High Tide at Noon (55 page)

Summer came in with a June of heavy, clinging fogs that lay over the bay for ten days at a time without lifting. The gardens flourished, but the men couldn't get out to haul. It didn't make much difference, Owen growled, slouched morosely by the stove reading Western story magazines; no lobsters out there anyway.

On the mainland, Mark and Stevie were making enough to pay for their meals, and their room on Wharf Street—a location that distressed Donna. The Closed Season had been lifted, so they expected to sell lobsters all summer long. David and Pierre worked to supply them, going together in the boat that had been Nils'. She was a big boat, and expensive to run; when you saw the boys going out in their peapods on a calm bright morning, you knew they didn't have enough money to buy gas.

It was in that wet June that Kristi went ashore to marry Peter Gray. Karl hired a Brigport girl to help his mother around the house. She was a lusty, strapping girl with a carefree manner, and Owen and Hugo, after eight months of being on their good behavior with the schoolteacher, found a new interest to fill the long summer evenings.

Lifting the Closed Season didn't make any material difference. It certainly didn't keep the lobsters from their usual summer preoccupation with shedding and breeding. To save gas, it was better to go hauling only two or three times a week. The rest of the time, most of the men went trawling or handlining. But fish weren't bringing in a high price either, unless a man were lucky enough to get a big halibut once in a while.

A curious apathy lay in the air. In other summers, when the men loafed around the shore or in the fish houses, they had talked of plans for the fall; how many more traps they'd set out in September, the new engine they wanted to put in, how they thought they'd try setting their pots to the south'ard or the west'ard this winter. They could sit in the sun and smoke, and live without haste, secure in the knowledge they'd earned the right to take life easily.

Now if they talked about the fall, they left words in midair and looked out across the sunlit bay at the mainland, and then began to talk about something else. Joanna, hearing them, thought it was as if they had their fingers crossed; as if they weren't sure of anything any more.

So the summer idled by, with its long bright afternoons and its nights thick with stars or washed with moonlight. The mailboat still came three days a week. But she didn't bring as much freight to Pete Grant as she used to. He ordered only the barest necessities. There were times when there was no soda pop, and—catastrophe indeed—no ice cream. There was no profit in it, he said. The candy counter was bare at times, and you couldn't always get the kind of tobacco or cigarettes you smoked.

When Joanna was a thin brown ten-year-old in Owen's old overalls, it had been one of her chief delights to go to the store for her father, and bring back a can of copper marine paint or a pound of threepenny nails. In those days Pete's back shop had been a paradise smelling deliciously of the green twine ranged in neat pyramids, the glistening oilskins the color of daffodils, shiny black rubber boots hung from the ceiling; there were the boxes of shiny new nails she wanted to sift through her fingers, the brightly polished tools, the glass toggles like big green bubbles, the cans of paint along the shelves, and in the corners the coils of new rope that smelled so good to a short freckled nose.

Now, more than often, there weren't any threepenny nails, or a suit of oilclothes in the right size, or even twine of the special thickness a man asked for. The back shop was bare in these days, when one remembered the riches it used to hold.

It struck a certain homesick sadness into Joanna's heart as she stood by the candy counter one rainy morning, and looked through the doorway into the back shop. Nothing else could show so vividly how the Island had changed. Charles, standing beside her in his dripping oilclothes, waiting for his mail, said curiously, “What are you staring at? You look as if you'd lost your last friend.”

She nodded toward the back room. “Remember how it used to be?”

“Pete's having it tough like the rest of us,” Charles said.

It was almost time for the
Aurora B
. to blow outside the point, and the store was crowded with wet oilskins and sou'westers. Philip left the group around the stove and came over to Charles and Joanna, lifting an eyebrow toward Owen, who was laughing with Sigurd. “Nothing bothers him, anyway.”

“As long as there's a woman to chase, and he makes enough to buy his liquor with,” said Joanna. “I wonder if he'll ever marry.”

“God help the woman,” said Philip piously. “I used to say that about Charles' wife, but he's turned out pretty good. Beats her where it won't show, anyway.”

