Storm Tide (53 page)

“Throw it at me, Mother!” Ellen shouted. “I bet you can't hit me!”

She ran toward them on feet that seemed hardly to touch the ground.

Owen had got up from his nap when they reached the house. He had shaved and put on a new and brilliant plaid shirt. When he saw them coming he had made the usual afternoon coffee, and rummaged through the cupboards for one of the dark fruitcakes Karin Sorensen had given to Joanna. In addition to the mug-up, he had what was left of his pint, and offered it magnanimously to Mark, who refused.

“Never touch the stuff, huh?” said Owen interestedly. “My, my, how times change.”

“Don't try to start anything,” Mark warned him. “We've got more to think about than what a comic feller you are. So sit down.”

“Okay, Aphrodite.” Owen patted his bottle and put it carefully in a remote corner of the cupboard. “What's happened? You just discover the Germans invaded Brigport?” He sprawled in his chair and grinned around at the others. “Now that'd be something. Link hands the mail over to the Limerock postoffice and says ‘Funny thing happened out at Brigport this mornin'. Store must have changed hands again. German feller came down to the wharf to get the mailbags.' ”

Nils laughed, and Mark relaxed a little. “Randolph Fowler's doing about as good as the Germans, the way he's spreading his propaganda around.”

“So you've got hold of that, have ye?” said Owen.

Nils went to the stove and came back with the coffee pot. “Who wants more coffee? Helmi, Joanna? . . . You're pretty sure it's Randolph behind this, Mark?”

“Who else would it be that would start such a story about you?” Joanna asked passionately, and then subsided. She had done all she could, said all she was going to say. It was for the men to take over now. And they'd not have the chance to say that she was talking too much again. She sipped her coffee and motioned Ellen not to take another piece of fruitcake, and watched the scene around her. The kitchen was warm with the pale gold wash of late afternoon sunshine, and the mulling fire. Helmi sat near her, finished with her coffee, her hands folded in her lap. Owen was beyond Helmi, his long legs thrust out before him, his bare ankles brown and gypsyish between the cuffs of his corduroys and his moccasins; the rich darkness of his skin and the Indian-blackness of his hair, the vigor of his face and changing expressions, made a startling contrast to Helmi's immobility and pallor. Across from him, Mark folded his arms on the table's edge and talked to Nils. His resemblance to Owen was shockingly vivid; yet the differences were vivid, too. Mark had a glow of freshness and youth, his cheekbones were tinged with coppery red, his voice resounded in the kitchen as Owen's had resounded years ago, when he'd been afire for action. But Owen at thirty-three was too tired to be afire about anything, now.

“Of course it's Fowler!” Mark was saying. “Look, this is the way the son of a bitch's figurin' it out. They whisper around, and finally they're sayin' it out loud, slicin' you in strips, soakin' you in pickle, and layin' you out on the flakes to dry. You can't take it after a while, so you leave and take your family with you. Then everybody else goes. Bennett's is wild again.”

He spread out his hands, shrugged, and sat back in his chair.

“What makes you think he's sure everybody else would go too?” Nils asked. He sat at the other end of the table, beyond Helmi and Mark and Owen. To Joanna, he dominated them. She told herself she thought that only because she had so recently ceased to pit herself against him. She was accepting him now as he was, with no sense of conflict. But reasoning didn't change the fact that he
did
dominate the others. And she was fiercely glad that her brothers turned to him as they did, without question or criticism.
It wasn't that way with Alec
, she thought, and then drove that sly, small memory away.

“Jud's set here,” Nils went on. “Caleb likes it. So does Matthew. You're Bennetts, it's your home-place and you know the ropes. So why should Randolph figure it would make any difference to the rest of you, what I do?”

“He figures it the way I would,” Owen drawled. “You hold this place together, Nils. Bennetts or no Bennetts.”

Joanna agreed silently. Yes, it was Nils who held them all together. And the boys were telling the truth when they said that was what Randolph Fowler was counting on. It was strange to be thinking all this, with calmness lapping around her like the sea lapping on the beach in Schoolhouse Cove on a windless summer day. Thinking that Randolph couldn't hurt the Island; thinking that Nils would take care of everything. . . .

