The Ebbing Tide (34 page)

“That's what you call the troubles of young love,” said Joanna with a warning tilt of her head toward the apparently oblivious children in the dining room. “What's in the dish you're hugging so fondly to your bosom?”

“Oh, Gram's been baking!” Nora grinned, and set the little dish down on the dresser, uncovering it. “It's some sort of custard, and she fixed this 'specially for Jamie.”

It was a good world. Suddenly Joanna liked it very much. In it she could conquer anything, nothing could daunt her. Was it possible that she'd been apprehensive about
anything
? Oh, yes, it was possible; she had worried about Nils, Owen, Laurie, and about herself. But not now. Loving-kindness flowed around her in as tangible a stream as the heat from the stove.

N
ORA STAYED ONLY A LITTLE WHILE
. Then Donna, having done her arithmetic with Ellen's assistance, gathered up her things. She was fourteen, a pretty, vivacious, black-haired girl who found life on Bennett's Island very dull after the comparative brillance of Pruitt's Harbor. But she was gay about her boredom. Ellen walked home with her through the frozen alder swamp. The day was still bright; wartime daylight saving had pushed back the early winter dusk.

On the back of the stove the teakettle hummed as busily and contentedly as a bee tumbling in and out of a honeysuckle vine. The sounds Jamie made as he played were contented too; he murmured to his boats and trains and trucks, weaving a long involved story about them. Joanna was to remember that small tranquil interval for the rest of her life.

It ended when she heard running feet on the long doorstep at the back, and Ellen's voice, high and piercing with terror. “Mother—mother—”

Joanna was at the door before the child could get it open. For a moment Ellen wrestled with the knob in wild desperation before she glanced up through the pane and saw her mother. Her eyes had darkened incredibly, or else her face had grown unbelievably white.

“Mother,” she sobbed, as Joanna swung the door open. She caught at Joanna with the strength of pure panic. “Mother, it's Owen—he's coming across the meadow now, and he's all dripping blood—” Her voice rose, and she began to choke. Joanna took her by the shoulders. Resisting her own impulse to run out and see, she spoke with authority.

“All right, Ellen. Don't cry. You'll frighten Jamie.”

The girl stared up at her, her thin shoulders moving convulsively under Joanna's fingers. She took a long gulping breath, and then nodded. “We heard the noise, up at Uncle Charles'. But we thought it was a ship having target practice down off Pirate Island. And I started home, and then I saw Owen coming from Goose Cove.” The wild trembling began again. “He's all covered with blood, Mother, he
is!
”

Oh, Lord!
said Joanna silently. She tightened her grip on Ellen's shoulders.

“We've got to help him, then. Can you run?”

“I ran all the way home—”

“Then go down and get Dennis.”

Ellen ran through the sun parlor and out the front door like a wild creature escaping from a snare, her bright hood flapping.

“Mama,” Jamie said from the doorway. He was mildly curious. “Where did Ellen go?”

“She'll be back in a minute.” Joanna picked him up and put him in his high chair, into which he fitted so snugly there was no chance of his standing up. She forestalled his howl of righteous indignation with an unprecedented handful of cookies. “Ellen's coming right back. Dick's here. Stay with him, Dick. . . . Mother's got to get some wood for the fire, Jamie.”

She snatched a jacket from the row of hooks as she passed and ran out, pulling on the jacket as she went. The frozen ground rang under her feet, the first onrush of cold air in her lungs was like fire. In the alder swamp there were the new tracks made by Donna and Ellen, and then by Ellen as she ran home. Joanna was the one who ran now, steadily, trying not to conjecture, trying not to wonder what she would find.

When she broke out past the belt of spruces into the meadow, she found Owen. He was a scant fifteen feet away from her, but he didn't see her; he came toward her at a staggering, lunging pace, that managed to be fast, but blind. The blood was there, and Ellen had been right. It dripped from the arm that he held rigidly against his side, it ran off the tips of his fingers, or where the tips should be, in a steady scarlet stream that splattered the snow between the grass-clumps. The other hand, pressed awkwardly against the front of his jacket, was red too. The jacket itself was ripped and shredded, one shoulder had been almost entirely torn loose.

Joanna moistened her lips, and conquered her nausea. “
Owen
,” she said, and stepped in his way. He stared at her from a face that seemed burned and blackened.

