Reprisal (41 page)

"I'm peed, and I'm ready!" Charis came swiftly down the back steps, past Joanna and across the yard--then jumped their new back bed, eased through sea grapes, and paced away along the ridge of the hill. "Youth," Joanna said aloud, and trotted to catch up.

They walked together across the dune hill, moving quickly over slipping sand and through clumps of tall sea grass to work the gardening's bending-and-kneeling out of their muscles. The summer sunlight sifted reflections from the sand, glittering in Joanna's sight. ... This was the slope where Frank's ashes were scattered; those myriad white flakes and powdered dust contributing to the sand slopes they climbed down to cross ...

and climb up again.

Good exercise ... in bright light and air and height above the ocean perfect enough to promise everything, if only men and women were immortal.

"Wonderful."

"What ...?"

"All this."

"You bet." Charis, as if lifted from below, took off in her stride, jumped a clump of tall grasses--and landed as if she'd landed on just that downsloped spot many times before, in casual balance. ... It was a pleasure for Joanna to watch her move. There was no doubt in what Charis did.--Very much, Joanna supposed, as she had been at that age. As she had been in many ways, as if this girl were an avatar of her own youth, come back to her when she had nothing else.

Charis waited for her. "You getting tired?"

"No. No, I feel good."

"We can go back."

"No, let's keep on truckin'."

They set out again, wading through deep drifts that ran downslope like slow, tan water, curling in small tugging currents around their sneakers. And as if this labor were a key to changes--as gardening, weeding had been when she was without hope--Joanna, walking fast over uncertain ground, felt again the possibility of contentment, even happiness. It rose in her throat, a physical thing, a manifestation that made it difficult to catch her breath.

"Okay?" Charis circling back, concerned.

"Better. Better than okay, sweetheart." Joanna moved faster, to keep up.--To be happy. Not yet, of course ... but someday to be happy. She was afraid to try to imagine what shape that might take. Much better just to walk the hill.

Charis, long dark-blond hair loose and breezing in the ocean wind, was climbing a little ahead again, moving up a steep slope of sand and sea grass with that perpetual easy engine of youth that no tried and hardened fitness could quite equal.-And arrived, waiting at the crest of the dune, the girl stood a slender figurehead, seeming to sail through the air. Below, the town and immense bright seascape appeared to vibrate in summer sun. "... I hope they never spoil it."

Joanna climbed to join her. "Well, they've been considering building wooden staircases up the hill--but they've been considering that for at least three hundred years."

"They mustn't ever do it."

"I'm sure they won't."

Charis turned, her eyes still brilliant with the view. "Doesn't it have to be good for you? Seeing something so beautiful?"

"I think so--probably good for the liver."

Charis turned away, started down the ridge, and spoke to Joanna into the air.

"You want to stay out here, don't you?--I mean all year round."

"... I've been thinking about it. A beautiful, smaller world, with fewer people." Climbing down in sand was much easier than climbing up. Just dig in your heels. ...

"I think it would be wonderful. ..." Charis, in slower, more reflective motion, walked the ridge north, toward the cottage. Joanna barely lengthened her stride to stay with her.

"It's something to think about, if I can get by without my job at White River.

And I suppose I can, if I'm careful ... find something part-time out here.--Wouldn't interest you, you're a little young for that, but maybe you could come out to visit, sometime--"

Charis stopped walking and turned an almost angry face--a grim face--to Joanna. "It would interest me," she said. "It would interest me a lot."

"Well, I thought you--"

"--I would rather do that than anything!"

What to say to this odd, contradictory girl, with her nighttime departures?

"Charis ... you mean stay with me out here? We talked about White River--"

"Yes. Out here."

"Sweetheart, you would always be welcome to do that. I'd love to have you stay with me as long as you like. I just thought you might want ... some other choices in your life."

"I don't." And Charis marched away, so Joanna had to hurry to catch up--the catching-up thing becoming habitual; some serious getting in shape obviously called for in this girl's company. A companionship that, for whatever reason, seemed assured at least for a while.