Mark said violently, “What I want to know is, are we go in' to fiddle-faddle around and act like we don't know it's goin' on, or are we going to
do
something?”

Owen scratched a match with his thumbnail. “What do you want to do, Wild Bill Hickok? Take your trusty .45 and clean up the joint over there?”

“There's a meeting tomorrow,” Helmi's voice slipped quietly into the little space of silence after Owen spoke. “I read it on the board outside the store, while Mark was getting the mail. Everybody is to come together in the schoolhouse at two o'clock. It's to form a shore patrol to look out for submarines.”

“That's it,” said Nils. “I'll be there.”

Mark followed swiftly. “I'll be there too, by God.”

“I suppose I'll be on deck too,” said Owen, and let the two front legs of his chair come down with a crash. “Any more coffee?”

The course was charted, as simply and undramatically as that. There was fresh coffee all around and the men began to discuss the winter lobstering, and the new engine Nils had brought out in the
White Lady
that morning. Joanna talked to Ellen, and told Helmi about the Christmas decorations in Limerock, the things she'd seen in the stores. But all the time she could feel a pulse beating in her throat—she hoped her blouse collar hid it.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
, it said. It was a fine and triumphant beat, like a tiny drum.

The three men went out again soon, down to the shore to bait up while the sunshine still lasted. Helmi stayed a few minutes longer and then left. She had a long walk across the wintery fields and then through the darkening woods, and at the end of it the houses were small and windswept and alone; one of them altogether empty, the other where she lived with Mark and dreamed of Stevie —

But she would fight her way through, Joanna thought, watching the tall, slender figure grow steadily smaller on the road beyond Schoolhouse Cove. She was willing to bet that Helmi would not go down under the strain; she had promised she would never hurt Mark, and she never would.

Ellen sang softly to herself in the next room. The sun dropped down behind the belt of woods at the foot of the meadow, and it would grow dark quickly. It would be time to light the lamps, and draw the shades, and set the table. Time for Nils to come home again.

After supper there were callers; Caleb and Jud and Matthew, filing in through the entry, pulling off their caps, refusing to sit down until they had stated what they had come to say. For some reason they had chosen Matthew Fennell to say it, though he was the youngest and shyest, and also the newest Islander. But there was a blunt and earnest sincerity about his words.

“Mark told us what you're plannin' on doin',” he said. His cheeks were redder than usual, but his tongue didn't stumble. “We want you to know we're with you. I mean, we'll be there too.”

“He means, we'll show 'em they ain't dealin' with no pale-faced—” Jud stopped abruptly, looked mortified, and then grinned. “Oh, hell, Nils, you know what he means.”

“He ought to,” said Caleb, “by the time you get through showin' off your plain and fancy vocabulary.” He put out his rough, bony hand to Nils and looked at him from under heavy grizzled brows. “I don't know yet what we can do, Nils, but we'll be there.”

“Thanks, Caleb,” Nils held out his own hand. “Thanks, Jud . . . Matthew.” He said nothing more about it, and Joanna knew they expected nothing more. He'd taken their offer for what it was—the sign of their loyalty—and that was what they wanted. Not speeches, or long words.

Men understand each other
, she thought.
They don't need anyone—me or anyone else—to explain them to each other
.

They were sitting down now, their somber faces relaxing into smiles; they were reaching for pipes and cigarettes and matches. She spoke to them all, and went into the sitting room, where Ellen played with her paper dolls. She had darning to do—there was always darning—and Christmas gifts to wrap, and a letter to write to Stevie, telling him Nils had come home.

T
HE
White Lady
WENT OUT OF THE HARBOR
with Matthew's boat following behind her. It was a gray and gold day, with the sun a pale, wide circle of light behind the thick veil of dove-colored cloud that meant snow. The sea was almost smooth between Bennett's and Brigport, silvery-gray; in the boiling wake of the
White Lady
each frothy crest held a glint of the sun's diffused gold.

