Storm Tide (10 page)

To Joanna the sound of the hoisting gear was a goodly one. She thought of the riches they were bailing out of the big net, and she liked to think of it. She went out once alone and stood on the back doorstep, listening. The men's voices were clear. She heard Harry Kimball yelling, “You down-east chowderhead!” It made her laugh. Harry was always calling his cousin that.

She turned to go back into the kitchen, when she heard another engine. She stood listening, her hand on the knob, trying to place the sound. It seemed to come from Schoolhouse Cove. She stepped off the doorstep and walked across the dooryard, feeling the wild growth of asters and goldenrod brush her knees as she passed the barn. Now she was on the point, an arm of blackness stretching out on the sea, under the stars. Matinicus Rock Light threw its beam toward her; between flashes she saw the shadow world of night. A few more steps and she reached a big granite rock, familiar to her even when she had to feel her way. She scrambled through a growth of bay and wild roses and stood up on the rock, and looked down into Schoolhouse Cove.

Another boat beat her steady way past the opposite point, running straight for Goose Cove Ledge. She knew beyond a doubt that it would be Tom Robey's boat, out for another evening's seining around the mouth of the cove. She chuckled. He'd be surprised to find another boat there; to see that Bennett's Island didn't need
his
herring. She wondered how he'd take it. She'd seen boats seining within fifty yards of each other, the men shouting back and forth in great good will. But Tom was jealous and bull-headed, he always had been.

He'll swear
, she thought happily.
How he'll swear
. . . . She went back into the house, and Vinnie Caldwell said, “I declare, you look as if you'd been talkin' to a young man, your cheeks are that red.”

“It's cold out!” Laughing, Joanna held her hands over the stove. “I've been watching them. Wasn't it good they could come!”

Marion rocked placidly. “Jud says them Robeys was always notional.”

Notional was no word for it, Joanna thought. Around the Islands you weren't notional about selling your bait to one man and not to another unless you were ready to cause a lot of criticism and hard feeling. Hard feeling on the part of those whom you refused, criticism on the part of the others. At least, that was the way it always had been. . . . She wondered with dismay if the island ways had changed so much in five years; if Brigport had changed so much that Tom wouldn't be criticized for turning down the Bennett's Island men.

She didn't like the thought. Again the conviction rose strongly within her that there was something else behind Tom's behavior, something more powerful than a notional whim. She wanted to talk about it to someone; but how could she put it into words? It was like seeing something from the corner of your eye, only to have it disappear completely when you turned both eyes upon it. Yet, when you looked away, there it was, dancing like a shadow on the edge of vision. . . .

She rose automatically as someone knocked at the door. “I sh'd think those men would know better than to knock, by this time,” Marion said.

Vinnie laughed. “Caleb's got one of his old-fashioned streaks on, I guess. Wonder what they've come ashore for.”

Joanna opened the entry door to see Tom Robey standing there, massive in the lamplight that shone on his black rubber clothes. His jaw shot out and his brows drew down thickly over his eyes as he saw Joanna.

“Where's Nils?” he rumbled.

“Nils is out aboard the
Marianne
,” she said politely. “Any message for him?”

Beyond his shoulder, dimly lighted in the shadows, she saw Winslow Fowler's face, and spoke to him. His greeting was unintelligible, and then Tom's voice was rumbling out of his barrel chest again.

“Maybe
you
can tell me,” he said, and his surliness brought the familiar fire of anger to her cheeks. Behind her Marion had stopped rocking. “Maybe
you
can tell me what's the idea of outsiders comin' here and seinin'. We've always kept the islands to ourselves, ain't we? Christ, with all the ocean they be, what's them Pruitt's Harbor bastards doin' in Goose Cove?”

“Seining herring, I hope,” Joanna said serenely. “The waters are free, Tom. I know we always
have
kept the islands to ourselves, but we need bait over here. And when you don't have enough to sell us,”—she smiled at him—“you can't blame us for getting it any way we can.”

“By God,” Tom said loudly, “we don't want strangers runnin' around here, cuttin' our pot-buoys off with their propellers! We ain't got our pots out jest for some seiner from inshore to snag off!”

