High Tide at Noon (51 page)

“We'll see,” said Owen Bennett, and more than one echoed him. By the time they reached the Bennett house, looming white in the moonlight, their somberness had gone. Their action tonight had lifted a load from their shoulders that had been there too long.

“Why didn't we ever do this before?” somebody sang out. They had just come to the house, and Joanna, setting out coffee cups, heard the exultant question and smiled to herself. She felt relaxed and peaceful now, as if she had reached the goal she'd set for herself. It would only be a little while, perhaps a matter of days, before Simon overstepped himself.

Then he would be gone. He would go far away, and never come back.

I
T SOMETIMES HAPPENS
that in midwinter the wind lulls, the sun shines brilliantly for a week and goes down each night in a mad glory of fire; all day long the water is the color of sapphire and ultramarine, dark jade in the shallows, purple close to the rockweed-covered ledges. The gulls wheel in great circles over the spruce-crested islands that dream in the bay. In storm the islands are fringed with flying white spray, but in these periods of calm, they seem to float on the surface of the sea.

It's easy to find the buoys then, and from Grand Manan to Casco Bay the lobster boats are out, dories and peapods, scrubby little power­boats and big graceful ones like the
White Lady
.

One of these rare weeks began the day after the visit to the Birds. For two days of this heaven-sent weather, George Bird and his sons didn't leave the harbor until most of the other boats had gone. On the third day, just as the Island was beginning to say, “By God, they knew we meant business—” on the third day Simon Bird went out before daylight and didn't come back until midafternoon.

The Island seethed. George and Ash were too scared to do anything but obey, but Simon was a different breed o' cats, for all he was a Bird. Somebody would have to tail him, the Island decided. On the beach, in the fish houses, in the store, over the pool table, the men talked it over. There were volunteers—Owen was one of them, but Nils was chosen. The Sorensens lived the nearest to the Birds, and Nils' room looked across the field and the lane so that he could see lights in the Bird kitchen when they were up early in the winter darkness.

When Nils came up to Stephen Bennett's house to tell them about his new job, he was quietly pleased. “Kind of like the idea of pestering Simon,” he admitted. His eyes said nothing at all as they met Joanna's, but she felt the strong link of comradeship between them that had existed all through their growing-up. Nils hadn't forgotten, any more than she had; he would gain revenge for them both.

Now Nils was up every morning long before daylight, fixing his own breakfast and eating it by lamplight while the rest of the house slept above him; then he dressed in his heavy outdoor clothing and went out into the sharp cold hush before dawn, when the air stung his throat, and the stars burned with a white brilliance over the Island. Brigport was a long, crouched shape across the sound, like a sleeping animal. There was hardly a sound anywhere, except his own feet on the ground that creaked with frost. The wind died down sometimes in this last hour before daybreak, and the water on the rocks was like breathing. He walked down to the shore in this silence, keeping close to the fish houses and not walking on the beach stones.

When Jud Gray left the Island, he had sold his boat shop back to Stephen Bennett, who'd owned it first, and Marcus Yetton now had his shop at the farther end, which rose flush with the outermost end of the old wharf. This was where Nils went, threading his way among the hogsheads and traps like a shadow among shadows, his rubber boots uncannily noiseless; he never stumbled, or rolled a stone under his foot, or bumped against a hogshead. He waited, in the dark doorway of Marcus' place. The cold struck through his clothes; the water gurgled and bumped under the wharf, and the sky was pale over the Eastern End woods.

He never had to wait long before there was a faint rattle of beach stones, a bump against wood, a punt being slipped lightly down to the sea's edge; then the clink of oars in the oarlocks, and the whisper of water about the blades. The punt would glide past the end of the wharf, and Nils would wait a little longer until he heard, clear in the silence, the shipping of oars, the heavy clink of the mooring chain. Then the throttled murmur of Simon's engine, thrown back by the rocks as it passed them.

Nils could tell by the sound whether the boat turned to the east'ard or west'ard when it left the harbor. Then, moving fast, he clambered down over the spilings to the beach and untied his own punt.

