Storm Tide (36 page)

Joanna went through the motions of starting him off. A substantial breakfast; a small bag packed with toothbrush, shaving things, clean shirts and socks in case he had to stay more than a few days. He intended to bring back his new engine, too.
He'll be all right when he comes back
, Joanna told herself.
He'll be sorry he said those things
. Perhaps when he had a chance to think, away from her, he'd understand her better. Funny to think that Nils didn't really know her, after all these years. But she didn't know him very well, either; it had been a stranger who confronted her out there behind the house yesterday.

Owen was going to take him to Brigport to board the mailboat. Joanna walked down to the shore with them. It was November weather today, clear and cold, with a bite in the wind that blew down from the northwest, turning the sea to a dark brilliant blue, driving big billowy clouds across the sky. Joanna listened to the idle conversation of the two men. Walking down to the shore was another way of keeping up appearances; she wondered if Nils would kiss her.

He didn't. He helped Owen push down the punt, and stepped aboard. Owen pushed off with the oars and there was a widening strip of water between the beach and the punt. “Good-bye,” Nils said to her. “Take care of yourself.”

“When will you be back?” she called after him, but by that time the punt was going out by the corner of the wharf, and Jud, puttering around on his lobster car, hailed it; if Nils answered Joanna, she didn't hear.

The gulls were screaming overhead this morning, swinging in circles with the wind, and the sea was washing noisily at the rocky shore of the harbor. She stood on the beach a few minutes longer, watching Nils and Owen board the
White Lady
and cast off the mooring. Then she turned and went back to the house, walking up the road where the tide had been a few days before, passing the boats lying crazily up there in the marsh; she walked quickly, as if the wind at her back were pushing her along.

The next day was Saturday. Ellen was home again—Caleb brought her and Joey in the early morning. It was a dull, quiet day; voices carried far under the low ceiling of cloud, and on the horizon Matinicus Rock stood up very large and clear, and to the west of Brigport the mainland showed a long dark gray line on the horizon. It hardly ever showed like that. The land was looming. Brigport looked near enough to call across to; and Tenpound, with the sheep on it, was mountainous between the islands.

Ellen spent her day out-of-doors. She went down to the Eastern End in the morning and called on Helmi. In the afternoon she visited Nora Fennell. Stevie and Owen were busy all day, and Joanna was alone. When her work was done, she read; or listened to the silence all around her. It was a restful silence, as full of peace as the silvery quiet of the water in the harbor and the coves. Even the gulls were still. It was not a day to torment your senses, to keep calling them to see and smell and hear, like those brilliant days full of color and flashing sunshine and noise.

I need peace
, Joanna thought, lying back in her chair by the sitting room stove. She closed her eyes, and immediately saw Nils, as he'd looked that afternoon, rubbing his hand across his forehead, watching her as he spoke. She tried to drive Nils away by thinking of Goose Cove as it looked now. Silvery water, quiet by the rocks, quiet in the shadow of woods untouched by the faintest breath of wind. . . . She tried to imagine herself a gull, drifting across the cove, dreaming on the surface of the water that mirrored his white breast. . . .

Now she
was
drifting.

The step in the kitchen brought her wide awake, sitting up, her heartbeat quickening.

“Is that you, Ellen?” she called. There was no answer.

She got up and went to the kitchen door. Randy Fowler stood by the stove in a plaid mackinaw, heavy trousers, and rubber boots, his cap and woolen gloves in his hand. He grinned at her.

“Hi, Joanna,” he said softly.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, and then checked her harsh tone, remembering Winslow.

“Hope you don't mind my droppin' in,” he said. “Had to. It's hell over home, Jo. Everybody takin' on about Win, and everything.”

“I'm sorry about Winslow. How is your mother?”

“Oh, she's doin' better than anybody expected.” He looked around the room. “I know you prob'ly think I got a hell of a nerve, comin' in, but I'm goin' right out again.”

He was very subdued, for Randy. Maybe he had a girl now; perhaps he'd come to apologize for being a nuisance. In all fairness, she shouldn't turn him out too quickly.

