Storm Tide (7 page)

She was not a talkative child, and she said nothing as she walked around the shore with her mother, but her very silence had the essence of contentment in it. She had played in her playhouse until it was in shadow from the high rock, and then she had come down to the Caldwells' to wait for Joanna.
Perhaps when she goes to bed
, Joanna thought,
she'll tell me something
. It would be some little thing she had seen—a fish hawk held motionless against the sky by his beating wings before he swooped, seals playing in the cove, the funny way a loon laughed. . . . It would be some one thing, out of the hundreds of treasures her mind had gathered during the long afternoon.

The south-eastern sky was flushed rosy-lavender, and the house looked white against it, its windows catching the fire of the western sky. As they went through the gate, Ellen cried out and pointed. “Look, Nils is home!”

Joanna looked up, and saw smoke rising in a thin blue plume from the chimney of her own house. She felt a vast, quiet warmth flow through her; her very weariness was a part of it, and Ellen's hand so firm and confident in hers, and Nils coming down to the well with the water pails.

She and Ellen walked up toward him. Ellen leaned over the curb to look down into the cold liquid darkness and watch the pails come up. Joanna looked down at the harbor.

“Three families getting supper right now, Nils,” she said to him. ‘There's smoke going up past Eastern Harbor Point. And over there we can see Jud's roof and chimney among the trees—and there's a fire there, too.”

“And in our house,” added Ellen. She giggled as cold water splashed on her shoe.

Nils set down the pail and stood beside Joanna; together they looked at the Island, their shadows long behind them.

“It looks good,” Nils said. “Tonight after dark there'll be other lights besides ours. . . . Joanna, Fennell wants to come here.”

She turned to him quickly. “Is he sure?”

“Well, he has to talk to his wife and grandmother first.” Nils grinned his unexpected youthful grin. “And I have to talk to my wife. He wants a place by himself, you see; wants to get away from people.”

She knew what he meant. The Whitcomb house, the house where she and Alec had lived, and from which he had gone out to be drowned, was the sort of a place a man would want, to be by himself. And Nils wanted her to let these strangers have it, though he would not suggest it.

She said nothing for a long moment as they stood there by the well, with Ellen picking the asters that grew around their knees. Four families on the Island; four families to face the winter, to drive the Brigport men back, to love the Island and cherish it and help it grow. . . . She looked at Nils with no shadow in her eyes, no misgivings deep within her.

“Let's go home and talk it over while we have supper,” she said.

N
ILS
, J
UD, AND
C
ALEB HAD THEIR PLAN
of work all laid out within a week of the moving-in. They talked it out around the
Donna
's hull, beautiful even after she had lain in the marsh for five years.

Joanna, who had come down to the shore to tell Nils there was a mug-up of coffee and fresh coffee cake waiting for him, found them standing there at the edge of the beach and marsh, looking the Donna over.

“Always wisht I was the feller built that boat,” Jud said, shaking his head. “Feller built her, he's got one good monument to himself, anyhow.”

Caldwell said nothing. He prowled around the hull in the bent-over marsh grass, drenched from the recent high tide, and looked at her lines. Joey imitated him, narrowing his amber eyes the way his father narrowed his deep-set ones. Nils smoked his pipe and looked impassive.

Joanna stood listening, by the old anchor that had been sunk in the beach ever since the storm that sank the
Portland
. She wondered if Nils was as impassive as he looked. She had known him too long not to catch the faint tightening of his jawline, as if his teeth were gripping the pipestem hard. When he glanced sidewise at the
Donna
, his eyelids dropped even more.
He loves her
, Joanna thought, and blinked her own eyes hastily, because they were suddenly moist. Nils had looked up to her father as he had never looked up to his own; and he had always loved the
Donna
. He and Owen had been fourteen when Stephen had brought her home from the boat-yard at Thomaston. . . . Joanna, watching Nils now, remembered that day, Owen's wild, vivid enthusiasm, Nils' silence. Like his silence of this present moment. But a twelve-year-old Joanna in dungarees had seen for one fiery instant the blaze in his eyes when he first saw the
Donna
.

