The Ebbing Tide (41 page)

There was a long moment when she lay quietly against him, waiting for him to respond. If he barely brushed his cheek over her hair— She waited, without trembling, but it was torture to keep so still.

He stirred, finally. She sensed his desire; it was to escape, and she let him go, sickly, slackly. She gave up in the instant when she took her arm from across his body, and moved back so that her face touched his shoulder no longer. He got up in the darkness, she heard him gathering up his clothes, and then he went downstairs. When the door closed at the foot, there was no other sound but the muffled, heavy beating of her blood. She was too desolate to cry.

N
ILS DID NOT COME BACK TO BED
that night. In the morning she got up as soon as the daylight began, and found him sleeping on the sitting-room couch. He got up when she brought Jamie downstairs, and they were no different with each other at breakfast from the way they had been since he came home. Joanna was doggedly pleasant, though her whole body ached with the effort. She must go through the motions of daily living. The rest of the Island was sure that she must be sublimely happy, and she would give that impression. But she must avoid Dennis; Dennis saw too much.

February gave way to March. There came a day that held a luminous softness that was like April. It was too windy for hauling; Charles would be home, and after breakfast Nils went up to the homestead to see him.

She watched him from the back door as he walked across the barnyard toward the alder swamp. In his plaid shirt and dark trousers he looked almost natural, except for the limp. He could go without the cane now, and he moved as if he had gathered strength from the Island in the short time he had been home. The odd tinge in his skin had disappeared. He walked with his head up, as if he were consciously breathing the wind that smelled of spruce, of warm damp earth, of salt, of rockweed at half-tide.
The Island hasn't let him down
, Joanna thought. She leaned her forehead against the doorframe for a moment and shut her eyes, letting her spirit's exhaustion flow over her in waves. It would be good to surrender to it entirely; but Jamie called from his pot-chair, and she went to him.

When Nils came back it was dinner-time. “Hello,” she said brightly when he appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hungry?”

“Can you give me a mug-up, Jo? I'm on my way to Sou-west Point.”

She looked at him in honest surprise. “But you—” She glanced swiftly down at his leg and then at his face. He had a preoccupied expression, as if his mind were busy with plans that were shut away from her. “Can I ask why you're on the way to Sou-west Point?” she inquired lightly.

“I'm going to kill an eagle, if I have any luck.” He went through the dining room and into the sitting room, where his rifle hung. His voice came back to her remotely. “Charles wants to put his sheep down there after lambing time. But there's an eagle to get rid of, first.”

“I didn't know anything about an eagle,” Joanna said slowly. She put a baked potato on his plate, ladled out creamed codfish, added a good spoonful of deep gold squash.

“Oh, Young Charles has seen it, Charles has, Sig—” He came out into the dining room, the rifle in his hands. “Owen's kept her in good condition for me. . . . You know, I think I'll really enjoy killing that eagle.” He laid the rifle down gently, running his hand along the polished stock. “I've never been much of a hunter. But this is a little different.”

She set his place for him at the table and poured his coffee. “Here you are, Nils.” He was looking out past the geraniums at the field whose dead grass was bronze in the sunlight, his face quiet and faraway. She had to speak to him twice before he came.

“Thanks, Joanna.” He glanced up at her as he sat down. “Aren't you going to eat with me?”

Her heart quickened slightly, and then slowed again. Nils would be polite under any circumstances; naturally he would be unfailingly courteous even if he had left her bed because he believed another man had possessed her. He slept on the sitting-room couch all the time, now. She shook her head. “I'm not hungry— I'll eat with Ellen.”

She went back into the kitchen again, and made herself keep busy there until he was ready to go. He stopped behind her for a moment, and she held her breath, so conscious of his nearness that she felt sick with dismayed longing.

“Don't worry about me, Jo. I'll take my time, and besides, I'm not going alone.”

This time she didn't watch him go away from the house.

The afternoon crept on hands and feet toward dusk. There was only one break in it. Leonie came up.

“You look bad,” she said frankly. “Headache?”

