High Tide at Noon (39 page)

Stevie flickered his lashes at her and grinned. “For God's sake,” Mark said. “Stevie thought up the whole idea!”

“
Stevie?
” She caught her breath. “You thought up this breaking and entering business? Stephen Bennett, you're every bit as bad as Owen, out there sinking those traps yesterday.”

“Mad at me, Jo?”

“I should be. I shouldn't sit here and listen to you. But you'd better tell me the rest of the mess.”

“Mark talks better than me. Take over, Mark.”

“We figured we could get Peter Gray, on account of him being a cousin to the Birds, even though he's not what you'd call proud of it. See, when George or the boys are working around the shore, they leave the shop open—you know how. Well, Peter comes along and says to George can he borrow a wrench or some other damn thing, and George, not thinking anything of it, says sure.” Mark paused dramatically. In the brief silence two crows began to shriek at each other from the treetops.

“Well” said Mark, “I'm around somewhere too. Peter comes up from the beach and gives me the high sign, and we go in. George doesn't see us—or if he does, he's too far away to stop us without coming up from the shore. So we go in, Peter gets a good look at the pots, on account of I know just where they are, and we go out.” He shrugged, and his grin held sheer delight. “Like it?”

“It's wonderful,” she said dryly. “And it would probably shut George up for quite a while. But you have to break into the shop in the first place—”

“And find out where the pots are! Cripes, they aren't going to leave 'em right out in the face and eyes of anybody that might come in.” Mark was disgusted with her stupidity. “If we know where the stutf is, we can show Peter.”

“I see,” said Joanna meekly. “But what if Peter won't do it? Maybe he won't be ready to get up and swear he saw those traps—after all, blood is thicker than water.”

“He'll do it,” Mark stated in dark tones. “Because he wouldn't want Kristi to know about him and Thea.”

Stevie's sweet smile told her to mind her own business. “And don't ask what that is, because it happened about a hundred years ago, and Peter was drunk as a coot, and nobody else knows about it but Mark and me.”

“I didn't want t o know anyway,” said Joanna. “When are you going to do all this? If you get caught, there'll be three Bennetts in court instead of just one.”

“They won't know,” said Mark, “and we won't get caught, because there'll be two of us inside to lift the stuff around if we have to, and somebody outside to watch.”

Joanna felt a definite apprehension. “And who's going t o watch?”

“You are. Well, me for the shore. Come on, Stevie.” They stood up and she looked at them, tall and black-haired against the blue October sky, and thought how calmly they had brought her into their plot, and how calmly she was accepting it, when she should be telling them they were crazy, that she forbade it, that she'd have no part of it.

“Me,” she said. “Nice you've got it all settled. So long, kids. Hope you bring in a lot of lobsters. . . . When does this little picnic come off?”

“Oh, tonight,” said Mark, grinning down at her. “We'll be around and pick you up.”

They went down the path to the gate, trying to throw each other in the tall timothy, their laughter coming back to her on the light wind. She had a moment of sharp astonishment as she thought : What am I letting myself in for? What will Alec say? And then she knew Alec wouldn't say anything, because he wouldn't know. It was rather shocking to realize she was going to deceive her husband, but there was nothing else to do. If the boys were right, and there were stolen pots in the Birds' fish house, the mess would end tomorrow, and the Birds would know at last that it was time to stop hauling other people's traps—the Bennetts' and the rest of the Island's.

She had no choice. She couldn't back out now.

After supper the seiners went out. Charles brought the
Sea-Gypsy
up to the harbor to pick them up; Alec, Philip, Tim and Peter Gray. Maurice was on the seining crew too this year, he came along from the Eastern End with Charles. At sundown they were all aboard, with food and coffee for a midnight lunch, full water jugs, and oilskins. The
Gypsy
headed out of the harbor across an apple-green and amethyst sea, and she wouldn't be back till long after midnight. If the ocean were willing, the dory and the seine dory and the big boat's cockpit would be brimming with silver—the silver of herring. On the beach the next day it would be divided among the crew, and the rest would be sold to the other men.

So far it had been a good autumn for herring, and it looked as if the men of Bennett's Island would have a good supply of bait salted away for the winter.

