The Whiskey Tide (10 page)

     
"Oh, Billy!" Kate Hinshaw bit her lip. "You're too young. It could be dangerous." She looked to Joe for help. "He's only a few years older than my little brother!"

     
Billy's freckles stood out on the desperate whiteness of his face. He clung to the foresail rope, a hard-working kid whose slight frame might never fill out and whose nerve Joe could vouch for. Shaking dark curls Joe looked from the boy to Kate.

     
"In the world we come from, Miss Hinshaw, Billy's a man. He may have a stiff muscle or two from lifting the booze, but he'll do okay."

     
She caught the mainsail boom and shifted it adroitly to match the breeze.

     
"Well, then. That makes two crew."

     
Joe's jaw dropped, but before he could speak, her eyes widened with indignation.

     
"Surely you didn't suppose I intended just to be a passenger. I can trim sail, I can take the helm, I can navigate."

     
Her logic was flawless. But he'd never sailed with a woman. His aunt and girl cousins didn't set foot on a boat. She wasn't strong enough; the open Atlantic was nothing like the placid coastal waters to which she was accustomed; and whereas he and Billy hadn't much to lose if they landed in jail, she'd be disgraced.

     
"She is awful good, Joe." Billy spoke nervously. "She and Mr. Hinshaw and Miss Aggie sailed all the way down to Newport last summer."

     
It was only the seductive pitch of the boat beneath him that kept him from saying "no" outright. He had fancied himself a lover of engines, but the schooner's beauty dazzled him. And when would he get such a chance again?

     
"Take the wheel," he said, not without misgivings. He tested rigging and booms, regretting the slick soled street shoes which made him take care with his footing. Compound pulleys, which took less muscle to pull. She might be worn out at the end of the day, but she should be able to handle them. She was holding course well.

     
"This is how it will work then," he said quietly. "I'll call orders from wherever I happen to be. When I do, you'll obey immediately. Without question."

     
Billy's nod was prompt; hers only a second delayed. Joe was silent a moment, analyzing the strength of the wind.

     
"Boat to lee," he said suddenly.

     
Billy leaped to lower the foresail.

     
"No!" cried Kate from the wheel. "We'll go over!"

     
She was right. It was taking a risk. But he had to know how well they'd do in a crunch, and how well she'd take orders.

     
"Boat to lee!" he snapped.
"Now!"

     
"No!"

     
She held course while Billy's hands braced on the already loosened rigging, unsure whether to bring down the sail or secure it. Joe had likewise unlashed the topsail, preparing to pleat it and swing the boom with the full speed necessary. Now he saw the impossibility of the trip that had tempted him. At sea, lives depended on obeying orders.

     
Unexpectedly he felt the deck list under his feet. The boat heaved about more sharply than he'd expected. As he simultaneously grabbed for the snapping canvas and bent his weight to the boom, his street shoes slipped on the spray slickened deck. The great wooden boom eluded his grasp and swung toward him. He regained footing just in time to recapture it and blunt the blow which could have fractured his forearm.

     
"Keep going!" he yelled to Billy above the snap of canvas as they headed full into the wind.

     
A few moments later the sails were down and the boat had stabilized. Kate Hinshaw's face was drained of color. There was blood on her lip where she'd bitten it. Joe tested muscles where he'd have one hell of a bruise come evening, and no one to blame but himself. She'd done exactly as he said. Finally.

     
"I wouldn't have been much use to you if you'd broken my arm," he said as he brought his breathing under control

     
"If you'd broken it, you wouldn't have been good enough to trust with the boat," she said in a small voice.

Six

     
The few bites Kate managed at dinner rolled toward her stomach like boulders. When her mother inquired if she was ill Kate saw an opportunity to hide her absence. Illness. Perfect. She waited until the dishes were cleared and Aggie had gone upstairs to dress for a date. Mama, rather like an automaton, was putting out cups and the tea service for a condolence call by two of her friends. Kate slipped up the stairs.

     
Aggie's door stood slightly ajar. Aggie seldom gave it the shove required to engage its finicky latch. With a breath of nervousness Kate raised her hand and tapped.

     
As she did, there came a jarring awareness she was intimidated by her little sister. Absurd. Why should she be? She opened the door in response to a hurried summons. Aggie stood in a silk slip working a stocking up one slender leg. She unrolled it little by little using the pads of her fingers.

     
"Which is more smashing?" She nodded at two dresses laid on the bed.

     
"I don't know." At the best of times, Kate couldn't understand the importance Aggie vested in clothes. Yellow light spilled from under the rose silk shade of the lamp on Aggie's dressing table and settled on a framed photograph of their whole family on the beach two summers ago. Pa with Woody in his arms. Mama and the three girls clustered around him. Kate swallowed. "Listen, Ag. From the sounds of it we're going to lose this house unless we come up with some money."

