Storm Tide (40 page)

There was nothing else. Only his name, simple and strongly written.
Nils
.

She thought vaguely,
He wouldn't write “Yours” or “Sincerely,” because then he would be lying
. He had left her. He had left her and the Island both, and he was not coming back.

After a little while the world broke in on her again, piece by piece. The lonesome fluting of a solitary gull standing on a rock; the sound of the hoisting gear on the
Aurora B
., getting the lobster crates aboard. Mark's laughter from the open door of Cap'n Merrill's boatshop. The gentle motion of the boat as the tide pulled at it. And Helmi, sitting motionless on the washboards, her raised profile pure and far-away.

It gave her time to recover her poise. After a moment she managed a creditable chuckle.

“Now Owen will be sure he's right!” she said, and Helmi turned her fair head toward her.

“Why?”

“Nils says I'm not to come.” She smiled confidently into her sister­in-law's unquestioning eyes. “Something about the boat his uncle's building. He can't leave it yet.”

“That's too bad! And you're all ready to go, too,” said Helmi. “Why don't you go, anyway? He'd be glad to see you.”

Joanna shook her head. “There's likely to be another storm over the weekend; I might not get back Tuesday. And there's not much room up at Eric's. Besides—” she shrugged, and laughed. “If Nils tells me to stay at home, I'm supposed to mind.”

Helmi smiled, and Joanna felt relieved. That was over with, anyway. Now to convince Mark there was nothing wrong, and then—hardest of all—to face Owen. The thought of it set her teeth on edge.
If he twits me
, she thought,
I'll not answer. I'll get out of the room
.

She heard Mark's whistling again, and took a long breath. By the time he reached the float and came aboard the boat, she had assumed a mock-forlorn expression. “Take me home again, Mark,” she said. “My husband doesn't want me.”

She was back in the house again long before Owen and Stevie were due in from hauling, and had torn up and burned the list, and the note; and Nils' letter. And now that she was alone, she faced the incredible fact that Nils hadn't responded to her offer. She had been so certain he would want her to come that the shock of his refusal was nearly physical. Her heart seemed to be pounding, her body was alive with beating pulses. And she was cold. She sent the fire roaring up the chimney and stood over the stove, rubbing her hands.

Nils has left me
, she said to herself. Then she said it aloud—and how ghastly clear it was in the empty house—made it cold fact at last, and then panic was upon her, the panic of pride. How long could she keep the truth to herself? Mark and Helmi hadn't questioned her today. But what about the brothers who lived in this very house with her? How long could she stave off their knowledge? And then the Island's knowledge. . . . When Thanksgiving came and went without him; when his gear went neglected, or left to the others to tend; what then? Everybody would know at last that Nils had gone; and they would realize how terribly wrong something had been, when a man like Nils would walk away, without a backward look, from his work and his home.

Then they would watch her. And wonder. And conjecture, with sidewise glances and lifted eyebrows. . . . Hovering over the stove, trying to warm hands that would not warm, already she felt naked and terrified. Eyes, everywhere eyes; the neighbors', her brothers', Ellen's.

I will have to tell her tonight
, she thought.
Tell her that Nils won't be here for Thanksgiving. . . . And after that, I'll have to tell her he won't be home for Christmas
.

And after a while, Ellen would look at her without asking about him, but the question would be in her crystal-clear, unswerving eyes.
Why?

They will all ask Why
, thought Joanna,
and they'll never be done watching me
. Suddenly she was warm, too warm; she felt suffocated. She moved away from the stove and flung open the back door. The soft air, heavy with rain, touched her face. She heard an engine down in the harbor, loud in the stillness, and recognized Owen's
White Lady
.

She felt trapped and harried, like a gull tied down to earth by a string, circled by enemies whichever way it turned, wanting to fly up and up, wanting to escape so much that its heart seemed bursting; but there was no way of cutting the string, and the circle was closing in. . . . This was what Nils had done to her, she cried out wildly inside herself. If he had wanted to repay her for what he said she'd done to him, this was it.

