Storm Tide (47 page)

Caleb was getting up, with a leisurely unfolding of long legs. He picked up his cap and mittens. “Well, Joanna, take it easy now,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Thanks for coming up, Caleb. And tell Joey not to get any more black eyes on account of—well, tell him to take it easy too.”

Caleb nodded and went out. She remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, letting her breath out in a long sighing sound.
Now I can think
, she said to herself, but even as she said it, she knew she couldn't think as she wanted to—logically, reasonably, making plans. There was nothing to work on. She couldn't build a strategy against gossip that was worse than any other gossip she'd ever encountered. For it said
murder
, and by now the word had the power to make her physically ill. Qualms of nausea began to surge over her like rolling billows of fog, and with each one the perspiration stood on her forehead and in her palms, and she could feel it, cold against her backbone.

She walked unsteadily into the sitting room. The fire needed prodding, but the thought of leaning over the woodbox weakened her. She lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling overhead.

She was beset by a panic that seemed to drain the blood from her heart. For she was an island woman, she had lived among these outermost islands all her life, but for those few years away from it. She knew how the smallest slight could be magnified, the faintest suspicion grow to enormous proportions in this life where there was so much unbroken solitude. A man hauling his traps, alone for six or eight hours between sea and sky, had all that time to conjecture on the unexplained word, the unusual circumstance. At night he spoke to his wife about it, and told her what someone had suggested or hinted down at the shore; in turn she told him what a neighbor had implied, or had even spoken in bold and definite terms. . . . To Joanna, it was like the grass-fires when they used to burn off the fields, in the old days. The little flames ran swiftly along the ground, so swiftly that the men had to watch them every second, and be ready to turn them away from the ground they shouldn't touch.

Only you couldn't turn this back. Not talk of murder. She saw, against the ceiling, the flames of a grass fire that had once licked at Uncle Nate's barn. They had saved the barn, but it had been a dangerously narrow escape. . . . She was shivering so hard that her teeth were chattering; the tighter she clenched them, the harder they chattered. She could not lie still, or she would go crazy.

She was out in the kitchen again, dizzily stoking the stove. No, they didn't take people out and hang them, up here on the solid, sensible coast of Maine. It was only in the South they did that. Not up here. The lobstermen she had known all her life didn't throng together in a sinister crowd and go to a man's home and drag him out. . . .

“I
am
crazy,” she said aloud. “But dear God, why doesn't Owen come home?”

She swung around to the window, and narrowed her eyes against the late afternoon sunglare across the harbor. The
White Lady
was at her mooring.

Ellen hadn't come back yet when Owen banged the back door loudly behind him. Joanna blessed Marion for keeping her down there. If only she'd stay away for a little while longer—

“Got any coffee?” Owen was demanding loudly. Then he came closer to her, where she stood by the stove. “Christ, what's the matter with you, Jo? You look as if somebody'd tied you up in knots! You sick?”

“No, I'm not sick,” she said. She looked back at him steadily; her eyes felt as if they took up most of her face.

“You're damn' white. Speak up—what's the matter?” He sounded furious, because he was worried.

“Owen, they're saying at Brigport that Nils killed Winslow, and threw his body overboard, and then went away because of it.”

Now it was out, blunt, cold truth, and Owen glared at her in amazement.
“Nils!
By God! . . . You sure?”

“Ellen told me—and Joey. Ellen was sick about it.” She smiled faintly. “Joey got into a fight and had his eye blacked.”

His face changed and quieted. “The kids would have it before half the grown folks knew it.”

“Knew
it!,' she exclaimed. “You sound is if you thought it was
so
. That he
did
do it!”

His great hands took her by the shoulders and forced her into a chair. “Sit down and take it easy, Jo. I'm not saying that. I know better. I'm just figuring that anybody who passes that lousy goddam fairy tale around believes it's true.”

“But they can't believe it. Not of Nils.”

