Storm Tide (31 page)

“What's this mean—'Joanna Bennett et als'?” Stevie asked.

“That means 'and others,'” she said. “They do that instead of putting everybody's name down on the outside. But we're all inside.” She unfolded the deed; never had a mere folded strip of paper meant so much to her as this one did. “See? Everybody's there. And we own the whole thing, outright.” She hugged Stevie's arm, and laughed aloud. “You should have seen Pete's face when I brought out the money! Of course, they made me stay and eat with them, and then we went to see the lawyer—gosh, it doesn't seem
real
, Stevie.”

“This deed is real enough.” Stevie read it carefully. “Golly, I never knew he owned so far along the west side.”

“Don't you remember the fight he had with George Bird once—George said he owned a strip in there between Pete and Barque Cove?” She read the deed with him. “Look—two days ago at this time I wasn't even thinking about Pete's property. And now we own it.”

She put the deed back in her pocketbook, and began to stow away her parcels in the bow of the
Elaine
. The Coast Guard sailor looked at her appreciatively, and it was hard for her to restrain a wink; she was bursting with happiness. She called to Stevie.

“Look, here's some candy, and I've got steak for supper tonight. Let's get started, Stevie. I can hardly wait to get home again.”

Stevie didn't move from the engine box. “Hey, wait a couple minutes, can't ye? What's your pucker? I ran into your husband over at Ray's Machine Shop, and told him to come along home with us, if he was ready.”

Joanna, for one blank moment, realized she had forgotten Nils. “Are we waiting for him?” she asked slowly.

“Sure. He's got a good engine too. He's leavin' it at Ray's to have the valves ground.”

“That shouldn't take long,” Joanna said. “He'll only have to come right back again.”

“Oh, they've got a pile of work ahead. He'll have to wait a week, anyway.” Stevie grinned. “He wanted to know what we came over for, but I told him that was your secret.”

She sat down beside him on the engine box and pulled off her hat, welcoming the sun's warmth on her head. She moved her shoulders luxuriously. She ought to store up as much of this sunshine as she could, she thought comfortably. The scent of Stevie's cigarette blended with the breath of salt water, freshened by a faint breeze from the east.

“Airin' up,” Stevie said. “He'd better get a move on.”

“Did he seem interested in my secret?” she asked him. She too wished Nils would hurry; not because there might be a stiff breeze outside Owl's Head, for no boisterous winds held any awe for her. But she wanted to show him the deed, to tell him what she'd done—what they'd all done, all the Islanders. They'd done it together, and it welded them closer than anything else could ever do. It was all very well to say “We must work together.” Just words. But it needed the threat of a common enemy, an instant defense of their own, to join them in one tight, hard-fighting cluster. Even Matthew Fennell, the newest member, had given his savings to her instantly when he knew how urgent it was for them to secure Grant's property at once.

“Well, you know how Nils is,” Stevie was saying, and she had to think for a moment to remember what he meant. She laughed aloud.

“Oh, sure! The impassive type. But let's see how impassive he looks when he finds out!”

“Finds out what?” Nils' voice said above them. They looked up and saw him leaning on the rail along the edge of the dock. There were people passing to and fro behind him, high schoolers, sailors, the rest of the crowd to be found at Limerock's Public Landing on a mellow and tawny afternoon. But to Joanna, in the instant of recognition, they were a noisy backdrop for Nils alone, as he leaned on the rail and looked down at her. Only the autumn sky belonged, against which his head gleamed white-blond, and his skin looked warm and ruddy-brown; the gulls belonged too, riding far above him.

But because of the brilliance of the sky, and the sun in her eyes, his face was hard to see. It was like one of those dreams when you are companioned by people who are real enough, yet you can never quite make them out.

” Come on down!” she called to him. “I'm getting a crick in my neck!”

He ran down the slip to the float, down another very short slip, and ran across the small float to the
Elaine
. Now she could see him clearly, as he walked along the washboard and jumped down into the cockpit. He smiled at her and Stevie as if he liked them both very much. She saw what she hadn't noticed before—the deepening of the little short lines at either end of his mouth.

