High Tide at Noon (37 page)

“It's thick o' fog. Going out today?”

He would yawn and stretch. “Hell, yes. What's a little fog?”

And by the time he was at the shore, lugging his bait box across the beach to his punt, the sun would be striking through the white wall. Alec had no hesitation about going out in the fog. He had learned well the ledges that made the Island waters treacherous to strangers, and the other men said he was half fish, half gull.

Toward noon Joanna walked down to the beach sometimes to wait for him. She would sit on the chopping block outside Nathan Parr's camp and watch him and Johnny mending her father's biggest seine with nimble, gnarled old fingers. Or if they had gone out to haul in their peapods—Johnny with his cat Theresa sitting proudly on the stern thwart—she sat cross-legged on the beach and scaled flat pebbles into the water, or watched the young gulls squabble and shriek over a dead fish.

One noon there were medricks skimming over the harbor, white and soft gray, with little orange feet, and forked tails like the swallows which lined the telephone wire these days, talking about their autumn migration across to Africa. The cries of the terns were shrill and tiny, and the gulls looked huge among them. Sometimes a single swallow shot out among the sea birds; he would be a minute and darkly shining speck, magnificently unafraid as he circled and banked and skimmed impudently under the very beaks of the big gulls, then soared high above them toward the sun.

Like a growing pulse then, there was an engine somewhere. Jud Gray. And the raucous hammering right behind it would be Marcus Yetton. And from the west side, the
Donna
was beating her way home, unfaltering and graceful across the jade water in the Island's shadow.

One by one the boats came in, stopped at the car, returned to their moorings; one by one the men rowed ashore to the beach. Marcus Yetton stopped to speak to Joanna, his bony face sulky and pale as usual.

“The little kids is sick, Jo. Susie's about crazy.”

“What's the matter with them?” she asked in quick concern.

Marcus shrugged. “Hot, 'n runny nose. Won't eat nothin', not even fried bread 'n coffee, and that'd always put 'em on the mendin' hand. before now.”

Fried bread and coffee, thought Joanna, and the oldest child wasn't fourteen yet, and all the others under twelve. Coffee meant fisherman's coffee, strong and black enough to float the spoon.

“My mother will come down and look at the children,” she told him. “She can tell Susie what the matter is.”

“Thanks, Jo.” He went up the beach with his discouraged walk.

She saw
The Basket
coming in, her shabbiness accentuated painfully by the clean brilliance of the September sea and sky. Joanna felt a twinge of sadness. No chance now of building a boat before cold weather, and there wasn't nearly enough in the money box for all the material, if he wanted to build his boat in the manner which had created the
White Lady
. The best thing was to take the money and try to pick up a good second-hand boat somewhere.

The
White Lady
followed
The Basket
around the point, the water flashing back from her bow in two glittering crystal wings. She was so lovely and so triumphant, her voice was so silken-strong that Joanna's heart sang at the sight of her. But at the same time she was thinking: Why should Owen have everything just a little better than anyone else?

That eight-hundred-dollar marine engine with an appetite for gasoline that would discourage anyone else—Owen had to have that, because nobody else on the Island could come up to it. Oh, he could pay for it easily enough. But why did those things come to him when he had only to lift a finger, while she and Alec seemed to have been rowing against the wind ever since they were married?

But she could answer that for herself, as she watched her husband and brother race their punts toward the beach. Owen had a convenient little gift for looking out for Owen. It would always get him what he wanted, whether it was a new boat or a girl. All the Bennetts had it in some degree; that was what made them as they were, had given them the Island and the life they lived on that Island.

But Alec didn't have it. Some day he would have a boat like the
White Lady
, and money in the bank, but he'd never do it alone. God and the Island willing, Joanna would have enough iron for them both.

They came up the beach toward her, Alec smiling at her and Owen scowling. He hauled her roughly to her feet.

“Come up to the house and have a mug-up.”

