Strawberries in the Sea (10 page)

It was like a knife slash across her midriff. She pressed her folded arms in on the pain and tried to keep her face straight. She couldn't think. Barton. Barton. All she could remember was old Chad Barton who'd died a few years ago, and he'd lived alone. Ralph, lighting a cigarette, was still talking.

“. . . hadn't lived in Seal Point for a long time before they came out here. Years, I guess. Barry just mentioned it once, that's all.”

The pain eased away. If she didn't know them, it was likely they didn't know her. They might have known her father; who wouldn't know True McKinnon? But Rosa Fleming should mean nothing to them.

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “I'd better push off. I called my wife last night and told her we had neighbors, she was real pleased.” He rolled up lightly onto his feet. “Folks around here are friendly, but they won't shove in till you give the high sign.”

“That's what I've always heard,” Rosa said. “Thank you for your help. Bringing up the gas and lighting pilots and everything.”

“I was happy to do it. And, like I said, I owe you wharf rent. Look, I'll carry that bag of lime up to the toilet. Where do you want the kerosene, in the entry?”

Afterwards he drove the tractor around behind the house and into his own yard, whistling
Garryowen
. She contemplated the silver cylinders of gas; they set a seal upon her occupancy.

I can live out of forty traps, she thought, and not touch what I've got in the bank unless I want something special.
Something special
. The words echoed and jangled.

You've had that, she thought dryly. Oh boy, have you had it. Now go on in and get yourself something to eat and get back to work.

By sundown the toilet had been cleaned and thoroughly limed. In the house she had washed the cupboards and the storage spaces under the counters and sink. She had cleared the rust from the sink with kerosene. When she was through for the day she sat down on the floor in the corner again with her guitar, and played and sang until she was ready to fall asleep.

She was awake at daylight with the gulls, and the boats going out. While she drank her coffee she wrote a note to Edwin on a lined pad she'd found in a bureau drawer. She asked him to pick up some towels and bedding at the house—her sleeping bag had been almost too warm last night—and to get certain tools from the fishhouse. If he would put everything in a carton and send it out on the mailboat, she'd be much obliged.

“Your path is still there,” she added. “And there's a yellow million eider ducklings.”

Then she made a grocery list, and when she thought the store was open she took the wheelbarrow down to the big wharf. A small dark-eyed boy was solemnly arranging cans of fruit on lower shelves, and a large gray-and-white cat who acted like the real owner of the place came to greet her with a flourish of his tail.

She bought a stamped envelope and addressed it to Edwin. “Do you have putty or shall I get somebody to send me some?” she asked Mark Bennett. “My windows are in tough shape.”

“I've got everything you need for fixing windows,” he said. “On this place somebody's forever having to put in a pane of glass.”

She sealed her letter and dropped it in the box, and then began on her grocery list. This morning she felt at least all of a piece, if not happy. She had more to do than muddle around in her own misery.

When the wheelbarrow was loaded, she gave Bennett a check for everything she'd gotten so far. Then, before she could change her mind, she said quickly, “I don't know if Jude told you, Mr. Bennett, but my husband isn't coming out to stay, and I'm not going back. I'd like to set out those forty traps. I'm buying the place from Jude, so does that give me the right to fish out here? Will anybody object?”

Sitting on the counter, he listened, his dark face without expression. The cat jumped up beside him and his big hand kept slowly stroking the broad head. The child leaned against his father's leg and looked at her the way his father did. Between the two pairs of dark eyes she began to feel uncomfortable, but she finished out.

Mark rubbed his jaw, looked out at the harbor, and said, “You're right up and down like a high board fence, and I like that, so I'll try to be the same with you. I don't know who'd object to your fishing that handful of traps. We try to keep down to a dozen fishermen here, and we've only got ten now. We don't count the kids, who have traps out for the summer. . . . We've got another rule amongst ourselves, and that is, when everybody starts fishing short warps around the island in the summer nobody fishes more than two hundred pots. Outside—” He shrugged. “No matter. But inshore, we try to keep limits, or it could just be plain hell, everybody fouling warps. Tempers get mean when you have to be clearing snarls all the time.”

