Storm Tide (39 page)

She made some excuse and got out of the boatshop quickly. Jud had often annoyed her in all the years she had known him; but she had never felt like this before. For a little while she had been at peace, sitting there by the old stove, looking out at the harbor. Now all her suppressed tensions and angers fought their way to the surface and concentrated on Jud.

She wondered when he had begun to add the extra two cents. Probably he'd decided he could make it up when Richards' smack came around to collect the lobsters. She kicked at a stone in the path. It wasn't fair for Jud to be paying the Brigport men two cents extra. If he was going to make presents, the Bennett's Island fishermen deserved a share. After all, it was really the Bennett's Island men who were bringing Judd his living. If he had to depend on Brigport fishermen for his money, he wouldn't stay in business long. . . . It was time the other men on Bennett's Island knew about that two cents, and she intended to let them know.

Owen and Stevie came in late in the afternoon, looking pleased with themselves, and immensely hungry, in spite of the big dinner boxes she'd fixed for them. She had a substantial mug-up ready.

Owen was in one of his best moods. He'd put some more traps out, and they were fishing well. “Hello, darlin' mine,” he greeted her. “Let me rub my whiskers over your cheek, sweetheart, and don't look so black.”

“Anybody'd look black at the thought of you huggin 'em,” Stevie said. He winked at Joanna. “Don't mind him. He's got money in his pocket and no girl. Hell of a mess.”

“I'm going to town and find one,” said Owen, and crashed his fist down on the table to make the dishes jump.

Joanna had intended to talk to them as soon as they'd finished the hot coffee and thick lobster sandwiches. But the warmth of the kitchen, and the comfort of food in their stomachs after the long day on the water, had them yawning helplessly. Watching Stevie's drowsy eyelids as he kicked off his boots, and the languid way Owen tossed a half-finished cigarette into the stove, Joanna knew they were in no mood for a discussion of Jud and his methods.

She let them go without protest, Stevie up to his room, Owen to sprawl on the sitting room couch, where he would fall instantly and heavily asleep.

After supper, the boys brought two balls of green marlin from the shed, and prepared to knit trapheads in the kitchen. Joanna was making baitbags from a ball of fifteen-thread. This knitting was necessary business, for there were always traps to be replaced.

The fire burned steadily in the stove, radiating the aromatic warmth and a certain personality that only a wood fire can give to a room. Owen worked at the window where Nils always worked, looking toward the sea, the bracket lamp on the wall shedding a clear, soft light on the green twine and the flat wooden needle. The head was started from a loop of twine hooked over a nail in the window sill, and as it grew, he had to move his low chair constantly backward—until the finished head went to join the others behind the stove. One day soon, those heads, laced tautly into the traps in the proper fashion, held open by the hoop called the funny-eye, would make a funnel of mesh through which the lobster would seek the bait. And the bait—salted herring in these winter months—would dangle lusciously from the top of the trap, in one of the bait-bags that Joanna was making.

Each man had his own pattern for his trapheads; when he told it aloud, it sounded like some mystic incantation.

“Take up twenty, knit down ten; widen twice on the fourth row; drop off to three, and knit down ten.” That was a big head. In a four-headed trap, a man used two big heads and two little ones.

There was never an end to the knitting. You had to do it, no matter what cataclysm came into your life. It was like eating and sleeping. . . . And so they were knitting, Owen at his window, Stevie at one of the harbor windows, Joanna at the other. They were quiet, all three. For her brothers it was a contented quietness, Joanna knew. She could glance sidewise at Stevie's peaceful, serious face, and she could hear Owen whistling under his breath, across the room.

But for herself, she could stand only so much of it. She found herself pulling the knots tight with much more of a yank than was necessary; and when she dropped a needle while she was filling it, she felt like snapping it in two. She finished the bag she was working on, took it from the hook in the sill, and threw it into the cardboard carton with the others.

At the dresser, she took a drink of water and let the dipper clatter back into the pail. It had the right effect. It startled Owen and Stevie out of their day-dreaming. Seeing their heads turned toward her, and the identical twitch of their black eyebrows, she had a silly impulse to put out her tongue at them, and wiggle her hands like a donkey's ears.

