Storm Tide (21 page)

“I'm thinkin' of keepin' that girl of yours, Joanna! By gorry, she's a hummin' star!”

And so, smiling, Joanna came to the postoffice window, and Randolph Fowler.

“Good morning,” she said. “I'll take all the Bennett's Island mail, if you please.”

He turned away from the window and began to collect the mail. Joanna looked at his back in the clean gray twill jacket, and listened. She listened for any change in the tempo of conversation around her; for that would tell her how Brigport—the real Brigport—thought about her and about Bennett's. But there was no sudden silence. The talk went on about war news and recipes and grandchildren and husbands. Joanna didn't know exactly why, but she began to relax a little. After all, the Fowlers and their associates weren't the whole of Brigport. And some day they'd be gone—

Randolph Fowler came back to the window, and slid the mail under the grating. “I want to thank you,” he said, “for looking out for Randy the night he fell overboard.”

“You're welcome,” she murmured. Their eyes met. Neither smiled. She thought,
It hurts him to have to thank me. But he'd do it, because he's that kind of a hypocrite
. . . . She was astounded by the depth of her antagonism. She turned away from the window and went out of the store.

The winter sunshine and the clean, cold air were good against her face. She took long breaths, and thought of Randolph Fowler who spent his days in the dimness of the store, moving and speaking quietly, never shouting or swearing; but always weaving his plans, giving his quiet orders to those who must obey him. His brother, his sons, Tom Robey; and they, in turn, had those whom they influenced.

As she reached the wharf she saw Mark lounging against an oil drum, smoking, and Nils was standing a little apart from the others, with Link Hall; probably paying him for the freight. It was such a commonplace scene, the wharf at boat time, that her dark thoughts began to dissolve. The Pierce boy who did odd jobs for everybody was wheeling boxes of bread and crates of oranges up to the store. He grinned at Joanna, who winked at him. His grin expanded even more and he trudged on, whistling.

She reached Nils, and Link grunted his usual salutation in her direction and left. She watched his thick, rolling figure go toward the store, and then Mark approached.

“Well, what next?” he said. His black eyes were brilliant. “My God, if there hasn't been some tongue-wagging around here this morning! Nobody could figure out what I was hanging around for.”

“What did the Cap'n say?” asked Joanna.

“He guessed. Told me it was a good thing. Some of the men don't take it too kindly, our taking our trade away from Fuss-face and his brother out yonder.” He waved his arm at the lobster car in the harbor. Smoke wreathed from the chimney of the little shack on it, and Ralph's double-ender was tied up alongside. It was too early for any boats to be in from hauling yet.

“As soon as Link gets the
Aurora
out of the way, we'll start rolling the oil aboard,” Nils said. “I brought some planks along so we won't have to use any of Brother Randolph's property.”

“Except his wharf,” said Joanna. “Maybe we ought to pay him wharfage. Just in case.”

Link came back with the mailbags, and there was a stir on the wharf. He had two passengers today, the elderly Merrill sisters; Fred Bowers, the engineer who had grown grizzled and mahogany-colored in the
Aurora B
.'s service, helped them down the gangplank with their blankets and suitcases, and then went below to warm up the engine.

“All aboard!” Link growled around his cigar.

With the
Aurora B
. steaming out of the harbor, Nils swung the
Donna
around until she was close to the wharf. The tide was high, and with the planks laid, there was just enough gentle incline for Mark to roll the drums aboard the stern, where Nils lashed them so they couldn't move.

The wharf was deserted now in the flood of sunshine. The two men worked quickly, and Joanna sat on a crate and watched them. If Randolph should be watching from the store, and Ralph from the lobster car, she hoped they were grinding their teeth at the way they'd been circumvented. If Randolph's mustache were longer, she thought, he could twist the ends and say “Curses, foiled again!” She giggled at the thought. Mark said, “What's the matter? You nuts?”

“Slightly!”

Mark grunted, heaved his strong body, and another full drum rolled slowly over the planks. Nils steadied it, pushed and tugged it into position on the
Donna
's broad stern, and his hands were fast as lightning with the ropes.

Joanna opened a letter from her mother. . . . Footsteps began at the far end of the wharf. She looked back, idly, and saw Winslow Fowler and one of the younger Robeys sauntering toward her. She returned to her letter. A boat came into the harbor, its engine loud in the stillness, and stopped briefly at the lobster car before it went to its mooring.

