The Ebbing Tide (19 page)

“Why don't you go along?” Dennis said to Joanna. “I'll tell them where to look.” For an instant his fingers went around her arm, gripping it hard through her sweater sleeve, and then she found herself walking along through the May morning.

She was grateful for Dennis Garland's impersonal attitude. It kept at bay the bone-dissolving terror that was trying to sweep over her like the persistent wash of surf over Eastern Harbor Point. But of course Jamie wasn't his child, of course he couldn't think of the hundred things she knew and feared about the Island; he didn't know the rocks by heart, and the granite-walled ravines in the woods, and the deep, dark places in the swamps where a child might wander and become suddenly beyond the reach of the voices that called him.

Her throat constricted.
If only Jamie won't be afraid
, she thought.
Don't let him be afraid. Dick, stay with him
.

Joanna had lived through many long hours in her life, but this one was beyond any doubt the longest. She went from panic to a sort of frantic reasoning with herself, and then to a sickening leap of hope when a gull's cry sounded like a child's voice. In the alder swamp she scratched her face and tore her dress, making her way through the dense interweaving of branches. Jamie could get through all right, and she must go wherever it was possible for him and the dog to go. She called, making her voice sound warm and unafraid, but her voice came back in a thin ghostly echo or not at all. She didn't know which was worse, the echo or the silence that swallowed all things up.

Soaked to the ankles, her back aching, her face bleeding from a deep scratch on her cheekbone, she emerged from the alder swamp into the Bennett meadow. She listened. Nothing anywhere. No
halloo
to call in the searchers and say that Jamie was found.

She walked across the meadow to Goose Cove. He might have found his way here; she'd brought him over here to play on warm afternoons. When he was not there she kept walking, following the old wood road along the edge of the woods above the shore.

When her weariness became too great, and she had to sit down, she was in a little cove that was too tiny to have ever been named. She used to play here once, among the rocks; it had always seemed a snug, secure place, its infinitesimal beach sheltered by a steep, densely wooded hillside rising above it, and by great black ledges on either side. Now, as she sat on the bank, she looked up at the monstrous tangle of ancient spruce boughs above her, hung with moss, confused with dead and fallen trees, stricken with an immense and brooding silence. When she looked away, it was to see the lazy, treacherous curl of surf on the ledges. Either way, it was no longer snug or secure. Far above her, so far they were mere shining specks as their white breasts caught the sunlight, the gulls continued their impersonal circling. She could not hear their cries. The sea stretched away into a luminous haze, and the noon sun was hot and unkind in this windless place. There was nothing here. It seemed that she had been moving in a vacuum ever since she had first called Jamie's name into the emptiness of the yard.

She wanted to get away from this place, but her legs wouldn't, let her. “Nils,” she whispered, holding his name in her mind like a talisman in her cupped hands. But her whisper faded into the hot, glistening silence, and Nils was as far away as ever. Perhaps there was a battle going on now. Perhaps—her hands went up to cover her aching eyes, to press hard against the lids. No, she wouldn't have it that way! Nils was all right. There would be a letter . . . maybe tomorrow. . . .

But what would she be writing to him tonight? She got up, knowing she must leave this place even if she had to crawl. Perhaps already they had found Jamie and taken him home, maybe giving him a glass of milk and he was asking where Mamma was. But she was too tired to hurry, or to feel the shock of hope sending new energy along her veins.

When she finally reached the back door of her own house, the silence remained undisturbed, and it pressed on her like stone. She stood for a moment by the lilac bush, staring at the tender young leaves without seeing them. If only someone would speak or call out from somewhere.

Her mouth was parched. She would have a drink of water and then go out again.

When she stepped on the doorstep, Dick growled. She stood rigid in the doorway, looking at him, not believing that it was really Dick. He came to her as she had expected him to come in that last instant before she realized Jamie was gone. She shut the door carefully behind her, and put her hand on Dick's head, feeling the broad hard skull under the silky coat. Automatically her fingers sought the tender spot behind Dick's ear, and when he pressed the ear into her hand, leaning blissfully against her fingers, the moment of unreality was past.

