Storm Tide (13 page)

Jud dragged out his red and white bandanna and wiped his glistening face. “I was jest liftin' a tub to the washboards, and I like to threw the whole business straight in his face. I'm tellin' ye, right then and there I didn't care if I never sold a lobster to Ralph Fowler. But half the haul was Caleb's, so I never said nothin' more.” On the edge of the table his thick knotted brown hand, curved as a fisherman's hand is always curved, made a fist. “Ralph Fowler wants to be careful—goddamned careful—what he says to me in the future. Or else he's likely to feel some day like he's in hell with no claws.”

When he finished there was a silence in the kitchen, except for his quick harsh breathing. Stevie said softly, “He's a son of a bitch.” Joanna, her hands clenched under the table, glanced at Nils. His face said nothing at all as he pushed back his chair and went over to the window looking out at the dark sea and the frosty burning of the stars above it. He sat down, picked up a filled traphead needle from the window sill, and began to work on a half-finished head which dangled from the hook. Jud's eyes followed him, fastened on the back of Nils' fair head, his strong clean-cut neck and square shoulders, as if there were no one else in the room.

“What do you think about it, Nils?” he asked.

“Looks like Ralph picked you out to take over because you've got a quick temper, and he knew he could gowel you,” said Nils without turning around. “How was it in the store?”

“And that's somethin' else!” said Jud with renewed vigor. “I didn't want much in the store, but Caleb, he wanted some fresh meat, and I told him the mailboat most always brings some. So he asked Randolph for it, and Randolph, lookin' like a gentleman with his white shirt and his necktie, he smiles, and says he's sorry, but it's all gone already. Caleb, he's got no reason to doubt him, so we went across to look at the candy counter, in case they was somethin' Marion and Vinnie'd like, and some old hen floats in there—Sophie Dyer, I think 'twas—and wants some meat. . . .” Jud's faded eyes were suffused redly with his wrath. “Does he tell
her
he's all out of it? No, he starts namin' off all the different kinds he's got! I tried to make Caleb go over and show Randolph up, but Caleb, he's too proud. ‘If my money ain't good enough for him,' he says, ‘he don't need to take it.' ”

“Caleb must have a funny idea of Islanders,” said Nils. “Brigport Islanders. First Tom with the bait, and then this. . . .”

“What do ye think makes 'em act like this?” said Jud insistently.

“They've got a mad to get over. They will. Give 'em time.” Nils left off his knitting and came back to the table. He put his hand on Jud's shoulder.

“Jud, you going to lose any sleep over it tonight?”

Jud shook his head slowly. “I figure not to. But God A'mighty, I never knew anybody'd get mad just because some of us came home!”

Joanna, looking at his stocky, dejected shoulders, and grizzled head, the creases of angry bewilderment across his forehead, opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again. What she had to say to Nils she could say when they were alone.

A
FTER
J
UD HAD GONE
, Stevie went to the woodshed to split some kindling for the morning. Nils came over to the sink where Joanna was wiping the last of the dishes, and she felt his fingers close gently on her elbow.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“You ought to know,” she answered. She felt the familiar crusading excitement rising in her. It was a good feeling. She liked it. It was time for action, to do battle, to come out of it untouched and victorious. Nils' glance moved over her vivid face, his fingers tightened on her arm.

They heard Stevie whistling as he came through the woodshed. Nils' fingers moved away; he smiled faintly, and went back to his trapheads.

“Time to crawl under the kelp,” Stevie said. “If Mark had his way, we'd be buildin' pots at three in the morning, instead of five.” He stood in the middle of the kitchen, very tall, and narrower in build than most of the Bennetts, and stretched with slow delight. “Dunno why I sleep so good here. Unless it's because I'm home.”

“That's it,” said Joanna, and Stevie dropped his arm around her shoulders. “For the last ten years,” she said, “I've been surprised because you're taller than I am. Once I could spank you.”

“With a kind of a struggle,” said Stevie. He squeezed her shoulders briefly. “But I wouldn't put it past you to try it again, if you thought I needed it.”

“I'm going to take a lath to a lot of people around here,” said Joanna. “And very soon, too.”

