Storm Tide (12 page)

“Or dumb,” finished Nils. His arm tightened around Joanna. His breathing was strong and peaceful, and his cheek lay against her hair. “Be a family disgrace if Mark married a moron, huh?”

Joanna chuckled against Nils' chest. “She's got beautiful hair, anyway. No, I guess she's not a moron. Just reserved. Tomorrow I'll get Stevie to tell me more about her.”

Nils' breathing sounded as if he was almost asleep. She lay there in silence, listening to it, and the wind trying to shake the house, the muted thunder of surf on the ledges. The voice of the Island. It was all around her.
Forever and ever, Amen
, she thought, like a prayer, and began to fall asleep.

M
ARK WANTED TO MOVE DOWN
to the Eastern End right away. Joanna had her doubts about putting a young girl down there for her first winter on the Island. The wind blew constantly across the narrow ridges of meadowland, even in summer; in November it howled. But apparently they had made up their minds, so she did the best she could to help them make the small gray house homelike with their limited amount of furniture. Helmi was a good housekeeper, like most of the Finnish girls Joanna had known, and Finns weren't afraid of work or loneliness.

Stevie had his old room back, in the Bennett homestead. He'd planned to live by himself in one of the old camps on the beach, but Joanna and Nils wouldn't hear of it. He went down to the Eastern End in the daytime to help Mark build pots; they would work together this winter, like Jud and Caleb, until a boat for sale turned up somewhere and Stevie could be independent.

“That's goin' to be a funny feelin',” he told Joanna. “We worked together for so long. But I guess it's time we split up. Mark's a family man now.”

He had come in at dusk from his work at the Eastern End, and Nils hadn't yet come back from Brigport. Joanna welcomed the chance to be alone with Stevie for a few minutes. She had always been close to her youngest brother, and there were things she wanted to ask him.

“Tell me about Helmi,” she said now. “Is she always like that? Stony-faced? Or is she one of these fire and ice people you read about?”

Stevie grinned. “You'd have to ask Mark that. How should I know? . . . I figure it's just as well she doesn't pay much attention to other folks.”

Joanna gave him a curious look. He was slouched deep in the old rocker, his long legs thrust out before him, his eyes smiling absently at the ceiling.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked him.

“Well, you ought to know how some of these Bennetts are. God help their wives. Mark's wife is his woman, and that's all there is to it. . . . What do you suppose he had to whisk her out here for, and then down to the Eastern End where he hopes to God nobody will even come and call?”

“Sounds like jealousy to me,” said Joanna, sounding less perturbed than she felt. What new tangle was now being dropped into her lap?

“He's so jealous he isn't hardly fit to live with,” said Stevie. “Wonder to me he doesn't start makin' her lock all the doors when he goes out to haul, so no one'll stop in for a drink of water. That poor girl's got one hell of a life ahead of her, married to our sweet brother!”

He sounded unusually vehement—for Stevie—and Joanna gave him a quick sidewise glance. He caught it and grinned. “Well, you know him as well as I do. Maybe by the time he's Charles' age, he'll quiet down. . . . But at that I guess she figures it's a better prospect than livin' at home with a yellow million relatives.”

“She's in love with Mark, isn't she? You sound as if she married him to get away from home.”

Stevie blew a cloud of pale blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Oh, I guess she's in love with him all right. If she isn't, it's not Mark's fault. He set out to do it, first time we met her.”

Joanna imagined the meeting, the two tall dark boys who took every girl's eye, the tall blonde girl listening so impassively to their patter. . . . Or had she been impassive? It was hard to imagine her being anything else but remote. “What sort of people does she have?” she demanded.

“Decent, respectable, hard-working Finns.
And
Lutherans.” He grinned at her. “Remember Nils' grandfather—old Gunnar? Well that's it. Let me tell you, sis, Mark hasn't taken a drink since he met Helmi. Or played poker.”

“Is he suffering?” asked Joanna dryly.

“He's too much in love. But wait till the new wears off and Mark starts bein' himself again. She'll tell him.”

“I'm glad somebody can tell a Bennett something,” said Joanna.

Stevie grinned. “Hell, can't Nils tell you anything? No, I'll bet he can't. Nobody ever could.”

