High Tide at Noon (6 page)

“You'd hang me up by my thumbs in the barn and take a whip to me,” said Joanna swiftly. “But I'm not yours, thank God, and if my grandfather was anything like you—” She bit her lip, suddenly abashed by her bad manners and startled at the current of hate that surged between herself and the old man. “You going now, Nils?”

“Get aboard.” His face was still impassive.

The peapod slid across the quiet harbor waters, among the moorings where only punts and dories lay; the power boats were all at work. This was a spell of fine weather and nobody was lazy on Bennett's Island when the Closed Season was so near. Nils rowed standing up, pushing on the oars with long, effortless movements. Joanna looked past him at the shore and saw Gunnar still standing there, a squat black figure against the sun, somehow frightening. . . . She felt gooseflesh on her arms and then laughed at herself.

“I didn't mean to slat around,” she said meekly. “I suppose he'll take it out on you.”

“He'd been taking it out on me for an hour before you came along.” Nils grinned. “Nothing new. He's on the prod, that's all. Drivin' Kris and David and me from hell to breakfast.”

“He's always taking a dig at my father. I won't have it.” But a little thread of fear ran through her anger. “Nils, you don't think my father's soft, do you?”

“Your father's all right. You know Grampa. He ran away to sea when he was eleven, and seafaring men were hard tickets in those days. So he thinks anybody that doesn't raise his kids with a Bible in one hand and a whip in the other is a fool.”

“We had the Bible, but the most we ever got for lickings was a lath across our seat.”

“Remember how you used to go out and sit on the woodpile and howl?”

She grinned at him. “And you'd come up to get Owen, and if you came anywhere near me I'd throw kindling at you!”

They were both laughing then, and the peapod was outside the harbor at last, so they couldn't see Gunnar on the beach any more. Now the boat seemed to leap forward over the bright water, and a sort of exultation possessed Joanna, made up of the crystalline sun­washed coolness of the morning, the whole blue and shining world around them, the rhythm of Nils' body as the oars swung the peapod with arrow-swiftness toward the first black and yellow buoy.

Nils shipped his oars and gaffed the buoy with one quick swoop. The boat rocked gently, in the cool dark shadow of the rocky shore, while the warp fell in wet coils at his feet; at last he caught the rope bridle and pulled the trap aboard. Balancing it on the low gunwale, his hands in the thick white cotton gloves scraped off the sea urchins and opened the door. There were innumerable crabs to be thrown overboard, and there were four lobsters. Three of them he tossed into the tub without a second look; the fourth one he measured with the gauge, and tossed it overboard.

“Good start, Jo,” he said briefly, as he took out the bait bag and strung a fresh one, bulging with herring, into place with a swift stabbing gesture of the bait needle. “You're no Jonah.”

“It doesn't look as if you've been bothered.”

He pushed the trap overboard, letting the warp play through his fingers, and gave her a sidewise glance. “Who's been bothered?”

“Charles.” The buoy splashed overboard, and Nils began to row again. “He wants to take a gun with him,” Joanna added.

“It might come to that yet,” Nils said.

The morning went on, brave with luminous skies and the glitter of sunshine across the water, the dazzle of gulls' wings and the sound of them as they came down in a shrieking rush when Joanna shook out the old bait bags. Nils hauled close to the shore, under the shadow of the high wooded places, and over the ledges whose rockweed swayed gently in the water like miniature meadows in the wind.

Their conversation was brief, but entirely satisfactory, the sparse words of two friends who can be as companionable in silence as in talk. When Joanna was thirsty, she drank from the water bottle; toward noon they shipped oars and ate mammoth sandwiches of beef and homemade bread, while the water chuckled and slapped at the sides of the boat, and the great, barren rocks of the lonely west side towered high above them.

Life was good, Joanna thought. It was even better when Nils let her row for a while. The whole blue expanse between the Island and the sun-bright ledge of the Rock was dotted with boats. She could pick out her uncle, and Philip; there was Nils' father, Karl, out by Shag Island, where the grotesque black birds sat on their rocks looking down at him. That cloud of gulls far to the east'ard marked the homeward progress of Jake Trudeau, shaking out the old bait bags as the
Cecile
chugged steadily along.