Joanna watched the
Gypsy
leave the harbor, and settled down to read. She avoided carefully any twinges of guilt about not telling Alec; and she refused to worry about the consequences of being discovered by the Birds. They wouldn't be caught. They couldn't be.

The boys came in shortly. “We're going to keep you company till ten o'clock,” Mark announced. “Then we have to go home. But we thought you'd be kind of lonesome, with Alec out every night.”

“You were nice to remember me,” said Joanna innocently. “Want to play pinochle?”

It was not till the end of the second game that Mark said, “We came round by the shore to get the lay of things. The Birds were fixin' to go torching, around Goose Cove Ledge, I heard Ash tell Karl. They ought to be around there by now.”

“Then let's go,” said Stevie. His cheeks were flushed with excitement. So were Mark's, and Joanna's heart was pounding. But they were laconic as they put on their jackets and turned down the lamp.

“New batteries in my light,” Mark muttered. “I've got a chisel too, but maybe we won't need it. There's a window you can open, and it's away from the road.”

As they opened the door, Joanna stopped them and they all three looked at each other in the weird, dim light of the turned-down lamp. “What if we get caught, kids?” she asked them.

“You scared?” said Mark suspiciously.

Joanna laughed. “I'm having the time of my life!” She meant it. The boys' white grins flashed, and Stevie caught her arm in a hard and loving grip.

The night was very dark and the stars were tiny frosty pin-points; and for once there were no northern lights. When they came out of the lane the wind from the harbor struck them, a bone-chilling, salty wind. The water was noisy on the ledges.

Though it was early yet, it might have been midnight. There were no lights to be seen, and for Joanna, the complete blackness made it a hundred times more dangerous; it looked as if everyone but the seiners and torchers were in bed, but you couldn't tell who might be wandering around in the darkness, you couldn't even hear a warning footfall on the path, when the sea was so loud on the shore.

Mark didn't dare use his light, and when they reached the black bulk of the Bird fish house, they stumbled through a knee-high growth of wild rose bushes and wild caraway, avoided by some miraculous sixth sense the old dory hauled up outside the door, and walked as stealthily as Indians around the other end of the shop, out to a small wharf and the edge of the harbor. The water slapped and chuckled at the spilings, and there was no shelter from the cutting wind. But the sound of wind and sea covered the slight noise of Mark's chisel, and he had the window loosened quickly enough.

Joanna held it up whlle the boys climbed in. There was one heart­stopping moment when Mark stepped in a paint bucket, but it was empty, and again the restless water had veiled the clatter. Joanna let the window down behind them and began her watch. The chances of discovery were small but they still existed. Hugging the tarpapered walls, she went around to the front, and crouched behind the old dory to listen. She was shivering, her teeth wanted to chatter, but it was neither fear nor cold.

Her mind raced at an unnatural speed, it seemed to her. What were the boys doing now? Had they found anything? Supposing they dropped a trap? Supposing the Birds couldn't find any herring and came back early? The thought sent her creeping around the fish house again, to scan the blackness that was the harbor; not complete blackness, for the sea had fire tonight, a greenish-white fire like luminous lace around the shore.

She looked cautiously through the window and saw the moving light. The boys' shadows were looming dark shapes on the walls as they examined the traps stacked against the front wall—in which, fortunately, there was no window. They were looking for burnt-in numbers and names that didn't belong to the Birds.

Time to go out front again. And it seemed to Joanna that she dropped down behind the dory just in time, that no darkness was thick enough to hide her, for someone was coming along the road from the shore.

Lying there uncomfortably in the chicory and beach peas, she recognized the step as it passed on the other side of the dory. Halting, almost limping—that was Nathan Parr, going home from his nightly game of cribbage with Pete Grant. He went on, unsuspecting of the eyes that strained to pick him out of the darkness, and Joanna breathed again.

Back to the little wharf . . . Above the roar on the ledges, she heard an engine. She knew, with a sick drop of her heart, that it was the seiners, coming back in the
Sea-Gypsy
. They hadn't found any herring. She tapped on the window and Stevie came quickly. The window stuck when they tried to raise it, and it meant some pounding, while the engine's pulse grew steadily louder.

