Storm Tide (35 page)

“I'm still glad I don't sell to that bastard,” Owen said. He sat down and stared morosely at the floor.

“You and me, too,” said Stevie. “I'd still rather come in and meet Jud instead of that down-east chowderhead, even if Jud's company is so small you can't hardly see it. . . . Well, Cap'n Sorensen, what do we do next?”

“I don't know,” said Nils. “Unless we eat dinner.” For the first time he looked directly at Joanna, and smiled. “Smells good. When do we get a look at it?”

She hurried to get the food on, the chicken in its golden gravy, the wine-red cranberry sauce, pale onions and deep orange squash, potatoes mashed and beaten. Yes, it was a feast; but the smell of it nauseated her. She would have given almost anything to get out of the house and stay out, to walk until she was exhausted, and then come home and go to bed, and
sleep
. It was the only way she could think of to escape the way she felt. For now she must recognize the truth; there was no evading it, no justifying herself.

Pete
would
have taken a down payment; and with money to pay for what they needed, the fishermen could have bought their trap stuff almost anywhere. There was no shortage of it. There was only a shortage of credit. . . .

She made herself serve the men, who were hungry in spite of their discouragement. After all, they'd been on the water all morning.

Stevie and Owen began to eat at once, without talking. Joanna looked at her plate. She would have to eat everything on it and pretend she enjoyed it. She'd be damned if she'd act guilty. . . . She didn't know when she became aware that Nils was not eating. She looked across at him and saw that his arms were folded on the edge of the table and that he was gazing past her, toward the window behind her, as if she didn't exist. There was such a remoteness in his eyes that she couldn't help asking,

“What's the matter, Nils? What are you seeing?”

He answered without looking at her, “When I was talking to Jud and Caleb this morning, between Pudd'n Island and Eastern End Cove, I could look up between the Islands and see the
Janet F
. hauling along between the sou'western end of Brigport and the Spar buoy.”

“You mean they found enough left to haul?” grunted Owen.

Nils went on as if he hadn't heard. “Well, Jud told me he didn't like to do business by telephone—made him nervous, he said—so I went to Brigport and called up Richards. When I came out of the harbor, I went out around Tenpound. I saw the
Janet F
. down by the Hogshead.” He hesitated for a moment, his eyes still distant, as if he were seeing the scene. Joanna was conscious of a tightening through her body, as she wondered what was coming next.

“Randy was in the store this morning; Winslow was out alone. I could see the boat was drifting, so I watched her for a while, to see if Winslow's head poked up—I thought he was down on his knees fooling with the engine.” He rubbed his forehead again. His voice was very quiet in the room.

“I didn't see anybody, and she was so damn' close to the Hogshead by then that I swung around and went down there, to see if he needed help. She was empty.”

Stevie put down his fork. “Empty?” he repeated.

“Jesus,” said Owen. “You mean he'd gone overboard?”

“Somewhere between the Islands, or between the southern end of Brigport and the Hogshead.”

“Maybe it had just happened, before you saw the boat,” Joanna said slowly.

“Could be—they had a few traps down that way, too.” Nils pushed back from the table. “I'm not very hungry, I guess. I thought I was . . . I towed the boat in. Everybody was around. Randolph came down to the wharf. He looked sick.”

“Almost makes me sorry for the poor bastard,” Owen muttered.

“I'm sorrier for Mrs. Fowler,” Joanna said. “Poor thing. She isn't much more than a wraith now, living with the Fowlers all these years. This might kill her.”

“Losing Winslow?” said Stevie unexpectedly. “I don't think so. Randy, maybe. He's a good-natured cuss. But not Winslow.” He helped himself to more chicken, more of everything. “Excuse me for being so cold-hearted, folks. But I'm hungry.”

“Gruesome Gil,” said Owen, grinning. “Sure, stow it away, kid. Come on back and eat, Nils. You can't do anything about it, and you need your food. Gives you strength, man.”