     
Aggie tossed her cap of black hair.

     
"
Must
you be beastly? Why spoil my evening bringing that up when I can't do anything about it?"

     
"But you can! I can." Kate took three quick steps round the edge of the bed. "I'm taking
Pa's Folly
to pick up a cargo of bootleg. I'll make a thousand dollars. I'll have to use some for expenses, but I'll make enough for us to pay on the mortgage. I need your help."

     
Aggie's other leg now rested on the dressing table. A circlet of stocking hung motionless from her fingers. Emotions jitterbugged across her face. Amazement. Disbelief. And finally a closed, sulky look.

     
"Don't make me laugh. You don't have the guts to run bootleg.”

     
Kate smothered the anger rising inside her.

     
"The arrangements are made. All I have to do is take the boat. But I'll be away five nights — maybe longer.
One trip
, Aggie. And I'll have over seven hundred dollars to pay on our debts! But you have to see to it Mama doesn't know I'm away."

     
Aggie's pretty lips swelled with stubbornness.

     
"I won't be a part of it."

     
"Oh yes you will!"

     
Rosalie had entered so silently that neither noticed her until she spoke and her hand delivered a light but stinging slap to Aggie's ear.

     
"We are in desperate straits, Aggie. Mama and Woody could be out on the streets! If Kate's willing to take such a risk, the least we can do is help."

     
Beneath the soft lines of her pompadour, anger colored their elder sister's cheeks. A blouse which she'd been mending for Aggie lay over her arm. She placed it over the foot of the bed, the care of her movements not quite masking her fury. Kate had never seen her like this. Aggie looked shaken. Rosalie pressed her hands together, briefly touching her engagement ring.

     
"I'll do whatever you ask, Kate, as long as there's hope you can get us out of this... jam."

     
"Oh, I will too." Aggie sank sullenly onto the bed. "You know I was teasing."

     
Kate knew she hadn't been.

     
"Rosalie — I couldn't. If Arthur found out, it might spoil things between the two of you."

     
Rosalie drew herself up.

     
"If it does, then he's not the man I want to marry anyway."

     
Kate's knees were weak from tension. She edged onto the bed across from Aggie.

     
"All you have to do is keep Mama and Woody from knowing I'm gone. For five nights. Maybe six."

     
Rosalie's lips drew together with worry.

     
"You'll be with — ruffians. Men you don't know."

     
"Billy, our garden boy, will be with me. And the man who'll captain the ship seems decent enough. Billy knows him. He appears rather quiet... not a troublemaker." She felt an urge to cross her fingers, remembering the sight of Joe Santayna flying through a window in a fistfight.

     
"When will you go?" asked Rosalie.

     
"Tomorrow morning."

     
"Oh!" Rosalie was struggling to be brave, but the suddenness on top of everything else seemed to take her breath away.

     
With a small yawn Aggie returned to her dressing table and began to rouge her cheeks.

     
"It's not a big deal," she assured Rosalie. "Scads of people are doing it. We're the ones who'll have to be on our toes to keep Mama and Woody from knowing she's gone."

***

     
Joe's tasks took him three good hours after supper. He couldn't, after all, appear to have any immediate interest when he struck up conversation with the captain of a vessel that sometimes hauled textiles as far as Halifax. Joe bought him a drink or two from the stash under Finnegan's floorboards and took good-natured ribbing from some of the regulars about his trip through the window that afternoon. Then he went on to Constantine's where he casually gleaned a tidbit or two from Stephen Barlow, who ran dark several times a month with his lucrative cargo. Finally he called on an old man who eked out a living selling used charts and scrap brass from his rented room.

     
"Bay of Fundy, eh?" he said with a twinkle.

     
"Yep. Thinking of buying my own boat," Joe replied, unperturbed. "Another fellow and I. Want to see what we'd be up against if we got one could take us that far."

     
The charts were stained but readable. He carried them under one arm as he returned home. His ribs ached where O'Malley had kicked him and his forearm was bruised from the boom. It was almost nine. His uncles would be turning in soon unless they'd gotten the bottle out.

     
The house smelled of cod and potatoes from supper. Rose and Cecilia stirred in the hot night as he walked quietly past their couches. Vic and Drake sat at the kitchen table. His cousin Sebastian was out womanizing, he guessed.

     
"You're walking stiff," Vic observed.

     
"Yeah. Had a spot of trouble with Officer O'Malley this afternoon."

     
"So we hear," grinned Drake. "Folks can go into Finnegan's through the door or window either one now, they say."