“Looks as if I'll starve her to death next winter if things don't pick up,” muttered Charles.

Nathan Parr was at the counter, looking very small and wizened in comparison with Pete, who loomed above him and said, “Well, chummy, what'll ye have?”

“Guess I'll have me a ball of marlin, before the boat gets here and you start rammin' around like a man of affairs.” Nathan's chuckle was wheezier than ever. “Got to knit up some heads—almost think the damn lobsters been eatin' the heads, 'stead of the bait.”

“They don't like pollack, do they, Nathan?” Philip said.

“Nope! Damn things want beefsteak, I guess.” Nathan's eyes watered at his own wit. He hitched up his sagging overalls. “A plug of Black B.L., if ye got any on hand, Pete. And I'll lug home a bunch of them spruce laths you got layin' around out there in the shed.”

He tucked the tobacco in his pocket and picked up the marlin. As he started toward the door, Pete cleared his throat. “Forgettin' somethin', chummy?”

“Nope, Pete. Got all I need, thanks.”

Pete cleared his throat again. He seemed oddly embarrassed. “You intendin' to pay somethin' on account, Nate?”

There was a sharp hush in the store. Over by the post office, Sigurd and Owen became absorbed in reading the government notices; those nearest the canned stuff were engrossed in the labels. The rest looked everywhere but at each other, and no one said anything at all. Nathan, at the door, turned slowly and went back to the counter, a stunned astonishment on his weatherworn old face.

“I don't reckon I can pay anything right now, Pete. You know how it is with me. Soon's I get these pots fixed up an' overboard, though—” His voice faded, but his arm tightened on the marlin.

“Sorry, chummy.” Pete looked at a point over Nathan's tattered sou'wester. “But I got a new rule in this establishment. Had to make it in self-defense. No more credit.”

Joanna felt the shock that ran through the store; it vibrated in herself.
No more credit
. Why, over half the people left on the Island depended on Pete Grant to live, paying him a little when they could. She saw Marcus Yetton's face grow bleak, and scared under its bleakness. His eyes shifted toward the little boy Julian. There were six more besides Julian.

Nathan put the marlin on the counter with trembling hands and took out the tobacco. He turned and walked out of the store, lurching slightly with a new unsteadiness.

Someone let out a long breath, and Pete said angrily, “You don't think I want to do this, do ye? But I got to. Christ Almighty, you ought to see my books! I ain't gettin' one goddam cent more out of this store than you fellas are gettin' from your traps. Prob'ly I get less. You keep chargin' stuff, even when you got nothin' comin' in.
Me
—” Pete stalked furiously into the post office, “me, I have to keep on orderin', and every goddam mail day I get enough bills to paper this whole store!”

“We pay when we got the money to pay with,” said Maurice.

“Sure—when you don't send off for a quart, first. And it might int'rest you to know that the marlin people don't intend to send me any more twine till I pay somethin' on account. So it looks like you fellas'll have to give, if you want to knit any more heads.”

“Who's to blame if the lobsters don't crawl and we don't get enough for 'em anyway to pay for the gas?” demanded Owen.

“I ain't blamin' anybody. And I can't very well pay you guys twenty cents a pound when I don't get more'n fifteen.” Pete loomed large in the post office window, his face dark red. “Listen, I ain't gettin' any fun out of stoppin' credit. But I got to. Talk about keepin' your head above water—I barely got my nose out. I can't do it, chummy! That's all there is to it!”

The
Aurora B
. whistled outside the point. The mail had come.

Joanna and her three brothers walked home together after the mail had been given out. The east wind blew a cold rain against their faces and made conversation difficult. At the anchor they stopped and left a few things on Nathan's doorstep—the laths, the twine, and the tobacco. Nathan came out before they got away.

“What's all this?” There was water in his faded eyes. “Look, I ain't allowin' nobody to give me nothin'.”

“Nobody's giving you anything, you old coot,” Philip told him. “It's just a loan. You can pay us when you come out a little ahead.”