Joanna said steadily, “The
Marianne
's got just as much right to go seining here as you have. And she's no more likely to cut off a pot buoy than your own boat.”

“Come on back aboard, Tom,” Winslow said suddenly. “You're jest wastin' time tryin' to argue with a woman.”

Feet planted wide apart, impervious to Winslow's hand on his arm, Tom looked down at Joanna from under his sou-wester brim. But when he spoke it was not in his usual bullying roar. His voice was so quiet it startled her.

“Jest tell me one thing, Joanna. Did Nils go to Pruitt's Harbor and bring them sons o' bitches out here?”

“I don't see,” said Joanna, her own voice as quiet, “that it's any of your business. You'd better go back aboard. Think of all the herring they're getting while you're standing here making a fool of yourself.”

She shut the door in his face, gently and decisively, and walked back into the kitchen. Marion looked at her anxiously, and Vinnie's amber-colored eyes were wide.

“What an awful man!” she said. “Wasn't you scared?”

Joanna laughed. “Scared of Tom? I think he was more scared of me.” Inwardly she was trembling with rage. That she should be bullied and sworn at in her own house, because there were none of her own men-folk there—and the insolence of him, declaring who should seine in
her
cove!

Marion said, “Tom always did roar. All them Robeys do. Make up in lungs what they ain't got in brains, I guess.”

“You think he'll go alongside the
Marianne
and make trouble?” Vinnie asked.

Their eyes followed Joanna as she crossed the kitchen and went to stand at the window looking seaward. She heard their voices, but not their words, for her own words went on endlessly in her brain.

Her own words, and Tom's loud-mouthed, offensive ones. It didn't do to get so mad with him, because he didn't know any better. But she couldn't help it. She'd been furious about the bait, she was more than furious now. He'd come ashore to bluster and bully. He thought he had a right to swear at her and Nils—had he expected they'd go meekly without bait because he wouldn't give them any?

But he hadn't blustered and bullied the whole time. She remembered, with a renewal of the odd feeling she'd known at the time, the sudden quieting of his voice on the last question. There'd been something strange and unnatural about it; like the sudden flat hush that comes sometimes in the middle of a storm and is dreaded, rather than appreciated, because it means the wind will crash down with new strength.

That didn't sound like Tom
, she thought now, staring out at the darkness beyond the window.
It wasn't Tom
. She was as positive at that instant as she'd ever been about anything in her whole life. Tom's voice, but not his words; for the space of a few minutes, Tom had been an actor speaking some other man's lines.
But whose lines?

She didn't hear the women's voices behind her, she felt her nerves tightening up into a knot of almost unbearable suspense. In a moment now she would have it . . . here was the shadow dancing on the edge of her consciousness again—

“Who was that with him?” Marion Gray asked suddenly, and Joanna answered her silently.
Winslow Fowler
. He had stood behind Tom's shoulder, not speaking. Winslow Fowler. The shadow was a shadow no longer, and again the tiny scene, the brief exchange of dialogue she had heard in the store was there in her mind. Not Winslow, but his father, Randolph; and Tom Robey.

Now she knew. Now she did not tell herself it was a discussion about feeding cows, or stopping arguments among the seining crew. She knew the truth of that instant, and she would never believe any other explanation of it. It all fitted together so perfectly that she could not doubt her own logic. Only the
why
remained; why Randolph didn't want Tom to let the Bennett's men have bait; why Randolph had put it in Tom's mind to come ashore tonight and ask that question. . . . She was sure the bullying was Tom's own idea. Harmless, profane noise. But not his last question. . . .

She felt cold suddenly. What if Nils
did
ask the
Marianne
to come out? What did they expect to make of it? She wished that Nils would come ashore soon so she could talk it over with him.

They talked it over, late that night, long after the others had gone home and the seiner was heading back to Pruitt's Harbor. At least they talked over Tom's visit. When Joanna tried to form the words to tell him about Randolph and Tom in the store, they all sounded weak and futile, and she realized again that she had so painfully little to tell, to convince Nils as she was convinced, heart and soul.

