Storm Tide (4 page)

Now, while he was getting her mail and packing her few groceries in a small carton, he asked her suddenly, “You think you and Nils can make out all right, living over there alone?”

“Why not? We've both lived out winters there before. Plenty of them.”

Fowler smoothed his narrow chin. “It's all right, as long as nobody gets sick.”

“At least we can try,” Joanna said.
And we won't he alone over there
, she thought, but she didn't want to say it aloud. She didn't know why. She told herself it was because she wasn't certain about the others' coming, except in her heart.

When she came outside again, a big Jersey cow grazed peacefully at the corner of the store, her sleek hide golden under the sun. The tall old spruces were very green and very sharp, puncturing the sky. Joanna rubbed the cow's nose and went back down to the wharf to wait for Nils.

From the pile of laths where she sat, she could see the peapod tied up at Ralph Fowler's lobster car; powerboats and dories and pea-pods were clustered around the big, broad-beamed seiner like gulls hungry and impatient for their share of the herring. Through the pellucid stillness of noon she heard Tom's bull-like roar, and it made her smile. The same old Tom.

She looked at each boat in the harbor. Brigport always prided itself on its fine-looking boats, and they were a trim fleet, she had to admit. But she could imagine the
Donna
coming up through the Gut and putting them all to shame.

How humble it made her feel that now it could be true; that it
would
be true. . . . The sound of rowlocks came to her and she saw Nils' pea pod crossing the harbor. She was ready at the head of the ladder when he came. As she watched the steady, contained serenity of his face, and saw the long even sweep of the oars, the dismay of the night before seemed like a dream.

It was stupid, even wrong, to feel dismay, for that was a weakening thing, and she had work to do. She and Nils had a lifetime job before them, and they needed each other. Only Nils could help her plans to blossom and bear fruit. And if her heart didn't pound at his touch, if color didn't surge up hotly through her throat and face at his touch, she knew why. That went with being twenty, and meeting Alec Douglass at the door in a sweet flare of passionate welcome. Alec had been a romantic husband. The first year of their marriage had been something a woman could not hope to find twice in one lifetime. When he had been drowned, she knew no other man would ever stir her as Alec had done.

She didn't feel like a traitor, thinking these things as Nils rowed toward her, and seeing the way his face changed at his perception of her up there on the wharf. Rather it made her answering smile more radiant for him. He need never know these things she knew; and now that she understood herself, she would not be dismayed by his passion again.

J
OANNA TOOK A TURN AT THE OARS
now. They rowed out through the Gut and past Tenpound, where a black ram stood on a high red rock cliff and looked down at them through a cloud of circling gulls. Heading straight for the Head, at the Eastern End of Bennett's, they passed in the cool shadow of Shag Ledge and startled a family of fat little sea-pigeons, who took off in a whir of black and white and tiny red feet. Above the beach in Eastern End Cove the houses looked bleak and alone, the grassy field rose high around the doorsteps and touched the window sills. But the Head looked the same, gigantic bare rock towering against the sky, tawny and brilliant in the sunshine.

Then around on the south-eastern side of the Island, where the woods were thick and the shoreline a jumbled mass of the same tawny rock. Today the water murmured with deceptive mildness over the rockweed that turned the shallows to jade-green and amethyst. Loons paddled in the coves, and old-squaws and tousle-headed sheldrakes moved complacently above their own images.

The house was in sight against the Western End woods from the time they rounded the Head. Captain Bennett had built the homestead in a high place, to command a fine view of his lands and waters and the doings of his fishermen. Joanna, rowing in silence while Nils smoked his pipe, tried to imagine the Island without the house, without the Indians who had been there long before the Bennetts. On a day like this it was so wild and alone, with the sea birds playing fearlessly around the shores, the seals venturing close enough to sun themselves on the flat shelving rocks in Goose Cove.

One side of her loved this wild solitude, wishing to be alone and complete with the birds and seals, to be friends with them in this world of unbroken quiet. But the other side of her saw smoke rising from Island chimneys again, and the harbor dotted with moorings, the water spangled with Island buoys, and thousands of pounds of Island lobsters leaving the cars to reach every comer of the United States; her eyes must return again to the homestead and the visions that had driven Grandpa Bennett when he built it in its high place.