Winslow and the Robey boy—it was Tom's nephew, Earl—stopped at the edge of the wharf, near the planks, and watched the job. Mark and Nils worked as if they had no audience, and Joanna, glancing up from her letter, noticed how Winslow's face darkened. He didn't like being ignored. . . . Apparently Randy was out hauling alone today; Winslow was limping slightly, and she remembered a snatch of words she'd heard in the store, about Winslow wrenching his knee.

He didn't look toward Joanna, his narrowed gaze was intent, first on Nils, aboard the
Donna
, and then on Mark, on the wharf. Joanna watched his sulky face. Even his shoulders were sullen, under the soft new leather jacket. The other boy, Earl Robey, was a weedy youth, and pimply. He might have been a Robey, Joanna thought, but he had none of the Robeys' breadth of chest. He turned to Winslow with a remark under his breath, and then snickered.

Two men rowed in from the boat they had just put at her mooring. They were middle-aged men; she knew one as the Pierce boy's father, and the other was a Merrill, a distant cousin of the Cap'n's. They greeted Nils civilly as they tied up their double-ender to a spiling near the
Donna
's bow, climbed up the ladder and touched their longvisored caps to Joanna.

They had barely passed Winslow and his chum when it happened. It was quick, yet Joanna saw it in its entirety, by some lucky fluke; if she had glanced back at her mail, she would have missed the incident. She saw Mark roll an oil drum toward the gangway of planks, gather his muscles for a quick heave—and she saw Earl Robey's boot shoot out. She heard the planks clatter, hesitate, and then rattle downward—one to fall into the
Donna's
cockpit with an astonishingly loud sound, the other to slip endwise into the space of water between boat and wharf.

With one swift motion Mark's hands flew out and balanced the drum before it could roll overboard. “You gorldam son of a bitch!” he said. He rolled the barrel back to safety and walked toward the other two. Nils climbed up to the wharf; the older men turned back and waited, a lively curiosity in their faces.

Earl Robey stepped back behind Winslow. Hands in his pockets, Winslow faced Mark insolently. “Who you callin' a son of a bitch?” he said.

“Both of you,” said Mark, “unless one of you prefers to be called a bastard.” He balanced lightly, his big brown fists swinging at his sides. “You're kind of free with your feet, Earl. Let's see how good you are with your hands.”

Earl laughed from beyond Winslow's shoulder. Some of his teeth weren't very good, Joanna noticed. It was odd how you saw such things in an instant when you were holding your breath, when the whole world seemed to be standing still, as still as the older men who were looking on, as still as Nils, at the edge of the wharf.

“Come and get me,” Earl said. He was skinny, and Winslow wasn't very big, but there was no telling what dirty stunt they'd worked up. Mark took another step forward.

“Looks like I'll have to move Turd-heels out of the way first,” Mark said, and his hand fell on Winslow's shoulder, took a good hold on the soft leather, and jerked him to one side. Winslow'8 knuckles grazed his cheekbone, and instantly Mark forgot about Earl Robey, who retreated to a safer distance.

Jonas Pierce said hastily, “Christ, I don't blame you none, Mark, but Win's got a bad leg. You oughtn't to—”

Merrill nodded gravely. Nils, no expression flickering in his face, walked forward and touched Mark's arm. “Better stop before you beat him up,” he said easily. “You want a fair fight, don't you?”

“Hell, that bastard don't know the meanin' of a fair fight!” Earl sneered. Winslow, unable to move in Mark's grip, said, “Leave him be. He'd liefer fight a man with a game leg—that's the only way he can lick him.”

He was released so suddenly that he staggered. Mark's brown face was savage. “I never tackled a little guy yet, or a lame one.”

“But that's what he was trying to get you to do, Mark,” Joanna said quietly. “Before witnesses. It's been done before.” She ignored Nils' quick warning frown. She was so furious that she could not have kept silent, yet her words came evenly. “It's another one of those dirty Fowler tricks. And he's fixed it so even a couple of decent men would have to swear to it.”

