High Tide at Noon (49 page)

“I'm with you, Jo!” said Mark, and in a burst of impulsive comradeship he gave her a mighty hug. “And Stevie'll be with us, too. Cripes, what did he have to go to bed so early for? Us three, we've always stuck together. Remember?”

She looked up into his gay, handsome young face, and memory was a quick strong current between them, memory of a dark fish house and a roving flashlight, a pried window. She knew then that the Little Boys would back her in anything and everything. But at the same time, she knew that the burden lay almost wholly upon her. For an instant she felt a heavy weariness, but it went quickly. Her hatred of Simon Bird mingled with the thought of Alec and her all­enduring love for the Island; together they made a brilliant and steady­burning flame.

S
HE WAS FEELING HEAVY AND
cumbersome now, but there was nothing heavy and cumbersome about the way she talked to the boys. She always thought of them as the boys, though they were men grown. She talked to them a great deal on those winter nights, after her father and mother had gone to bed. Sometimes, knowing what she wanted the boys to do, she had a twinge of guilt, as if she were betraying her father, but she deliberately ignored it. There was a time to talk about law, and a time to forget there was law.

There were many nights when she went to bed feeling baffled and furious. Either they shook their heads or they laughed at her, like Sigurd Sorensen, who would watch her with his bright blue eyes dancing and his grin broadening, as if she were one of the youngsters playing around on the beach, and he'd toss her a nickel in a moment because her prattle delighted him so. Or, like Jeff Bennett, they weren't interested in her opinions simply because she was a woman, and in Jeff's world women didn't tell men what to do. She didn't know which attitude made her the more furious. And in her own brothers' glances she sensed that nothing, not even the child who would come in six weeks' time, could make them see her as anything else but the kid sister who always had a chip on her shoulder.

But night after night she sewed and listened, and then she talked.

“It would be one thing if you hadn't been chewing about them all these years,” she said scornfully. “Sit around and tell what you'd like to do, and call them all the dirty names you can think of, while they go their own merry way. Why, they're the only ones who've got the
guts
to do as they please! And the rest of you sit around and take it.”

“Jo, listen,” Philip said. “Don't you think we'd like to run 'em off? But we can't walk up to a man that owns his house and shore privilege and tell him to git.”

Hugo said from his tilted chair in a warm corner by the stove, “Cripes, Jo, those Birds are pure brass. You couldn't keep them off the Island, short of murder.”

And Owen, who'd been so hot-blooded and vehement about the Birds once, talked of proof until Joanna flared at him, “Oh, you make me sick! If they were bothering you right now you'd be hot enough! Only you're so damned busy chasing those Brigport girls and coming home drunk that the Island can go to hell for all you care!”

Charles said he had family to take care of, another baby coming. Lobstering was bad enough this winter—he couldn't take any chances on getting into trouble. As far as the Island's going to hell, it looked as if it was on its way without any help from the Birds. After all, they didn't have anything to do with the way the dealers had brought the lobsters down to twelve cents, or the way the lobsters themselves weren't crawling, no matter how far out you set your pots. He admonished Joanna, as one of experience, not to get so worked up. She should take things easy, he said. Like a cow.

Sometimes she thought she couldn't stand it. She'd always been so proud of her brothers, and now she half-despised them, even Philip. And all Owen's big talk didn't mean a thing; the way he held his head was just an empty gesture.

Once, going over to the Grants' place to spend an evening with Miss Adams, she met Simon Bird in the chill December dusk. He spoke to her, but she didn't answer. When he'd gone by, she leaned against the wall of Karl Sorensen's fish house and fought to get her breath. Just meeting him like that had choked her with a feeling she couldn't endure. She knew then that she couldn't live on the Island while he was still there; and it was her Island, therefore she must drive him off.

Afterward she laughed at her fancies, but the obsession stayed. The boys would have to do it for her. They
shall
do it, she thought. They
shall
. I'll make them.