“Sit down for a minute, and get warmed up before you go,” she said.

“Gosh, Jo. Thanks,” he said gratefully. He settled down in the rocker beside the stove. “Well, how's things? Storm hurt you fellers much? Over home we lost plenty of pots.”

“Well, we lost some here,” she admitted.

“Yep. I was in the store when Nils called up about gettin' some trap-stuff. You can hear everythin' right through that booth,” he added candidly. “Saw him goin' off on the mailboat yesterday. Does he figger on gettin' enough for everybody?”

“He'll do all right.” If she sat down, it would seem too cordial. She leaned against the dresser and studied him as he opened a fresh package of cigarettes. He was a nice-looking boy, well-built in spite of his slenderness. She wondered what he would have been like if his father were a different sort of man; and what Randy would be twenty years from now.

He turned his head and looked up at her suddenly. “Jo, Nils is gonna have himself a damn' hard time tryin' to get trap-stuff. The big companies have it all sewed up. I know. Look at my Uncle Ralph—he buys for the Leavitt company. He's got enough laths and sills and marlin—everything—come out on the mailboat yesterday to fit a hundred fishermen each with a brand new string.”

Joanna shrugged. “That's nice. It must make your uncle feel good.”

“Well, I wasn't sayin' it to show off, Jo.” The match flame reflected in his eyes as he looked at her. Then he blew it out and tossed it onto the stove, and got up. She folded her arms and watched him come toward her; she saw the telltale flush in his thin cheeks, and knew with a cold dismay that he hadn't got himself a girl. . . .

“Are you warm enough to go out again now, Randy?” she asked.

He stopped moving. “Not yet, Jo. I just wanted to tell you somethin', that's all.”

“Make it quick, Randy. I've got work to do.”

He came nearer, so near she could smell the woolly scent of his mackinaw and see the yellow specks that gave his eyes their odd sunlit effect. He was looking at her queerly; his glance kept going again and again to her mouth.

“
I
can get Uncle Ralph to give the Bennett's Island fishermen credit for everything they need,” he said. His eyes narrowed into mirthful, sparkling lines. “I know somethin' about the old rooster that Aunt Josie don't know. And he likes to keep on the good side of me.”

“Nils is taking care of the trap-stuff,” she said patiently. If he meant what she thought he meant, it was best to be stupid, though in the back of her mind she was thinking,
His brother drowned two days ago, and he's over here making propositions to me!
It was so fantastic she felt unreal.

“Sure, but maybe he can't manage like he thinks he can,” Randy reminded her softly. “And you don't know how long before he'll be back. I can fix it all up for you, when I go back home. Providin'—”

Joanna turned her head and saw Owen coming up through the meadow. In this day when everything loomed, Owen loomed too; he was like a giant, approaching the house with long, easy strides. She turned back to Randy who said, “Providin' you treat me decent, Jo.”

“Do you want to leave the house under your own power, Randy, or have Owen throw you out?” she asked him pleasantly.

He stared at her so hard, so unbelievingly, that the pupils in his eyes dilated against the yellow-specked brown, his nostrils and the space around his mouth whitened sharply. Whatever pleasant dream of power he'd been living in, he'd come out of it with a rude swiftness. For a moment he was speechless. Then he grated the words out at her thickly. “Goddam you, Joanna—”

Before her folded arms and steady, even indifferent, glance, he turned and went across the kitchen, catching his boot toe on a chair leg, finally reaching the door. The kitchen door crashed behind him and then the back door. Without moving she reviewed the incident. At another time she would have been angrier, she supposed; but today she was too tired to be angry. She laughed with sheer astonishment at the idiotic strategy the boy had cooked up.

She was in that mood of amusement and amazement when she felt like telling someone about Randy. She heard Owen's voice sing out a greeting.

“Hey, Randy! What's your hurry?”

Randy's answer was indistinct. Looking out, she saw him going down the slope. She went over to the stove to push the teakettle forward for coffee, and wondered what Owen would say if she told him about Randy's proposition. Perhaps his laughter would warm her; she hadn't laughed hard—achingly, tearfully,
hard
—in months.

