Storm Tide (32 page)

But I was right
, she said fiercely to herself.
We have it now. Nobody can ever take it away from us
.

Spray washed suddenly over the side and its cold splatter felt like ice against her hot face. The
Elaine
bobbed a little, then plunged smoothly through another swell. There was more spray. The decked-in bow gleamed wetly in the sunshine, and the wind was sharp. She could have gone back where the men were, and sat on the engine box–boats rode easier amidships. And it wasn't a good idea to get soaked at the outset of the trip, she'd be cold by the time they reached the Island. But she would not go back and face Nils. Not yet. It would show in her face, the resentment that she felt.

There won't be any big storms this fall
, her mind stated with passionate assurance. No storms.
This was all meant to be, so there won't be any storms
.

Now she could go back and sit on the engine box. Her self-assurance had returned, her spirit had lightened, almost like a gull soaring up to the zenith. She took a box of candy and a bag of oranges from her carry-all bag, and turning toward the men, confidence in the carriage of her head and shoulders; smiling, she held out the fruit and candy to them.

I
N THE MORNING
J
OANNA WAS RESTLESS
and excited. Her dreams had been charged with the thought of her triumph over Fowler. Though Nils slept beside her, in the deep entirety with which he always slept, it was to Joanna as if she were completely alone, she was so absorbed in what she had done. When she awoke for brief intervals during the night, she lay watching the paling twinkle of stars above the saw-toothed black wall of the woods, and listened to the surge on the shore, the wind around the house, and remembered again and again the moment in which the deed had been put into her hands. She would have to send it back to have it recorded, but not until she knew almost every word of it by heart! She had worked for that deed, and she had worked alone. Nils, lying unconscious beside her, had no part in it. She savored her proud confidence, and fell asleep again.

During the day she had not much to do in the house beyond the routine picking-up, and the walls seemed to stifle her. The wind was too brisk for the men to haul; just enough top-chop to make the buoys almost invisible, and hard to reach. But it was as bright as yesterday had been. It matched Joanna's mood, and she wanted to get out into it, with the wind blowing hard against her, and the strong, salt-scented sunshine on her skin. As soon as the men had gone down to the shore, to hunt out the source of a mysterious tinkle in the
Elaine
's engine, she went out too. At first she considered going over to Uncle Nate's field to see if there were any cranberries left in the warm boggy spot beyond the ice pond. But she knew she would never be content to kneel quietly and pick berries when her energy was teeming down to her fingertips.

She thought of the deed, back there in the house. She was walking on the small, sheltered curve of Goose Cove beach then, watching the easy surge of rollers come in from the sea; they held a smooth glitter in the morning sunshine. But when she remembered the deed, she glanced up at the house. Everyone on the Island had a right to see that deed, and his name on it. She should carry it around from house to house this morning, let them read it from one end to the other. But the men would be out around the shore, with their hands in bait or tar or something. . . . She considered, watching a pair of blue-winged teal who rode unconcernedly on the swell at the mouth of the cove.

She had it then. There was something better than carrying the deed around. A party—tonight. She and Nils had never had everybody up to the house for an evening together, and if this wasn't the occasion for it, what was? She turned and went up the slope from the beach, leaping from boulder to gray boulder as she'd done when she was fifteen; she felt as happy and intent as fifteen had ever been.

But almost at the doorstep, her feet slowed to a stop. Mark and Helmi wouldn't come... or would they? If she went down to the Eastern End to ask them, perhaps they'd come, and then there'd be an end to the strangeness between Mark and Owen. Nils would see that she'd really been right, about keeping them from blows. The thought of Mark and Owen comrades again added to her happiness.

She veered away from the house, down across the October-painted meadow toward the woods. Nora Fennell should have the very first invitation.