Instead, she spoke quietly. “How do you like the idea of Jud paying Brigport two cents extra on the pound? Two cents more than he pays you?”

Stevie was lighting a cigarette; above it his dark eyes glanced up at her in a quick question. Owen pushed back his chair and stretched his long legs.

“Two cents extra? Sure, why not? . . . Don't be so narrow with your cigarettes, Steve.”

Astonished, she watched Stevie toss the pack across the room to Owen; she was astonished by their lack of indignation, when she had been smoldering all day.

“But it's not fair!” she burst out. “Why should they get a higher price? I don't like it!”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Owen said impatiently. “Dry up, Jo. What's it to you?”

“Jud talked it over with us a hell of a while ago, Jo,” Stevie explained. “It's just a little come-on to bring those fellers over here. About pays for their extra gas, that's all.”

“You mean, everybody knew it, all the time?
Everybody?”
She was slightly bewildered. “But I never heard anything about it!”

“All the men knew it,” Owen said sardonically. “Didn't figure it was any of your business, so we didn't inform you.” He stood up, grinning at her, and she felt like slapping the grin from his face.

“How about Nils?” she demanded. “Did he know? Or did you talk it over after he'd gone?”

“You think he wouldn't like it?” inquired Owen. “Well, it was his idea, sweetheart. Takes money out of Ralph Fowler's pocket. And the extra two cents'll keep 'em from makin' up with Ralph in a hurry.” He yawned in her face. “If Nils didn't tell you anything about it, after we talked it over, maybe it was because he figured the way I do—that it's men's business, and not yours.”

“I don't like your tone, Owen.”

He stretched, and seemed twice as big in the low-ceilinged room. “Sorry, my love . . . . Guess I'll go in and turn on the radio.”

“You might wait and finish what you've started.” She spoke serenely. It wasn't the way she felt inside, but she knew how disastrous it would be to let her voice get away from her.

Owen's eyebrow tilted. “I didn't know I'd started anything, Mrs. Sorensen. Just reminded you we could do a few things around here without your help.” He lifted his hand. “No, wait a minute before you blast my ears off. Sure, you're smart and you're a go-getter. But you're still a woman, Jo, and none of us takes much to petticoat government. So why don't you start mindin' your own business? Everybody'd appreciate it, includin' Nils, I'd almost think.”

She watched him walk out. In the sitting room the radio blared, insolently loud. She remembered a time when she would have called him back and matched his insults with her own, “blasted his ears off,” to use his own phrase. But today she let him go, hating his arrogant certainty, and fighting an agonizing impulse to burst into tears.

Stevie sat back in his chair, one ankle resting on the other knee, and looked thoughtfully at his moccasin. “That boy,” he said softly, “is in a hard position. For him . . . So think nothin' of it, Jo.”

“He didn't have any call to jump down my throat.” Her voice wobbled, and she swallowed hard to steady it. “I could
kill
him.”

“Think nothin' of it, Jo,” Stevie repeated. He smiled at her, and got up. “I'll go in and fix that radio. Want any special program?”

“No, wait a minute, Stevie.” It would take courage to ask him; but Stevie would tell her the truth, without sarcasm. “Stevie, you heard him. He said if I'd mind my own business, everybody'd appreciate it. . . . What did he mean by that?”

“That's just some more of his—”

“' want to know, Stevie,” she insisted. “Do people think that about me? That I don't mind my own business?”

Stevie said, “Look, Jo. Owen's got the itch again. For a woman or a quart. Both, if he could have 'em. So you just let everything he says go in one ear and out the other.” He winked at her and went into the sitting room.

She was alone in the kitchen. She let out a long breath, and with that breath all the stiffening went out of her spine. She sat down wearily, and shut her eyes.

O
N
F
RIDAY
J
OANNA WOKE VERY EARLY.
Today was the day when she was going ashore. She'd seen Mark the afternoon before, and he wasn't going to haul, but would go over to meet the boat and bring home the Island mail; and she was to go with him, pick up Nils' answer to her last note, and then go aboard the mailboat. She had no doubt of Nils' answer. It would tell her to come ahead. . . .
If he can't meet me at the wharf in Limerock
, she planned, lying awake in the windless gray dawn,
I'll go up to Camden, where he is
.