“
Joanna
—” It was Nora, hushed but radiant, coming out of the kitchen. “I've been making you some coffee—Jamie's asleep.” Nora had tears wobbling on her lashes. “He's in there.”

Joanna went into the dining room, putting back a strand of hair from her forehead with a heavy hand. Dennis was sitting in the biggest rocking chair, and Jamie was asleep in his lap, pouting, his lower lip looking furious and his cheeks red and streaked with dirt and tears.

“He was playing in the sandpile behind the clubhouse,” Dennis said. “Dick was guarding him. Jamie was mad because I interrupted him, and he called me a son-of-a-bitch. When we were almost home he decided he was outnumbered, and fell asleep.”

Joanna contemplated them both, the man with the gray eyes, the child. Her eyes came back to the gray ones. “Why is it always you?” she said. “Give him to me, I'll put him in his crib. Nothing will wake him for hours now.”

She took the warm burden into her arms, and when the sleep­heavy blond head rolled against her shoulder she put her lips against the moist forehead for a moment; then she turned toward the stairs.

“I'll go along home, Joanna,” Nora said from the kitchen.

“Thanks for everything, Nora.” Joanna smiled at her over her shoulder, the warm Bennett smile, vivid in spite of her untidy hair and blood-stained cheek. Then she went up the stairs, and laid Jamie in his crib. She took off his shoes and socks, and covered him up. For a moment she stood looking down at him, her face locked against the impact of her relief. And he hadn't been terrified, after all. Just furious at being found.

Son of a gun
. She felt a sudden irrepressible desire to laugh.

When she went downstairs, Dennis was standing in the middle of the dining room. “Well, everything's under control,” he said easily. “But I'm wondering if you ought to have a bromide—you need rest as much as Jamie.”

“Don't go yet. I haven't thanked you.”

“You thanked me. The way you looked at him was thanks enough for me.” His eyes were smiling a little, and his voice was as blessedly serene as sleep without dreams.

“I want to thank you properly, but I don't know how,” she said haltingly. “I'm really happy. But I—” Her voice was unsteady. She tightened her lips, and turned her back to him instinctively. She had always hated display, she had always fought wildly against showing her emotions. Standing at the window she looked out at the field and spoke again.

“I'm so grateful. You've already done so much I feel ashamed. Whenever anything happens, you're there. And everything seems to be h-h-happening—”

The relief was too great. She began to cry, so suddenly and so easily she hardly knew it until she felt the tears sliding down her cheeks. When she tried to speak it was worse. She put her hands over her face, but she would not lower her chin. Shamed, and yet proud, she stood Indian-straight, Bennett-straight, and wept.

“Don't try to stop it,” he said quietly, moving close beside her. “You need to cry.”

She couldn't have stopped then, but it was agony to be like this, with no defenses against his eyes. It seemed as he were always seeing what she intended no one to see.

“Its just that—it's just—” She tried to explain, but she didn't know what she wanted to explain.

“Don't talk,” he said, and put his arms around her, drawing her into their comforting circle with a light, firm pressure. It was his touch that had done it, and now she was helpless. With a sudden blind gesture she pressed her face hard against his shoulder and shut her eyes. His arms tightened.

After a few minutes they moved apart. She should have been embarrassed, she thought, or confused, but she wasn't. She took her handkerchief from her pocket, and Dennis looked out the window, his face as dispassionately kind as always.

“Thank you,” she said. “I guess I can say it now. Thank you for everything.”

“You're welcome.” He looked at her then, and with concern, touched her cheek gently with his fingers. “You've a nasty scratch there. Have you anything to put on it?”

She nodded, and at that instant the front door opened, and Thea trotted through the sun parlor and into the kitchen. For a moment she hesitated in the doorway, looking from one to the other, her eyes narrowing in almost imperceptible speculation. Then she smiled—broadly.

“Jest thought I'd see how you felt, and if there was anything I could do,” she explained. “But you look like you're in good hands.”

“Yes, I'm fine,” Joanna said. “Thanks for helping out, Thea. It was wonderful of everybody to go running around over the Island this morning.”