Pierce and Merrill seemed suddenly embarrassed. Mark lit a cigarette with a violent gesture. As if nothing at all had happened, and neither Winslow nor Earl Robey existed, Nils said, “Well, let's get the rest of that oil aboard.”

“I shouldn't be surprised,” said Joanna, surveying Winslow as if he were a particularly repugnant specimen of eel, “if he was responsible for putting the water in the gasoline. Its just the kind of scummy underhanded thing his crowd goes in for.”

“And who do you think you are?” said Winslow, his voice thick and dark. “The Queen of the Bennett's Island bastards?”

“You want to be careful, Winslow.” Nils spoke gently. But he had been standing apart from the others, and now he was between Winslow and Joanna; and though his hands were in his pockets, his eyes silenced Winslow as thoroughly as a hand across the sullen mouth. “You don't want to say too much,” Nils said. “You may have to answer for it some day.”

There was a little wake of silence behind his words. Winslow's eyes clung to Nils' face as if they were held there, beyond his will. Then he laughed jerkily. “Why don't you slap me down, if you think I've insulted your wife?”

Nils regarded him for another long moment, then turned toward Mark. “Come on, let's get back to work.”

The incident was over. Jon as Pierce and George Merrill murmured awkward good-byes and left the wharf. Earl Robey, who had stopped grinning a while back, started after them. Winslow followed.

F
EBRUARY BROUGHT THE WORST STORM YET.
It was a time of cold and of exceedingly high tides, a time of nervous tension, of worry, of getting up in the night to dress and fight the wind that tried to keep you from reaching the shore, and in the wild moonlight you looked to see if the boats were all right. Joanna would get up whenever the men did, and watch from the house; she couldn't decide whether the surf looked more deadly by sunlight or moonlight. But she was certain that the endless thunder and surge, and the keening of the wind around the house, were not easy to endure. Oddly, it was better if you were out in it, even if the cold burned the skin of your face and the wind knifed through your heaviest clothes. When you were in the house, and looked out at the ceaseless assault of the sea against the rocks, and heard how the wind shook the house with a fury that seemed always to mount instead of to decrease, you felt sometimes the stirring of a primitive alarm. But outside, you felt the solidity of the Island under your feet, and remembered how many years it had remained like this, how many storms had battered its shores and lashed at its trees . . . and then you felt secure.

She wondered how the other women took these things. Marion Gray was used to them, but she was getting along in years; and the Island life was completely new to Vinnie and Helmi.

But Marion complained only of the continual rush of wind through the trees around her house. “Sounds like we was bein' taken over by a tidal wave,” she said. “But I guess I like it just as well as hearin' those banshees howl around your place!”

Vinnie admitted she was nervous, worrying about Caleb's traps, and she missed Joey on the weekends when the children couldn't come home. And it was impossible to keep the windows clean. That was her biggest complaint. Then she laughed.

“But now I've gone and fussed about it, I'll feel all right. It's good to have somebody to complain to,” she said. “Caleb's one of them men of few words. Less even than Nils, I think sometimes.”

As for Helmi, Joanna couldn't find out. One day she braved the wind and walked down to the Eastern End. It was bad enough across the open field between the schoolhouse and Uncle Nate's place; the woods offered respite for a while, though the ground seemed to tremble under her feet with the undiminished strength of the sea piling up on the rocks below the path. Sometimes she felt flying spray against her face. Five miles out, the Rock was almost hidden in a smother of white; the nearer ledges were buried in surf, showed briefly, black and deadly against the gray-blue, and then disappeared again; spray flew up in great fountains where they had been. The gulls rode the wind.

The instant she came out of the woods, on the rise by the gate, the wind attacked her. She held to the gatepost with one hand and her beret with the other, and narrowed her eyes against the cutting edge of the wind and looked around her. The smoke from the chimneys was whipped away in shreds. At the far end of the brown field, the Head rose, solid rock sown with dead grass and spangled with wind-dwarfed spruces; immutable. On either side of the field, which sloped down from the ridge where the buildings were, the sea rolled in without pause. In Eastern End Cove it was not as fierce. But on the seaward side breaker after breaker reared up and rushed shoreward and tumbled, roaring, into frothing white confusion among the jumbled rocks. When Joanna remembered that for a week there had been a sea and a wind like this, she wondered if her sister-in-law would show any signs of tension.