They went off through the drenched grass to the road before he could say anything else. Joanna looked back and saw him standing there, the red bandanna in his hand a brilliant splotch of color against the grayness of the shack and the day. He wiped his eyes, and Joanna didn't look back again.

The marsh was bright green with summer now, spattered with blue flag that stood tall and vivid in the rain. The wind drove in from Schoolhouse Cove, and the Bennetts bent their heads against it.

“Pete didn't have to come out like that, with the store full of people,” Joanna said furiously. “Who does he think he is?”

“I can see Pete's viewpoint.” Philip was always moderate. “There's some men on this Island haven't paid him anything since the flood. I suppose he figured he'd get them all told at once.”

“Well, when Pete comes right out flatfooted and says no more credit, you can see how lobstering's gone to hell,” said Charles. “If Pete holds out another year, it'll be something for the record.”

“Listen, they can't go any lower.” Owen laughed at them. “You're a bunch of damned crape-hangers. The tide goes out just so far and then it comes in again. Cripes, we'll all be rich again a year from now!”

Charles tilted a skeptical eyebrow. “You think you're rich as long as you can tumble some little bitch like that hired girl of Sorensens', and get drunk once a week. That's all you want.”

“Yeah?” Owen stood still in the road and tapped Charles hard on the chest. “I can remember when you were pretty good at getting drunk. And at that tumbling business too.”

“I'm not saying I wasn't. But that's gone by now—I've got a wife and kids to look after, and I don't intend to have one of those Marcus Yetton rigs. A year from now we'll all be rich—
hell!
We'll be living from hand to mouth, you mean.” Charles removed Owen's hand from his chest. “Well, I don't plan to live like that. I'm getting out while I've still got something to take with me.”

“Are you fellas going to stand down here in the rain and eye each other like a couple of tomcats?” asked Philip. “Come on. Where do you plan to go, Charles?”

“Seining somewhere to the west'ard. Want to go with me?”

Joanna squeezed in between Philip and Charles and linked arms with them. She looked long and hard at Charles' stubborn dark face. “Charles, you wouldn't
really
go away.”

“Why not? My God, Jo, what is there for me to stay for? I can find a nice place ashore somewhere between here and Portland, pick up a good boat, and make some money. There's plenty of it in seining, too.”

“Do you hate the Island that much?”

“What is this, Jo? Witness stand?” He grinned down at her. “Hell, I don't hate the Island. It's home, isn't it? I'd never leave it if I didn't know I could make a better living for Mateel and the kids elsewhere. The Island's dead, Jo. It was all right for Grandpa and Father and all the other old-timers, but things have changed. The waters around here are fished out.”

“I still say you're wrong,” Owen said stubbornly, and Joanna felt her heart warm to him. Philip, on her other side, said, “I'm willing to give the Island a chance. Maybe you're right, Cap'n Charles. But it's damned expensive to start in anywhere else, when you're just as likely to come trailing home without a dime in your dungarees. Come on up and have some coffee before you start trekking for the Eastern End.”

At the house they told Stephen and Donna about Pete's credit troubles. But nothing was said about Charles' plans.

Nothing was said of those plans for a week. Charles went ashore on the
Aurora B
. to see a doctor about his hand—a quarrelsome lobster had pinched his finger and started a minor case of blood-poisoning. He didn't come back on the next boat, but Mateel had a letter from him. She brought it up to the house and showed it to the family. His hand was fine, and Mark and Stevie were fine, too; they were getting enough to eat out of their business, anyway. And he'd be back on the next boat for sure.

The evening of the day he came back, he and Mateel walked up from the Eastern End to spend a few hours. He told his father and the other boys that night what had held him on the mainland. He had gone along the coast toward Portland, on the track of a good boat he'd heard about—a big one, bigger than the
Gypsy
, big enough to hold a crew of five men and go seining for herring, mackerel, and pollack. He was all set to go; there was nothing to hold him back except that the present owner wanted cash, and he didn't have enough laid by to pay for it all in one crack.

He talked fast and with enthusiasm, but there was a nervous edge to his voice. His eyes met his father's again and again; still Stephen listened in polite but unreadable silence. At last Charles leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.