“Well, gosh, a lost kid,” Thea mumbled. She bent nervously to pat Dick. For Joanna, her moment of pliant uncertainty and weakness was gone. Thea had checked on the time Nora had left, waited to see if Dennis had gone too, and then she'd had to come over. Joanna knew it as thoroughly as though she could look into Thea's brain under the yellow curls. And Thea had been rewarded; she'd seen Dennis' hand touch Joanna's cheek.

When Thea straightened up Joanna's dark eyes looked into hers with a challenge the other woman couldn't miss. “I've been telling Dennis I don't know how we ever got along without him.”

Thea threw back her head, smiling, her glance flashing between the other two. Her hand went to her hip; she laughed over her raised shoulder at Dennis. “Yes, he cer'nly come in handy for you, Jo! Well, you prob'ly want to take it easy, so I won't hang around.”

She hurried through the sun parlor, her heels clattering. She let the door slam behind her.

“It looks as if life might be getting back to normal again,” Dennis said mildly. “Are you going to let me fix that cut?”

She shook her head and smiled. “I can do it. You've already done enough, and the men'll be coming to the car now.”

“Oh—reminding me of my duties, are you?”

She managed to laugh as she walked with him to the door. When he was gone she went into the kitchen and poured out a cup of the coffee Nora had made; but another scent was in her nostrils, that of sweet tobacco clinging to an old tweed jacket; and her forehead still felt the imprint of that tweed, and the hard bone under it, against which her face had so blindly pressed.

It seemed, all at once, as if it had been long years instead of weeks since Nils' arms had held her tightly; and each year was a burden. In this moment, almost too heavy a burden to carry alone.

B
Y THE END OF
M
AY
, the gardens on the Island were planted. Everybody had one. Joanna's was out in the field beside the house, where Gunnar Sorensen had grown prodigious gardens fertilized with seaweed and rotten herring, as the Indians had done. There was no horse on the Island to pull a plow, as there was at Brigport, but Owen turned the soil in his spare time, and Joanna herself was handy with the fork. Then she did the planting; turnips, potatoes, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, bush and pole beans, squash. In the sunny dining-room windows she had started tomato plants and cabbages.

Though the planting season was sometimes late, everything grew with an almost tropical speed once it had a start, and by early June she was setting out tomatoes and tiny, pale green cabbage plants. The field behind the windbreak was sheltered, and sometimes she worked out there all day, the sun beating warm on her head, the earth moist and friable under her fingers. At night she reported everything in her letter to Nils.

D-Day had come and gone; gone, but life had changed suddenly. The Island alternated between furious optimism and abysmal depression. Some said it would be all over in a month, that the Germans were ready to crumble, they knew it was the end. Others swore there'd be a year or more of dirty fighting. And there was Japan, wasn't there? The Japanese would surrender as soon as the Germans did; no, the Japs would fight to the last man, they had nothing to lose. Look at the way they were always committing suicide. It wouldn't bother them to keep on fighting.

The papers and the radio commentators were even more confusing. Owen read everything and listened to everything. Joanna, feeling her nerves beginning to tighten unbearably, and bad dreams threatening, took sensible steps. She read only one newspaper, and listened to only two commentators. And even then she found herself wondering if she would have been able to listen if Nils were off the coast of Normandy instead of in the Pacific.

I should be praying
, she thought as she knelt in her garden.
But what would I ask for?
She could see Jamie's little red wheelbarrow, tacit evidence of his being.
All I can ask
, she thought,
is for God to save something for Jamie and all the other children in the world
. She remembered the monstrous sufferings inflicted on those other children, and her stomach knotted with cold rage and sickness.
Maybe God's given us up as a bad job and turned away for keeps
.

Much of the news made D-Day sound terribly easy, as if the Americans and British were simply walking ashore, after crossing a stretch of water like the twenty-five miles between the Island and the mainland; they were to be met by the French patriots, wearing tri­color sashes and carrying bouquets, and the Germans would simply be eliminated with no effort on anybody's part. She'd listened with her tongue in her cheek, and Owen had been darkly cynical.