Storm Tide (34 page)

In the pouring rain and the rising tide, water flowing around their boot tops, the men worked, carrying everything that could be carried; traps that had been stacked on the newly repaired wharf by the boatshop; buoys; planks. She saw some loose planks floating. When the tide brought them close enough, someone caught them and dragged them in. They were working hard, for the unbridled sweep of the wind blowing straight across the marsh from Schoolhouse Cove was strong enough to knock them down if it caught them off balance. She saw Jud stumble and go down on his hands and knees in the icy water and Caleb pull him up again.

The lobster car had been made more secure with extra lines to the wharf, but the wharf was almost flooded now. Dories and punts that had been tied above the usual high water line had been dragged up to the marsh; now they had to be moved again. Nils and Owen brought a dory over towards the higher ground near the Arey house, and they saw Joanna standing there, in the shelter of the porch. Owen waved, and Nils nodded. Then they went back again.

The noise of the sea and of the wind seemed to be growing with every instant. Even with her sou'wester over her ears Joanna could hear the din of it. She was thankful that the boats were safe at their moorings; an easterly couldn't hurt them. Only the traps . . . She felt cold and miserable, but she couldn't go back to the house.

Quite suddenly the old pinky, that had been heeled over in the marsh ever since Joanna could remember, began to sail. Owen's first powerboat, not much bigger than a good-sized dory, danced along beside her. They sailed halfway across the marsh before they came to rest, the pinky on a small rocky hillock that rose above the fast-flowing sheet of water, the little power-boat in the middle of the road. The men let them go as they pleased. They had more needful things to do.

Turning her head, Joanna could look out the other way, past Jud Gray's old fish house, at Pete Grant's wharf. . . . Only it wasn't Pete's wharf any more, she reminded herself. If the tide kept coming it would flood that wharf too, she thought, and then she saw something else, something which floated placidly about the harbor, dangerously near the moorings. It was Pete Grant's old lobster car, which for so many years had been hauled up on his little stretch of rocky beach, beyond Jud's and the Sorensens' fish houses.

Nils was wading across the road from the old wharf to the long fish house. No sense to call to him; he couldn't hear with the rain pounding at him and the wind tearing at him. She ran forward along the road until the water was rising coldly around her ankles, and he saw her and came toward her.

“You'd better stay out of this, Joanna,” he said. “Get along up to the house where it's warm.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “And make some more coffee. We'll be through with this job pretty soon. Nothing to do then but wait.”

She knew what he meant. Wait to see how the traps were. How many were wiped out beyond repair. She said quickly, “The old car is afloat. Out there.”

He went back along the road with her as far as the Areys' front steps, and looked where she pointed. Owen would have said, “Jesus Christ!” But Nils wiped the rain from his face and said, “Looks like we'll have to take care of that.” He started back to the beach; then turned toward her for a moment. “Thanks for keeping an eye out, Jo.”

She watched him wade into the water and stop Matthew Fennell, who was carrying the last load of buoys into the long fish house. Then he called to Mark, who was nearby. They came over and got one of the dories. It was queer to see them row out over the top of the old wharf. As they rounded the corner by the boatshop and disappeared, Owen came wading across from the camps.

“Where the hell are they going?” he asked.

“The old car's afloat. It's going to be bumping against Matthew's boat in a minute,” she told him.

“Jesus. Always something,” grunted Owen, fumbling inside his oil jacket for a cigarette. “I suppose this little mess'll make matchwood out of my new pots. . . . Well, we got everything that's movable lugged out of harm's way for the time being. . . .”

The dory came in sight again. Rowing close to the shore, Nils and Mark handling the two pairs of oars, they were in the lee and they made good time. Then they turned and sent the dory flying over the steel-gray water toward Matthew's boat. The car had almost reached it. Joanna and Owen watched while Matthew made a line fast to the car and the dory headed for the little strip of beach beyond the fish houses. When it disappeared again Owen blew out a long puff of smoke. “Hell, they managed that all right. Guess I'll go home and dry out.”

“I'll go with you,' Joanna said.

“Thought you came down to walk home with your old man,” Owen remarked, grinning broadly at her.