They circled the long crest of the hill a last time, and into the afternoon--Joanna moving more and more easily, effort oiling her muscles. They hiked with ocean in view to the east and north ... two smaller islands seen to the south and west, with the mainland only a green mark beyond them.

"I have to run into town." Joanna, changed to clean shirt and slacks, came to the kitchen door. "The big car inspection. ..."

"Want some lunch first?" Charis, by the backyard faucet, was washing their gardening tools in an old yellow plastic bucket found in the garage.

"Not hungry yet. ... I'll be back soon. Do we need anything for the stew?"

"We've got everything."

"Enough onions?"

"Plenty of onions."

"Okay," Joanna said, and went back in to get her purse.

... She parked on Strand, and got out of the car in the shadow of low racing dark clouds, a summer rainstorm coming in from the sea. She walked to the bakery, four doors down, and went in to wait behind an elderly fisherman apparently buying doughnuts and crullers for a boat crew unloading.

"I need some plain."

"How many?" Mrs. Cooper, rail-thin for a baker's wife, stood patiently behind her counter.

"Three ... no, five."

"I'm going to give you four, Edgar. Let's keep to even numbers."

"Okay. ... And two jellies."

"Two jellies." Mrs. Cooper began filling a cardboard box top.

"Two sugars."

"Two powdered sugars."

"And we need three crullers."

"Two crullers."

"--Okay. ... Well, I guess that's it."

"That's it. Now, Edgar--you're off the Big Boy?"

"That's right."

"Big Boy already owes thirty-four dollars and seventy-one cents."

"Oh. ... I'm supposed to charge it."

"I see.--Now, Edgar, I'm going to let you have these doughnuts and crullers.

But I want you to tell Dale Boynton that I expect payment on this account. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"And your total is now ... thirty-nine dollars and eleven cents. You got that figure? You'll remember that?"

"Yes."

"All right, as long as that is understood."

"Okay."

"You tell Dale what I said."

"Yes, I will."

"All right." Mrs. Cooper handed the box top over the counter.

When the fisherman was gone, the door's harness bells ringing behind him, Mrs.

Cooper smiled sadly at Joanna. "Isn't that a shame?-But you know, Mrs. Reed, things have got so tight we have to draw a line just to stay in business. We can't give these captains credit like we used to."

"It is too bad."

"Well, your cake's ready. ..." Mrs. Cooper went into the back of the shop.

Joanna stood waiting, watching through the bakery's big window as people walked by. ... Mrs. Cooper was talking to someone in the back.

There was a stack of Islanders on the counter, Asconsett's two-fold weekly just out, out every Thursday afternoon. Its news usually concerned with weather, social notes, fishing reports, boats for sale, and an occasional cranky editorial concerning the State Bureau of Fisheries.

Joanna picked up the top copy, and began reading the left-hand column: "Bottom Fishing." Bottom-fishing forecasts were really promising, stocks almost equal to last year's, though last year's had been disappointing. There was a cartoon--badly drawn--of a bottom fish looking worried about being caught.

A two-paragraph editorial, at the top of the right-hand column, dealt with the right whale-swarms of them, and endangered only in the fantasies of mainlanders.

The lower-right column had a piece titled "Mishap." There'd been an excavation accident --runaway vehicle rolling down into nighttime workings on South Sound. An island man, seriously injured, had crawled up to the road and been found in early morning by a Coast Guardsman coming off-duty from the light.

Joanna read to a name, then stopped reading.

"Here we are." Mrs. Cooper carried in a large white box. "--Man back there with a sample of cake doughnuts. You just order 'em in, frozen." She set the box on the counter. "... Well, you never tasted such stuff in your life.

Cooper's has been doin' oil-bath doughnuts for nearly a hundred years, and I guess we'll stick to it.--Now, here's your cake, coconut with rosebuds. And we make from absolute scratch."

"Oh, but I ordered a small cake."

"That's what you got. Small cake. Should serve ... oh, four to six, couple of good slices each. Don't get a lot of call for these small ones."

"Well ... thank you. I'm sure it'll be wonderful."

"You can bet on it, dear."

"And what do I owe you?"

"That's twelve dollars and fifty cents.-And the paper?"