“Yes, they can too.” Owen stalked back and forth before her, his jaw set. “Because any time there's ever been a murder off this coast, it's been the same thing. They don't sneak up and shoot a man in his camp, or bat him over the head. They do it so nobody ever
knows
it's a murder. . . . Like—what about the kid over in Port George who fell overboard? Sure, just an accident; but he'd been warned to keep his hands off the other guys' traps, hadn't he?” He stared hard at the floor, his black brows heavy, his lower lip thrust out. “His father found him—what was left of him—three months later, in the rockweed one day. That was the bitchly thing. . . .” He lifted his head and looked at Joanna. “See why they talk? Because they know what
they'd
do if they wanted to get rid of a guy.”

With a fierce gesture he pushed the teakettle forward on the stove. “I want some grub, dammit! You been broodin' about this all day, Jo? You better snap out of it. There's nothing you can do about it.”

“Isn't there?” She stood up, feeling a little stronger. The weakening nausea that had attacked her was gone. “That's what you think, Owen. Maybe you figure I'll stay here and do nothing, and let Nils find out for himself, after the story's gone so far there'll be no stamping it out! And he's the only one who can stop it, if he does it now.”

“Jo, let me tell you this for your own good,” Owen said. His voice was no longer roaring, but strangely gentle, as if it were on tiptoe. “Maybe it'll save you from getting your fingers mashed. . . . Jo, maybe you're foolin' yourself, and maybe you know it, deep down, but Nils won't thank you for rushin' over there after him. What they say about him out here doesn't mean a good goddam to him. Because he's
through
.”

“Are you sure of your facts, Owen Bennett?” She felt her spine pulling out and stiffening, it held her straight and tail like a steel rod. She didn't take her eyes from her brother's face.

“Nothing else would keep Nils Sorensen away from his boat and his traps this long.” Owen shrugged. “His engine was probably ready long ago. If he'd wanted to come home—he'd be here now. . . . Jo, I'm sorry as hell you two couldn't work it out, but that's the way it looks to me, and I almost think you'd better tend to your knitting and forget all the chew on Brigport.”

She couldn't shout. She spoke just above a whisper, in a passion of rage. “And I almost think you'd better keep your tongue to yourself, Owen Bennett. . . . Are you going to take me to the mainland tomorrow?”

Owen said sadly to the teakettle, “It's a damn' shame some women never think a man means it when he says he's through.”

She laid her hand on his arm, and with a strength beyond herself pulled him around to face her.
“Are—you—going—to—take—me—ashore—tomorrow?”

The sardonic twinkle came to life in his eyes. He opened his mouth; then looked rather intently into her face. “Damned if you don't mean it, Jo,” he said softly, and shrugged. “Oh, what the hell? Sure, I'll take you in.”

I
N THE MORNING
O
WEN TOOK
E
LLEN
down to the Eastern End, while Joanna tidied the house and got herself ready for the trip to Limerock. She was finished before Owen came back, and could not endure waiting in the house; she went out to the back doorstep to see if he was coming. The day had begun with a clear wash of topaz light and a faint, singing breeze, which touched Joanna gendy as she stood watching for Owen to come through the gate from the Eastern End woods, far across the dark blue loop of Schoolhouse Cove.

Even in winter the Island sustained its beauty; even without the songbirds and the early-morning iluting of the gulls over the house, and the wild flowers that spangled the meadows with color. The rocks remained the same, and the shape of the woods, a rough slope here, a straight and solitary spruce there, black and stark as an ink drawing against the winter sky and the far horizon.

Standing there now, not noticing the cold, Joanna realized with a small guilty pain that she had not looked much at the Island lately. She'd been too preoccupied with herself, too rushed, too confused. But this morning she could look at it; in fact it clamored for her attention. The sun climbed higher and higher, the tide was flowing into Schoolhouse Cove, a surge of white broke on the great russet rocks and on the silvery lavender of the beach. The tall, sharp-edged grass around the seawall was flattened down and dead now; like the evening primroses and the beach peas, the morning glories that hung their pink bells from the marsh grasses, and the speedwell that was so tiny you were likely to miss it. . . . They were all dead, but only until spring. And meanwhile the Island lived. The never-static tide was its pulse.

