Storm Tide (48 page)

She saw Owen's hand dart out to the engine box, and the swift turning of the flywheel was instantly checked. The
White Lady
slid down a shining hill of water, and Joanna, looking astern, saw the sea rushing on, and the punt flung high on its crest. Owen touched the throttle and the low murmur of the motor quickened to a loud throbbing again. He looked out by the sprayhood, and then ducked his head back quickly, but his face glistened with salt water. “Jesus, did I get wet!”

“Where are these seas coming from?”

“We're off the Black Ledges. It's always nasty here when there's any wind. And I told you there was a good breeze, didn't I?” He was on watch again, and then she felt the bow rising once more; she stepped quickly astern into the open part of the cockpit, and looked past Owen. It seemed as if the whole thirty-four-foot length of the
White Lady
stood on end; as if anyone watching from Brigport would see her entire washboards from stem to stern outlined against the great roaring sea that rose up under her. Joanna knew nothing in that instant but a horrible awe. Her mouth formed an O through which she drew her breath.

Owen reached down to move the throttle again. The power inside that box could drive the
Lady's
nose down under the next comber, down and down. But even shutting off the power couldn't keep the boat from its sickening leap into the trough. An enormous wing of white water rose on either side of the bow and curved outward in a sweep of crystal. Water poured over the cuddy roof, seeped in between the washboards and the sprayhood, ran down the washboards to the stern, fast rivulets shining in the sun.

The engine throbbed louder again. Joanna moved up beside Owen, who watched keenly past the sprayhood to where his boat's high bow tossed against the horizon. His eyes were slitted against the wind and the spray. Already the salt had left white lines on his dark skin, and the black hair over his forehead was wet.

Joanna peered by the edge of the sprayhood and saw a wild, flashing, twinkling expanse of blue-green ocean, and the thin and faraway line of islands on either side gave no protection from the strong, sweeping wind. The racing gusts feathered the rolling wave-crests into seething foam. Joanna looked out upon the vista of restless water, that was tormented and angered by the lash of the cold, stinging wind; the
White Lady
seemed like a mere cockleshell, frail and innocent; but she met each wave steadily, rising over it, or plunging through it. She moved slowly but surely upon the invisible line that the compass needle drew upon the sea.

“Will it be like this all the way?” she shouted at Owen.

He shrugged. “If the wind keeps risin', it'll be worse.” He didn't take his eyes from the sea. “Hold on—here comes another bastard!”

She caught at him as the boat leaped and heeled. When it was over she realized she'd shut her eyes tight. She'd never done that before. She called to Owen. “Everything's falling down in the cabin. I'd better go pick things up.”

He looked at her with a grin. “Not much sense in doing that; they'll only get thrown around again. But if you want to lie down, go ahead.”

The
White Lady
began to climb another sea. Down in the cuddy, Joanna lost her balance and staggered into a corner, just as the sea broke over the deck. It sounded as if it were about to crash in upon her head. She made a faint attempt to pick up the things strewn about the cabin, but the boat rolled and pitched so that she had to sit down. She was conscious, then, of her weakness; a dreadful weakness, as if her strength were oozing out through every pore. Her skin felt clammy and numb. This nerveless sensation was new to her, at least as far as the sea was concerned; she had never before wanted to throw herself into a heap on the locker, shut eyes and ears and cling—if she had the strength to cling—until the worst was past.

Only—what if it didn't pass? They'd hardly begun the trip. They had a good two hours yet to go.
I can't stand any more of it
, her brain cried out, and with that she recognized her trouble. She was terrified. She, Joanna Bennett, who had never in her thirty-one years been afraid when she was aboard a boat.

Moreover, this utter weariness was centering in her stomach. Every roll and leap of the boat made it worse; she was beginning to sweat. If something happened to the
White Lady
now—if her nose went under or her round bottom rolled her over too far—Joanna would be utterly unable to help herself. She felt a shuddering relief at the thought of surrendering to her misery; she couldn't be both seasick and terrified at once.