By now the winter dawn threw a paling light across the Island; the spruces were very black against the eastern sky, the world was drained of all color. On the water the wind was sharp. There was a stiff chop in the rip tide at the harbor mouth. Nils' boat rode it steadily, responsive to his hand on the wheel. And when daylight was a reality, and not just a promise, he saw Simon ahead of him, bow pointed out to sea. If Simon looked back, he could see Nils.

Nils stayed behind him all day. Sunrise touched the sea with gold as far as he could look, and sometimes he had to narrow his eyes against the glare in order to see the tiny, dancing black speck that was Simon's boat. Simon roared to the east'ard, spray flying in a rainbow glitter from his bow, and Nils roared behind him. When Simon at last reached his string and began to haul, Nils cut off his engine and sat on the engine box, smoking, sheltered from the wind by the sprayhood, drinking hot coffee from his thermos jug. As the sun climbed toward the zenith, and struck up sparks of silver fire from the whole tossing, blue-green expanse, it was easier to watch Simon work along his string. The boat was at some distance, and Simon was only a minute dark figure moving back and forth in the cockpit, gaffing buoys with a venomous thrust, slamming the lobsters into the box, and throwing the traps overboard again as if it were Nils himself he had there, bound hand and foot and weighted down with a weir stone.

Perhaps there would be no sunshine, but snow on the wind, and foreboding black clouds driving across the sky, and a steadily roughening sea to wash over the decks, so that the boats would be iced before they reached home. But it was never too rough for Simon to go out, or for Nils to follow him. It became a strange, silent duel, with no signs of exhaustion on either side.

Simon didn't have reason to stay out all day when Nils trailed him so closely. Sometimes, to Nils' amusement, he invented side trips—apparently hoping to make Nils run out of gas. But Nils had prepared for this. He kept his tank filled, and two extra cans of gas in the cuddy. He was ready and willing to stay out all day—round and round the Rock, the boats wallowing in the wash from the steep shores of the ledge. The keepers and their families came out with glasses, to see what sort of hare-and-hound chase was taking place around their barren stronghold. Nils took off his cap and waved it at them, yelling greetings through the bitter-cold, sparkling air.

Nils' happy attitude, as if he were on a pleasure sail in the middle of summer, was usually too much for Simon. He would start for the Island. His boat was narrower in the beam than Nils', and when he reached Sou-west Point, where the red rock cliffs gleamed in the winter sunshine, half hidden in boiling surf, he skirted close to the ledges or between them, his engine wide open. He was tacitly daring Nils to follow him, but Nils was no fool. Eventually he must start for the harbor along the west side, and then Nils was with him again.

Simon wouldn't go to the car with his lobsters these days, not with Nils coming up alongside to shout cheerfully, “How they craw lin', Cap'n Simon?” No, Simon went straight to his mooring and gaffed up the buoy with a vicious thrust, and had reached the shore and disappeared before Nils rowed to the beach. Later, Simon would sell his lobsters.

The Island was laughing. They hadn't enjoyed anything so much for years.

“Simon knows they're laughing,” Stephen told Nils one night. “Watch out for him. He won't take this forever.”

“That's what my father and grandfather tell me. Well, I don't want any chew with him. If I can handle him without exchanging any remarks, that's the best way.”

Joanna walked to the door with him that night when he left, and stood for a moment on the step, watching the sparkle and blaze of stars in the cold night.

“What'll happen between you and Simon?”

“I don't know, Jo. Wait till he makes a move.”

“You've been waiting a long time,” she said simply.

Nils looked down at her. “You've been waiting, yourself. I know about that poker rig, Jo. The debts, and all . . . and then the house.”

“You know a lot, don't you?” She tilted her chin at him, defying him to be sorry for her.

“I know you've got guts,” said Nils with simple eloquence, and stepped down into the path. “Night, Jo. I've got to turn in early and turn out early on this job. I expect our friend to start out at midnight, first thing I know.”

“He can't keep this up forever. Having to be honest in spite of himself will strike in on him and poison him,” Joanna called after him. She was laughing as she came back into the kitchen, and Mark said with frank interest, “Hey, Jo, are all women supposed to look as good as you do, when they're going to have a baby?”

“Mark,”
Donna reproved him, and Joanna grinned.