“Look there!” Nils said suddenly, and she saw Charles' boat come around Sou-West Point toward them, the water flashing back from the bow. The rocks threw back the beating echo, and gulls on the half-submerged Bull Cove Reef took off in a fluttering cloud of white wings. The two in the peapod watched, Joanna with a lifting thrill in her heart, Nils with pure delight caught unconsciously on his face.

“She's an able handsome lady, see her go!” Joanna chanted from the old song. The engine slowed to a muted pulse as the
Sea-Gypsy
slipped toward them across the water. Nils rowed to meet her.

Charles looked at them merrily. “What kind of a haul did you get, you Svenska?”

“Good,” said Nils. “How'd you do?”

“They've been hauling hell out of me,” said Charles, looking extraordinarily cheerful about it. “Well, I want my sister.”

“What for?” said Joanna.

“Orders. My orders. And don't ask the skipper questions or you'll be sorry. Come aboard before I haul you over with a gaff.”

“But
why?
' Joanna didn't move, and Charles laughed at her.

“Listen, lady, don't you like surprises? After I came 'round here on purpose to pick you up because I thought you'd kind of hanker to come with me. Just about through for the day, Nils?”

“Just about. You better go with him, Jo. Can't tell what he's up to.”

It was true, Charles was up to something. She knew that. Ever since she could remember, Charles was the lordly one, the biggest brother of all, who hardly ever noticed her; but there had always been the amazing instants when he chose her, and no other, to go with him.
One thing, you can keep your mouth shut
, he'd told her.

She watched him now as he lounged on the washboard, old yachting cap on the back of his head, his white shirt dazzling in the sunshine as he smoked and swapped shop talk with Nils. She weighed the respective advantages of going with him, or staying with Nils, who would let her row the peapod. Curiosity won out, and she climbed over into the
Sea-Gypsy's
big cockpit. Charles grinned at her.

“Couldn't risk missing something, could you, darlin' mine?”

She threw a full bait bag at him, but he dodged, laughing, and it went overboard. “That'll cost you a nickel, sweetheart!”

“Wild woman,” Nils drawled.

“Some man'll tame that fire out of her some day.” Charles unfolded his long legs, then hesitated as Nils took up his oars. “By the way, Nils, maybe I ought to tell you something, if you're on your way home. So you'll know what the hell you've run afoul of, if anybody starts riding you down on the beach. Your grandfather's been talking to my old man.”

Nils' eyes narrowed. “What's he been saying?”

Charles sniffed and wagged his head, and suddenly Gunnar was before them. “Your girl—she bad for the boy, she keep him from his vork. Ya, he vass good boy, he vork all vinter till dat Yo come home from school!” Charles smiled at the slow flush in the younger boy's face. “Oh, we know he's a crazy old bastard. But he likes to do his chewing in the face and eyes of the whole Island. The beach wasn't what you'd call empty.”

“You wait till I see that old devil!” Joanna felt suffocated by her rage, she wanted to throw things and hear them smash. “I'll tell him something—goddam old fool—” She raged up and down the cockpit until Charles caught her by the shoulder and clapped a hard hand over her mouth.

“Seems like you've said enough to him already,” he said dryly.

“What did your father say?” Nils' voice was quiet.

“What do you think he said? Any of the rest of us would've had plenty to say, but not the old man. He wouldn't lower himself to argue with anybody that was so beside himself.” There was pride in Charles' tone. “Besides, he don't talk over his business on the beach. He looked Gunnar up and down just once and walked away. Left the old son of a bitch sputtering and fizzing like a fish out of water.” He laughed, and started up the engine. “So long, Nils. Think nothing of it.”

Nils began to row. The space of glistening blue widened between the two boats, and Joanna stared angrily after the peapod, wishing she hadn't climbed out of it. She'd show Gunnar! So he had to stir up trouble, because the Island was too peaceful at the moment! Oh, she knew all his nasty little tricks. And how long were they going to take it from him, those sons Karl and Eric, with grown families of their own? If there was any chew to be made about her and Nils, why didn't Nils' father make it? Why did there have to be a chew? Why, Nils was another brother to her—only a little better because he didn't try to team her around, and he was generous with his gum and his boat and his cigarettes.