B
RIGHTLY AND PITILESSLY COLD
, December began. The wind blew almost without stopping. It was too rough to go out and haul. All day and all night the sea stormed against the Island and boiled into the rocky coves; for miles around the Island every ledge was a cauldron of white water, spray blowing off the combers like smoke.

Thanksgiving was over and done with, and Ellen had gone back to Brigport again. It had been a strange Thanksgiving; Joanna had given her thanks when the day was safely past. To the boys, she'd been rueful about poor Nils, whose family loyalty was keeping him over on the mainland when he'd rather be home. She was thankful that the pose had carried so well, she was thankful that Owen had held his tongue.

She was taking a certain pride in herself these days; in keeping her head up and a smile on her lips, in laughing a good deal—though sometimes she had to catch and hold on to her laughter, so it wouldn't be too hilarious. Sometimes it tried to get away from her. Deep in her brain she knew she should be making plans, but so often her head was aching, when she went to bed at night, that she allowed herself to think of only one thing at a time.

There was Christmas to get through—Christmas with Ellen, who would wonder why Nils wasn't there. And after that, she promised herself, there was time enough to plan.
After that;
sometimes she had a premonition that those two words were all that stood between her and a black abyss of confusion. And because she had always known exactly what she was going to do, and how, and when, the thought was terrifying. Rather, it
could
be terrifying, if she dwelt on it.

Every morning that first week in December the vapor curled up from the sea, a shimmering, moving blanket of freezing mist, and every morning the men looked at the weather and knew they couldn't go out to haul that day. You had weeks like this often through the winter. But never, to Joanna, had one seemed so long.

One bitter morning when she felt she couldn't bear another day in the house—with Stevie hanging over the radio and Owen taking up most of the kitchen—she bundled up and went out. No matter if she were frost bitten, she wouldn't stay in. If she had to climb over Owen's feet once more on her way to the stove, she would be tempted to throw the teakettle at him. Inwardly she was trembling with nervousness, and that made her angry with herself.

The cold, bright air burned her throat when she breathed, and cut her face; it struck through her mittens, and her heavy shoes and woolen socks. The ground rang under her feet, hard as iron. And the sea glittered too much for her to look at it.

Except for the smoke from the chimneys, plumes of grayed purple against the sky, the Island might have returned to its deserted state. She saw no one as she walked down to the harbor and around the shore towards Grant's point. She had a share in the point now, she reflected ironically—she might as well walk on it, though she doubted she'd feel any thrill of accomplishment or ownership. That pleasure had been very efficiently taken away from her. . . .

She walked through the long covered shed and came out on the wharf. There was always enough water here for a boat the size of the
Aurora B
.; Link had never had to tie up out in the harbor and row his passengers ashore in a dory because of a lack of water, even at the low-dreen tides.

She gazed along the length of the wharf, noting the rotted planks, the gaping squares where planks were missing. She became absorbed in the problem of repairs, and gave herself to it gratefully. If new planks were laid, the wharf could be used by the men to pile traps on for drying out, instead of their dragging them up the beach and stacking them on the top of the bank. It would save them time and labor to use the wharf. There was no reason why the men couldn't fix the wharf in a few days, in a few forenoons or afternoons when it was warm enough to work outdoors, but too windy to haul.

She went back to the solid ground by the store. She felt excited; this was what she needed, something to take an interest in, something to plan out. She hesitated, wondering whom to approach first, and then received her answer. Caleb Caldwell was out in the harbor, pounding ice off the bow of his boat. Caleb was one who would help her.

She hurried back around the shore to the beach, feeling warm and alive. Even her fingers and toes had stopped stinging. She was almost happy. On the empty beach she waited for Caleb to row ashore, tapping her feet to keep the blood moving in them. It was a glorious morning after all. She was glad she'd come out. She looked up at a single gull flying overhead, and waved a red-mittened hand at it.

Caleb's punt came in sight beyond the lobster car, and she ran down to the water's edge to help pull it in.