She lay flat on the hard locker and closed her eyes. It was no wonder she was seasick for the first time in her life. She made excuses for herself, remembering how strained and tired she'd felt for so long, how for the last month her stomach had been so easily upset. Just then, a new wave of horrible nausea went over her, and swamped her pride completely. She didn't try to think of any more excuses.

She must have dozed at last, for when she became aware of the cuddy again, and the thin sunlight slanting through the salt-dimmed ports, the
White Lady
was thrumming along at a self-possessed rate. She might have been back in her home harbor. Joanna got up from the locker, tightening her lips when her cramped muscles and aching spine asserted themselves. She took her compact from her bag and looked at herself. She was pale, but not greenishly so, and her hair was mussed. The shadows around her eyes had been there for a long time. . . . She combed her hair back from her face and powdered her nose, and went out under the sprayhood to the wheel.

Owen was sitting on the washboards, smoking. “Hi,” he said laconically. “You been asleep?”

“It just crept up on me,” she explained. The sharp, clear air, almost windless now, was as refreshing as cold well water. She looked out past the sprayhood and saw the Camden mountains against the sky. They rolled down to the sea, the nearer, lower ones patched with fawn-color and brown, the farther, higher ones grape-blue with forests and snow-crested slopes. Over them all, the huge white clouds sailed from the west, and their shadows moved across the rolling lands below.

The
White Lady
was almost into Limerock Harbor.

She wanted to go alone to find Nils. She had a right to go alone, she believed. But Owen overrode her, and there was nothing for her to say, because she didn't know where Nils' uncle lived, and Owen did. Besides, he had dropped his work to take her on what he thought was a wild-goose chase. She couldn't argue with him now. And she felt too tired to talk; the trip had exhausted her. She ached from lying so long on the locker and there was a hot throbbing behind her eyes.

They walked along Limerock's narrow Main Street toward the bus stop. The day had turned mild, and the sidewalks were crowded. Ordinarily people were of enormous interest to Joanna, but today she walked through them as if she were completely alone, following one of the deserted trails on the barren end of the Island.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Owen said, and she stopped. They stood on a windy corner with some half-dozen others. At another time she would have catalogued each one of them in the five minutes before the bus came. Today her thoughts were turned inward. . . . Nils would go home with her when he realized the necessity of it. . . .

The bus lumbered on toward Camden. There was a sickening odor of exhaust, but it seemed to bother no one but herself. She looked around at the others, wondering how they could stand it. Probably they were used to it. . . . She remembered, with a little twitching of her lips, how the disreputable bus that ran between Limerock and Pruitt's Harbor was minus a door, so you had plenty of air in all sorts of weathers, including blizzards.

She sat back in her seat, trying to release the tightness in her shoulders and neck, making her fingers loosen on her bag. She and Owen sat behind the driver, and in his mirror she could see herself. She didn't look too bad; it was probably her hat brim and the bad light in the bus that made her so pale. But at that she had better color than most of the mainlanders in the other seats. She was lucky, being a brown-skinned Bennett to begin with. No one would ever think she'd been so nearly seasick, and so weakened with fright out there in the boat. And she would never admit it.

They had to walk from the bus stop to Eric Sorensen's place, away from the town and down a narrow dirt road through spruce and birch. The frozen ruts were hard to walk on, and there was sparse warmth in the thin sunshine. Owen smoked one cigarette after another, and the smoke was very blue in the still, biting air.

“Jesus, I'm hungry,” he said. But you wouldn't let a man stop to get some dinner, would ye? Had to grab that bus as if there wasn't another one for a year.”

“You didn't have to come with me,” she answered, her eyes on the next twist of the road. “You could have stayed, and had twenty meals if you wanted.”

“And how were you to get here? I've been to Eric's, and you haven't. You'd never find the place by yourself. They'd find you a month later, roamin' around the woods like a blind cod in a school of herring.”

She didn't answer. She was too near the end of her journey. She was beset by her desire to reach Nils; she knew that once she had seen him, and told him to come home where he belonged, and put an end to this vicious Brigport story, she could relax. When she tried to think how long it had been since she had lain down to sleep, or sat down to read or eat, without this tremor in her stomach, this involuntary clenching of her muscles, she couldn't remember.