“I'm cold,” Joanna said briefly. “Come on.”

The wind didn't die out when the tide turned. To Joanna it was the longest day she had ever known. The men sat up until the tide rose again, and went down to the shore in the wet and howling blackness; Joanna waited in the kitchen, shivering in spite of the brisk fire in the stove. She was so tired that she ached, yet she knew she couldn't sleep.

But when they trooped up again, and hung their wet oilskins in the woodshed, and kicked off their boots, they told her the wind was beginning to die out.

She went to bed when Nils did. He fell asleep almost at once, but she lay tense in the darkness, unable to relax, listening to the gusts hit the house. Yes, they were farther apart now, there was more of a lull between them. But how long would there be a heavy sea, to keep the men from going out to their pots? Oh, it wasn't fair, for this to happen to her. Supposing, tomorrow, someone said, “What'll I do for trap stuff? I've no money in my pocket.”

But we had to have the point
, she argued fiercely, lying there in the darkness.
Before Fowler could get his hands on it
. . . And then the words would come back to her, irrevocably.
Down payment . . . Pay in the good seasons . . . Lease
.

At last she fell asleep.

The next day the sun shone, there was no wind, and the sea was blue; but it was a wild sea that roared and tumbled along the Island's rocky shores without cessation. As far as the eye could see the water glittered under the sun like boiling metal, and there was no escaping from its monotonous muted thunder. Schoolhouse Cove was cupped out, where the long and powerful undertow had sucked gravel from the beach. The harbor shore had a deep gully splitting it in two from the water's edge to the marsh, and water ran down through the gully all day long like a mountain brook, brown rain water to mingle with the clear green salt water.

But in the night the seas flattened out, and by the next morning the men could get out to their traps. Joanna saw them go, one at a time, and dreaded what they would find. Nils went out as if he were on his way to an ordinary day's hauling. Another man might have been sarcastic; in a way she wished Nils would be a little less amiable. If he would only say, “I told you so,” it would give her an excuse to give way to her edginess.

She did an immense washing that morning. Vinnie Caldwell came up for a few minutes, to discuss, round-eyed, the unusually high tides, and to bring a young rooster from her flock. Nora Fennell, with Bosun at her heels, ran up through the woods to stay a few breathless moments and then race back again before Gram missed her. For the rest of the time Joanna was alone.

With her sheets swaying mildly in the sunshine, the men's work shirts and woolen socks all hung out, she had dinner to get. If Stevie had lost a great many traps he would still be good natured, and Nils wouldn't say much about his losses. But Owen would be in one of his black moods. . . . “Oh, for heaven's sake!” she said aloud, “anybody would think you blew up this storm by yourself!”

It made her laugh, but she couldn't help feeling guilty. It was Nils' fault. He had put the idea into her head. Maybe sometime she'd do something that would be exactly right, and he wouldn't be able to find even the smallest fault with it.

The young rooster was tender and small, and she stewed it, hoping the boys would like it. She didn't have much appetite, herself. Onions, squash, cranberry sauce she'd made last fall from Island berries—it would be quite a dinner for them, if they weren't too discouraged to eat it.

Stevie came home first. She didn't have to beat around the bush with Stevie. She asked him at once how his traps were.

“Oh, so-so,” Stevie said, putting his thick gloves to dry on the stove shelf. “I brought in a load. Couldn't find some of'em.” He washed at the sink, and combed his hair, smelled appreciatively of the chicken. “Serves me right for setting so many to the east'ard.”

He looked rueful, but good-tempered. And hungry. Joanna gave him a piece of Swedish coffee bread to stay his stomach, and a cup of steaming coffee, and he went into the sitting room to turn on the radio for the news.

She looked up from setting the table to see Owen and Nils coming along the road through the marsh. The tide had not come so far this noon, and though the water covered the beach to the edge of the marsh ground, the road was clear. The men came by the old pinky, resting rakishly on its hillock, and passed the little powerboat; she saw them stop to look at it. Probably Owen was talking about the old days, when he'd lobstered from that small craft, and made unbelievable money for a boy in his teens. She watched his big, arrogant figure as he stood in the road, hands shoved deep in his pockets, head back. Nils stood by him, a smaller man, head bent thoughtfully.