Yes, you need your strength
, Joanna thought.
We all do
. She felt as cold as if a winter wind had blown through the warm, sunlit kitchen. She sat very still in her chair, holding herself tightly together; she could not have relaxed, she thought, to save her life. A nightmare breath was blowing feathers of dread along her backbone.
This is a foreboding
, a voice said clearly in her brain.

I
N THE AFTERNOON
S
TEVIE AND
O
WEN
went out. Stevie went down to the Eastern End to see how Mark had fared in his day's hauling. Owen headed for the shore, to help Jud fix the lobster car, which had been somewhat battered by the constant pounding against the wharf during the height of the gale.

Joanna cleaned up the dishes and brought in her washing. She was surprised when Nils followed her out to the clotheslines, in the sheltered place behind the house and overlooking Goose Cove. It was as warm as early fall there this afternoon; the sun had shone there almost all day, and the clothes, drying so close to the sea, smelled delicious. Nils took down the sheets and folded them, and put them in the basket while Joanna took down the shirts and socks and underwear.

“Thank you, Nils,” she said gravely, as the last towel was folded and laid on top of the pile.

“You're welcome. I'll carry the basket in for you.”

“All right,” she said. She couldn't help a certain stiffness in her tone. She wished he had gone out with her brothers. His presence around the house irked her this afternoon—not because she disliked him, she reminded herself hastily. But he'd been so right about the storm. Sometimes she wished he'd be wrong, for once.

He didn't pick up the basket right away. Instead he stood looking down the slope, where the wild roses bloomed so pinkly in June, at the soft blue and gray and lavender tints of Goose Cove beach; and at the Cove beyond, the hardly murmuring water on the stretch of wet pebbles, the purple and green shallows around the rockweedmaned boulders. Joanna followed Nils' eyes. When he lifted his head and gazed at the woods across the cove, the tall spar growth and the young emerald-green trees so vivid among their elders, she stood beside him and gazed too, down to where Schooner Head stood out in bold relief against the dreaminess of sea and sky.

“Let's talk a minute before we go in,” he said. Joanna sat down willingly enough on a neat stack of four-foot spruce logs. It was always easier to talk outside . . . whatever it was Nils wanted to talk about. He sat down beside her and took out his pipe.

“I've decided what to do about the gear,” he said. “I'm going ashore on the mailboat and go along the coast till I find somebody who'll give us trap-stuff on credit.”

“How do you know where to go?” she asked.

“There must be plenty of places that we don't know about.” He filled his pipe without spilling a grain of tobacco. She wished vaguely that he would spill something, make a mistake in his calculations, once in a while. . . . “If we have to make our own bows and funny­eyes, we can,” he went on. “But there must be someone with a sawmill somewhere that would trust Bennett's Islanders for laths and sills.” She saw his mouth twitch. “The name ought to be good for something.”

“Well, I hope you can find what you want,” she said, and stood up. His contemplative blue glance followed her; it seemed to measure her, and suddenly she was stung by it. “I suppose you're thinking,” she remarked with a forced nonchalance, “that if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have to make the trip.”

His eyes narrowed, but only for a second. “Joanna,” he said gently, “I'd almost think you had a guilty conscience, the way you put words into my mouth.”

“
Guilty conscience.!
” She whirled around to face him squarely, her chin set hard. “Is that what you think? Well, I've no guilty conscience, Nils, but what I ought to have is an inferiority complex! And I
would
have, if I was fool enough! Everything I do is wrong, everything I say is pure foolishness—I'm of no consequence whatever!”

She stopped, aghast at her recklessness; but still, there was relief in it. Nils stood up, and shook his head at her.

“No, Joanna. You're important enough. You're Joanna Bennett, and nobody must forget it.
I'm
the person of no consequence around here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I'm just Joanna's husband,” said Nils. “She runs things. I do what she can't do with her own two hands. The hired man that gets treated like one of the family. I mean,
almost
.”

She had never known Nils' words could ever cut like this, coming so quietly from his mouth. She stared at him with widening eyes, throat drying with the heat of her amazed indignation.