They came around the next bend in the road, the spruces thinned, and Owen said, “There it is.”

The bay opened up before them, such a calm sparkle of blue in the winter afternoon that the
White Lady
's trip might have been a dream, except that she, Joanna, was here; she stood on the hard rutty road, and looked at the white farmhouse on the rise from the shore.
There it is
, Owen had said, calmly lighting another cigarette. It was just a farmhouse to him, but to her it meant Nils.

Her eyes flew swiftly to the huge barn that loomed beyond the house, dwarfing it. That would be where Eric and Nils were building the boat. She found herself straining for the sound of hammers; it would carry far in this hushed, crystalline atmosphere.

“For Christ's sake, you intend to stand here all day?” demanded Owen, and started up the winter-brown slope to the house. “Maybe Mrs. Eric's got something to eat up there.”

She followed him without speaking. She had a premonition that no one would be at home; but suddenly, when they were halfway to the house, there was movement. It was as if at a given signal everything
began
. She knew it was only that she had noticed nothing until now, nothing but the barn. Now she saw the smoke rising from the chimney, and the big mongrel shepherd dog lying on the doorstep. He saw them too, and came toward them, barking; the ell door was flung open, and Eric Sorensen's wife, Karin, stood in the open doorway.

“Peter!” she shrieked, and clapped her hands. At the same instant she recognized Joanna and Owen and shrieked again, this time in joyous welcome.

“Well, I
never!
Of all people!
Peter!
Friends, Peter . . . be good now!” She came out on the doorstep to greet them, fatter than she'd ever been on Bennett's Island; but her little blue eyes were jolly, and there was not a thread of gray in her yellow hair. “Peter, you be good ””

“Peter's good,” said Joanna. The dog went from her to Owen, and she glanced around the dooryard quickly. The dog's barking might bring Nils out of the barn to see what was wrong; but what if he wasn't in the barn? What if he was away this afternoon?

Mrs. Eric was hustling them into her kitchen, talking all the while. “I'll make you some coffee—I made fresh coffee ring this morning! Now give me your things.” She giggled as Owen chucked her under her chin—or chins. “You'll have to excuse the kitchen, it looks like it's ready to ride out, I know—”

“The kitchen looks fine,” said Owen, who towered head and shoulders above this little Swedish dumpling of a woman. “Almost as good as you do, Karin. Did you say coffee? And how about a couple of eggs?” he added without shame.

“Eggs, and bacon too, you can have!” Tittering and rosy, Karin turned back to Joanna, who stood by the stove warming her hands. “You poor darling, are you cold? Sit down now, and I'll open the oven door—I'll put more wood on—”

Joanna moved back from the stove. It was odd; her hands were cold, but already it seemed as if the kitchen were hot enough to stifle her.

Owen was settled in the most comfortable chair in the room, exchanging light banter with Karin, who'd always liked him, ever since the long-ago Bennett's Island days. Joanna pulled off her hat and ran her hands through her hair to loosen it from her aching head.

“Karin, is Nils around?” she asked simply. “I'd like to speak to him.”

“Why, child, he's right out in the barn this minute! And all alone, too. Eric's gone to town.” She flung open the shed door. Owen said, “I'd like to get a look at that boat.”

“Now that can wait,” returned Karin, with a portentous wink for Joanna. “You sit here quiet while I ftx your bacon and eggs. . . . You go along, child. The coffee'll be ready when you want it.”

“Thanks,” Joanna said briefly. The door shut behind her; the shed stretched before her. It was the longest shed she had ever walked through. At the other end of it she saw the door into the barn. . . . She stood quietly for a moment, between the long bulwark of stacked and split firewood on one side of her, and the oilskins hanging on the other wall. Karin's voice in the kitchen was small and far-off; from the barn ahead there was no sound, and outside there was the unmoving hush of the afternoon, as if the essence of all expectant silence had run like rainwater into this clearing between the woods and the sea. And in the middle of it Joanna stood; she felt herself its pulse.