“But I've got dinner ready —”

“Forget it. Come on!” He linked arms with her, and Alec took the other side. For some unknown reason, Owen was in a difficult temper, so she didn't argue. They went up the road through the marsh that was turning red-brown at the edges now. The Bennett house stood high and white against the luminous aquamarine sky. Like the old Captain, who had built it, there was no nonsense in its straight New England lines, erected for service but somehow achieving an austere beauty. Now the dahlias blazed in a pagan fire of wine and scarlet and gold against the clapboards; and the sun-warmed perfume of the last white roses on the tall bush by the front door was anything but austere.

Alec broke off one to tuck behind Joanna's ear. Owen went on into the house, banging the screen door and kicking a chair out of the way. When Joanna and Alec came in, the whole family was assembled in the kitchen, having coffee and fresh doughnuts. And Owen stood back to the stove, legs set wide apart, chin out-thrust in the familiar attitude of black defiance.

“I waited a week before I said anything. I wanted to be sure,” he said. “I've gone out every day, thick or no thick. I've gone out as soon as it was light enough to see my way past the harbor ledges.” He looked around at the family, his face tightening. “If it just happened once or twice—well, Christ, that's bad luck! But when it happens
every goddam day —”

“That's not luck, it's the Birds!” said Mark.

“You're damn right.” Owen looked across at his father. “You know what folks have always said about us—that we could set traps in the dooryard and find lobsters in 'em. Even Stevie here, with his measly thirty traps, has made a good dollar this fall. But
me —”
His eyes burned in his furious dark face.
“Me!
They're hauling hell out of me. And the company's dunning me every mail for more money on that engine. If those bastards hadn't been sneaking around in the fog, trying to get even for the time I caught them in the shop, I'd have had that engine paid for now!”

“How do you know it's the Birds? How do you know it isn't somebody from Brigport?” Stephen asked quietly.

“What other son of a bitch would put the buoy inside the pot and sink it for good after they'd hauled it?”

Stephen set down his coffee cup, his face tightening and darkening as Owen's had done. Mark was on his feet.

“Let's go down there right now and clean up the lot of them, once and for all!”

“Sit down and stop waving your arms around.” Philip spoke for the first time. “It wouldn't do any good to take them over. They'd have us up for assault and battery and everything else. But we've got to do something.” He looked at his father.

“Yes, we've got to do something,” Stephen said. “But it'll be something lawful. I'd like to tell you—God knows I've felt like it plenty of times—to go out and sink every last one of their pots. But I
won't
. It's just one family raising hell now. But if we make one move the wrong way, the whole Island'll be up to its neck in the worst mess of robbing and bedeviling and cutting off that's ever happened in Penobscot Bay.” His voice was irrevocable; his eyes met Owen's steadily. “There'll be no way of stopping it. It'll go on for twenty years or more and every family on the Island, instead of just the Birds, will be ruined.”

“And George Bird's got plenty salted away to keep traps in the water,” Philip said. “Looks like we've got to keep on looking for proof. We're damn sick of that word, but we've got to take notice of it.”

“I don't have to take notice of it!” Owen's nostrils were rimmed with white. “I'll be goddamned if I'll sneak around trying to catch them in the act! They're too smart for that, anyway, or they'd have been caught five years ago.”

Stevie said mildly, “It's about time for the warden to be out here again. Can't we talk to him?”

Owen turned on him savagely. “What about my engine? Let 'em come and take it back again?” He gave them all one long black look, his mouth twisting. Then, without a word or a backward glance, he walked out of the house.

Stephen shook his head and went to stand by the seaward windows. Donna collected the coffee cups. Joanna joined her at the sink to wash and wipe the china, while the boys talked and argued behind them, Mark angrily demanding action.

“Owen's gone off to the woods, probably,” Donna murmured. “He'll be back when he's walked it off. But I don't like it, Joanna.”

“Those rotten —”

“I don't mean the Birds. It's Owen, and the way he's been about this boat. If anything ever happened to her, I don't know what he'd do.” Donna shook her head. “He's got some notion that it'll be unlucky for the
White Lady
if he doesn't pay for every bit of her himself, without even borrowing, and if they ever tried to take that engine away . . .”