One night, when the younger boys were down at Gunnar's with David, Charles came up to the house, along with Jeff and Hugo and Nils. Owen was in fine fettle. He was making time with Miss Adams, and there was a girl on Brigport who was silly about him. He was candid in his boastings. Miss Adams was a good girl, sure enough, but he could stand that. The one over on Brigport, now—she wasn't in a class with the schoolmarm, but she had her points.

Joanna listened. She watched him, watched the gleam of black eyes and white teeth, the rich healthy color of his skin, heard the vigor and energy in his voice. But the things he was saying, and the comments the others threw in, sickened her suddenly; she felt nauseated. This was what they would rather talk about—Owen and Jeff and Hugo—than something that meant stirring themselves a little, doing something for their own good and the Island. Philip and Nils weren't saying much, and being a family man had tamed Charles down; but they weren't any more eager than the others to listen to her, to take a drastic step forward.

She said suddenly, in a quiet, dreamy voice, “Simon was right after all, when he said the Bennetts didn't have anything to hold their heads up for. We haven't.”

“When did he say that?” Charles asked sharply,

“Oh, a long time ago.” She didn't look up from the baby shoe she was crocheting. “The night he told me he held the note on the house. He said all you boys cared about was drinking and whoring around.”

“What else did he say?” Owen's voice was slow and quiet in the suddenly hushed kitchen.

She smiled up at him. “Oh, that was all he said about you boys. It made me mad, of course. But I guess he was right. I've been feeling bad because folks are moving off, and more people are talking of going, but I guess it doesn't matter much—even if they stayed, the Island would still go to hell. Charles was right about that.”

“It's not the Island, it's the whole lobstering business—” Philip began.

“The Island's seen trouble before, hasn't it? I've heard Father and Pete Grant, and Gunnar talk about it. But it always held together, because of the Bennetts. Well, now there aren't any Bennetts to hold it together. A fine crew Father and Uncle Nate've raised for themselves! Simon spoke the truth for once in his life!”

Words rose to her lips in a tumbling tide. “You sit up here and call the Birds bastards and bitches and everything else you can think of, but they sit down there and
despise
you, a hundred times more than you despise them!” Her eyes swept around the room, burned on Owen and Philip and Charles, and didn't spare her cousins or Nils. “You know why? Because they know no matter how much you talk you'll never lift a hand to stop them! They can do just as they please on this Island. Bennett's Island—it ought to be Birds' Island,” she said with rich scorn. “And it will be, some day, when the Bennetts fall apart altogether. The Birds'll have it, and everything Grandpa Bennett and Father and Uncle Nate built up will go to pieces, and it'll be like some island the gulls have taken over. They'll destroy it, the way they're destroying it now, while you sit around on your backsides and swear.”

She took a fierce triumph in their startled faces. They didn't like what she was saying, and she was glad, glad.

“You keep talking about Father,” Philip said quietly, “but he's held us back more than once, Joanna.”

“You fool, I thought you had more sense than the others!” she lashed back at him. “He held you back because you were kids, you wanted to go off half-cocked. But don't you think he's been wondering when you'd show some signs of life? Don't you think he's been wondering how long you'd let somebody rob you, and take the bread out of old Nathan Parr's mouth, and from Marcus Yetton's kids?” She put her work in the basket and stood up. There was a strange dark dignity in her figure, straight and strong even with its heaviness.

“And you, Nils—maybe Gunnar wasn't so wrong after all, in the things he used to say about you. I used to think that if you ever got mad, you could pick up a mountain and throw it. But it seems as if you don't know when to get mad. And I thought you had some feeling about the Island, even if these brothers and cousins of mine haven't.”

His cool blue gaze didn't falter away from hers; his face was impassive. She went across the kitchen in a heavy silence, but her soul was singing. At the door, she stopped. “Don't worry,” she told them. “I'm not going to fuss you with any more talk. I can't do anything alone, and I shan't bother you with it.” She sounded very remote from them. “If the Island doesn't mean anything to you now that the lobsters don't crawl so good, I can't make you think about it. So I might as well stop thinking about it too.”