“I'd keep out of everybody's way—”

“Putting forty pots overboard isn't plastering the place. No, I don't guess anybody'd object.”

“Someone already has,” she said, “before I had a chance to ask.”

“Who was it?”

“I don't know his name. He was tinkering with his engine when I came into the harbor. He's got yellow hair.”

Mark grinned. “That's the feller who put your boat off the other night. Jamie Sorensen, my sister's boy. Tried to scare you, did he?”

“I don't scare,” said Rosa.

“I can see that. Well, you go along and set your traps, just don't drop 'em on top of anybody else. Got any bait?”

“Yes, thanks.” She wanted to get out of there, but something held her to the spot, uncomfortable under all the eyes—the cat was now fascinated with her, for some reason. Finally, reddening and clearing her throat, she said, “I wouldn't want anybody to think I took it for granted about setting traps out here. I mean I didn't have any idea. I mean—” The red was pure fire. “The traps just happened to be on the boat when I started out.”

He nodded in a kind of massive calm, and she burned to think that Jude must have told him something of the truth. But at least the child didn't know what they were talking about.

“Do you think I could rent that mooring my boat's on?” she asked.

“No need. That's Jude's mooring. He paid for it. It's in good shape too. The Wylies put a new pennant on it last year.”

“Then that's that,” she said, out of the fire now, everything concentrated on the boat. “This is my last question, I promise. Do you know where I can rent a skiff?”

“I've got one tied up at the car you can use.” Humor narrowed his eyes. “Jamie's got one for sale, but you and he may not want to do business.”

She shrugged. “It's up to him. Does he just naturally have a chip on his shoulder, or what?”

“Hard telling about Jamie. Nothing ever seems to get under his father's skin, but his mother's pretty quick off the mark. Calmed down some through the years. Mellowed, Nils says.” His amusement deepened. “Jamie favors her some days, other times it's his father. Depends on which side of the bed he gets out of.”

“Like all the rest of us,” she admitted. “Maybe his engine had him all fussed up that day. How much rent do you want for your skiff?”

He raised and then flattened one hand in a negative gesture. “It's a spare. Young Mark has his own. Let's see how long you use it before we talk rent.”

She felt easy enough with him now to put a lot more into her thanks, though she never could be lavish even if she were melting with gratitude inside.

“I appreciate everything, and I don't plan to be a nuisance.”

Again the slow gesture of the hand. “Anything for True McKinnon's girl,” he said with a smile. “You'd be so cussid solemn, working away at that ice cream. Nobody could pry you off that nail keg.”

“I was some bashful. And you know what? I can't stand ice cream now. You just can't imagine that, can you?” she asked the astonished child. His father laughed, and she went out feeling quite pleased with herself.

Wheeling her load home through the early morning with only the birds out, she experienced for the first time the peace she hoped to find here. She returned to her dooryard with a tinge of proprietory affection; this was the first home she had ever obtained for herself, and it set her apart from everything she had ever been and everybody she had ever known. She was a person alone, neither True McKinnon's daughter nor Conall Fleming's wife.

S
he put the plastic billfold holding her lobster license in her hip pocket, took her oil jacket, and was on her way. Setting traps didn't call for rubber boots or oil pants, and there were work gloves aboard the boat.

When she walked by the store someone was inside talking with Mark. She went into the shed, which smelled exactly as she remembered it, damp and pungent with the hogsheads of bait along one side. The planks underfoot never dried out, and gave off the rich moist bouquet of the years. When she came out into the sunny open, Young Mark and the cat were on the car, lying in wait for her; brown eyes and green eyes never missed a motion as she went down the ladder. Young Mark's skiff was obviously the five-footer with the name “Louis” painted in large, wobbly, red letters across the stern. But she asked him, anyway.

“Which one is yours?”

He pointed.

“Who's she named after? Or maybe I should say who's he named after?”

Young Mark pointed to the cat.

“Oh. . . . He got your tongue?”

“No,” said Young Mark with great dignity. Rosa grinned.

