High Tide at Noon (42 page)

How long she sat there she didn't know, but her legs cramped when she slid down off the rock and went up to the house. She lit a lamp in the kitchen, and sat down to read until Alec came. Sometimes he stayed out all night, and came in with his face set against her, already on the defensive. After tomorrow he wouldn't have to feel like that, because there'd be no one to set his face against.

It was curious how alone she felt as she sat there with her book in her lap. But it was not the aching loneliness she had lived with for so long. Everybody, even the family, seemed far away in little worlds of their own. And as she waited here, in her own little world, she must have slept, for suddenly she was waking up with a start, her heart pounding. and Alec was coming through the door.

The lamplight was a sickly thing, with the spring dawn flushing the sky outside the windows. She sat up, rubbing her cramped neck, and her book dropped to the floor. The fire was out. Without a word Alec went to the stove and began to put kindling into it. His face was a queer gray color, his eyes strange. She watched him calmly. He had been staring at cards too long, she thought.

He got the fire going and put the teakettle on to heat. Still there was silence in the kitchen; he seemed not to realize she was there. Joanna wondered how to begin to tell him about her decision. Perhaps she had better wait until he had coffee. He looked as if his head ached terribly. She stood up and went over to the sink to wash the sleep out of her eyes.

“Joanna,” he said, and the strangeness of his voice turned her around. He came toward her, so the light from the east window fell full upon his face, and she caught her breath.

“Are you sick, Alec?” she asked him swiftly.

“No.” His eyes were bloodshot, and there were deep lines carved from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. “No, I'm not sick, Joanna. Just not crazy any more.”

She didn't know what to say to him, so she waited. His words came from his throat with a harsh weariness. “I'm not playing poker any more. Not any game of cards. Remember when you told me to burn the pack I carried?”

He went back to the stove, took the cards from his pocket, and dropped them in. She saw the flames leap up, then he put the cover on again and came back to her. “I'm through, Joanna,” he said.

She put her hands on his arms and looked at him, trying to read what lay behind the gaunt weariness of him. He looked ten years older than the Alec she'd married, and this was still a new Alec; neither the lover, nor the man in the delirium, but someone else.

“What's happened, Alec?” she asked him quietly, and he shook his head.

“I've told you.” A gleam of the old smile struggled through. “Turned over a new leaf, if you want to call it that. Let's have some breakfast. Then I'm going to bed for a few hours before I go out to haul.”

“The boat's on the beach—”

“Where she always is, poor critter. I'll go out in the peapod, if I have to.
But I'm going to haul.”

They ate breakfast together in the early morning, with the sun coming up over the trees and setting the dew afire with diamonds in the grass. It was an odd and silent meal. He ate like a man starved, but his strangeness held, and Joanna couldn't speak. Somehow there was nothing to say, not even the most casual remark, and all the things she had planned to say were far out of her throat's reach. She couldn't say them now. Not right away.

Breakfast over, Alec went upstairs. “Call me about half-past nine,” he told her. “Looks like a good day to haul.” The door shut behind him. Joanna, clearing the table, knew that whatever had happened, she couldn't go away today. She would have to wait a while, until she had things straight in her head again.

T
HE SPRING CRAWL CAME
, and the Island was plunged into a fever of activity. New traps of yellow wood slid overboard from the washboards, set close around the Island now, among the rocks where the kelp grew the thickest. After the long winter, when the lobsters went out to sea and lay in the mud at bottom to keep warm, some unknown instinct sent them toward the mainland to spawn, and the men on the outer islands made good on this mass migration.

The Island was up and working at dawn these days. There was a joyful stir everywhere; the women felt it, and turned their houses almost inside out to let the sunshine reach every corner. The children felt it, and Miss Hollis found them more than usually fiendish to handle in school.

The hauls were good and the weather fine. The price was not as high as it had been a year ago. Some of the older men worried. It wasn't natural for prices to stay down so consistently, they said. Jud Gray, always a worrier, said that if they didn't come up again in the fall, he'd have to move off to the mainland. It was expensive, keeping his girls in high school.