Then they started along again, toward the house. When they came in, she knew by the way that Owen slammed the door and began to pull off his outdoor clothes, without speaking, that there was no need for her to ask him about his traps. His dark face and drawn black brows, his sullen lower lip, were answer enough.

Nils said, “Hi, Joanna. Dinner smells good.” But he looked absent-minded. As he was tidying up at the sink, Stevie came out from the sitting room, carrying his empty coffee cup.

“How'd you guys make out?” he asked cheerfully.

“Oh, go to hell!” Owen growled. Stevie grinned. “How about it, Nils? You got anything left?”

“Not much,” said Nils. “Nobody's got much. It looks as if we'll be spending the next few weeks building new pots and patching old ones.” He stood by the window looking out to sea; in the clear brilliant light from the sky and water his eyes looked tired. They seemed deeper-set than usual. And the little lines at either end of his mouth were deeper too.

“I went up alongside Caleb down by Pudd'n Island,” he went on. “Jud was with him. Caleb's string was shacked, and he hasn't got any more trap stuff than the rest of us. Needs laths and hoops, and marlin for trapheads. Matthew Fennell didn't lose many, and he'd brought some extra stuff with him. As for the rest of us—”

Owen, one foot on the stove hearth, his big shoulders hunched, said roughly, “The rest of you gave me your spare trap stuff. That's why you're short.”

“Sold it to you,” Nils corrected him. “You've paid for it. For God's sake, Owen, stop looking like a black crow. You're in the same boat with the rest of us, and no more.”

His words were sharp, for Nils; but Owen grinned, and went over to the sink to take his turn at washing up. “Sounds like Gunnar was around,” he said. “The old man's on the prod.”

Joanna glanced covertly at Nils. She saw him rub his hand across his forehead; and she remembered with a stabbing clarity when she had seen him do that before. Back in the old days, when he'd lived with his tyrannical grandfather—old Gunnar—he had done it sometimes. It meant that his temper and nerves were at a pitch that in a Bennett would have meant an explosion. But Nils always held on, long past the stage where anyone else would have given in.
Anyone human
, Joanna thought now, and, startled by her spitefulness, realized that her own nervous system was humming.

Somebody would have to say something, and it might as well be herself. She moistened her dry lips carefully, and then heard her voice come out, clear and strong.

“Why doesn't somebody say,” she inquired, “what you're probably all thinking? That you haven't any money laid by to get all the new trap stuff you need, because I took it away from you.”

Nils said nothing. Owen's face was buried in a towel. But Stevie said quickly, “My God, sis, nobody's blaming you because there was a gale of wind on the full moon! And we got the Point, that's one sure thing.”

She looked at Owen's back and then at Nils as she answered. “Maybe you'd rather have the trap stuff than the Point. How do I know?”

Owen emerged from the towel. “Hell, we can always get credit, can't we? What's a lobster-buyer for? Richards'll supply us.”

She'd forgotten all about Richards. He'd get them all the things they needed—laths, bows, funny-eyes, marlin. And they could pay him right back again, within a few weeks. It was miraculous, the lightening she felt. She cried out before she thought, “Oh, Nils, I'd forgotten about that!”

He rubbed his forehead and looked around the room at her and the boys as if his eyes ached. “I thought of it,” he said evenly. “I spoke to Jud. He asked me to swing into Brigport and call up Richards.”

“When's he sending the stuff out?” Owen asked. He was watching himself in the mirror carefully, as he tried to comb down his damp, springy black hair.

“He isn't,” said Nils. “No credit.”

Stevie's jaw dropped. Owen swung around from the mirror, his black eyes ablaze. “What's he mean—no credit? The son of a bitch!”

“Take it easy,” said Nils. “It's not his fault. He's got a hell of a job to keep going, with the big companies trying to squeeze the little fellows out of existence. He's been all over the place trying to get trap stuff for his fishermen, and he hasn't got any credit himself. He needs cash and plenty of it. The big concerns get first pick.” He added, smiling a little, “Ralph Fowler's fishermen don't have to worry, I guess.”