“You mean the Fowlers?” He released her shoulders and went over to sit on the window sill where Nils was knitting trapheads. His thin dark face was alert and eager. “Hey, that was a funny way for them to act over there, Nils. What do you make of it? Why pick on Jud?”

Joanna stood behind Nils' chair, her hands tense on the back of it. “Because Jud would get mad,” she said. “If he'd said that to Nils, Nils wouldn't even bother to repeat it. They'll find a different way to bother Nils.”

“Hey, what are you driving at?” demanded Stevie. He knew that look of hers: lifted chin, the particular deepening intensity of her dark Bennett eyes. Nils didn't look around. He kept on knitting; the flat wooden needle slipped in and out of the green marlin meshes, pulled the twine taut with a faint sibilant sound, wove and made fast the next knot. The resinous oily scent was pleasantly mingled with the smell of the wood fire.

Joanna looked down at his fair head, and waited. . . . “You mean they'll start bothering the traps?” insisted Stevie.

“Nothing as simple as that,” said Joanna. “But they'll think of something. If Nils doesn't think of it first.”

Stevie grinned at his brother-in-law. “Seems like old times, Joanna teamin' us around again.”

Joanna wished she could see Nils' face. It would be easier to talk if she could see his face and not the back of his head, its hair very fair against the warm tan of his neck, and his strong shoulders under his clean chambray shirt. She wished Stevie would go to bed, and then she could sit where he was sitting now, on the wide window sill, so she could face Nils.

But she couldn't stop now, and wait until Stevie had gone. Besides, he had a right to know what she thought, and what she knew she must say. Her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the back of Nils' chair.

“It's the Fowlers,” she said quietly. “The Fowlers, and I don't know who else on Brigport is in it. Tom Robey is, because I think he's letting Randolph Fowler tell him what to do. But they want to get rid of us over here. It's more than a mad that they'll get over. . . . Randolph's just as determined to drive us out of here as he was to drive Tim Merrill out of the store over there, and to get rid of Gil Marsh as a lobster buyer.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the traphead needle stop. Stevie was watching her, his thin brown face absorbed as he followed her words. Nils said evenly, “Go on. I'm listening.”

It was to him she spoke now; he was the one who must believe her, and not think she was dreaming up things. “Nils, at frrst they thought we were just playing around over here, you and me. But the trouble started when Jud and Caleb came. It's been getting worse. Can't you see it?” She flicked her tongue over lips that kept drying. “If Bennett's keeps building up again, they know what'll happen. Our own store, our own lobster buyer. . . . And there's a war coming in which the Fowlers can make a fortune from the lobster business—especially if they have free run of these waters. I don't think it's all of Brigport . . . I hope it isn't. Just the Fowlers, and their boys, and the young crowd that don't go by any laws and never did.”

Nils swung around in his chair and looked up at her, his blue eyes steady on hers. “You think they're going to make things uncomfortable for us? Try to make it so hard for us to get a living that we'll leave?”

She nodded, and at once her voice escaped its level calm. “That's it! Make things disagreeable and inconvenient, and even go farther than that, till they wear us down. They don't want us to have a buyer here, buying thousands of pounds of lobsters and making a lot of money that could go into Fowler pockets. And the more people come here, the sooner the buyer will come—”

“Makes sense to me,” Stevie said. “Just like somethin' those bastards would think up. Well, if they think they're goin' to get me off Bennett's Island, they're in for a hell of a surprise!”

“What Stevie says is right,' said Nils. “Nobody can budge us. We've been through something like this before, haven't we? And when they know they can't budge us, they'll get tired of it. They don't dare go outside the law, and they'll run out of ideas pretty soon.”

“Oh, sure!” said Joanna bitterly. “They can't budge us, because we're home. We know them, and we can hang on through everything! But what about the others? Caleb and Vinnie? The Fennells? What if Mark's wife doesn't feel like going without, and fighting and worrying all the time? What about Jud? You saw how he was tonight. He's getting old, and he can't fight back!”