“What's going on?” he said.

Stevie shrugged. “Ask my sister. Get off the engine box, Beautiful. This critter's got a starter, but it only works on State days ‘n' Sundays ‘n' bonified nights.”

Joanna moved up to the bow and picked up her topcoat. Nils helped her on with it. She had a sudden conviction at that moment that she didn't want to tell Nils about the sale while the
Elaine
was still at the wharf. She looked at him over her shoulder, smiling.

“Well, what goes on?” he asked.

“Wait till we get out of the harbor,” she told him. “And I'll tell you all about it. But I know you'll like it.... How's the new engine?”

“Fine,” he said absently. His touch on her shoulders was impersonal. “I was lucky. Fellow knows my father and Uncle Eric. He knew your father too.” Nils took out his pipe and studied it for a moment. Then, as the
Elaine
's engine began her sturdy chugging and backing, he went to join Stevie by the wheel.

The
Elaine
backed out between the yacht and the Coast Guard boat, her propeller churning the green water into a confusion of jade and ivory. The sailor, sprawled on the gray boat's deck, bare and brown to his waist and his dungarees, waved to Joanna, who waved back. He looked wistfully after the
Elaine
, as she headed for the mouth of the big harbor. Joanna waved again, her deep satisfaction in her two days' work making her feel friend to all the world, and turned her face to the bow. She felt the curious sensation of delight she always knew when she stood like this, the wind flowing against her face, sleeking her hair back from her forehead; the water rushing away from either side of the bow, the foaming wake behind them. The
Elaine
looked tiny, flying across the harbor, under the towering noses of the lumber schooners and coal lighters, slipping close to a destroyer that had come up the coast for her trial run. She lay at peace on the crinkling peacock water, a giant above the
Elaine
. Far up the sleek, sun-washed gray side of her Joanna saw the white caps of sailors who looked down at the infinitesimal
Elaine
, and waved. Joanna waved back; then she looked astern at Stevie and Nils, and saw the way Stevie's eyes were climbing up to the topmost point of the destroyer, and knew by his face what he was saying. He thought the ship was beautiful, and somehow he was telling Nils so, for she could read Nils' face too as he listened.

She turned away quickly, the brightness of the day tarnished by a breath. If there was a war, Stevie wouldn't care if fishermen were essential or not. He'd head for the place where they'd tell him the way to a ship like that.

They passed the house on the end of the long breakwater, and the breeze was already stiffening. Owl's Head was next. When she was a small girl, the keeper had owned a little white dog who used to run out on the steep slope to bark every time the
Aurora B
. entered or left Limerock harbor. You couldn't hear him bark, but you could see how he raced himself and how his mouth moved. Link always blew the whistle twice at the dog. Every child who ever rode on the mailboat in those faraway times knew that dog. From habit, Joanna looked for him now. Thinking of him, she forgot about the war, and her secret excitement came back to her.

As the boat passed Monroe's Island, Nils came to stand beside her, looking ahead for the long blue cloud of Brigport on the horizon. His pipe smelled even better than Stevie's cigarette. Little translucent green wavelets slapped at the
Elaine
's bow, and Joanna tasted spray. She turned to Nils with a smile.

“This is going to be good!” she said.

“How good is your surprise? That's what I want to know.”

She said, “Oh, you do, do you?” Laughing, she picked up her pocketbook from a coil of rope under the washboards, took out the deed, and handed it to him. He gave her a quick, questioning look, as he saw her name on the outside ; then, unfolding the crisp paper, he began to read.

She watched his face with something approaching an agony of suspense. Why didn't he
show
anything? Must he always be the impassive Scandinavian, keeping his emotions locked behind an unreadable face? . . . Toward the end, he took his pipe out of his mouth; she watched to see if his fingers tightened on the bowl. But he might have been reading almost anything; in fact, he showed more interest in Ellen's spelling papers.

At last he was through. He folded the deed and put it back in its envelope and returned it to her

“How come?” he said. “What happened?”