All the women were pleased at the idea of a party, according to their various ways of showing pleasure. There was enough child in Nora yet to be thrilled at the thought. Gram snorted, and shook her head; she hadn't liked it when Matthew had handed out his savings without a question. But when the snortings and headshakings were done, she announced abruptly that she'd wear her best black silk, though she'd have to press it herself because Nora would probably scorch it. Marion Gray said at once she'd bake a big devil's food cake, and get Jud into a clean white shirt if she had to hog-tie him first. Vinnie bubbled almost as much as Nora had. Caleb was home when Joanna carne in. He said somberly that they ought to get together oftener, with the bad weather coming. It would make the winter shorter, he said.

She saved the Eastern End for the last, but her confidence was intact. She found Helmi and Mark in the kitchen, Helmi sewing, Mark having a mug-up after a spell of work in his shop. They were glad to see her, and Mark wanted to know about the purchase; but when she told them about the party Mark gave her a dark look and shook his head. Helmi's needle slipped steadily along the hem of a curtain.

“Mark, it's a sort of special occasion,” Joanna said quietly. “It's more important than any one of us.”

“Listen, I did my part,” Mark retorted. “I shelled out like the rest of 'em. And I don't feel like goin' in for any of the flagwaving and handshaking afterwards.”

Joanna shrugged, grinned at him as if she weren't disappointed, and got up to go.

“A cup of coffee first, Joanna?” Helmi said unexpectedly.

She drank it, so that they wouldn't wonder afterwards if she'd been annoyed with Mark, but she didn't linger when she'd finished.

Nils and Stevie took the news as she'd expected, Stevie cheerfully, Nils with an agreeable nod.

“Hell,” Owen said. “If I'd known this was in the wind, I'd have had you fellers bring me out a couple of quarts yesterday.” They were all good-natured about having a party sprung on them so suddenly.

Her preparations didn't amount to much. The house was clean, though she gave the sitting room an extra dusting, and hunted up two new decks of cards and the cribbage board. She had checkers, and Chinese checkers. There was enough to amuse everybody. The only shadow across her afternoon was the fact that Mark and Helmi wouldn't be there. But this couldn't go on forever, she told herself. Something would happen to bring them all together again. She refused to worry.

The refreshments were as simple as the cleaning. Nora and Vinnie had both offered to bring sandwiches; they had plenty of bread on hand, for the smack had been out only a few days before. They had no fear of using it all up in sandwiches, for they could always
make
bread. The men liked that better anyway.... Joanna would make a big white cake, to go with Marion's devil's food cake, and they would have coffee.

Beating up the cake, Joanna whistled as she had not whistled for a long time. They were through with Fowler; there was nothing more he could do to persecute them. He knew better than to start a lobster war, for the Bennett's Islanders could cut off Brigport traps as fast as their own were molested. She didn't let her mind dwell on what could have happened if Pete hadn't written to let them know of Fowler's offer.

We wouldn have let them stay
, she thought, beating the batter fiercely.
They'd never have got a trap set
. But it was foolish to cloud this day with fury now. No alien fishermen had come, the battle was won, and tonight she was giving a party.

The men cleaned up before supper. While the potatoes were cooking, and Owen and Stevie were upstairs in their room, she went into her room. Nils was putting on a blue necktie before the mirror over the tall chest that had been Joanna's father's. She stood behind him and met his eyes in the glass. They were even bluer than the tie.

“Do you mind having them all come up tonight?” she asked him.

“Did you think I minded?” He smiled at her in the mirror. “I think it's. a good idea. Remember how they all used to get together in the old days, when we were kids? Before everybody had radios to keep 'em from going out to somebody's house?”

She nodded, but wouldn't be diverted. “I mean—the reason for a party,” she insisted. “You didn't think much of it yesterday.”

“That was yesterday,” said Nils. “You sprung it on me—took me by surprise. You want to be careful how you startle the old man, Jo.”

“There's more of Grampa Gunnar in you than I thought,” she said, and was surprised to find a slight edge to her voice. Was there ever a time when she'd been able to guess what Nils was thinking? She hardly believed it. “He didn't like new ideas, either.”