"... Yes. Can I give you a check?"

"Your check'll be just fine. With the paper, twelve dollars and seventy-five cents."

Joanna, purse strap over her shoulder, the cake box and folded newspaper held in both hands, stepped out of Cooper's into a warm pattering rain.

... At the car, she put the cake box over on the passenger seat and got in, only damp. The rain spattered, hesitated, then came lacing down through sunshine as she closed the door. Rain marched across the windshield, and made the car's metal softly ring.

There was no good reason to keep reading the newspaper. That Tom Lowell's accident had happened late last night--and south, south of town --was no reason to read the rest of it.

But the summer shower seemed to bring a reason with it--that not reading, that imagining, would be worse. So Joanna sat beside the coconut cake in rain-curtained privacy, and read.

When she finished, she tucked the newspaper behind the seat. Then she started the car--but when she put both hands on the steering wheel, her fingers began to tremble ... then flutter like feathers. Her hands shook as if they were no longer hers, and belonged to those parts of the Volvo's idling engine that moved and muttered.

What had that news introduced to set her trembling, signifying something even graver than the captain's agony?--Only that a girl with no lover had gone out secretly at night? Had driven south, where an accident occurred? That signified nothing. As a red baseball cap, one of so many, signified nothing.

Joanna put her hands together on the steering wheel, and leaned to rest her forehead on them, keep them still. She was afraid she'd sound the car's horn, but she didn't. ... The rain was so helpful. Its small sounds were very helpful, and the veil it provided.

When she sat up, her hands and fingers were still. She put the car into reverse for a foot or two ... then drive, to pull out of the parking space into Strand, heading south. She drove out of town-looking, only looking, not thinking of anything at all. ...

Almost two miles out on South Sound, Joanna saw red and yellow lights flashing down off the road to the left. She steered onto the right shoulder ... got out of the Volvo, and walked across the road. A tow truck and police car were parked below, alongside a steep driveway cut out of the side of the bluff.

Severely injured. ... Crawled up to the road, and was found in early morning.

...

Almost at the foot of the drive--fallen off it--a big white pickup was lying half on its side, its hood and front wheels buried in a collapsed excavation with splintered planks, heavier timbers. A small orange backhoe was parked nearby--and farther off, past some ditches, two big houses stood above the sea.

Joanna looked down at that scene ... then out over the ocean for a while. The rain had come through and blown over. Now the summer sun laid its light on the sea, painted it bright green, glazed its whitecaps from white to a warmer ivory. The sea wind gently buffeted her as she stood, persistent as a puppy.

Joanna went up the kitchen steps, purse on its strap over her shoulder, the cake box held carefully with two hands. She freed one hand for a moment, to open the door.

Charis was at the stove, peering down into the big frying pan. "I'm browning the lamb. ... Want some lunch?"

"No, I'll wait for dinner. ... I have something for you."

"What?--A cake!"

"Coconut."

"Oh, God, that's great!" Pleased as a child, Charis dusted flour off her hands, took the box and put it on the table. She broke its white string with one sharp tug, and lifted the top. "It looks wonderful. Rosebuds!"

"I ordered it yesterday."

"Ah, the phone call. ..."

"Yes, I lied; no car inspection.--I ordered a small cake, but apparently they don't do really small ones out here. Big eaters."

"We'll have some for dessert."

"... I'll be upstairs for a while--sure I can't help?"

"No way, Joanna. It's my stew; I'm going to do everything. And thanks so much for the cake."

"Hope you enjoy it, sweetheart."

Joanna climbed the stairs as if she were leaving some of herself still with Charis in the kitchen. A strange feeling--as if this part of her were coming upstairs to wait for something expected, but not yet quite arrived.

She went into her room, took the boxes of photographs from the closet, and sat on the bed with them. Odd she'd never cared enough about the past to fill albums. ... Joanna sorted through small stacks and bundles of pictures, dealing the photographs out until she sat among scattered drifts of them--some quite old, fading--and began to search, almost aimlessly, for a familiar face.

She found a picture of Frank with his first team on the field at White River, and was surprised how young he looked, almost the same age as the boys. ...