“For a minute you had me scared.” She untied her skiff, and suddenly he was under her elbow, kneeling on the car to hold the skiff steady while she stepped in. He was manfully braced, expecting God knew what from somebody her size. She always felt lithe as a willow when she boarded a boat; the skiff hardly bobbed, and she was proud of that and Young Mark's relieved approval.

“Thanks,” she said to him as she rowed away, and he gave her a gesture so much like his father's that she wanted to laugh.

There was a light northwest breeze skimming across the harbor and riffling the surface in dark blue patches. The skiff sped toward
Sea Star
. For a moment she was conscious of village windows but not concerned, then she forgot them altogether when she reached the boat. She reached up and patted the side. “How do you like it out here, old girl?” she asked. “The other ones speaking to you? Or are they stuck-up? Hey, what about that Sorensen putting you off the other night? I hope you were a credit to me.” She swung herself aboard. “Well, here we are. Let's have fun.”

She took the boat across the harbor to gas up, Mark had seen her coming and was down on the car with the hose. “Watch the bottom, now,” he advised paternally.

“I've got my chart, plus the fathometer.”

Even when you knew the grounds, setting traps was always an adventure in gambling and hope, but this time she was in foreign territory and not about to dump pots just anywhere. Once she was past the breakwater and heading down the west side, she had that sensation of having crossed an ocean instead of a bay to get to this place. With her chart at hand, she set out on a voyage of exploration.

The island was high on this end, and still in its morning shade it looked even higher, the woods almost black against the early blue-white radiance of the sky. Past Barque Cove with its one pink wall, the rocky shore turned black and brown, sometimes streaked with dull rusty red; even in sunshine, it would soak up light rather than give it. It was broken at intervals by steep little coves with stony beaches, submerged in the shadow of the heights, the brown eiders and ducklings almost invisible. In one cove toward Sou'west Point a boy was hauling from a double-ender, as close to the rocks as the birds could get. His fluorescent orange buoys caught the eye like flashes of fire.

The boy waved as
Sea Star
cruised slowly by. Up on the ridge the forest thinned out to a few stunted, wind-wrung individuals. Gulls stood on the cliffs, breasts to the wind, or circled high above the ledges in their tireless aerial circus. The place looked wild and barren even with its sunny green slopes, and she could hardly wait to walk to it.

But the water excited her more; the blue-green combers advancing, rearing, breaking white over the long black reefs that tailed off the point, then the glassy slide of seas in retreat, and the return in a powerful and deliberate rhythm of attack.

Someone was hauling on the outer edge of the turbulence, and she went well outside him. There were two men aboard, or rather a man and a boy, and they both waved. She returned the salute, but was not taken in; new fishermen had been greeted like this in other places, including Seal Point, but on their first time out to haul they had found never a trap. She was not naturally suspicious, and she knew Mark Bennett could be telling the truth. But she knew also that she was as alien in this place as it was alien to her.

Around the Point and going up the south side, she was in a hot lee of flat shining water and sunny woods that bore no relation to the dark forest on the other shore. Outside the lee the seas were breaking on ledges and islets she identified on her chart; boats worked around them, rolling in the swells. Another boat was hauling along this shore of the island, just a little ahead of her. But she was dawdling, and at last the boat disappeared around a point that she found on the chart as Schooner Head.

She was glad of that. She wanted to be alone while she was finding her way. Buoys were a spatter of color everywhere, like exotic seabirds. She noticed a string of green-and-white buoys, and knew she'd set nowhere near these and give Sorensen an excuse to say she'd set on top of him.

She passed the long, deep bite of Goose Cove, with the Bennett Homestead at its head, crossed Schoolhouse Cove and Windward Point, and around into Pump Cove.

There were a few traps in this cove, but no green-and-white buoys. She set
Sea Star
to moving slowly in a circle, and took the lid off the bait box. The herring had a clean, acrid, nose-prickling scent that meant it had been freshly corned just before she came out here. Forty of the nylon twine bags she'd knit for Con had been filled. Not by her. She used to bag up for him before the break-up, but now he hired some youngster to do it, and the kid sure hated to stuff a bag. About one herring apiece, it looked like; well, never mind for this time. The bait was just about perfect, nothing like the bream cuttings that were nothing more than garbage after they had been standing around a few days.