch it, the children squealing and capering in reach of the glittering spray, the men's eyes and mouths set in a sort of desperate resignation.

“Almost seems as if somethin' was against us stayin' here,” Marcus Yetton said. “We'll be lucky if we got more'n two or three pots left.”

For some, it wasn't so bad. In spite of Marcus' worrying, he wasn't harmed as much as Owen, who came in with the
White Lady
loaded with smashed traps, dumped them ashore in a black silence nobody cared to break, and went out for another load. Some were lost altogether. When the men got together in Pete's store and compared notes, it was Owen who had lost the most, with Stephen a close second. Their favorite winter grounds, the shoal called “The Ripper,” had betrayed them.

Stephen began at once to rebuild. He was patient, for patience is of the essence for a good lobsterman, and he had rebuilt many times in his life on the Island. He told Donna and Joanna briefly how many pots he had lost, how long it would take him to straighten out, and that was the end of it. If he worried deeply behind those steady dark eyes, if he was discouraged or even afraid, no one would guess it—except possibly Donna.

Owen piled his broken traps beside the boat shop on the old wharf, and apparently went for a walk. He didn't come home all day, and toward supper time, Donna began to grow anxious. She never fidgeted or worried aloud, but Joanna knew the signs. Her own idea was that Owen had gone somewhere on the Island to get over his ugly mood, and she would have left him to sulk—when he was hungry enough he'd come home, and in a decent temper. But the March wind was blowing up cold, and Donna's eyes went again and again to the window, as if she were watching for him to come through the gate.

Joanna fed Ellen and put her to bed, then went out to look for Owen. She discovered, when she took her coat from its hook, that the keys to Nate's place were gone; the ring usually hung on an empty hook by the coats. That simplified her search.

Schoolhouse Cove was dark blue and benignly calm as she walked around it, but the sea wall, no more than a long heap of tumbled boulders now, showed that the cove had been neither calm nor benign in the past few weeks. The brown fields turned a warm, tawny color in the late sunshine, a few little clouds showed edges of fiery gold. The windows of the big barn against the woods seemed afire, the weather vane glittered against the sky.

When she reached Nate's place she went past the house to the barn, and found what she was looking for—the key ring dangling carelessly from a small door next to one of the big sliding ones. And in the hayloft, in last summer's hay, Owen was asleep.

She stood there for a moment watching him in the yellow light that came dimly through a small, cobwebbed window near his head. He lay on his back, arms flung wide; there was hay in his thick black crest, he needed a shave, his breath came harshly, and the whole chill, dim atmosphere of the place smelled of whiskey.

Joanna was suddenly furious. “You beauty,” she said aloud, and kicked the nearest foot. Apparently he didn't feel it through his rubber boots, so she kicked again. He came awake then, with a choking start, and stared at her through dulled black eyes.

“What do you want?” he said thickly.

“Get up and go home,” said Joanna. “Mother's worried about you. If it was me, I'd let you stay out here and make a fool of yourself.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “The answer to a maiden's prayer. God's gift to the women. Roll out of that hay and get moving.”

He came up on one elbow, groping around in the hay. He couldn't find what he was looking for, and dropped back again with a groan, his eyes closed.

“Got a headache, haven't you?” said Joanna with relish. “Feel mean, don't you? Well I'm glad. It's no more than you deserve. What if you did lose some traps? Is that anything for a grown man to run away and sulk over?”

Her foot clinked against the bottle, and she handed it to him, her mouth twisting as she watched him drink. He took a long breath and opened his eyes again; color came back into his face. He looked at Joanna with the beginning of his old smile.

“Teaming me around, are you? Well, who in hell do you think you are?”

“Who do I have to be, to tell you what I think of you? You're no help to the Island, I can tell you that much. Father's got seven traps fixed over already, while you've been lying up here like some filthy old derelict.”

“Oh, shut up and leave me alone.” Owen turned over on his side, and Joanna kicked his boot again.