“I'm getting a cold, I think.” Joanna managed to smile gaily. “I may
look
bad, but I feel good, except for my nose prickling.”

“Well, I'll only stay but a minute. I'm scared to death of catchin' cold.” She left in ten minutes, during which short interval she touched comprehensively on Island affairs, leaving nothing out; Owen's state of health, the surprise of his marriage to Laurie, Charles' children and his wife, the Fennells and the inordinate stubbornness of Gram, who plainly intended to live forever. She stated bluntly that Sigurd was driving her crazy, and that she couldn't abide Thea.

“It's a relief to find one of that breed that's got some sense,” she observed. “And that's your husband. Land o' love, you'd never know Sig was his brother nor Thea his cousin, now would you? And that
Franny
— if she'd feed him up and put a little meat on his bones, and look out for him a mite—” Leonie shook her head, her glasses flashing as emphatically as she moved, and prepared to leave. “When he comes down I try to get some good food into him, but I dunno as it's much use.”

“Poor Franny,” said Joanna.

“Ayuh . . . Well, I hope the men get their eagle. Lord, I s'pose you'd be worried sick about Nils hikin' off to Sou-west Point if he hadn't taken Dennis with him.”

“I never worry about Nils,” Joanna answered. She went to the door with Leonie, forcing the stiffened muscles of her face into a casual smile. “He always manages to take care of himself. Of course, I'm glad Dennis went along.”

When she had shut the door behind Leonie she knew she was afraid. The men had been gone for nearly four hours. It would soon be starting to get dark; they should be on their way home.
They
What if it were not
they
, but
he?
She fought like a drowning person to prevent herself from being dragged down by the powerful undertow of her dread. But there was no denying that the remoteness of Nils since he had come home was unlike the natural quiet thoughtfulness that had always been so much a part of him. And the way he had stood by the window while she had put his dinner on the table, his eyes distant and faraway, had there been dangerous planning behind that gaze?

Ellen had gone home with Donna after school but she should be back in a little while now. But it was almost dark enough to light the lamps when Ellen came in. “Hello, Chick,” Joanna greeted her. “Mind standing watch for a while? I'm going out to meet Nils.” As quickly as that she made up her mind. She could not stay in the house another moment and do nothing but wonder, and be afraid. She must get out, do something—

“Sure, I'll start supper, too.” Ellen sang to herself as she hung up her parka. She was very happy these days.

If nothing's happened
, she said to herself as she ran upstairs to change her clothes,
I'll have it out with Nils tonight, whether he wants to talk or not
. It was a life-giving thought, and it strengthened her as she moved with frantic haste, getting out of her skirt and into her slacks— the skirt would hamper her walking. She put on her old saddle shoes, and made herself think of each motion as she performed it. She didn't dare think ahead ; if she did, her panic would constrict her chest so that she couldn't breathe. And she needed all her breath.

She ran downstairs again, trying to appear nonchalant, and put on her jacket. “Well, I'm off! Here's hoping I meet him by Barque Cove!”
And pray God he would not be alone
.

She went out the back way, and walked across the barnyard. Once out of sight of the house she began to run. She was on her way to Sou-west Point, but not by the familiar walk along the rocks of the west side. It was not the way she had first planned to go, but it was the way her feet were now taking her, because it was a much shorter, straighter way of reaching that lonely shore. It was an old wood road cut through the woods along the very crest of the Island; when Joanna was small, her father and uncle had agreed to sell some of the Island's pulp wood, and the choppers had cut the road from above Goose Cove to the farthest limits of the woods, beyond which Sou-west Point rose to its grassy, treeless heights. It had been a long time since Joanna had followed the wood road, but as a child she had known each bend and twist of it as intimately as she knew the Bennett homestead. With her strong flashlight, she would find— she hoped with all her being that she would find— she hoped with all her being that she would find
nothing
.