Alec had never offered to tell Joanna what had happened that strange night, and she didn't ask him any questions. He worked hard, much harder than he had ever worked before; a twenty-four hour day seemed too short for him. He kept
The Basket
on the beach, giving her the most thorough overhauling of her career, while he hauled his traps from a peapod. It was cruelly hard work, and long. He came home to his dinner, handed over his entire receipts to Joanna, and went down to the shore to work all afternoon on
The Basket
and bait up for the next day. At night he slept like a dead man, but he was up again at dawn. Once Joanna tried letting him sleep—he was driving himself too hard and he needed the rest. But he was furious when he woke up.

“I can't waste time sleeping!” he told her impatiently. Then he smiled at her frown and kissed her hard, and strode off to the shore without any breakfast other than coffee.

She wondered about him sometimes, but it didn't do to question the gods, she would think ruefully. It should be enough for her that he was working with the drive and energy of five men to regain all the lost ground. It was painfully slow progress; they needed so much that every bit of profit was swallowed up immediately. And
The Basket
wouldn't stand much more patching, no matter how thorough he was. But already there were a few dollars in the money box, and this time she dared to hope.

To be proud of him; to know the Island and the family were watching him and seeing how hard he worked—and to know in her own heart that there was truly iron in him somewhere—it made the scrimping and saving as easy as a song.

Little by little the boys started to come back to the house. She never forgot the intense gladness that flooded her when she looked down toward the gate one day and saw Alec, Owen, and Philip coming up the lane. Her eyes stung, and she knew then how much it had really hurt her when there was trouble between her brothers and her husband. Seeing them together like this, seeing Owen walking with his hand on Alec's shoulder, watching them laugh together in the clear April sunshine, she felt a tremendous lift of her heart.

She had coffee ready for them when they came in, and fresh cookies. The cookies were a symbol of the new order of things. It had been a long time since she'd dared to use eggs and shortening and sugar for something that was purely a luxury.

They sat around the kitchen talking as they had always talked. Owen groused good-naturedly; this time it was the price of lobsters.

“What are you growling about?” Philip asked lazily. ‘You brought in your hundred seventy-five pounds, didn't you?”

“Yes, but listen—last year at this time they were thirty-five, and now it's twenty-five. They haven't been up to thirty for a hell of a while, and they never used to go below it!”

“They'll go up again,” Philip promised, and Alec said, with a rueful tilt of an eyebrow, “I wish they'd be quick about it, then. Pete's charging a god-awful price for pot warp, and if I don't get a new suit of oilskins pretty soon, I might's well go to haul in my undershirt.”

“Pete's making a damn good living out here, running the only store,” said Owen.

Philip tipped back in his chair. “Good coffee, Jo. I don't know about Pete. There's a lot of bills owed him. He's carried Marcus Yetton along for years.”

“So has Father,” Joanna put in.

“Well, that's none of our business,” said Philip, smiling at her. “Listen, Alec, there's some oilclothes kicking around up at the house, nobody wearing them.”

Alec shook his head. “Thanks, but I'd rather buy and pay for 'em. Pay as you go, that's what I'm sailing under.” He looked pleasant but firm, and Joanna was proud of him. This was the Alec she had looked for a long time ago.

“Stiff-necked son of a bitch, ain't he?” demanded Owen. “I been talking to him all day, trying to convince him there's no sense hanging on to that old engine of his.”

“What's he supposed to do, send off for a brand-new Kermath or something?” Joanna asked him hotly. “She'll do all right with a little care and attention.”

“Like you, huh?” He grinned at her. “I notice you're kind of blooming these days, since your old man took to staying in of nights.” He laughed at her sudden angry flush, and turned back to Alec. “Now that engine I took out of the
Old Girl
—she'll run like a bird with half the fussin' you've done over that wreck of yours. Just try her out, that's all! Rent it if you don't want to borrow it—but just try it.”