Joanna was angry with herself for flushing. No, she'd never been meek, but why be embarrassed because her baby brother wanted to twit her about it? She got up and began to work busily around the kitchen, lighting another lamp to send away the shadows and shine down across the meadow when Nils came into the harbor. Stevie lit a fresh cigarette and began to talk about lobstering.

To begin all over again, with winter so near, held no fears for him and Mark. The long hours on the water, the coming home after dark, the flying spray, so icy it burned the skin before it numbed it, the vapor storms that froze the flesh, the sliding hills of cold green water—they took it in their stride, they were like gulls, born to it, bred in it.

Joanna hoped Helmi wasn't the anxious sort. Mrs. Caldwell, in spite of her quick, nervous movements, didn't seem to be a worrier. Marion had faith in Jud's sea-sense, as Joanna had faith in Nils and the
Donna
. The young man Matthew Fennell had written that he would be there definitely in the spring. He would like to come now, and his wife was game, but his grandmother was very old, and the Island was a long way from a doctor.

Joanna wondered about young Mrs. Fennell, who was game. Game was what you had to be, if you were an Island woman; you had to learn not to worry, even while fear nagged at you like chronic pain, and you had to gird yourself at every waking to the possibility that something might happen
today;
some boat not come in at dusk, some man not walk up the path to his home with his empty dinner bucket. And that man might be yours.

Placed as it was, the Bennett house heard the slightest whisper of wind, but you couldn't hear the engines in the harbor when the night breeze was rising from the sea. Nils kept the
Donna
in the harbor now, and Joanna wouldn't know he was back until he walked into the house.

So suddenly there he was, unzipping his heavy leather jacket, hanging up his blue plaid cap, warming his hands over the stove, hardly speaking; yet in his eyes, very blue in his ruddy face, there was his appreciation of his home and of Joanna greeting him from the dresser. When he came in and Stevie was already there, he never touched Joanna, for to Nils his love for her was an intensely private thing. But his eyes and his smile signaled her across the room, and then he began to talk to Stevie.

“When are you going to get those pots out? Lobsters went up three cents today, and they'll be up more tomorrow.”

“God Almighty, man, we've built seventy in three days. If we can get some bait, we can set those before long—soon as we get them headed. Think we'll get much in 'em, or—”

“Well, no new trap fishes like an old one,” said Nils mildly, “but you can make a living, I guess. That same seventy'll serve you better come spring, though.”

“If we don't have a couple of willie-waws to knock 'em all to hell,” said Stevie cheerfully. “Oh well, we'll have plenty more built. We've got to order some laths from Ralph Fowler pretty soon, I guess.”

“Ralph was a little sticky today,” Nils said.

“Why?” Joanna asked quickly, pausing at the stove.

Nils shrugged. “I don't know. Just ugly. . . . Time to wash up, isn't it?” He went to the sink and washed, then ran his pocket comb through his hair before he came to the table. Even at the end of a long day, which had begun before daylight, he looked freshly scrubbed and at peace with the world.

Joanna halted to glance over the box of groceries before she joined the men at the table. “How was Brother Randolph? Did he have anything more in the store this time than he did the other day?”

“Not much more. He said the meat was all gone an hour after the mailboat had brought it.”

“Next year we'd better have a pig and a lamb,” Joanna said. “Though it'll break Ellen's heart when we slaughter them. Mine too, probably. . . . Anyone else around the store?”

“Randy and Winslow were hanging around. Randy said he'd be over some night soon.”

“He'd better wait for an invitation, hadn't he?”

“Randy's not a bad kid,” Nils said.

“You'd say the devil himself wasn't bad, just a mite difficult,” said Joanna tartly. “Randy's a spoiled brat. Winslow's worse. Nils, I don't like any of the Fowlers.” She wanted badly to tell him what she thought about the Fowlers, and as he stirred his coffee serenely, she felt a painful surge of irritation. If he were like any other man, he'd have been annoyed by Ralph's ugliness at the car, and by Randolph's never having half the things on the list, or being just out of them. Then she could make good use of his annoyance. But no, as far as he was concerned all was right with the world.

