High Tide at Noon (38 page)

Stevie shook his head. “You feel it yourself, but you won't say so.”

“Well, I'm not crossing any bridges till I come to them, Stevie lad. How are you getting along with your pots?”

“Bought some new ones this week from Nathan Parr.” He scowled at her. “Only lobsters've gone down to twenty-five and that's something else I don't like much. Nathan Parr says it means trouble.”

“You're a regular bird of ill omen, aren't you?”

Stevie said gloomily, “Just you wait.”

One morning, when a small chop made a dancing edge o f lace against the rocks, Joanna, out hauling with Alec, saw the
White Lady
idling in a tiny cove between jagged walls of rock. Gulls roosted on the cliffs and rose into the bright air in a cloud if a boat came too near; they were wheeling and shrieking above the
White Lady
when Alec and Joanna saw her.

Joanna looked past Alec's shoulder and said, “Has he any pots set in there?”

“Not that I know of, unless he's shifted some. Maybe he's fouled up in somebody's warp. That's a hell of a note.” He turned
The Basket
's wheel and she obeyed him, heading for the
Lady
. “That's no place to be stuck.”

“What's he doing with that trap on the washboards? He
must
be fouled up.”

Alec yelled to Owen above the roar of the water. “Need a hand?”

They saw Owen grin. “No, thanks!” He waved them away, but
The Basket
was closing in already and Joanna noticed, hardly realizing, that it was a blue-and-white buoy he'd caught with his gaff—George Bird's colors. “You don't want to come too close,” he called to them cheerfully.

“Fouled up?” said Alec.

“Fouled, hell,” said Owen merrily. “I'm having the time of my young life.” He coiled the warp neatly, dropped the buoy into the trap, and fastened the button.

Alec said, “My God! What are you doing, you crazy fool?” He sunk his gaff into the
White Lady's
washboard and held the two boats together. “Are you going to sink that pot?”

“I am!” He stripped off the thick white canvas gloves, wrung them out, and took out his cigarettes. “In a minute I'm going to sink it. No hurry. I've been sinking them all morning. Sunk some yesterday, and cut some off day before that.”

Joanna wondered if the motion of the boat made her stomach feel so queer, and her hands so clammy. She said, “Owen, are you drunk?”

He laughed at that. “I'm not drunk, but I'm having a hell of a good time. I've wanted to do this for years, and it's a damn sight more fun than a quart or a woman.”

Joanna sat down weakly on the engine box. Alec said, stiff-lipped, “How many you done away with?”

“I lost count, but I treated 'em all alike—Ash, Simon, and dear old Dad. I guess they've started missing 'em, too. I noticed they were going around the shore with a sort of bewildered look.”

“Well, you'd better stop right now,” said Joanna. “I don't blame you, Owen, but you know it's wrong—what'll Father say?”

Two spots of red burned suddenly on Owen's brown cheekbones as he leaned toward her. “I don't give a good goddam what he or anybody else says. That goes for you fellas, too. I've listened to this so-called common sense all my life and it never got me anywhere, so I'm using my own brand of sense.”

“And you'll get us all into trouble!” Joanna was furious. “We were brought up to have some decency—not to be thieves and cheats and liars. And maybe
you
don't care how much mud gets thrown at your name, but the rest of us care!”

“Aren't you a cute little devil?” said Owen benevolently, and blew a mouthful of smoke into her face. Alec pushed her aside and sat down on the washboard.

“Look, Owen,” he said confidentially, “you've had your fun, and got even, and scared them off for good, most likely. Now it's time to stop fooling around, before you go too far.”

Owen grinned at the trap on the
Lady
, ready to be pushed over­board. “Did you ever sink anybody's traps, Alec? More damn fun!”

There was a clatter of an engine to the eastward of them, and all three turned to see Hugo's boat, black against the sun glare, heading straight for them. They were quiet, watching him come. Joanna glanced at Owen, feeling the same strangeness and distaste she knew when she saw him drunk, and then at Alec. His thin face was grim.

Hugo grinned at them merrily as he edged alongside
The Basket
. “Hell, what is this? Family conference?”