“Golly, Mother, he's going to be its uncle—I'm glad he's interested in it.”

“Me too,” Stevie chimed in. “Will somebody tell me why I'm getting a lot more kick out of being an uncle to this one than Charles' kids? Say, Jo, are you going to keep on calling it
it?”

“Itsie,” said Joanna. She went up to bed, smiling. In spite of her aching back, an odd and somehow satisfying peace lay upon her these days. She thought of Uncle Nate's cows in the time just before they calved; nothing bothered them, they stood knee-deep in meadow grass and looked at you with buttercups sticking out of their mouths, and switched their tails languidly. Perhaps this quietness was nature's way of making you rested and ready for the business to come. But whatever it was, she was thankful for it.

The baby was going to be born on the Island. She had settled that when she first came home to live. Donna wanted her to go to the hospital, and Stephen agreed that it was safer to be ashore, in case anything went wrong.

“But,” he added, “Nate and I were born out here, and Charles, and Joanna herself.”

“You see?” Joanna faced them triumphantly. “It's right that my baby should be born here, if I was. What can happen to me? I'm strong and husky. Look at Mateel, she got along all right, didn't she? Oh, women make too much fuss about having a baby nowadays! Me for the good old days when you dropped them between the rows when you were picking beans!”

Donna said,
“Joanna!”
But her eyes were sparkling, and Stephen laughed till his own eyes ran water.

‘That's the spirit, Jo! You're a real Bennett!” he applauded her. “You can stay home and have your baby. Thank God for the telephone and the Coast Guard, if we need them.”

Now, lying in bed, she heard faintly the voices in the kitchen, someone bringing in a pail of water, Mark dumping a load of wood in the box, Winnie asking to go out. All sounds mingled with the sound of the Island outside into a harmonious whole. Her mind drifted toward sleep, and on the very brink of it she thought of Alec, as she always did when she was alone in the dark. Perhaps she should still be crying for him, but she couldn't cry. If he knew—and he must know—he would be the first one to be glad she had reached this serenity. Alec hated tears and long faces. Against the darkness she could see him, long mouth twitching with suppressed laughter, eyes crinkling at the corners, alight with tiny sparkles, eyebrow tilted.

Joanna, honey, if you turn out to be one of those mothers who howls while she rocks the cradle, and drips tears all over my child's face, I'll never forgive you
.

That was how he'd say it. She could hear his voice, with laughter running warmly under it.

“Darling,” she said softly in the darkness. “I promise. Maybe I'll cry when it's born, because I'll never see you holding it in your arms. But I promise I won't howl over the cradle.”

She went to sleep then, and dreamed she was climbing up the slope from Spanish Cove on Pirate Island, up toward the blue sky and the sparrows and the wheeling gulls. She could feel the sun hot on her face, and she knew that when she reached the top, she'd look down and see Alec coming up after her.

*
*
*

While Joanna dreamed, Nils was walking home, briskly in the cold night air. The Island slept under the distant, frosty twinkle overhead. Nils liked to sleep, and to sleep late on winter mornings, as well as anybody. But the Island, lying around him under the stars, had chosen him for its agent, and his sleeping hours would be short until his job was done.

He was almost home before he remembered that he'd left his dinner box out aboard his boat. Kristi always made something special for his lunch, and put it where he could find it, and he liked to take some coffee along on those long days on the water. There was nothing for it but to go out aboard and get the box.

He walked back to the beach, untied his punt, and rowed out across the harbor. The wind was around to the northeast, and the water was kicking up outside: he could see the white surge of it in the starlight. The long swells raced by the harbor mouth and piled up on the rocks with a sound like thunder.

The harbor was placid enough. He climbed aboard his boat, gave the skiff's painter a twist around the winch head of the hauling gear, and went down into the cuddy. He reached for the flashlight he kept aboard the boat, and found the dinner box just where he'd left it, beside the stove. He found something else, too—his charts, strewn across a locker, some of them half-unrolled. They marred the tidiness of his cabin, and he sat down to roll them up again and put them away. David and Stevie had been aboard in the afternoon—they'd probably had the charts out, and left them like that when Owen yelled at them to shake a leg if they wanted to go to Brigport with him.