“How dare you talk like that, Nils? When you've stopped me from doing all the things I've wanted to do, and criticized anything I
did
happen to do—”

“I could keep you off the lobster car, because you needed my money,” said Nils. “But that's all. Think back, Jo. Think back and see if you needed me for anything else. You could have got one of the boys to tarpaper the long fish house, and you could have hired a carpenter to rebuild the wharf. But I did it all right, and it kept me busy, didn't it, Joanna?”

“Nils, you—” She stopped helplessly. She felt torn apart with anger.

“You think nobody cares about the Island but you, nobody knows what the Island needs but you.” He sounded almost kind, now. “And you were thinking about just one thing when you married me, Joanna. How you could use me for the good of the Island.”

“How long have you been thinking these things, Nils?” she asked him, her voice a dry whisper.

“For a long time. I didn't like thinking about them, but I got used to them. Anybody gets used to things . . . like knowing you didn't really need me, or even want me. I'm not blaming you, Joanna, because you didn't know those things. I didn't either, for a long while.” He looked away from her, out at the shimmering cove and the silent wall of woods, and that remoteness came to his face again. The brilliant afternoon sunshine carved deep-angled planes in his face.

“Nils, you're lying,” she told him fiercely. “You're my oldest friend—you've always been.” She fought desperately for her self­control; she would not look into the depths, she would not give in. What if she were to be humble now, and say,
I know. I've been wrong
. That was what he wanted. But she couldn't do it. She was Joanna Bennett, and how could she submit to anyone?

To admit, ever, that she was wrong was to be lost. So she stared at him with fire in her cheeks and in her eyes, knowing this for a duel in which she must not be conquered, and repeated, “You've always been my oldest friend!”

She saw his contempt at her stubbornness. But it was better for him to think she was stupid than to think he had smashed her armor.

“I was your friend till I came too close,” he said. “Till I got a foolish idea in my head that I was your husband. But I never was your husband, Joanna.”

So he had chalked
that
up against her too. Well, she could be as poised as he was. “Whatever else you want to say about me, Nils,” she told him evenly, “you can't say I ever refused you.”

For the first time color deepened on his cheekbones and his eyes searched her face and her strong, slim throat. “You never refused me. But you never wanted me, either. You did your duty, that's all. It was just another chore to you.”

“Well, at least you can give me credit for not neglecting my work,” she said, and knew that had touched him. She turned around and went toward the house.

She walked through the empty rooms to their bedroom and stood listening. After a little space of silence she heard the back door open, and the sound of the clothesbasket being put down. She waited, her body aching with its tautness, the sound of her blood beating loudly in her ears. If he came to apologize, what could she do? She had a crazy, panicky impulse to climb out the window and run for the woods, but she stifled it. He would come and apologize for the hate­ful things he had said, he was so much in love with her he couldn't help but make that gesture. She was in his bones, where she'd been since she was fifteen. And she would meet him with her back straight and proud, her head lifted.

She heard the back door close again. A thick and absolute silence settled over the house. She remembered, then, a little and treacherous thought she'd had once; that she was always listening to a door shutting, and then—nothing.

T
HERE WAS SUPPER TO GET
, and then the evening to come after. To Joanna the time stretched out to an eternity. It was not too hard to keep up appearances, because Nils had never been demonstrative when anyone else was around. It seemed no strain for him to be as polite and friendly as ever. Joanna envied his ease, and resented it. Yet the boys didn't notice any change in her, though she was on the alert for a quizzical glance from Owen or a puzzled one from Stevie.
I must be doing as well as Nils
, she thought, and wondered how she could, when the inner Joanna was holding herself so tightly and coldly aloof from everyone. Especially from Nils.

Even the night passed by, somehow. Joanna had thought she couldn't sleep; yet she found herself waking at daybreak, just as Nils went quietly from the room.

This was the day he was to go ashore. He had told the boys last night of his decision, and they'd offered to go over his string while he was gone, bring in the shattered pots, and re-bait and set the good ones back in line.