She was still staring at him, her dark eyes intense. “Well? Don't you think it's pretty good?”

Quite unexpectedly he smiled, his whole face smiled, and he reached out and shook her shoulder gently. “'f course it's good! But you took the wind out of my sails. Now I want to know what happened.”

Of course it's good
, he'd said, and from Nils that was praise. She'd been foolish to expect him to make a lot of noise about it and practically dance a jig. After all, he wasn't a Bennett. She began eagerly to tell him about the letter.

“It was addressed to you, but I knew it concerned the both of us,” she said confidently. “I knew you wouldn't care if I read it. You don't, do you?”

“Well, it's opened now, isn't it?” said Nils, and put his pipe back in his mouth.

“So,” she went on briskly, “I thought I'd better do something about it. So I did. I went around and talked to everybody and they agreed.”

“What are the terms? Pete make 'em easy?”

“But that's the good part of it, Nils! No payments to meet, nothing hanging over us—because it's all paid for. In one lump sum! Cash.”

Nils' blond eyebrows drew together. He said quietly, “Where did you get twenty-five hundred dollars together in one afternoon?”

“Everybody chipped in,” she said. She felt her shoulders tensing, her chin tightening. “You did, too. Out of the money box.”

“You mean,” Nils questioned her, “that you got twenty-five hundred dollars from the seven fishermen on Bennett's Island yesterday? That they just handed it over?”

“Yes, they handed it over, and they were glad to,” she answered serenely, “when they found out that we needed to hurry. . . . And I knew you wouldn't keep back your savings, either.”

He turned his head and looked out across the water toward the islands. They made a chain along the sea, from the Camden mountains, as if all the green islands in the chain were the tops of mountains that had sunk. Far out, Brigport lay on the horizon. Beyond it was Bennett's. Joanna watched Nils' proflle. She was on the defensive now. No matter what he said, she knew she had done right.

“Pete would have taken a down payment,” he said finally. “We could have paid the whole thing in the good seasons. . . .”

“Am I wrong—or isn't this a good season?”

“Sure, it's a good one. But Pete probably didn't expect you to take everybody's fall earnings and pay him in one fell swoop.”

She said tensely, “The fall spurt's still going on. In the next six weeks you'll make as much again as you made in the last six weeks, the way lobsters are coming.”

“You sure of that?” He turned and looked at her directly. “Are you positive there won't be a bad storm, say next week, that'll wipe us out, clip and clean? What do we do then?”

She fought desperately for a come-back. She'd never known his words to bite her so. They made her skin bum, she knew her cheeks were reddening and he would see the color in them.

“That would still mean Fowler had a chance of buying-”

“You think Pete would pull anything like that on us?” Nils said. “Then you don't know him.”

“Well, anyway,” she said stubbornly. “It's ours. Later on we can buy out the others and make it Bennett-Sorensen property.”

“Did you have that in your mind when you made them open up their money boxes and shell out?” he asked her quietly. “You'd better make it just
Bennett
property, Joanna.”

He left her and went astern to Stevie at the wheel. Alone, she stood in the bow and looked out toward the islands. Bennett's was there, the little world of red rock and fields and spruces that meant more to her than anything else in the world; with which she felt an even stronger kinship than with her daughter Ellen. When she used to read fairy tales, she wondered sometimes if she hadn't once been one of the straight young green spruces, and had been turned into a maiden; it had seemed to her that almost she could remember the feel of roots in the Island's soil, and the beating of the rain and snow and wind, and the sun making her grow.

She remembered that now, as she looked out across the sea, over the roughening, glistening folds of blue-green. And she felt lonelier than a spruce tree, lonelier than a gull; for they were what they were and nothing more was expected of them—but if you were a person, if you were Joanna Bennett, and you tried to be what you were, it was always wrong. At least as far as other people were concerned. It was lonely and it was hard to know that you were right, and that no one else believed it. She wondered by now if the other men—Matthew, Caleb, Jud, her brothers—were thinking about storms; were thinking there might have been another way of securing the property.