All this Joanna knew, just as she knew that she would never forget this instant of perception. It was as if the Island had called out to her. She felt alive with an aching awareness; she had ached a good deal lately, but not with this sense of life.

It's because I'm going to do something at last
, she thought.
I'm through with wringing my hands and wondering what to do next. I know what to do
.

She saw Owen coming then. He had said he would be ready to leave as soon as he came back, so she got her dressing case from the kitchen, locked the back door behind her, and went down through the meadow to meet him where the road turned toward the harbor.

He swung past the seawall, his rubber boots ringing on the frozen gravel, his cap on the back of his head. He was whistling as he came up to her.

“Is it all right?” she asked him instantly. “What did Helmi say?”

“She said sure, she'd be glad to look out for Ellen.” They fell into step together.

“Is that all?” Joanna said. “Did she ask any questions?”

“Nope, but Mark did. Wanted to know why you were tearin' off in such a hell of a hurry. I told him I didn't know.” He grinned at her. “So probably Mark thinks you're crazy as a coot.”

“That's all right,” said Joanna. As long as they didn't know, it was all right. She shrank from telling Helmi about Nils and the Brigport story, for already Helmi had too much on her mind. Perhaps Ellen would keep her from brooding. That was what Joanna had hoped, when she sent Ellen down to the Eastern End. Helmi was sincerely fond of the child, and would try to entertain her; that would help her over these first black days of Stevie's absence. . . .

There was no one in sight when they came to the beach. Caleb and Matthew had gone to haul, and Jud hadn't come down to the car yet. At least she wouldn't have to answer any friendly questions. She didn't want to speak to anyone; only to Nils, when she would tell him he must come home.

“Hey, Jo.” Owen came over the beach toward her. “There's a good breeze outside. You sure you want to go?”

“The
White Lady
can take it, can't she?”

“Yep.” Owen shoved his cap back farther. “But it's not exactly the kind of a sea I'd take women and children on.”

“I'm not women and children. I'm one woman and no sissy.” The thought of delay set her muscles to quivering again. “Come on, Owen.”

He shrugged. “Okay. Let's go.”

The harbor wasn't glassy-smooth when they rowed out to the mooring, but it wasn't choppy. The day was cold enough, without the cutting glitter of the day before. The sun danced across the riffling water, and the
White Lady
, dressed in her winter sprayhood, bounced on her mooring chain, her wet white sides shining.

Joanna felt the old exhilaration warming her. They were on their way, and it would be a good way, too. Owen and his breezes! Had he forgotten what sort of sailor she was? She was conscious of her growing excitement through the familiar routine of wanning up the engine, taking up the mooring—the ringing clatter of the chain was as sweet as birdsong to her; and then the moment when the
White Lady
swung around and headed for the harbor mouth, the skiff painter snapped out taut behind them. They were on their way.

Crossing between the harbor mouth and the southern end of Brigport, they met the pleasant top-chop that made no difference to the
White Lady
. She sped across it, and her engine-beat made a song about the white water flung out from her bow, the frothing sea in her wake, the cold blue brilliance of the sky.

Owen stood with one hand on the wheel, the other in his pocket, watching past the edge of the sprayhood. Joanna stood behind him, loving the flow of the wind against her face. Not for her, to sit tamely on the engine box in the shelter of the sprayhood. . . . The dark­wooded end of Brigport grew steadily larger—there was surf breaking on the bold, rocky point flung out into the sea, and Joanna braced herself for the swell. But it wasn't bad. She stepped past Owen into the complete shelter of the sprayhood to tie her kerchief tighter and fasten her coat at the neck. With all her heart she was glad she was on her way to the mainland. She'd been right to insist on coming.

The
White Lady
rose under her feet, and kept on rising. It was a slow and deliberate sensation. Joanna waited for the fast downward smack that made a choppy sea exciting; it didn't come. This was no chop, this lifting of the
White Lady
's bow until her stern was flush with the bubbling wake, until it seemed as if the water must boil over into the cockpit; this was a heavy sea, and when the boat plunged down on the other side—