“Well!” Caleb looked down into her glowing face. “Seems like you ain't much scared of the weather.”

“Not me!” she answered. She waited for him to make the punt fast, and then walked up to the road with him. “Look, Caleb, I know you're in a hurry to get home and warm up, so I'll talk fast. How about fixing up the big wharf? We've got planks left over from the other work.”

Caleb stopped in the shelter of one of the old camps to light his pipe. His deep-set eyes shifted somberly from the pipe bowl to her eager face; there was a deliberation in his glance, as there was in all his movements, and in his slow voice.

“Well, Joanna, it's like this. You see, Nils had sort of a good idea about fixin' the wharf, and there's more to it than layin' a few planks.”

“Well, why haven't you fellows got around to do something about it then?”

“Well, you'd ought to understand how we feel about goin' ahead with it while Nils ain't here. Jud can't climb around much, and Matthew and me, we never worked on a wharf.”

She leaned against the camp wall, trying not to show the sickening disappointment she felt.

His long humorous mouth twitched. “I s'pose that makes us out to be a couple of proper numbheads, but there it is. Maybe your brothers could do it the way Nils said. I dunno.”

“I see,” said Joanna. “Well, if that's the way you feel about it, Caleb—”

“Nils is the one to be takin' care of that wharf-business,” Caleb said. He grinned at her. “You ought to be proud of him, Joanna. . . . Prob'ly are, though, ain't ye?”

She smiled back at him. “Go along home and get warm, Caleb. . . . So long!” She stood with her back against the ancient shingles of the camp and watched him go along the board walk, a tall gaunt man in heavy clothes and oilskins, leaning against the wind.

It was she who had spoken for him when he wanted to come to the Island to live, she had overridden Nils' caution about strangers, she had made the house ready for his wife; but it was not for her that he would work, but for Nils.

She did not know how long she stood there, the two shabby camps keeping off the wind, and the faint warmth of the sun reaching through her clothes. The marsh lay frozen and dead before her, a light sifting of snow glittering among the hummocks; the spruce trees looked rusty­black. There was nothing moving now, not even a gull. She shut her eyes, trying to feel the sun on her lids. Instead she felt the hot, warning moisture of tears gathering, and she opened her eyes quickly. Something flashed past her face and hit the beach rocks at her feet. A shingle blown from the roof of one of the camps.

Slowly, as if she ached in every muscle or were very tired, she straightened up, and began to walk up the frozen road toward the Bennett meadow.

The camps haunted her for the rest of the week. They'd been built before her father was born, for Grandpa Bennett's hired fishermen. There'd been some others that had been torn down or burned down, but these two had remained, standing small and sturdy and independent at the edge of the marsh, on the brow of the beach. Sometimes a high tide—at the full moon—washed around them, but it could never move them. She could remember them from the time when she stood hardly as high as the anchor, with the silvery-green pigweed against the weathered shingles in summer, and the snow drifting against their lee sides in winter.

She remembered the swallows lining up on the ridgepoles, and old Nathan Farr splitting his evening firewood outside his door, and Johnny Fernandez sitting on his heels against the wall, at sunset, with his cat Teresa bending her lean head under his hand. She remembered herself on the beach in dungarees, waiting at Nils' peapod for him to come and take her hauling; and the old men, Johnny and Nathan, mending nets outside the camps and trying to tease her. . . . As if anyone could tease her about Nils, who was like a sixth brother, only better than a brother because he was nicer to her. . . .

She didn't want the camps to fall down; she didn't want any more shingles to blow off. And there would be more and more wind.

The sea was too rough for Ellen and Joey to come home this weekend, too rough to go for the mail on Friday. So there was nothing to break up the week. By Sunday she knew she was sick of the boys being in the house; sick even of Stevie, who had never annoyed her in any way before.

There were no boiled lobsters in the cellar-way, and Richards' smack hadn't been able to come out and bring groceries and fresh meat. Sunday dinner was creamed salt fish, baked potatoes, and mashed squash; she made a pie from a jar of blueberries she'd put up last summer.