Mark joined Stevie at the window. “For Christ's sake, what in hell ate you two doing?” he demanded in a furious whisper.

“The seiners are coming back,” Joanna hissed at him. “Get out of there, quick! They can see that light of yours when they get to the wharf.”

“I guess we've got enought to go on. Climb out, Stevie.” As each one of the boys dropped softly to the beach stones, all three were motionless for a moment, listening. For an anguished interval the window wouldn't come down again, and when it did, after frenzied tugging and much cursing on Mark's part, it came with a crash that convinced them each pane had been broken. It was too risky to use the light, and they passed their hands quickly over the window, expecting at any moment to sever an artery on a jagged edge of glass.

The
sea-Gypsy
was coming into the harbor, her masthead light swaying as she rolled in the tide rip, when they slipped between the Birds' fish house and the Grays', and came out into the road—to collide with Jud Gray.

“Hi, Jud,” Stevie said in a smooth young voice. “We've been watching for the seiners—here they come now.”

“Yep! Thought I'd go down to the shore and see how much they got. Can't be a hell of a lot, when they're back so early.” He peered at them. “Oh, it's Jo you've got with you—thought it was another boy!” They laughed obligingly with him about his mistake, and went on. Not until they reached the well did they dare to speak.

“Two minutes earlier and he'd have heard that window drop,” said Joanna. “Well, what did you find?”

“Wait till we get to the house,” Mark warned her, but the triumph in his voice was hardly hidden. She knew then that they must have found enough to stop the Birds. In all these years there had never been one atom of proof; men had guessed that the locked fish house might hold a few traps lifted from another man's string, but no one had ever found out anything. They were smooth and skillful, their stories were always plausible, there was never a chance for conclusive evidence.

“Not a goddam one of those traps under the tarp belonged to a Bird,” Mark told her when they reached the house. He stood with one foot on the stove hearth, watching her make coffee; Stevie lounged in the rocker with his legs over the arm, reading
Popular Mechanics
as if he hadn't been out of the chair all evening.

“Not a goddam one,” Mark repeated, almost admiringly. “Three of them were Owen's. And there was a good one, almost new, belonged to Jud Gray. Wait till Peter sees
that!
And a couple Karl Sorensen thought he lost in the last gale o' wind we had.” He blew out a long mouthful of smoke. “Two of Marcus Yetton's—can you beat that? Marcus with all those kids, and almost too dumb to make a living anyway.”

Joanna glanced down at Stevie's absorbed face. “You must feel pretty proud of yourself and your idea, Stevie.”

“Huh?” He winked. “Oh, Mark was the skipper. H e did all the work. Did you see this old auto engine a fella made into a battery charger?”

When Alec came in, there was coffee and pie on the table, two boys reading magazines, a wife knitting tranquilly on a new sweater for him. He looked with pleasure on the scene as he warmed his cold hands over the stove and kicked off his boots.

“I guess you didn't miss me tonight, sugar,” he said cheerfully. Joanna tilted back her head to smile at him from luminous dark eyes above the deep, lovely color in her cheeks.

“No, darling. To be truthful, I didn't miss you at all.”

I
T WAS QUEER, THE ISLAND AGREED
, how George Bird stopped growling about Owen Bennett. Just stopped talking about those traps Owen'd cut off, and never said another word about it to anybody.

The Island waited in breathless anticipation for the sheriff to arrive, but he didn't arrive. In fact, nothing at all happened, and by the time November blew down across the bay, the Island stopped wondering. The incident was closed, and no one ever knew why.

But Donna had begun to show the worry and strain of those days. She couldn't sleep, and her headaches became more frequent and more painful. Early in November, Charles, Philip, and Stephen won out by sheer force of numbers, and sent her ashore to see a doctor.

At the very last minute, Joanna went with her. Alec had two good days' hauling before she went, and made her take most of the money. He wanted her to go, he said; she deserved a little spree. As the
Aurora B
. went around the point, out of the harbor, Donna turned to Joanna with her gray-blue eyes shining, and said, “Your father and I think of Alec as one of our own boys. I couldn't have asked anyone better for you, Joanna.”