But when Owen came in, she decided not to tell him. He looked out of sorts; that came from an afternoon of patching pots. He kicked his boots into their place in the entry and came to glare morosely into the woodbox.

“Almost empty,” he muttered, and went to the woodshed. She heard him banging around out there, heard a crash, and his voice, “Oh, bitch-bastard!” When Owen was mad he was always kicking things over, she thought drearily.
Oh, we're a fine family. A Fowler wanting to make love to me, and my brother cursing his head off at a stick of wood when he feels like cursing me
.

She made coffee and brought out some of the filled cookies that Owen liked. He came in with a load of wood, let it fall into the woodbox with a series of crashes, and washed at the sink, unmindful of the soapy water that dripped to the floor. He said nothing at all until he had put sugar and cream in his coffee and demolished a cookie in two bites. Then he looked across the table at his sister.

“Why didn't you go with Nils yesterday?” he said.

She looked up, startled, from the cup of coffee which she didn't really want. “Why . . . I couldn't. The weekend, Ellen coming home—”

“God in Heaven, if Stevie and I couldn't look after that kid between us,” he said violently, “we're a couple of numbheads. You could have gone. Nils doesn't know how long it'll take him to get that stuff—you helped push us into this fix, the least you could've done was to go along with him and keep him company in the evenings.”

She got up from the table. “Owen, has anybody asked for your opinion?”

“I don't notice that you wait to be asked for yours—you give it free and often enough.” He added, brutally, “If it was Alec goin' away, you could've fixed it to go with him—couldn't you?”

“If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd been drinking,” she said coldly, and walked out of the kitchen, through the sitting room to her own room, and shut the door behind her. Owen had noticed, after all. She felt suddenly as if she had no shelter anywhere; for even when she locked the door, her thoughts flocked after her, and some of them she didn't want to own.

T
HE WEEKEND WAS FULL OF WIND
and fog and a raw cold that penetrated into the houses through the very walls. Everybody stayed close by the fire and the radio. Joanna cooked for the boys and for Ellen, fixed Ellen's clothes for the next week at school, and in her spare time read avidly; she was going through her grandmother's Dickens series, and the familiar stories helped to keep her from being too restless. She hated this restlessness, but it had come, and she would have to find some way to drive it off again. Perhaps, she thought, she should start making a quilt, or do some sewing for herself and Ellen, or—then the few minutes with Nils out behind the house would come back to her, and Owen sitting at the kitchen table, scowling at her, trying to shame her in a half-dozen brutal words.

The next boatday was Tuesday, and a crisp, light breeze blew from the west. Joanna awoke believing that Nils would be on the
Aurora
today, with the trap-stuff and his new engine. Perhaps they could be friends again.

Mark had gone to get the mail. Coming back, he put in at the harbor and brought her mail up to the house. Nils hadn't come, he said. But there had been plenty of trap-stuff sent out on the
Aurora B
. and he'd brought it over and stowed it in the new boatshop, until they could divide it up, according to whose traps had got it the worst. . . . He stayed to talk a few minutes longer, and then went back down to the harbor and his boat again. He was going home to dinner, he said, and then get out to haul the traps he had left. Lobsters were a damned good price. It had hopped ten cents after the storm and was still going up.

She knew he wanted to get out of the house before Owen came in. That nagged at her like an old lameness. But not for long. There was a letter from Nils for her. It was no more than a note, short and to the point without being too curt. He didn't know when he'd be back. He was going to help Uncle Eric on his new boat. If she wanted to get in touch with him, she could reach him at his uncle's house, in Camden.

She tucked the note behind the clock with the rest of the mail and went about her work. Sometimes she thought there would never be an end to peeling potatoes for men's dinners. . . . While she peeled, she thought of Nils' note. Probably his engine wasn't ready yet, and she didn't doubt but what Eric would welcome Nils' help. Eric's son-in-law lived near-by, but he was shiftless and untidy. At least he'd always been that way when he lived on the Island. Helping Eric would fill in the time for Nils until his engine was ready and he could come back to his own work.