“Must have been a mine,” he said thickly. “Floated ashore. I poked it. Goddam a fool!”

Joanna felt a maddening helplessness. It was surely wrong to let him walk another yard while he was bleeding like that; but the wonder was that he had walked all the way from Goose Cove.

“Out of my way, woman,” he muttered. She stepped back dumbly; and then she heard Sigurd call from the alder swamp. He came in sight first, and then Dennis, with Franny behind him. She was grateful for them all, with a gratitude that made her eyes swim; but it was Dennis she saw with a prayerful relief that seemed to sink into her bones and melt them so that she wanted to sit down on the ground with her back against a tree and not move for an hour.

“Well, I'll be a son-of-a-bitch,” Owen muttered in vague amazement as the men surrounded him. He began to waver. Sigurd caught him by the shoulder that was intact, holding him with his great strength. Franny stood by, holding the things that Dennis had brought, and Dennis began to make tourniquets. Joanna could not keep from watching him; first, his hands, as they bound and tied and twisted, working with strong and competent agility to stop the bleeding. Then his face. . . . Reaction was setting in; the scene blurred and writhed before her eyes. She thought dimly,
I don't have to worry now, Dennis is here. . . . Dennis always comes
.

“
Joanna!
” Dennis said, without stopping his work. His voice was like a slap across her fading consciousness. She shook her head hard, and everything became clear at once; Owen's face, set like dark iron, his eyes gazing into space as he tried to stand alone and not lean too much on Sigurd; Sigurd's face, red, sweating, as he bit at his lower lip; Franny, pale and intent, like a frightened white rabbit; and Dennis. He was in command. He was looking out for Owen, but his skilled eyes had time for her too, and they were warning her. They held her up as if they had been his hands.

“You'd better go up and get Charles,” he said, nodding his head toward the homestead. “I don't need you here.”

The meadow seemed miles wide, and the Bennett house seemed very small with distance, up on its rise. Its windows blazed with the sunset, the snow on the slope was tinged with rose and gold. Yes, it was a long way when her legs were trembling. But he had told her to get Charles.

She looked back once. Where they were, there was no sun, it had gone down behind the solid black wall of the tall old spruces; the snow was overlaid with purpling shadows, and against it the men stood in a tight, dark knot. She went on, and after what seemed a long while, she climbed up into the sunshine. The snow crystals glistened in tiny jets as she walked through the powdery stuff. Charles' windows winked and gleamed. From here she could look down at Schoolhouse Cove on her left, and Goose Cove on her right; and she wondered if she'd ever again be able to look at the long oval of Goose Cove, dark sapphire as the shadows thickened over it, without this instant drying of her throat and difficulty with her breath.

She stepped up on the wide granite doorstep under the front door, laid her hand on the knob, and went into the house.

*    *    *

When she and Charles came down through the meadow, ten minutes later, the men had gone. The snow where they had been was trampled and stained. Charles looked at it with his chin jutting out, his eyelids drooping. He said nothing at all. They went through the alder swamp to the house.

It was oddly reminiscent of the time Owen had collapsed at the oars. The other men stood around the kitchen nervously, giving Charles quick nervous grins, glancing sheepishly at Joanna as if they expected her to give way in customary feminine fashion. But the moment had passed when she might have given way. She spoke to them briskly, and went into the dining room, where Ellen, still woefully white, sat in the rocking chair holding Jamie; she was keeping him turned away from the sitting-room door, and was talking to him in a low voice.

Joanna brushed a lock of hair back from Ellen's forehead and tucked it carefully under the ribbon. “Good girl, Ellen,” she murmured. “You're a real help.” Jamie struggled to sit up, and held out his arms imploringly. She shook her head at him. “Stay with Ellen, Jamie. If you're a bad boy, you'll have to go upstairs in your crib.”

She turned inquiringly toward Dennis as he came out from the sitting room, trying to read his face; but he had the same unemotional, preoccupied expression he had had when he worked over Nora.

“How bad is it?” Charles asked.

“I've stopped the bleeding for the time being, but we can't leave the tourniquets on too long. I don't know what I'll find when I get his jacket off. . . . Can you put leaves in this table, Joanna?”

