Storm Tide (17 page)

Stevie came in first, his dark face bright with his laughter. “My God, of all the landlubbers! I told him he was more farmer than fisherman.”

“Who?” said Joanna.

“Randy. Skidded on the deck when he was casting off, and went hellety larrup right overboard! Went down clip and clean – talk about your fancy diving!” His brown face sobered. “Of course it wasn't any joke when it happened. That water's cold as hell, and it was pounding in against the old wharf. He floundered some, but we fished him up.”

She wondered if Randy had kept his twinkle through that. “Where is he now? Gone home?”

“Not on your life. It's getting colder all the time, and besides, he was kind of shaky. Nils went out to put the
Janet F
. on that empty mooring, and Randy, he was set on going with him to see he got the lady settled all right. But they'll be here in a minute.” He held his hands over the stove. “My God, if my hands are cold, Randy must feel like an icicle. . . . What did you say, Jo?”

“Nothing,” said Joanna, looking perfectly composed. “I'll have to collect up some hot water bottles. And make up a bed.”

“I'll help you.” Stevie followed her as she went toward the back stairs, lamp in hand. “This is a nuisance for you, huh?”

“Accidents,” said Joanna, still serenely, “will happen.” She thought,
This is my judgment for thinking I'd got rid of him. He probably fell overboard on purpose
. And suddenly she was sure she was right. Of course they'd bring him back to the house, and he knew it.

The bed was made in the room that had been Mark's, and the hot water bottles were warming it; dry clothes and hot coffee were waiting when Nils came in with Randy. She was ready for him. Of course he would gloat. . . .

She was unprepared for the white and shaky Randy whose hands could hardly hold a mug of coffee, they shivered so, and whose cheek was streaked with blood where he'd scraped it. If he'd fallen overboard on purpose, he'd got more than he bargained for.

“You didn't guess you were goin' to see me again right off,” he told her between chattering teeth. “I'm sorry if I'm makin' a lot of mess.”

“You'd better go right to bed,” said Joanna. She felt almost sorry for him. He looked wobbly as he stood up, and very slight and youthful between Nils and Stevie. They went upstairs with him and Joanna began to fix a tall glass of hot lemonade. When Nils called to her, she took it up to Mark's room.

Randy was sitting up in the bed. The lamplight threw his shadow on the slanting ceiling. In flannel pajamas, and with one of Donna's warmest quilts throwing its glowing, prismatic colors across the bed, he had managed to comb his soaked brown hair, and the mingled blood and sea water had been wiped away. He still looked white, however, and this, along with his thinness and his hair's tendency to curl when wet, added to his youthfulness.

Nils and Stevie had gone on separate errands to bring other things calculated to add to the invalid's comfort during the night. Randy took the hot lemonade meekly from Joanna's hands.

“Is there anythin' in it?” he inquired. “Besides lemon and hot water and sugar, I mean?”

“Not a thing,” said Joanna. She watched him drink. “You should have come right up to the house instead of going to the mooring.”

“I was scared to come rushin' right in again,” he said vaguely “You know what they say, somethin' about where angels fear to tread . . . or whatever it is. . . .”

Joanna said, “You can put the glass on the stand when you're through.” She started for the door.

“Only I figgered,” the meek voice went on, “you'd be real hospitable to somethin' your husband lugged home to ye.”

She turned once; and before the certain and brilliant triumph in his eyes, she knew so great a rush of pure rage that she almost ran the last few steps to the door, lest she give in and slap his face.

A
T FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING
, the Sorensens and Stevie ate breakfast by lamplight. The house was like a lighted island in the windless December morning which lay around it, still pricked by stars and the pale unreality of moonlight. Breakfast was warmed-up baked beans—that was when they were best—fresh johnnycake, and strong coffee. Upstairs, in the room over the kitchen, Randy still slept.

“He'll be going home today,” Nils said. “Wonder if his father is worried about him being down here with us south-island cannibals.”

“Fowler's as bad as Squire Merrill used to be. Father used to tell about him,” Joanna said. “The Squire thought Bennett's was really a hunk of Brigport that seceded, like the Confederacy. But he didn't want to start any Civil War and hang all the rebels.”