Her voice trailed off. The two women looked at each other for a long, apprehensive moment.

Joanna and Alec walked home across the meadow without speaking. Alec was lost in thought, and Joanna's mind seemed heavy with an unknown oppression. Steadily before the eye of her brain she saw Simon's thin-chinned face watching her, mocking her from narrowed smoky eyes that told her that there would never be an end to this. She knew it was a crazy fancy, but she couldn't escape it. When they spoke of the Birds, she thought of Simon alone.

Everything he did was aimed at her. Of that she was sure, and as she walked home through spattered shadow and sunlight, past the orchard where the apples hung like golden fruit from twisted boughs, she felt strange and alone. She wanted to shake this oppression, but there was no one to help her shake it.

No one but Nils, who was the only other person who knew what she knew about Simon. For an instant, as she glimpsed the gray Sorensen house among the trees, she wondered if she could find him and talk to him. But in a moment she knew it wasn't possible. And Alec was close beside her, his arm snug around her waist, he was saying close to her ear:

“What are you thinking about?”

Joanna tilted her head to look up at Alec. “Thinking about my husband. What else would I be thinking about?” she answered lightly, crinkling her nose in a grin.

T
HE APPLESAUCE HAD BEEN PUT UP
, and the blackberry jam, and it was almost time to pick cranberries. The slopes of Sou-west point were wine and bronze with them. With everyone on the Island picking water pails full, there were still enough for Stephen to send two or three barrels across on the
Aurora B
. to a store in Port George. But up at the big house they were still making pickles, and Joanna awoke one day with an infinitely pleasant sense of leisure. For a few days, until Kristi was free to go cranberrying with her, she didn't have anything to do. And she was going to spend every available moment aboard the boat with Alec.

She'd go with him to haul in the bright blue mornings, and they'd go fishing in the quiet afternoons, when sea and sky melted together in a dim violet haze on the horizon, and the big cod swam lazily upward through the sun-shot water to nip at the black lobster on the hook. She and Alec would soak in gallons of sunlight, and talk sometimes or be peacefully silent, with only the gentle chuckle of the water against
The Basket
's hull, and the infrequent voice of a gull floating overhead. They might see some ducks and old-squaws paddling contentedly along, too. . . .

It was a good prospect for Joanna to think about when she woke up in the morning. In this golden fall it seemed as if there'd never been anything but perfect harmony between her and Alec. Those days and nights at the trailing, stormy end of the last winter were something unreal. The Douglasses had crossed the choppy stretch and come into the slick, and except for the Birds and Owen life was almost completely satisfactory. And in another year there'd be the child. The circle would be complete.

For a few days after Owen's outburst, they saw little of him. Mark and Stevie were in and out, Philip dropped in, once Charles and Mateel came up from the Eastern End with young Charles, who was almost two now; square, determined, with his father's eloquent dark eyes and his mother's shy sweet smile and bronzy curls. Joanna was undemonstrative with him, but he loved her, he demanded to be held, and talked to her in remarkably clear language, except for the Trudeau way of dropping h's and adding them where they shouldn't be.

“Damned little Frenchman!” Charles said affectionately, piling his son onto his shoulder, to take him through the woods up to the big house to see his grandmother.

But Owen stayed away and Alec said he was working very hard, trying to send off a big payment on his engine. Philip reported that the rooster was so mild in the house that Donna thought he might be ailing, but Stephen said not to worry, but to be grateful for small mercies.

All in all, it seemed very peaceful. It was young Stevie, usually without much to say, who told Joanna it was almost too peaceful. “Like the way it is just before the wind starts up in a squall,” he told her. “Know what I mean, Joanna?”

She laughed at him. “You're all Bennett. If there isn't any excitement, you try to make it. Owen's just decided to use common sense for a change, that's all. We'll get rid of the Birds sometime, but we can't just go and blast them off the face of the earth.”