Alec stared at the table, ran a lean hard hand through his hair. There were drawbacks to this new Alec; Joanna didn't know what he was thinking, she didn't know what changes had taken place behind the curiously bright hazel eyes and the easy smile. And this man who drove himself from dawn until long after dark was not a man to talk about himself.

“Listen, Alec, you can haul twice as much,” Owen said. “Sure, a peapod's all right for a kid with fifty traps, but how many new traps did you put overboard this spring? You must have well over a hundred, and building more all the time—” He leaned across the table. “I'm not trying to give you anything, if that's what you're scared of. But rent it, like I said, and see what happens.”

Alec looked at him, then at Joanna, whose lips quivered a little in excitement and eagerness. He said, smiling, “It's a deal, Cap'n Owen.”

They had fresh coffee all around to drink to the bargain. Then there was a new problem to discuss. Alec was running short of bait. Back in the fall, while he was on the seining crew, he had laid in a good supply of herring. But he'd let Jake Trudeau have some when he was short, and Marcus Yetton, and Forest Merrill—in fact, all the usual bad providers, who were perpetually short of something. The boys had warned him against it, but it seemed to be an utter impossibility for Alec to say
no
to anyone.

“I suppose it won't do any good to tell you to help yourself to mine, said Philip. “But if you want to get your own bait—well, what about the flounders down at Pirate Island? Nobody ever goes after 'em, and it's coming time—in May they come to sun themselves in Spanish Cove. It's shallow there, and the bottom's flat, and you can go along in a peapod and spear the things.”

Alec stood up. “How long will it take us to set that engine of yours on the beds, Owen?”

“Couple of days. Why? You in a hurry?”

“Let's get started, then. Those flounders won't wait forever.” The others went through the door, but Alec held back until he and Joanna were alone for an instant. He took her into his arms.

“Love me, Jo?”

“What do you think?” She hugged him with all the hard, passionate strength of her young body. “I love you more all the time.” Words trembled on her lips, words that must be said. She whispered, “Alec, I'm so
proud
of you, too.”

She saw for an instant the way his face changed, before he tightened his arms and crushed her head down against his shoulder. He kissed her neck, her cheek, her hair, with a sudden desperate hardness, and then as suddenly let her go. He went out without another word. But she could still feel the pressure of his arms and his mouth, she still saw that strange look, and wondered at it. It hadn't been a happy thing.

She went out to walk in the May afternoon. The wild pear tree at the gate was in bud, and soon the strawberry blossoms would cover the ground in little white stars, promise of fragrant red sweetness to come in June. The harbor shimmered and rippled in alternate sun shine and shadow as the clouds moved in dazzling masses across the sky.

She stopped by the gate to look around and sniff the ineffable scent of May on the Island. Her own house gleamed whitely against the dark spruces on the hillside, there was a sheen of blue through a break in the trees above the little cove; the Sorensen house and barn looked somnolent in the afternoon sunshine, a gull chanted lazily overhead, the sparrows twittered and chirped in the wild pear tree, and Gunnar's cow lifted up her voice in a paean of thanks as David came across the field with a pail of fresh water for her.

Joanna watched the yellow-haired boy and the cow in their silent comradeship, felt the sunshine warm on her face, and the clear green-scented breath of May, and she knew in that instant something which hadn't come to her for a long time; it was as if the presence of the Island slipped into her again. She stood in a little hush at the very center of this glowing world, not wanting to move or speak.

David saw her, whistled and waved; she waved back, and the instant had gone. She walked down the lane toward the harbor. Things are right for us now, she thought. Really right. The Island will look out for its own.

As she came past the Birds', Simon was coming down to the lane, Ash a little behind him. Joanna met him face to face. For a second they looked at each other without speaking.

Quite suddenly she smiled. “Hello, Simon . . . Ash.” She nodded, and walked by them. She was inwardly rejoicing; she knew just how Owen and Mark felt when they walked down the road as if the world were their exclusive property—and fenced in, too. At this moment the world belonged to her, Joanna Douglass, and Simon Bird didn't exist in it any longer. He had been shut out of it forever in a dawn she would remember till she died; the dawn when Alec had come home and dropped a pack of cards in the fire.