Later, years later, Jud had built a boat for Nils, and she had been fine and strong. But though he had been quietly confident of her ability, Joanna had never seen him look at his own boat as he had looked for the first time at Stephen Bennett's boat.

So she watched him now, and wondered what he was thinking. She ached to have him get the
Donna
overboard as soon as was humanly possible. The
Donna
had been the last boat to be put on the beach, and Stephen had put his hand on the lovely sheer of her bow and promised her he would be back. . . . But it had been Nils who had come; and now the
Donna
must go down to the water again and be the first Bennett's Island boat to ride at her mooring in her own harbor.

Jud's eyes had taken on a watery sheen, and Caleb was still prowling silently about the boat like the Indian who had certainly got into the Caldwell bloodstream some generations back. Nils said suddenly, “How many traps you two plan to build with that trap stuff you brought down?”

“A hundred apiece—we hope,” said Jud. “And quick.”

“Can't get 'em overboard too quick, the way lobsters crawl around this place,” Caldwell said, coming to a stop beside them with the boy Joey at his heels. “Before God, I never see such lobsters.”

“Didn't I tell ye, for God's sake?” demanded Jud. “Look, Nils, we brought fifty-odd pots with us, set 'em where I said, and we've hauled together from Caleb's boat. We been here a week, hauled four times, and averaged eighty bucks apiece.”

“The price of lobsters right now helps some,” Caldwell said moderately.

“Hell, it's goin' even higher,” Jud snorted. “Ralph Fowler's payin' two cents less than they're payin' inshore, as 'tis now—and we're still doin' all right.” He added darkly, “Ralph pays you out money like he had fish hooks in his pockets, and when you go ashore brother Randolph tries to take it all off'n you. But I can't say his prices are any worse'n Pete Grant's used to be.”

“I'm pretty good at building traps,” Nils said. “You any good at overhauling a boat?”

“I get it,” said Jud. “We give you two hours, you give us two. Same as it always was, huh, Nils?” He turned to Caldwell and clapped him heartily on the shoulder. “You like that idea, Caleb? With this Swede on the job we can get a hell of a lot of pots built in a week, and he gets his boat overboard.”

“Sure,” said Caleb, “Why not?” His slow smile creased his leathery cheeks, and he put out his hand. Nils' hand met it.

“Now let's go up and have a cup of coffee to bind the bargain,” he said. He caught the boy's anxious eagerness. “Joey too, Joanna?”

“Joey of course,” she said promptly. “He's an Island man, isn't he?”

When they came into the kitchen, warm and bright with the fire and the flood of afternoon sunshine, Nils glanced around the room. “Where's Ellen? Doesn't she want a mug-up too?”

“She's too busy keeping house,” Joanna said. It always filled her with a deep serenity, the fact that Nils was so fond of Ellen. It was as if they had always been together, all three of them, and that was the right of it, as far as Nils was concerned. Ellen's fair hair was like his, and' that seemed natural, just as the weight of her slim, strong little body leaning against his shoulder as he read seemed natural.

Tall, smiling, not intruding on their male conversation of boats, engines, and fishing, Joanna moved about the room, getting the mugup ready on the table for them.

“The boy's new riggin' came today,” Caleb said to her. “I guess he's all set.”

Joanna met his twinkle with one of her own, nodded, and went into the sitting room to resume her sewing. She knew what he meant. Vinnie had ordered some new school clothes for Joey, and had refused to let him go among strangers until he was what she called “decently clad.” So he and Ellen had both had a week of pure holiday before starting school.

The idea of taking them to the sand beach in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon had been abandoned. The trip would take too much out of the working day, and the men had all they could handle before the fall weather really shut down. Old Captain Merrill and his wife, whose boys had grown up and started families of their own, were anxious to have Joey come as soon as possible. Mrs. Whit Robey, who had been one of Donna's few close friends, was to take Ellen. Whit Robey was an uncle to Tom and Milt. He roared, like all the Robeys, but he was a truly pleasant man, and Mrs. Whit had a gentle humor that reminded Joanna much of her mother. She knew Ellen would like and obey her.