She nodded, and began to clear things away. She felt as calm as Dennis looked. It was impossible to be afraid now. She realized her faith in Dennis might be childlike, but at the same time it was a wellspring of strength.

Behind her Charles and Dennis talked in low, unruffled voices. “I'll want all the first-aid material there is on the Island,” Dennis was saying. “I've got some sulfa powder, but I'll need more dressings. We'll fix him up so we can get him ashore—I don't dare take a chance on sending him in as he is now.”

“I'll take him in,” said Charles. “In his own boat. She's the fastest in the harbor.”

“Good. And before we start, call up for an ambulance to meet us, will you?” He went over to Ellen's chair and looked down at her. She smiled back at him, and the last of her wan pallor went. “Want a job, Ellen?”

“Sure,” she said promptly.

“Take Jamie down and park him with Leonie for a while. Then, you can start collecting everybody's first-aid stuff, and all their hot-water bottles. We'll keep him as warm as we can on the trip.”

There was a comforting stir of activity at once. Joanna stuffed Jamie briskly into his snowsuit, and for once he was too overwhelmed to protest. She led him to the door, and Ellen followed, zipping her parka. She said soberly, “Gee, Mother, I'm glad Dennis is here. It's just like when Nils is here, he knows what to do and he makes everybody stop being scared.”

“Yes,” Joanna answered. “He makes us all stop being scared.” She shut the door behind them, and went back to Dennis, giving Sigurd and Franny a small reassuring smile as she went by.

“Well, Dennis?” she said quietly. “What do you want me to do?”

“You can hold the lamp—we'll need it now. I'll want Charles and Sigurd to stand by and steady Owen, if he needs steadying.” For the smallest fragment of a moment, he smiled at her, and then moved away. “I think we can get started.”

She had thought of strength, she had believed she
had
strength, and at the end of the half-hour during which she held the Aladdin lamp, she knew beyond a doubt that she was strong. She stood without moving, holding the heavy base of the lamp so that the incandescent mantle cast a maximum of light over the table and yet didn't dazzle Dennis' eyes. First her wrists ached, then her forearms, then her shoulders, and finally a red-hot knife was pressing into her backbone. At the end of the first ten minutes her legs were beginning to ache from their tense immobility. But the lamp remained motionless, from beginning to end, shedding its yellow brilliance over Sigurd's agonized, sweat-streaming face and Charles' stony one, over Owen's closed eyes and moving lips. Softly and steadily he was swearing. The light shone on Dennis' hands as they cut away the tattered sleeve and laid bare the mutilated flesh.

Leonie came in quietly with the first-aid materials and the hot-water bottles. She stood for awhile behind Franny in the kitchen doorway. Joanna was conscious of the light flashing on her glasses. Then she and Franny went away.

Dennis sprinkled the bloody hands thickly with sulfa powder and dressed them loosely, and did the same with Owen's arm. “How many fingers can I keep, Doc?” Owen asked, opening his eyes.

“I don't know,” said Dennis frankly. “I can't do much more for you here, Owen. This is just to fix you up for the trip.”

“What about my arm?” Owen persisted. He tried to lift his head and look down at his arm, but Charles pressed him back.

“I'm not promising you anything at the moment,” said Dennis. Owen closed his eyes again. His face, scratched and cut slightly from flying fragments, looked sick and gray under the iodine.

“Goddam a fool,” he muttered. “Pokin' at somethin' that looked like a dishpan full of electric light bulbs. . . . Sounds like one of your fool tricks, Siggy. . . . When are we leavin'?”

“As soon as we can get you on your feet,” said Dennis.

“Sigurd,” said Joanna quietly. “Take the lamp, will you?” He took it, and the relief in her cramped muscles was at first an agony.

F
RANNY WENT DOWN TO THE STORE
to call up for an ambulance which would meet the
White Lady
when they reached Limerock. Charles went to bring the boat in to the wharf while Dennis and Sigurd took charge of Owen. It would be a difficult chore to get him aboard the boat when he couldn't use his hands, and while Sigurd looked as if he'd like nothing better than a stiff drink and a chance to sit down, Dennis wouldn't let him go. They started down to the wharf with Owen, and Joanna hurried up and downstairs, her head wonderfully clear now, collecting clothes for Owen and for herself, gathering up blankets and extra cigarettes—Owen was chain-smoking in long, hard puffs.