Stevie pushed back his chair and patted a non-existent stomach. “I'm so full my riggin's about to part, Jo. How's a man to set traps when he's so groggy?”

“By the time you get yourself down to the Eastern End you'll be ready for another breakfast,” Joanna said. She got up to mix the coffee for the thermos bottles. The dinner-boxes were all packed, husky sandwiches and Vinnie's thick, filled cookies. Homemade mince meat was the filling; and it was made from the meat of the deer Caleb had shot last autumn.

Stevie puttered around the kitchen, collecting his thick wool socks and rubber boots and outdoor clothes, whistling under his breath. Nils stood by the seaward window, looking out to where the light at the Rock still swung its beam through the dark. There was no lightening along the horizon yet. By the time it came, Joanna thought, glancing past his shoulder at the outside world, both he and Stevie would be out there, Nils on his way to his traps, Stevie with Mark and a load of the spanking-new traps they'd been building. It was going to be a clear, calmly beautiful day, with the colors of midsummer intensified to an almost poignant degree, and all the more exquisite because it was a winter day and not a summer day.

Joanna knew those days and loved them. She wished suddenly that she could go with Nils, and breathe all day the pure cold air of the sea, build up a fire in the cuddy stove and drop jewel­bubbling lobsters into boiling salt water; eat them hot, along with the coffee from the thermos bottle, and then begin the afternoon's hauling.

But she couldn't leave the house because of Randy sleeping so peacefully and smugly upstairs. Her longing to go out on the water suffered a quick change and became anger. Trust Nils to bring Randy right back to the house again, as Randy had intended him to do. . . . Oh, Nils couldn't know the young devil had slipped overboard on purpose. He probably wouldn't believe it if she told him. . . . She clamped Nils' dinner-box shut with an eloquent snap, and he looked around at her.

“All ready?” he said. “I'd better be starting along, then. Don't look for me early. I'll probably have to chase around some, if that gale threw my gear out of line the way I think it did.”

He pulled on his sheepskin vest and then his mackinaw. Stevie, still looking absent-minded, began to dress too.

Joanna said thoughtfully, “Then you probably won't be able to do anything about shingling today.”

“Shingling?”

“The barn over at Uncle Nate's,” she explained. “I noticed last night some more shingles had blown off. It ought to be fixed before the next storm.” Nils stopped putting on his boots and looked at her quietly.

“Isn't that your uncle's worry?” he asked.

She felt a quick surprise. “Nils, if we see something to be done, we ought to do it.”

“If there wasn't somebody to do it, that would be different.” Nils pulled on the other boot. “Only Hugo's working over in the shipyard with nothing much to do on his weekends—”

“But raise hell,” Stevie said, grinning. “So I hear.”

“And he could come out and nail shingles just as well as I can. And better. I've got all I can handle now, Joanna.”

Her astonishment had the effect of setting her back on her heels, hard. She could only stare at him, and he looked back, his blue eyes very calm. With just as much simple, unadorned conviction as he had ever said he
would
do a thing, he had now said he wouldn't. She wished suddenly that Stevie hadn't been there.

“You can write to your uncle,” Nils said, “and tell him about the shingles.”

“He'll wonder why we can't do it,” she objected. She smiled at Nils, gathering her forces. “It would only take an hour or so.”

Nils stood up. He took his cap from its hook. His voice came quietly, but it was the quiet of gray granite.

“Joanna, maybe you don't know what an hour means to me right now. But we've the old wharf to fix, and the boatshop; the long fish house needs to be straightened up and tar-papered. We've got to do something about Pete Grant's wharf before it gets any worse—”

“That's not your worry any more than Uncle Nate's place, then,” she flashed out at him. “That isn't even in the family.” Her cheeks were fiery. Nils had never been like this before.

“The whole Island uses Pete's wharf when they need it, and they don't use Nate's barn.”

Stevie said eagerly from the door, “Look here, if Hugo can't do it, Mark and I'd be the ones to fix the barn, anyway. It's a Bennett barn, isn't it?”

Joanna didn't look at him. Neither did Nils. Their eyes stayed on each other's faces. Joanna felt a desperation stir within her. This was something more important than a few shingles on a barn. It was something that threatened her scheme of days, her whole life.