“Yeah,” said Alec grimly. “Owen'll tell you all about it.”

Hugo's eyebrows lifted. “Well, what is it? Christ, Jo, you look ugly as a basket of rattlesnakes.”

“They're all ugly, Hugo my boy.” Owen threw away his cigarette butt with a flourish. “They're ugly because I'm besmirching the honor of the family—or something.”

“It all adds up to this,” said Joanna crisply. “Owen's been cutting and sinking the Birds' traps. Talk about a Roman holiday!”

There was pure dismay in Hugo's answer. “Jesus, Ash and Simon were just going gunning when I left. They're down here on the point somewhere! And Ash had his father's field glasses. My God, Owen, if they saw anything this morning you'll be in court and there'll be hell to pay!”

“Listen, Owen, take the buoy and warp out of that trap, and set it again,” said Alec. “It's time to stop being a damn fool.”

Owen was white around the nostrils. “So they're sneaking around the point, are they? With glasses! Trying to see who's bothered their traps—well, I hope they see a hell of a lot!”

Hugo stared into the
Lady
's cockpit. “Where'd you get all those lobsters? From their traps?”

“You bastard, I'm not a thief!” He swung around, caught the heavy trap in an instant, and slung it overboard. He threw back his head and looked up at the towering rocks and the screaming gulls. “If you're up there, you sons o' bitches, I hope you saw that! Sure I sunk your traps, and I'll sink every one I get my hands on, till you get the hell off this Island.”

For once Hugo was speechless. Without a backward look he took his boat through the reef, and Alec followed him. Joanna lay flat on her stomach on the bow, and felt furious and sick and dismayed.

And Alec didn't whistle.

By nightfall the whole Island knew that George Bird had met Owen Bennett at the wharf, and told him that unless he paid for the damage to the Bird traps, the sheriff would be called; and when Owen looked at him with blank insolence, George told him, there in front of the store with half-a-dozen men and children listening in gape-mouthed amazement, that Ash and Simon had watched him through the glasses, and that when the time came Joanna, Alec, and Hugo would be subpoenaed as witnesses. They had been with him when he was seen to toss overboard and sink a Bird pot.

Owen looked down at him, brushed him aside as if he were a fly, and walked away. The story came to Stephen, who found Owen in the bait house, and asked for the truth. Donna, taking a chicken and some oranges down to Marcus Y etton's children, heard the story from a gasping and pop-eyed Annie. Only it was slightly distorted; Annie quoted Owen as saying he was going home to get his gun and shoot it out with the Birds.

That night Alec and Joanna walked up to the big house, feeling as if there had been a death in the family. “Worse than that,” Joanna said tautly. “Murder.”

“Everybody's with him,” Alec said.

“Yes, but that doesn't make it any better. Owen'll never pay one cent and they'll drag him into court —” Her indignation choked her. “All these years they've been stealing, and then when somebody has the courage to hit back—the Birds set up a holler and you'd think they'd never done anything but good works.”

Alec hugged her close to him. “You were mad with Owen this morning.“

“Because he was so foolish, and I knew there'd be a stink, and hurt Mother—hurt all of us. But I don't blame him.”

Alec stopped under the ghostly glow of the northern lights streaming over Brigport, and turned her face up to his. He kissed her hard, on her cheeks, her chin, her nose, her lips.

“Listen, honey,” he said gently. “You've been wound up like a top all day. Relax, will you? If you go into that house with your nerves all tied up in knots, you won't be any help at all.”

“It's those Birds,” she whispered against his throat. “I hate them. You don't know how I hate them.”

“Yes, I do, honey.” He stroked her head. “I don't like 'em myself.”

You don't know, she thought, with a long quivering sigh that made him tighten his arms. You don't know how I hate Simon. It was a hate that sickened her, like poison running in her veins instead of blood; hate and fear mixed together in deadly proportions. She didn't think of it often, only when something like this happened, and then it seemed to her that she could never feel free and happy and unafraid again.

Even in Alec's arms she didn't feel safe and comforted. She clung to him, there in the meadow with the surf roaring in Goose Cove, and the lights of the house looking down at them; she clung to him because he was hers, and she loved him. But he didn't know, he didn't understand how it was with her and Simon.