They passed the mouth of Schoolhouse Cove, came between Goose Ledge and the long arm of the point, where the wild-rose haws glowed red among lichened granite, and rowed into Goose Cove.

There was a boat lying beside the little wharf, a strange boat, and instantly the sense of remoteness was gone. For the first time in a half-hour Joanna spoke.

“Did you ever see that boat before, Nils”

Nils narrowed his eyes against the sunglare and studied the boat as the peapod moved steadily toward it. 'I don't think so. She's a line trawler, by the looks of those trawl tubs along the washboards. Been out quite a long spell, too. . . . She needs paint.”

“They probably stopped for water,” Joanna said. “I hope they found the well all right.” The peapod's white paint was bright beside the shabby hull of the line-trawler. Joanna took her bundles ashore, and Nils rowed out toward his mooring, where his skiff waited.

Joanna, feeling starved, thought whole-heartedly about dinner as she left the sturdy, sun-heated planks of the wharf and walked up the slope to the house. This noon it was hot and windless there, perfumed with the bay that grew in glossy-leaved clumps almost as tall as herself. The ripening cranberries turned red cheeks to the sun; they were like tiny apples, lying there in the moss.

Fishermen had always stopped at the Island for water as long as Joanna could remember. So she was not startled when she saw the two men and the boy come around the comer of the house; but they were startled. She knew it by the way they stopped and stared. A tall lank man in a long-visored cap, faded plaid shirt, rubber boots and nondescript work pants riding low on his lean hips; a short, rounding man with a battered felt hat shading his face, except for the stubble of beard and the pipe as short and stubby as himself. His overalls curved over a stoutening girth. He took his pipe out of his mouth and gazed at Joanna.

But it was to the boy she spoke, for he was ahead, a skinny youngster in dungarees and boots too big for him, the yachting cap jaunty on the back of his close-cut sandy head. He was no more than twelve, she thought, and said, “Hello.”

He stared back at her, his eyes round in his pointed face. They were the same odd golden color as the freckles scattered liberally over his sharp cheekbones and brief nose.

“H-h-hello,” he said, sounding out of breath.

Joanna looked past him at the men, and smiled. “Hello. Did you find the well all right?”

“We warn't exactly lookin' for the well,” said the short man, and pushed back his hat. “We was lookin' for you and Nils. You still chasin' around on his coattails, Jo?” He began to laugh, and at the sound of that chuckle, Joanna knew him beyond a doubt.

She had never dreamed, in the days when Jud Gray was a familiar stubby figure around the shore, always ready to tease her, that she would ever be so glad to see him. She dropped her bundles on the grass to take a firm hold on his hard leathery hand.

“Jud, you devil, what are you doing out here? How are you, anyway? Oh, golly—Nils will be ashore in a minute, and he'll be so darned glad to see you—”

“You sure?” Jud asked her quizzically. “This bein' a honeymoon, I didn't know how you fellers would take to callers so sudden-like . . . This is Caleb Caldwell—and that's his boat down there, we been trawlin' together for quite a spell—and that long-legged gandygut is his boy Joey.”

Joey blushed, but he possessed a shy endearing grin. His father had a long face, somberly carved, lantern-jawed; but he smiled in his eyes, and his deep voice held a slow warmth and courtesy that Joanna liked at once.

She felt excited and happy as she led the way into the kitchen. She listened to Jud's news of his family with her eyes shining and her mouth ready to exclaim. As she listened she planned how to make a dinner for two stretch for five. Of course they would stay; they must stay. She could not possibly explain why seeing Jud meant so much to her, except that he too belonged to the Island's past. And because he belonged to it, he had come back, if only for an hour.

She put more corned hake on to freshen, sliced more salt pork, peeled extra potatoes. There were beets from her sister-in-law Mateel's garden, and new piccalilli she and her mother and Mateel had put up just the week before. For dessert she could stir up a molasses cake.