She said in a low voice, “Maybe you don't call it any of your affair to fix that saddleboard on the—the Whitcomb place. Or ploughing up the field for the gardens. Or any of the other things our family always looked out for.”

“Joanna, I know what I've got to do,” said Nils. He pulled the blue plaid cap on over his fair head; beneath the long visor his eyes regarded her bright dark ones, her flushed cheeks, her mouth held so straight and firm that there were tiny dents at either corner. “I get my work done. First things first. . . . Maybe you've forgotten that besides everything else I've got two hundred traps to tend. And I've got to take off at least two good days to take the lobsters ashore next week.”

“You said you'd go,” she reminded him passionately. “You said you didn't mind.”

“I knew somebody had to go first, and I'd back you up in your plan, anyway. But—” His hand on the knob, he looked back at her. “But don't plan out anything more for me to do for a while yet, Joanna.”

He went out. Joanna didn't move from where she was standing, neither did Stevie. He didn't look at her, and she was furious with him. Pitying her, was he, because she'd come off second best?

She began swiftly to clear the table and stack the dishes, determined not to watch Nils go down to the harbor through the paling light, wishing Stevie would take his dinner-box and get out of the house.

“Jo,” he said hesitantly behind her. She slid the silver into the dishpan and reached for the teakettle.

“What is it?” she said, her voice even and pleasant.

“Maybe I shouldn't have hung around. I know that. But I want to tell you something before I go out.“

She swung around and looked at him, and he smiled at her, a little shyly. “Maybe you think it's none of my business. Well, it isn't, except that you're my sister, and you've always been swell to me, and Nils is the finest kind. But sometimes a woman can't see so good as a man what gets under another man's skin.”

“You'd better hurry up and get it said, Stevie. I've got a lot to do, and so have you.”

Stevie fidgeted. “Well, look, Jo—maybe you've kind of forgot that most of his life Nils had somebody following him around and asking him when he was going to get this or that done—”

“You mean
Gunnar
?” Her hands behind her clenched hard at the edge of the dresser. “You mean I'm like Nils' grandfather, Stevie?” She smiled as if it was very amusing. Inwardly she was sickened with her rage and humiliation.

“No, I don't mean you're like Gunnar, but it's just the idea, see? At least that's the way I figure it. I think Nils used to get so damn' mad at that old bastard that the minute he thinks somebody's checking up on him—no matter who it is—he gets those feelings all over again.” Stevie waved his hands vaguely, and knotted his brow. “See what I mean? And if anybody keeps it up, without reading the storm warnings, well, someday they're likely to see him rise up like hell coming sideways on a pair of wheels.”

Joanna laughed aloud. “Stevie, you don't change. You're still that bird of ill-omen. Every good day was a weather-breeder, remember? You always believed in looking for the worst.”

“And preparing for it,” said Stevie. He grinned back at her. “Of course, you're married to the guy. You ought to know him better than I do, I suppose. Probably he'd never lose his temper with you—you're a lot more sightly than his grandpap was.”

He grabbed up his dinner-box, took his cap and went out whistling. Joanna sat down. She didn't feel the rush of vigor and energy that usually came with her anger. She felt suddenly drained of all vitality. Again in her mind she saw Nils' blue eyes, and heard his voice; she wondered almost feverishly how long he had been thinking these things, if all the time when he had listened and agreed so calmly he had been preparing to say what he had said this morning. Or whether it had come on him all at once. Perhaps she would know sometime.

She began to do her morning tasks. She'd planned on a few hours work on her Christmas gifts, but now she had no heart for them. She told herself it was silly to feel so disturbed. What had happened this morning had no importance, really. When Nils came home that night everything would be as it always was.

But she couldn't keep from thinking about it. She washed and dried the dishes, shook the braided rugs from the back doorstep, the first apricot glow of morning over the black trees of the Eastern End hill lighting her face, and the quiet cold, sweet with frost, prickling her nostrils. She wiped off the stove and the teakettle, swept the floor and laid the rugs back in place. Her strong hands were quick and automatic. All the time her brain wondered, struggling toward a solution that would give her peace of mind. As soon as she arrived at some conclusion that turned the situation to her own advantage—as soon as she knew how to keep it from occurring again—she would be all right.