Nils turned and smiled directly at her, not at her reflection. “Jo,” he said softly. “You sound a little sticky.”

“Do you have to keep talking like your grandfather?” she demanded. “And can't you say, at least, that we've got the point, and nobody can take it away from us—and that it's all paid for?”

“I do admit that, Jo.” He was serious now. “And I want it to work out right for us. But you'll have to grant that this is a bad place and a bad time of year to bank on a long spell of good weather, and a good lobstering season.”

So he was back on that again. She stared at him for a moment longer, her face burning with her suppressed irritation; then she turned to leave the room. Nils' hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“You wanted to know what I thought, Jo—didn't you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think the potatoes are burning, Nils.” He took his hand away, and she left him.

But her excitement came back after supper, as she brushed her hair and changed her dress. The dishes were done, the cake was iced, the kitchen was shiningly clean. From her room she could hear the muted tones of the radio in the sitting room. She knew how the lights of the house shone out across the dark meadow, and how the light in her room sent its steady ray down into Goose Cove; she pictured the house under the star-pricked autumn sky, set in its high place on the Island. She pictured the Island, lying on the sea, with its black and silent woods, its fields, its empty, listening houses. But in her own house and the others there were lights and warmth and voices; under each roof there was a warm and secure small world that knew no fear of the dark, windy spaces of sky and sea.

In the face of this thought, she had no room for petty irritation. From the other end of the house she heard opening doors, voices, laughter. She fastened her grandmother's gold-and-garnet heart at the neck of her wine-red dress, tucked a crisp tendril of black hair behind her ear, and was ready for her party to begin.

Gram Fennell, in her best black silk, was enthroned in the best easy chair in the sitting room, watching everything with her bright eagle's eyes. Somehow everyone had sorted out, so all the women were in the sitting room, and the men in the kitchen. Joanna heard the rumble of their conversations as a deep-toned background for hers and the other women's. She and Nora, Vinnie and Marion, were playing Chinese checkers. It was not an exciting sort of a party, but it was the kind the Islanders liked best, when they outgrew Postoffice and Spin the Cover. It was a pleasant, unhurried get-together. The men could talk at the shore, and the women visited back and forth, but this was different. There was no watching the clock because dinner had to be started, and nobody had to go out to haul in a few minutes, or put his bait aboard, or gas up. They'd met for the pure sake of sociability... and to read and enjoy the deed.

They had all studied it, and in turn Joanna had studied their faces. She was sure she saw no anxiety there, no doubt, no fear that they had done something too drastic in not asking for easy terms.

Yes, it was the right kind of a party, the women together, the men in the kitchen playing cribbage, as Jud and Stevie were, or pinochle, or just talking around the stove, as the others were doing. When she was a girl, she'd liked the other kind, when they'd sat before Uncle Nate's fireplace and sang to somebody's guitar, or played forfeits—nothing tame about their version of it. Couples were always being sent out on impossible errands, to bring something in from the barn, or a certain kind of rock from Schoolhouse Cove, or a bag of cucumbers from somebody's garden patch.

Then there'd been the dances.... She wondered how long it would be before the clubhouse would ring with laughter and singing again, and the floor shake under dancing feet. She remembered how the accordion used to sound. Nils' brother Sigurd had played for the dances; he was much bigger than Nils, and his hair was a yellow mane.

She started violently, and her checker rolled across the board. For surely that was an accordion! It started tentatively, and then gathered speed; the old hornpipe, “Stack of Barley,” began to dance through the rooms.

Vinnie laughed aloud at her bewilderment. “That's Caleb's old squeezebox, Joanna. Didn't you know he brought it?”

“I didn't even know he had one!”

“Well, he don't play it much these days. But Jud knew about it and asked him to bring it along. You should've heard him back when Joey was a baby, and Caleb played at the dances.” She cocked her head. “Listen to him!”

They all listened. Gram began to tap her foot. The tune changed, and out in the kitchen, Owen began to sing, his voice sure and strong and merry, even without bottled help.