Storm Tide by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page A

“queer streak.” Like Marion Gray, he thought the Robeys were notional. Moreover, the Brigport fishermen were shifting their traps outward. Nils came home almost daily with an account of seeing them hauling up pots and taking a boatload out toward Bantam, or in the other direction, toward Pirate Island, or out around the Island toward the Rock. The Fowler boys, the Merrills, the other Robeys—Tom’s cousins—and a scattering of men who didn’t belong to any one of the three principal families on Brigport—they were all moving into deeper water. There were all in all some fifteen fishermen from Brigport, not counting the old men who puttered around with their handful of pots and two-cycle engines, who didn’t need to work but couldn’t give it up because it was their lifeblood.
    There were tranquil and lovely days in November, but there were gray and blustery ones too. On such a day, when it was too rough to haul, Nils took the Donna to Brigport, with Caleb and Jud aboard, to meet the mailboat, put in groceries, and bring Ellen and Joey home for the weekend.
    Joanna stood at the window to watch the Donna plunge through the tide rip at the harbor mouth. The water was slate gray under a dark sky, the wave crests very white. The trees on the harbor point looked black, and Joanna was grateful for the smoke blowing from the Caldwells’ chimney, and the white paint she’d put on the house. It looked snug and friendly on the bleak day.
    She turned from the window, so as not to watch the Donna out of sight. If she hadn’t been doing some special baking in Ellen’s honor, she would have wanted to go with them this morning. Spray would be flying over the bow and the gulls would be swooping low into the glistening dark valleys between the waves, and Tenpound would be lashed with exploding white water this morning.
    She had a special sympathy for anyone who’d come out to Brigport on the Aurora B . today. The Aurora rolled and pitched frightfully, and two hours could stretch to two years if you were down in the after cabin with the slide pulled over to keep out the water that constantly washed the narrow decks. It was cold and miserable even for a good sailor.
    But the Donna . . . She smiled absently at the devil’s food cake cooling on its rack, inspected the beans in the oven. There was a boat. She’d never loved any other boat so well, unless it was the White Lady . Her brother Owen had designed and built the White Lady himself in the boatshop long since burned down. She wondered about the White Lady now. Somebody over in Pleasant Point had her. Owen had dreamed of her for all his life, until he could bring her into being; and then he had walked away from her without a backward glance.
    Joanna could understand how one could part with people as Owen had parted from his family; she could almost understand how he could leave the Island. It had mocked him and suffocated him. But a boat . . .
    She shook her head, and her brown hands were strong and swift, kneading yeast dough. Maybe it had been dreams Owen had lived for; and when the dream came true, was solid timber and paint under his touch, it was not in his system any more, and he felt an emptiness, because he had lived with the dream for so long.
    Maybe he had used up all the dreams the Island could offer him, so he had gone looking for more. She hoped with all her heart that he had found them. She would never know; for it was in her blood, the conviction that she would never see him again.
    The morning went swiftly and she was busy with dinner when she saw the Donna come into the harbor again, as unflurried and serene as the real Donna for whom the boat had been named. Mother of Joanna and the five boys, wife of Stephen, in the days of her family’s youth she had been like a slender tree beset by tumultuous winds; yet a deep-rooted tree, who knew how to stand through the storms without giving way. She was the same