“You never liked anybody on Brigport much, Jo,” Stevie said. “What's the matter with the Fowlers? You ought to be sorry for 'em. Look at all the money they've been makin' off these grounds, and now
we're
goin' to make it instead. . . . Nils, when are you goin' to start buyin' lobsters?”

“Why me?” said Nils.

“Why not you? You're the one to do it.”

“Nils isn't any kind of a business man,” said Joanna, laughing. “Now, that's a job I'd like to have.”

“Sure,” said Stevie. “Anything to keep you away from the dishpan and the stove all day. You haven't changed a mite, Jo.”

“That's the second poke you've taken at me tonight, Stephen Bennett,” she accused him. She was laughing, but under the laughter she thought in amazement,
What's the matter with me?
For she was slightly cross with Stevie. It was almost as if he were implying that she took too much on herself. As if she could ever take too much on herself where the Island was concerned!

Jud came in just as they were finishing. While Joanna cleared the table, he had a cup of coffee with the men and discussed the day's haul. He was doing all right on the Western Ground, he said. How was it with Nils at the Ripper?

“Mark and I, we're plannin' on droppin' a few at the Coombs Spot, if nobody's lugged it off,” said Stevie.

“I wouldn't be surprised if it warn't there when you went to look for it,” said Jud darkly. “Some of them Brigport bastards'd tow Tenpound home if they was to find it adrift.”

“Well, that would save Whit Robey a trip when it came time to shear his sheep,” said Nils. “What's the matter, Jud? You found some Brigport buoys mixed up with yours?”

Jud snorted, and set his stubbled jaw. “Huh! You think they're goin' to take any chance o' gettin' fouled in my warps and losin' their own? Not them! They'd rather hand out a lot of cheap talk, so a man don't even feel like goin' over there to sell his lobsters.”

“Somebody on the prod?” said Stevie. “Who's been ridin' you, Jud?”

Jud turned to Nils. “How was Ralph when you was over there, late this afternoon?”

“Sticky. Why?”

“Why?
I'll tell ye.” Jud's round face turned deep red, as if his memories were bringing his rage to the boiling point. “Caleb and me, we was over there just after Ralph comes out to the car—he'd been home for his dinner. A nice hot dinner by the kitchen stove, and then he comes out to the car, and he's got a good fire goin', and a bottle of whiskey on the shelf to keep his stomach clear of germs, and warm besides—” Jud took a deep breath. “Well, Caleb and me, we been out since daylight, and we was pretty cold and hungry and it was beginnin' to air up some, so we knew how that boat of Caleb's would slat around when we came out of the Gut. So we come alongside the car, and there's a crowd hangin' around—them smart-alec nephews of his, and a couple of Robeys, and some fellers old enough to know better.”

Jud was alarmingly red. Joanna watched him in worried fascination. Stevie looked sympathetic, with only a dark twinkle in his eyes. Nils listened meditatively, as if he were seeing the scene Jud painted.

“Well, d'ye think Ralph would offer
us
a drink? D'ye think he'd hold out that bottle and say, ‘Here, boys, it's goddamned cold and wet out today, and here's something to revive your droopin' spirits. Go on, have another drink, you can't fly on one wing.'
No!
He was laughin' and jokin' one minute and then he comes out and looks at us like we was so much guts an' gurry. Caleb swings the boxes over the side, and Ralph—” Here Jud took a long breath and a gulp of coffee. “And Ralph, he waits till some of 'em come out of the shed, and nobody's talkin' for a minute, and then he gets that mean sly look on him and says, ‘Jud, I hope you been careful about not gettin' any short lobsters in these boxes. I'm used to honest fishermen,' he says, ‘and I got more to do than cull every haul that comes to this car.' He says that to
me
, that never had a short lobster in all the hauls I ever made since I started lobsterin'!”

Joanna could sense his shock and indignation. “And with everybody standing around,” she prompted. “What happened then?”

“One of them Brigport loud-mouths has to laugh, of course. I said, ‘Listen here, Ralph Fowler, how many shorts you ever weighed back out of any hauls I ever brought in?' Well, he was just as smooth and mealy-mouthed as a man could be and live. ‘No call for you to get mad, Jud, if you ain't got nothin' to hide. I'm just remindin' ye.' ”