The boy Joey sat on the woodbox, with his knees under his chin, watching her. He was starved, probably. Boys always were. His eyes were almost too big for his sharp solemn face. With one side of her mind she listened to Jud, and the other thought this boy was a world different from her oldest nephew, young Charles, who was sturdy, handsome, and almost too self-assured.

The older Caldwell sat in comfortable silence, smoking his pipe, watching Jud from under shaggy brows. His thick gray hair was in sharp contrast to his seamed, darkly-burnt skin.

Jud's round face shone with sunburn and excitement. “By Golly, Jo, if I'd knowed I was goin' to be seein' you, I'd of brought my razor along this trip.”

“Never mind,” she told him fondly. “You look just as good to me, beard or no beard.”

“Who's that you're handing out that sweet talk to?” said Nils from the doorway. “Hello, Jud, you old coot.”

“Toughest old coot afloat,” said Jud. “Unsinkable. Like one of them newfangled Coast Guard boats.” He pumped Nils' arm fervently. “So you done it, my boy! Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” said Nils, imperturbable except for the faint stain of color along his cheekbones. “Well, how'd you happen to stop in today? Did you know we were here?”

Jud winked. “You ain't mad, are you, boy? Us bustin' in like this on a honeymoon?”

“Sit down and behave yourself, Jud. And tell us how come.”

“Well, we met Charles last night. He was just comin' from here—hailed us over to the west'ard of Bantam. We was layin' out there for the night.” Jud looked from Nils to Joanna with his familiar gnomish grin. ” 'Course we didn't figure to come visitin' right off, soon as we found out. We waited till today.”

“You'd all better get washed up,” said Joanna. “Then we can eat and talk. Nils, this is Mr. Caldwell, and Joey.”

“I kinda fell down on my etti-kett,” Jud said, beaming. “But now that you two fellers is acquainted, I hope you size each other up right. It's important.” He broke off to wash with complete and noisy enjoyment.

“How's the line-trawling these days?” Nils asked.

“All right,” Caldwell said in his deep voice. “Could be better. Could be worse.”

Jud emerged rosily from the towel. “Ruther be lobsterin', wouldn't ye, Caleb? Me too.” He was abruptly serious. “Nils, I been up lookin' my place over. The bushes is kind of wild, and the grass is growed high, but the place looks good to me. Damn' good. There's space around it, and trees with birds in 'em—damned if I ain't missed the little devils all these years.”

Joanna, putting food on the table and motioning Joey to his place, was conscious of her deepening heartbeat. She felt as though she knew what Jud was going to say next; as if she had always known it.

“We're due ashore tonight—the boy has to start school in a few days—and I'm goin' to talk to Marion. Our baby graduated from high school last June and got her a job in Portland. Livin' with a cousin of her mother's. They ain't nothin' to keep us over there now. Marion, she's kind of stuffy and tired most of the time, and me, I been ailin' ever since I left the Island. Now I know why. I been suffocated. That air ain't fit to breathe. And I got that somethin'-o-phobia you get in closets.”

His faded eyes, set in their crinkled network, were shiny. “All this means I'm movin' back here just as soon as I can get the old lady and our stuff aboard the mailboat. We may be gettin' along, but we got as much courage as we ever had. We'll make out.” He put his hand on Caleb's shoulder. “And Caleb here—he never lived on an island, but he's an island man just the same. ‘Cause he's been hankerin' after somethin' all his life, and he never knowed what it was till today.”

Nils' impassive blue glance moved toward Caleb Caldwell, whose deep-set eyes looked back at him. At the table Joey sat unmoving. Joanna had the impression he was holding his breath.

“I know,” Jud went on doggedly, “that most people've held onto their places here, like I have. But you fellers have the say of some of 'em, like that place where Marcus Yetton lived, f'r instance. And the Binnacle. What I want to know is—have you got a place for Caleb, or am I goin' to have him move in with me? ‘Cause I'm willin' and glad to have him.”

Nils said in his slow pleasant voice, “Let's sit down and eat, and talk this over.”

“What is there to talk over?” Joanna's excitement kindled the warm color in her face. “Jud, if you vouch for him, we're willing and glad to have him. After dinner, we'll show him the Binnacle and the Yetton place, and let him choose. How soon can you move?” she demanded of Caldwell.