Nils would be glad to get home, she was sure of it. He would be finished with his sulking by now, ready to resume life on an even keel. Everything would assume its proper proportions. . . . She remembered, involuntarily, his words on that last bright afternoon. That she didn't want or need him. But if she went all the way to Camden—

She got up and began to dress. She had found, lately, that it was not a good idea to think far ahead. One thing at a time. Like breakfast, and leaving lists for the boys for their meals, so they wouldn't eat everything up at once, and writing out a note for Ellen.

Early as it was, the boys had already gone to haul when she came out into the kitchen. She was relieved. No need then of being distantly civil to Owen, of fighting for her poise when she saw his eyebrow go up and knew he was waiting with diabolic delight for her to lose her temper and fly at him. Yes, he'd like a real John Rogers brawl. But she wasn't going to give it to him, even if she had to stop speaking to him entirely.

It was a soft gray day outside; it smelled like spring, and the sea lay against the shores like smoke-colored watered silk. There was no sound of wind or water.
Another weather-breeder
, she thought; but it didn't matter as long as the rain and wind held off till she reached Limerock.

She ate breakfast, tidied the house, made out her lists and wrote Ellen's note; packed her small dressing case, and dressed in her good dark suit, with an immaculate and snowy blouse, whiter than a gull's breast. Finished, she stood in front of the mirror in the kitchen and looked at her reflection. There was a little line vertically between her peaked black brows: it felt as if it had been there always. She lifted her firm round chin slightly, and smiled at herself in the glass. The little line disappeared.

Shortly after nine she saw Mark and Helmi coming along the road past Schoolhouse Cove. She gathered up her winter coat and dressing case, and went down to meet them. No need to lock the house. No one ever locked houses on Bennett's Island.

The
Aurora B
. had just come in, when they reached Brigport Harbor, and was tied up at Ralph Fowler's lobster car. The tide was down, too low for the big boat to go in alongside the wharf.

“No need of you going aboard till she's ready to sail, Jo,” Mark said. “I'll take you two girls in to Cap'n Merrill's float while I get the mail.”

Helmi, standing beside Joanna, smiled at her. “Nils will be glad to see you.”

“I hope so!” Joanna laughed. She felt confident, her color glowed. “Owen says I should've been over there long ago. According to him, I probably haven't got a husband by now.”

“Owen has strange ideas,” said Helmi. It was her only reference to Owen since the night he had kissed her. “Nils is good. A one-woman man, too. And you're the woman, Joanna.”

They waited beside Cap'n Merrill's float while Mark went up to the store for the mail. The sunless harbor was quiet. It always was that way at low tide. Hardly anyone appeared; they were all in the store.

Helmi, lost in her customary air of remoteness, watched the gulls walking gingerly over the rockweed under Cap'n Merrill's wharf. After her remark about Nils—the one personal remark Joanna had ever heard her make—she seemed to have nothing more to say. Perhaps some day Joanna would get to know her well enough to find out what she thought about other things.

In a little while Mark came back down the wharf and slip to the float, whistling. He dumped an armful of mail into Helmi's lap.

“There you are. Pick out your own, girls. . . . No sense you going aboard yet, Jo, Link's got to take some lobsters on.” He went up the slip again. “I'll be here in the boatshop if you want me.”

Helmi's mouth moved in a faint smile. “Here you are, Joanna. From your husband.” She handed the envelope to Joanna, who said, “I don't really need to read it. It'll just say, “Come ahead'—”

She tore the end off the envelope and began to read.

“Dear Joanna,” Nils had written in his firm, methodical hand. “I still don't know when I'm coming back. I'm telling you this so you won't make the trip for nothing. Of course if you want to come to Limerock anyway, that's your business. I only wanted to tell you that I wouldn't be going back with you. . . . The boat is coming along well. Everybody is fine here. Tell Ellen not to eat too much dinner on Thanksgiving day.”