Nils chuckled about Tom. “So he swore, did he? Well, let him swear. If he doesn't want the
Marianne
here, let him give us some bait.”

“He wanted to know if you brought the
Marianne
out here,” she pointed out. They were in bed, and Nils' arm tightened around her.

“I'm dog-tired, but I feel good,” he said. “What did you tell Tom?”

“That it was none of his business. But Nils, you know he sounded funny when he asked me . . . not like Tom, I mean. Too quiet.”

“He'd probably run out of wind about that time.” Nils laid his cheek against her hair. “He'd been drinking today, I guess. Sounds like it.”

Nils was tired, his body was heavy with contented weariness, but Joanna felt strung-up and alert. “But what could he
do
if he wanted to keep you from bringing another seiner here?” she insisted.

“Do? Oh, make a hell of a lot more noise and wave his arms around. . . . What did you think he could do? Poor old Tom.”

But it's not Tom alone
, she thought with something very like agony.
Not Tom alone. And how am I going to make you see it?

W
ITH THE BAIT IN
, the men could put their minds to other things, and by the first of November the
Donna
was overboard. In her new white paint, her name in dazzling black on either side of her lovely bow, her engine installed, she rode at her mooring in the harbor. Joanna could see her from the house. When the wind was from the west'ard, and swung her around so that her stern-lettering showed, Joanna could read it with the field glasses, and the sight of those crisp black letters was like a defiant banner unfurled to the wind:

DONNA

BENNETT'S ISLAND

Yes, there was her name, and her home port's name; the first boat in five years to carry the Island's name. As Nils went about his business, hauling his traps or slipping into Brigport Harbor to sell his lobsters and get his mail and groceries, the name was there for all the world to see, and let Brigport know that Bennett's Island was alive again. That was how Joanna thought about it; for her conviction was growing that Brigport didn't
want
to see Bennett's alive again.

It was a secret conviction, because there was nothing tangible to base it on, and Nils was like Joanna's father, Stephen. He didn't hold with wildcat suspicions, he asked for proof, he didn't look for evil until it confronted him.

He implied that the bait episode was just another display of the Robey “queer streak.” Like Marion Gray, he thought the Robeys were notional. Moreover, the Brigport fishermen were shifting their traps outward. Nils came home almost daily with an account of seeing them hauling up pots and taking a boatload out toward Bantam, or in the other direction, toward Pirate Island, or out around the Island toward the Rock. The Fowler boys, the Merrills, the other Robeys—Tom's cousins—and a scattering of men who didn't belong to any one of the three principal families on Brigport—they were all moving into deeper water. There were all in all some fifteen fishermen from Brigport, not counting the old men who puttered around with their handful of pots and two-cycle engines, who didn't need to work but couldn't give it up because it was their lifeblood.

There were tranquil and lovely days in November, but there were gray and blustery ones too. On such a day, when it was too rough to haul, Nils took the
Donna
to Brigport, with Caleb and Jud aboard, to meet the mailboat, put in groceries, and bring Ellen and Joey home for the weekend.

Joanna stood at the window to watch the
Donna
plunge through the tide rip at the harbor mouth. The water was slate gray under a dark sky, the wave crests very white. The trees on the harbor point looked black, and Joanna was grateful for the smoke blowing from the Caldwells' chimney, and the white paint she'd put on the house. It looked snug and friendly on the bleak day.

She turned from the window, so as not to watch the
Donna
out of sight. If she hadn't been doing some special baking in Ellen's honor, she would have wanted to go with them this morning. Spray would be flying over the bow and the gulls would be swooping low into the glistening dark valleys between the waves, and Tenpound would be lashed with exploding white water this morning.

She had a special sympathy for anyone who'd come out to Brigport on the
Aurora B
. today. The
Aurora
rolled and pitched frightfully, and two hours could stretch to two years if you were down in the after cabin with the slide pulled over to keep out the water that constantly washed the narrow decks. It was cold and miserable even for a good sailor.