She had forgotten to put anything on her head, and as the alders along the path pulled stilly at her hair, she struck out at them fiercely. When she came to the meadow she stopped for a breath, consciously flexing her shoulders; she had carried herself so tensely that there was a pain in her chest. This wouldn't do. She must relax, walk easily and without strain.

The late afternoon was clouding up, dark masses of fog and mist were rushing in from the east and hastening the dusk. Across the meadow the old fence along the rim of Goose Cove stood silhouetted against the ragged sky. She walked toward it, trying to keep an even pace. Her shoes sank in water in places; at other spots the long dead grass tangled with fiendish persistence around her ankles.

The Bennett homestead looked massive and foursquare on its rise to the left of Goose Cove. As she looked up at it, a light appeared in the sitting room. Her brother and his family were settling in for the night, and if the east wind beat gustily against the seaward windows, and the rain came, it would only enhance the security they felt within the four walls. The house was for others; for her there were the woods, beginning at the right of the cove and marching thickly and blackly down the Island to Sou-west Cove. It was growing colder— or was the cold within herself?

At last she reached the broken-down rail fence and climbed over it. There was a noisy chug on the shore, and before long there would be the crash of white breakers in the dusk. She turned away from the beach and went up into the woods.

She found the beginning of the wood road before it was dark enough to use her flashlight. Then, with the strong beam to pick out the trail for her, she set off. It was impossible to walk. The darkness, the immense quiet that surrounded her as soon as she had left the shore, impelled her to move quickly. It was as if the very stillness fed her fears and she must run along the rutty, overgrown path, scrambling in frantic haste over trees that had blown down during the years when she had never come here.

She had to stop to rest, finally. She sat down on a log, switched off her light, and tried to calculate where she was, in relation to the shore. She must be at least half-way to the end of the woods, she thought in relief that was almost painful. . . . It was very quiet here, and black, after she'd put off the light. The blackness accentuated the silence. This was the very heart of the woods. Far off, along the rocky shores, the surf was white in the dusk, and there was the sound it made, and the rising wind; and there'd be the first glimmer of Matinicus Rock Light against the thick night.

But here there was nothing. In the spring or summer there would have been birds. Now there was no living thing to make a sound except herself. Her feet were wet, and because they were not moving, they began to feel cold, and the chill was creeping through her body. She switched on the light again and stood up.

After that, though she still hurried, time seemed to go backward, and there were always the woods around her with no sign of thinning out. She realized that the network of trails and paths she had known so well had grown over with ferns and blackberry bushes since there was no traffic here. Sometimes she felt a little confused; she found herself several times at an impasse, unable to break through a thickly laced wall of spruce that meant she had followed an opening which wasn't a path at all. Then she must find her way back to the wood road again. At least she could always recognize the wood road, because of the deep ruts where they'd brought the pulpwood out through the mud.

But the wood road had branched off too; she remembered now how many of those little side roads there were, reaching to the various cuttings. It had been fun to walk here once, to spend a whole afternoon wandering along the paths, with the sun falling in a pattern of misty gold through the trembling birch leaves, and the ground covered with young, tender green things, ferns and bunchberries and a hundred other little plants that grew wherever the sun could reach between the spruces. It had been lovely then, and the raspberries had grown huge and purple-red, quivering in the cuttings, their fragrance warm and rich in the still hot air. The trees had been alive with birds—

But this was March, the birds were gone, and on Bennett's Island there was not even a rabbit to give some life to the woods. Besides, it was confusing and difficult to try to keep to the right road when vision was confined to the small radius of the flashlight, and the landmarks had changed with the years.

But I'll come out to the shore some time
, she argued with herself. Now she concentrated solely on that, she tried not to think of Nils and Dennis. She could think of them after she found them.
One thing at a time
, she cautioned herself.

Her feet were cold— they'd been wet ever since she'd crossed the meadow— and her legs were aching with weariness. She pushed on stubbornly, expecting that every twist of the path would bring her to the place where the trees thinned out suddenly, and through them she would see Matinicus Light. But with every turn, the flashlight's ray shone on impenetrable ranks of spruces that grew thicker and more hostile.