If they tried to keep her out of Nils' boat just to please old Gunnar, she'd show them something. But they wouldn't try; they wouldn't say anything. Her father and mother knew better than to listen to the old devil. The tight knot in her stomach loosened. She went aft to the wheel and confronted Charles, hands in her hip pockets.

“Well, what goes on?”

Charles grinned. “I got a little errand to do—out there to the no'theast point of the Rock.” He pointed across the water. “Who's that out there?”

“Ash Bird.”

“Yes. Young Ash. Well, when I went to haul this morning there was more'n one place where little Ashly was set right on top of me. Don't know where he gets his courage from. So I went home with my lobsters, and Ash was still out—and now I'm back again.”

“If it isn't the father it's the son,” said Joanna. “Charles, why do they do it to us?”

“Because we're the Bennetts,” said Charles. “Because we own most of the Island, and we got a way of thinking we're somebody.”

“Well, we
are
somebody.”

“Maybe,” said Charles, “but that Bird trash don't think so.”

She thought of Simon, pleading with her in the darkness, threatening her. If Charles, or any of them, knew about that . . . Was it because she was Joanna Bennett that Simon was so dead set on having her?

“What are you going to do?” she demanded eagerly.

“Damned if you aren't spoiling for a fight, young Jo!” Charles laughed at her. “But I'm just going to have a word with that boy.”

“Well, what are you going to
say?
”

“Just give him a mite of advice,” her brother said mildly. “I wouldn't go against the skipper's orders. Wouldn't hurt the boy any. After all, Ash is kind of a little fella.”

Ash looked startled when the
Sea-Gypsy
came alongside. He was a thin, sulky youth, with none of the handsome self-assurance of his elder brother, or the mock-meekness of his father. Well he might look startled, with Charles a black young giant in oilskins, whose gaff caught and quivered in the washboards and whose big hand fastened in the front of Ash's shirt and dragged him against the gunwale.

“Hello, Ash!”

“What do you want?” Ash tried to laugh. “Hell, what is this?”

“Just a little neighborly greeting,” said Charles genially. “Seems like your pots have moved around some in all this weather we been having. Shoved right up alongside mine, some of 'em are. I thought I'd let you know, so you could move 'em.”

“Sure, sure,” Ash stammered. “I never noticed—guess I ain't reached that string yet-”

“Round on the east side,” said Charles benevolently. “You better take a little sail around there. If I had a suspicious nature I might think you'd been there already—'bout daylight—hauling my traps.” His smile was benign. “But it's a good thing for you I have a Christian mind. Because if I thought you were robbing me I'd haul hell out of you, my boy. And I'd give you the biggest, worst, goddamndest beating you ever had!”

Sweat sprang out on Ash's forehead. “Aw, let go, Charles,” he said with a feeble grin. “You know damn well I'd never touch your gear.”

“Sure I know it!” Charles let go and clapped him on the shoulder with such robust goodfellowship that Ash fell backwards over the engine box. “Kind of unsteady on your pins, aren't you, fella? Well, I'll be getting back to work.”

He lifted his cap with a flourish, and the
Sea-Gypsy
leaped away like a creature glad to be free again. Joanna had one last glimpse of Ash, sitting limply on his engine box and fumbling with a package of cigarettes. She looked at Charles and they began to laugh.

They headed for the eastern end of the Island, passing under the shadow of the great rocky crest called the Head; it was yellow in the brilliant sunshine, and there was always a surge and swell below it, even in the calmest, fairest weather. Around the Head, on the lee side of the Island that looked across at the tawny, sloping fields of Brigport and its white houses, they passed the perfect and tranquil curve of Eastern End Cove. The fish houses huddled on the bank, and above them the Trudeau houses crouched, gray and shabby. Between the Eastern End and the harbor there was a long thick stretch of woods, and then fields; the Trudeaus seemed to live on an isolated little island of their own; and the village said it was a good thing.

Past Long Cove, then, and Uncle Nate's place looked serene and comfortable across the meadow where his cattle stood knee-deep in buttercups. . . . They were almost back to the harbor before it struck Joanna again: Gunnar and his talk. Oh, she'd get even with the old—It was exciting to have something to be good and mad about. She went to stand by the wheel.