There was no reason why the children couldn't start school at once now that Joey's “new riggin'” had come. Joanna was finishing the buttonholes in a new blouse for Ellen. It was Saturday now. On Monday, if it was good, the children could go.

She smoothed out the little white blouse, and looked down across the meadow to the harbor. The bushes at the edge of the alder swamp were crimson; the berries on the rowan tree were red-orange, tiny clustered globes of pure brilliant color. Crows were feeding on some-thing in the marsh. They were rich and startling blackness against the dying yellow-brown grass.

October on Bennett's Island, and children getting ready for school. How many would there be by next October, she wondered. If she moved a little, she could see the schoolhouse, with the narrow field behind it and then the dark brilliance of the blue sound between the islands. She knew that when she heard the bell ringing from the white belfry, and saw the everlasting game of catch going on in the sandy yard between the steps and the tumble-down sea wall, she would be almost satisfied.

She heard chairs being pushed back in the kitchen, and knew the men were getting ready to go. Jud came to the doorway of the sitting room.

“Damn' good mug-up, Jo.” He beamed at her. Caleb called in past him, “Thanks, Mrs. Sorensen.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Sorensen,” Joey's young voice echoed him.

“I'm glad you liked it,” she said. “That's the way Nils' grandmother makes coffee cake. Nils taught me.” In a few moments she heard the back door close, and thought they had all gone back to the shore. But Nils crossed the kitchen with his soundless step, and came into the sitting room.

He said nothing, but leaned over, putting a hand on either arm of her chair, and looked long and searchingly into her face. It was warm and very still in the room. The sunlight fell in squarish patterns on the dark-blue painted floor, and the braided rug under their feet. They were motionless, so near to each other, so quiet. It was one of those moments when she wished he would tell her in words what he was thinking, what lay behind his intent gaze.

His face was so close to hers that she knew he could count every black lash, every fine black hair that made her brows like peaked wings across her forehead; he could swing forward only a little and touch her mouth with his own, yet still he said nothing. She thought of Alec. Tender phrases were never imprisoned behind Alec's eyes, compliments and loving words had always come easily to his tongue. . . .

Nils looked somberly at her and she looked back, seeing her face mirrored in miniature in his blue eyes, and the tiny white semi-circular scar on the bridge of his nose.

“What is it, Nils?” she teased him softly. “Did you come to tell me it was a good coffee cake—as good as your grandmother's?” She put her hands on either side of his face, feeling its bones and taut spare flesh warm under her palms, and kissed his mouth.

Whatever he came to tell me
, she thought, knowing well that he was not thinking of the coffee cake,
I can answer him as he wants to be answered
. She knew that from her kiss and the touch of her hands he could never guess that the same voiceless current which impelled him didn't swirl through her blood too.

On Monday morning a brisk wind sent the sea racing up the sound between the two islands, and whipped each blue-green wavelet into a tiny crest of white. Great snowy billows of clouds, under-shadowed with faint purple, blew across the sky, turning the water from bright blue to lavender-gray, thence to cold green, thence to blue again. Nothing stayed still, and the gulls dived and soared crazily; the sound of their shrieking went on eternally against the wash of the sea and the wind.

Icy spray flashed again and again over the bows of Caldwell's boat as she rounded Tenpound and headed for the Gut. Caleb and Nils stood by the wheel, their brown faces streaming with the salt water that made their yellow oilclothes glitter, Joey was close behind them, valiantly braving the wet. He had oilclothes too. Ellen and Joanna were in the cabin. Except for Ellen, Joanna would have been outside too, but she didn't want Ellen to start her new school career with the sniffies.

Vinnie Caldwell had refused to come along. “It'll be a long day before anybody gets me on a boat again,” she'd stated firmly. “Caleb wanted me to come, and here I am. And here I stay. I haven't forgot yet how I suffered comin' out on that mailboat!”

Joanna couldn't blame her. But Joey, standing behind his father, was rigid with excitement, and Ellen, sitting on the locker in the cabin, watched everything shining-eyed; no threat of seasickness here.