High Tide at Noon by Elisabeth Ogilvie

heavenward. “All right,” he said on a sigh. “Whose leg you been feelin’ now?”
    Hugo came down the tree, attempted to look nonchalant, and failed. Nils sat back on his heels and lit a cigarette. “I suppose we got to listen to his childish prattle.”
    â€œYou’ll laugh off the other side of your face when I get through telling you.” Hugo settled against a warm tree trunk, looking dreamy. “Well, I was drivin’ ’er along from the store about sundown one day last week—a Tuesday, it was—or was it Thursday? Well, here I am, and there’s a lady going to the well with a bucket. So, being a gentleman like all the Bennetts, I carried the bucket home for her.”
    â€œWho was it—Susie Yetton?” said Nils. Owen chuckled. And Hugo, with an elaborate indifference that couldn’t possibly hide his triumph, said, “Well, boys, I carried that pail of water into the Binnacle.”
    Owen said incredulously, “The Binnacle? Leah Foster? ”
    â€œSurprised, ain’t you?” Hugo’s mouth twitched with excited laughter. “Well, it’s true. You could’ve knocked me stiffer’n a maggot . . . Old Neddie watches her like a hawk, but he’d gone to Vinalhaven, and I guess the lady was lonely.”
    Owen was frankly scornful. “My God, you’re kind of hard up, aren’t you?”
    â€œLemme tell you, chummy!” Exultant color burned on Hugo’s cheekbones. “She’s got something you’ll never find the like of!”
    â€œYou been back since then?” Nils asked.
    â€œSure. Just last night.” Hugo looked dreamily into the cigarette smoke, shook his head, and sighed deeply. It was a blissful sound. “I guess it’s no picnic for her, married to that old man, and her still a young woman.”
    Owen straightened up, lower lip prominent and eyebrows a scowling black bar across his brown face. “Let me get this straight. You mean you just carried a pail of water home for her and that was all there was to it?”
    â€œSure! Asked me to stop a while, in that nice little voice of hers. Welcomed me right in. And you can’t blame a fella for trying to be friendly . . . if she acts like she’d like some friendliness.” Hugo twinkled, and Joanna stood up.
    â€œHe’s getting set to tell you all the details. I’m going for a walk before I get embarrassed.”
    â€œAs if you never stood around and listened with all ears to his crazy yarns,” grunted Owen.
    â€œAnd believed all he said about his technique and just how he gets his women,” added Nils.
    Joanna rumpled Hugo’s head. “Never mind, darlin’, if it wasn’t for you and your women, I’d never have learned the facts of life. Give me your knife, Owen. I’ll get some spruce gum for Mark and Stevie.”
    As she walked away, she heard Hugo begin, with a deliberate drawl, “Well, when I went into the kitchen . . . “ His voice faded as she entered the cool sun-spattered gloom under the great spruces that abruptly walled her in. The path was black mud underfoot, but the gently swaying treetops touched April’s cloud-dappled skies.
    It was too early yet for the small song birds that would come in migration time to spend the warm months in the Island woods, but the crossbills, the nuthatches, and an early robin were noisily industrious all around Joanna. From the topmost branches of a dead fir, a crow made hoarse inquiries, challenging Joanna’s presence here in his domain.
    This was the highest part of the Island. In a little while the path turned steeply downward, there was a scent of salt water edging the breeze, and a deepening roar from not-distant surf. Joanna, whistling under her breath, filled her pockets with spruce gum. She wondered if the younger boys, when they opened the box, would remember how the woods looked in spring, how the mud squished