Nils, Mark, Owen, Joanna, and Helmi were aboard the
White Lady
; Matthew, Caleb and Jud in Matthew's boat. And Joey. He'd been allowed to come at the last minute. Joanna had taken Ellen down to the Caldwells' to stay for the afternoon, and had discovered Joey standing at the sitting room window, looking across the harbor with a stern expression. Caleb was in the kitchen, pulling on his boots.

“Aren't you going over to Brigport, Joey?” she asked the boy.

He shrugged. “No place for kids, my father says.”

“But you're the one who got the black eye,” Joanna said. She went out into the kitchen and spoke to Caleb.

“Joey has a right to be in this, Caleb. He's as much of an Island man as any of you. After all, he was fighting for Nils before the rest of us knew what was going on.”

“Well . . .” said Caleb. He reached for his cap. “I s'pose so. Get your things on, son.”

Outside the harbor Owen slowed the
White Lady
down so that Matthew could come abreast of her, and the two boats moved side by side down Long Cove toward Tenpound. Joanna watched the Island slipping by. In the pale, chill light, with its winter colorings upon it, it was not beautiful, she supposed, but it was home, and more than home; if she were on the other side of the world, and were suddenly transported, blindfolded, across the miles and set down on the Island, her feet would know it before her head did. They would know the feel of Island soil, and of Island rocks with the sea beating against them.

She looked at Nils and Mark and Owen, clustered around the wheel, talking and smoking; at Helmi, standing beside her, her face turned to the wind, and she wanted to tell them what she was thinking, but she could not. . . . All over the world now, people like themselves were fighting, some of them dying, to hold on to the bits of land their feet knew as home. It was a fight that always went on, and sometimes the small, unimportant people won, and sometimes they didn't. But the battle never finished, because there would never be an end to the men who tried to take home away.

At the end of Long Cove the woods came almost down to the shore; spruce woods, black with winter, trees that had been little emerald-green saplings when her father and Uncle Nate were boys and played Indians among them with their bows and arrows. The little stretch of grass-ground between the fringe of the woods and the harshly carved shoreline was a sallow brown now; who would ever think that by July it would be brilliant with blue flag, and spattered with daisies like the Milky Way?

How would I feel now
, Joanna asked herself relentlessly,
if I thought Fowler could drive us away, so we wouldn't see the blue flag again?

She thought of the Philippines then; there was no escaping it, you heard it whenever you turned on the radio, and wherever the men talked. American boys like Stevie, and the Filipinos themselves, were fighting and dying and losing. . . . The Poles, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French—and how long had it been going on for the Chinese? Pain twisted in her breast like a knife. She looked at Nils, standing by the wheel; he was listening to Mark and Owen, and there was a little smile on his lips. She wanted to go to him and put her arms around him, and feel his arms around her, and be comforted.

The boats rounded the point of Tenpound and met a slight swell, they rose and fell on its billowing sweep with a smooth rhythm. The sun was reflected on the glossy water in small yellow circles. Surf broke unhurriedly on the back shores of Tenpound and slid back to the sea again, over slopes of red rock; shags and seagulls took off as the boats came near, the shags with their furiously awkward struggles for altitude, the gulls with their pure and effortless launching into the wind.

In the diffused, unshadowed light there was an unbroken view to the east, save for Pirate Island crouched on the horizon, long and very flat. Gray sea, gray sky, and it reached all the way to Spain. . . . Beside Joanna, Helmi stirred.

“I think a shore patrol is a good thing,” she said in her cool, distinct voice. “I'd be willing to take my turn walking around the shore for two hours every day. . . . Sometimes when Mark is out hauling, I go up on the Head and look out to sea, and wonder what I would do if I saw a periscope.”

Joanna, already tense, felt herself tightening even more. “Vinnie gets all wrought up about it, but you make it sound worse by being so calm, Helmi. What
would
you do if you saw a submarine?”

“The other night I thought I heard one. I woke up and heard heavy engines.” She smiled faintly. “I was reading that they come up at night to charge their batteries. So of course I was sure.”

“What did you do?”

“I woke up Mark and said, ‘There's a submarine out between the Head and Pirate Island.' And he said, ‘What the hell can I do about it?' and went to sleep again.”