“I will
not
leave you alone,” she said between her teeth. “You're going to get out of here and go home. Maybe the wind'll blow some of that bar-room smell off you.”

A hand like steel closed around her ankle, caught her off balance, and jerked; with a gasp, she found herself tumbling headfirst over Owen and landing beside him in the hay. “That'll learn you,” he said. “Seems to me you ought to know by now it's no time to start talking a man to death when he wakes up with a hangover.”

“I'll talk whenever I feel like it,” she said furiously. “You ought to have somebody telling you just what you are, Owen Bennett. Sure, I know the women across at Brigport practically fall on their faces with joy when they see you coming, but I'm not one of them. I'm your sister, and I know just what kind of a guy you are.” It seemed suddenly as if she had saved up all these things for a long time, and there was no holding them back. “I thought it was pretty good when you said you wouldn't leave the Island. I thought you were going to help Father and the rest of us to keep the place going. But I know now it was just damned shiftlessness. You thought you could rot in peace and quiet if you stayed here. I used to think you were a worker like the rest of the Bennetts, because you made money once, but I know better now. Anybody could make money in those days. But you have to have
guts
to keep going now, and you haven't got enough. You lose some traps and you get mad, and go off in a hayloft, and kill a quart of whiskey —”

She picked up the bottle. “I've a good mind to break this over your head! Father's working his head off to keep the Island going, and here you are. Liquor and women, and you get worse every year. Oh, I wish —” Her words caught in her throat. She stared at him with widening eyes as if she had never seen him before, and got to her feet. As she reached the hayloft stairs, she heard him call after her, but she didn't answer.

She walked home swiftly, the wind blowing against her face and cooling it. The sun had gone down, and she saw one star in the clear, pale, western sky. Yes, the wind was cool against her face, but it didn't cool the thoughts that burned and twisted inside her head.

I wish
, she had been going to say to Owen,
I wish it had been you who drowned that night, instead of Alec. I wish you were dead now, and he was alive. In spite of everything—gambling and all—he was a better man than you could ever be
.

And it was true. It was so true that she could have wept, here on the road. Alec would be here now to hold her in his arms—it seemed an eternity since that last kiss he had given her; he would know his child and she would know her father. And Alec would have been, in spite of everything, a better son to Stephen than Owen had ever been.

Owen came along the road behind her, whistling to her to stop, but she pretended she didn't hear him. Walking thus, they came to the house.

I
T WAS ALMOST TIME
for the spring season again, and as always, there was a resurgence of hope and energy. The freshness in the air, the mild days when the song sparrows sang beguilingly from the wild pear bushes and the ice melted in the wells, the tiny spears of green grass coming up in the sheltered spaces—it was enough to lighten a man's heart as well as his step.

The new strings put overboard this April would be considerably smaller than they used to be: a big string was expensive, and they must do the best they could with a few pots, and if the lobsters crawled into them—well, it meant more pots. Stephen worked long and hard getting his traps ready; he tended with a mother's care the ones the storm hadn't touched, and was ready to start the spring season without any bills for gear on his conscience.

This was encouraging to Marcus and Jake and the others, whose belief in Stephen amounted almost to a tradition. No matter what the others said when they left the place; as long as Stephen Bennett stayed and went lobstering, there was still a chance for the business. And they'd stay, too.

Maurice went to join the crew of the dragger the Robey boys had bought. With his going, Owen was the only young man left. Joanna had been short with him ever since the day in the hayloft, but she noticed with some satisfaction he had cut down on his drinking and didn't go to Brigport so much. He still moved through the days with an air of intense boredom, and Donna reminded him occasionally that he needed a shave. But at the same time, he worked on his traps. Going back and forth between the store and the house, Joanna saw him there on the old wharf, working in the sunshine and whistling. He didn't seem to drive nails with any great hurry, she noticed, and more than once she saw him lounging against the shed wall, out of the wind, smoking while he watched the gulls or the water on the beach.