She paused, then added with a little quirk to her mouth, “The only thing that gowels me is that I have to admit that Simon Bird was right about you.”

Up in her room, she lay in bed in the darkness, hearing the murmur of voices in the kitchen below. The winter wind battered against her window pane, and the stars had the distant twinkling brilliance of frost; she could hear the sea, the Island's voice, a subdued thunder on the ledges.

Excitement that approached exultation beat through her body. Whether she had done it or not, she didn't know. But she had said all the things that had been fermenting in her mind for so long; she had told them what she thought of them. And now they could think about it for a while. It wouldn't be very comfortable. . . . She smiled in the darkness and snuggled down. Her bed hadn't felt so good for weeks. She'd probably sleep very well tonight.

She knew the instant she walked into the kitchen the next morning that the boys had decided what to do, and that Stephen Bennett knew. They were still standing around the big room, lamplit against the gray morning outside, when she came down. Mark and Owen, who were going out to haul together in the
White Lady
, were putting on their extra wool socks, while Donna mixed hot coffee for their thermos bottle. Stevie, the family's slowest eater, tried to make his doughnuts last while he finished an article in
Popular Mechanics
. Stephen and Philip stood by the stove, smoking.

She didn't know how she guessed, unless it was the way Mark looked at her, with a swift sly grin. But when she went to the stove to pour out her coffee, Stephen looked at her gravely and said, “Well, I suppose you know what's in the wind. You always did.”

“What's the matter?” she asked innocently.

“Don't lay it on too thick, my dear,” he advised her. “I guess you know what it's all about. You ought to know, the way you've been sitting up every night till the last gun's fired. But I'll help you remember. They're planning to talk to George Bird, more or less, and I can like it or lump it, I guess.” His mouth twitched in a wry smile. “They're all over twenty-one, except Stevie, and they've got a right to say how things should go on the Island.”

“What do
you
say?”

Her mother and the boys were silent, listening for his answer. She guessed that he'd said nothing at all when he was told. He looked out now at the sea, took his pipe from his mouth, and said, “This is more than a family touse, Jo. The rest of the Island's in this. I've been wondering if the Birds would have the common decency to mind their own business now when lobstering isn't good, but it seems as if they don't know what decency means. So I'm leaving it to the boys here to sound out the rest of the Island. The majority rules.”

“What about proof?” Joanna asked warily. Stephen shrugged.

“Circumstantial evidence is more like it. Nobody on the Island has a big string of traps out this winter—the price of gear being what it is—and everybody knows just how few pots the Birds have got between 'em. But they do pretty good out of that handful. Pretty
damn
good.”

“The bastards,” said Mark with enthusiasm. “Walkin' around here too big for their boots, grinning like fools because they don't think anybody's got the guts to say anything—wait till they see us come in—”

“With the tar and feathers,” finished Owen.

“Hold your horses, now! None of that talk even in fun,” his father said. “First thing you know some numbhead like Forest Merrill will show up with a pot of hot tar. Remember what you told me this morning. Make it plain what the idea is—to tell George and his crew they've either got to walk the straight and narrow, or else.”

“Can't we even take a piece of manila rope along, just to make it look good?” Owen put on his long-visored plaid cap, picked up the dinner box, and jerked his chin at Mark. “Come on, Bub. Let's get started. Sooner we're back, sooner we can start in on some of these has-beens that only know enough to sit around on their backsides and chew, instead of doing something about it.”

Joanna's mouth quirked. Owen certainly sounded bold and reckless this morning, using practically her own words. Carefully avoiding anybody's eyes, she carried her coffee and fish hash to the table. Stevie emerged from his magazine as from a dream, gave her a vague smile, and moved in the direction of his rubber boots. He was going out with his father in the
Donna;
in the winter, they doubled up to haul. Mark and Owen went out noisily, the two Stephens put on their outdoor clothes, Donna poured more coffee into a second thermos bottle. Philip went out to the shop to work on some damaged traps. He and Charles had hauled their complete string the day before.