When they came into the kitchen, Nils was there. She hadn't seen him to talk with for a long time, and there he stood by the end of the stove, one foot on the hearth. He had come to try to persuade Owen to pay for the traps.

He smiled at Joanna and Alec, and she was suddenly conscious of a loosening of the iron band around her chest. “Hello, Nils,” she said casually.

“Hi, Jo.” That was all, that and his calm friendly blue gaze. But Nils was someone out of that long-ago time. Even if she never spoke to him about it, never again exchanged more than the time of day with him, she could always have the comforting knowledge that if she were to go to him and say, “Nils, I'm afraid. There's something evil in this and Simon's behind it all—” why, if she said that to Nils, he would nod, and understand.

I
N THE MORNING SHE WAS ASLEEP
when Alec got up, and he didn't call her. She didn't wake up until the October sun was a bright golden bar across her face, and downstairs someone was kicking the kitchen apart.

“Who's that?” she called sharply.

“It's me. Cripes, you gonna sleep all day?”

Me
was Mark. Joanna said with some spirit, “Well, stop shacking the furniture and make some coffee. I'll be down in a minute.”

When she came down, she found Stevie there too, long legs folded over the arm of a rocker, nose buried in
Popular Mechanics
. “Hi, Jo,” he said vaguely, and went on reading.

“Isn't this a hell of a mess?” Mark said.

“Don't mention it till I've had some coffee. I can't face it right now. Go get a pail of water.”

“Kind of high and mighty, aren't you?” But he went, and Joanna washed her face. Odd how you could feel so desolate and worn-out and look like a blooming rose, she thought, stopping in front of the mirror. Behind her, Stevie put down his magazine.

“Jo, we have to do something. I don't know what, but the three of us together ought to be able to figure out something.”

Her mouth felt too tired to smile, but somehow it did. Stevie was so earnest and so eager. At seventeen he still kept his open-eyed interest and amazement at the world, and the shyness that the others had all left behind them at a very early age.

She said gravely, “Don't you think Owen should take his medicine?”

“Well, if it was just Owen, I'd say yes. But it's more than Owen; it's all of us. Father and Philip and Charles say there isn't anything to do, but I still figure we have to stick together.”

Mark kicked open the screen and came in, splashing water from the door to the dresser. Stevie said nothing more, as they drank coffee together and toasted bread on a fork over the stove. The boys did away with half a jar of plum jam. They discussed everything but Owen until the dishes were washed and put away.

“Can I talk now?” Mark asked.

“Let's go out, it's easier to think that way.” They went out to sit on the doorstep, the October sunshine mellow on their black Bennett heads, the nuthatches noisily at work in the woods. Mark passed around his cigarettes. There were no other preliminaries.

“Look,” he said directly. “It's ten to one that there's some pots stacked up in the Bird's fish house with somebody else's name on 'em. They keep it locked tighter'n a drum all the time.”

“Well?” Joanna said. “What good does that do us?”

“Well, if we was to see those pots with our own eyes, and could talk about it plenty if we had a mind to, George might find out that if he opens his mouth too big he's likely t'O put his foot in it.”

His black eyes were shining, his mouth quirked with suppressed excitement. The battle-cry had been sounded and the Bennett flags were flying. And all the time that she was saying in her most skeptical, adult manner, “You've got a lot of
ifs
there, Markie boy,” she was conscious of that excitement creeping into her own blood. She was going to be sensible for as long as possible, but already she knew she was on the brink.

“Never mind the
ifs
,' Mark said bluntly. “Lookit, Jo. We're gonna get into that fish house and see for ourselves. And then we'll talk to George.”

“And what are you going to say when he asks how come you got into his shop? It'll be breaking and entering.”

Mark was triumphant. “That's all figured out. We'll find out if any of our pots are there—or anybody's that shouldn't be there—and then we'll get somebody to go in while the place is open some time.”

“Who?” she gave him a sidewise look. “What do you think about it, Stevie? Don't you think Mark's kind of foolish in the head?”