“Joanna, we don't need to fight,” Nils said patiently. “Let Randolph wear himself down to a nub—he can't hurt us. In the long run he can't do us any harm. None of 'em—Fowlers or the young gang—can go openly outside the law without a warden coming down on their necks. Don't you think they know it?”

“We've got to fight for anything we want in this world!” Joanna said. “Nils, I know what you think. You've got things by sitting and waiting—” The instant she said it she saw his eyes darken, she saw the infinitesimal lift at the corner of his mouth, and she felt her whole tense body grow hot, as if her pounding blood was suffusing every inch of her skin. Oh, yes, he had waited for her, without fighting, unless you could call his stubborn, passive patience a battle, and now she was his. . . . At least she had his name, and he had a right to her body.

She was shocked suddenly by the way she felt; for she was fighting Nils now, and the thought appalled her.
Nils
. They were facing each other like duelists, and Stevie, listening, didn't realize it. To him, Jo was just teaming her men around, the way she'd always done. . . .

Her pause was only momentary. She gathered her defenses together and said calmly, “Maybe we
can
wear them down. But when they start insulting the others, that's different.
They
don't have any call to accept somebody's cheap talk as if they couldn't do anything but take it.”

“What's your idea?” said Nils.

“Yep, what is it?” demanded Stevie. “You've probably got somethin' up your sleeve. I hope it's good,” he added frankly. “Not just one of those woman-ideas.”

“I want us to stop selling lobsters at Brigport altogether,” said Joanna. “I know we haven't got the capital to start buying, and we'd have a job to find a company to back us. But what's to prevent all the Bennett's men from earring their lobsters and taking them ashore once a week? One man could take the whole business, turn about.” This was it; this was her stride, never a fight without a plan. She felt calm and easy and sure of herself; she smiled at her men.

“How about gas and oil? Trap stuff? Rope?” Nils questioned her. “You don't think Ralph will supply us if we don't take him our lobsters.”

“Whoever buys the lobsters inshore can look out for that,” she assured him. “And they will, too. You know it as well as I do. Gas and oil—” she paused. “Well, what about those tanks of Pete Grant's, up on the hill behind the wharf?”

“They're rusted all to hell, Jo,” Stevie said. “I looked 'em over yesterday when I was around the point looking for ducks.”

“Nils, you ought to be able to think of something,” she appealed to him. He hadn't said yet that her plan was good, but that would come, because it
was
good.

“We could have it come out in drums right from the oil company,” he said slowly. “Come out as freight on the mailboat. That'd mean picking it up at Brigport, though. And our mail would still come there. . . . You see, we'd still be dependent, Jo.”

“Just till we got one of the wharves fixed, and the postoffice back, so the mailboat came down here again!” She hadn't felt so happy for a long time, she thought exultantly. What did it matter if they had to get mail and freight at Brigport—that wasn't real dependence; you weren't put in a position that could turn your food to gall and worm­wood in your mouth. She thought suddenly of groceries, but she put it hastily out of her mind. That would take care of itself. Tomorrow she would figure it out.

“You think the others will like the idea?” Nils said. “Maybe they won't. But I'll tell you the truth, Jo. It's a good plan.” She felt herself relax imperceptibly. She knew it was a good plan, she knew she could put it through, but if Nils agreed, that made things so much easier. After all, she didn't want to be a driving woman.

Stevie said, “I like it all right. Mark will, too. He can't stomach those Fowlers anyway—you ought to hear him cuss when the
Janet F
. goes up by the cove.”

“Nils, let me talk to the others,” she said confidently. “Why wouldn't they like it, anyway? They'll get all their money in one lump instead of thirty here and forty there—that's all the difference.”

“Convince 'em, if you can,' said Nils. “If you work on them the way you work on me, they won't stand a show.”

Stevie stood up, stretching. “Holy cow, I'm tired, but my mind isn't. What a woman . . . huh, Nils?”

“She's all right,” said Nils, and smiled at Joanna with his eyes. And she felt a quick stab of wonder at what he must be thinking behind that glance. Sometimes it seemed to her, in strange, swift, and somehow lonesome instants like this one, that she had never known Nils at all.