Read By The Sea, Book Three: Laura Online

Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg

Tags: #adventure, #great depression, #hurricane, #newport rhode island, #sailing adventure, #schooner, #downton abbey, #amreicas cup

By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (2 page)

BOOK: By The Sea, Book Three: Laura
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Her mother thought she was crazy and so did
all of her friends. But Laura learned to navigate by the stars and
to fry eggs sunnyside on a stove that wasn't always horizontal. Her
pale skin darkened and her thin arms strengthened; her heart beat
with a slower, stronger pulse. She forgot the names of authors and
the titles of plays, but she knew the names of dozens of
constellations and of every seaport between Nova Scotia and North
Carolina. She learned to play the concertina, and when to coax a
seamen's ditty out of her baritone husband, and when to let him
be.

And sometimes, when the night was quiet and
little Neil was sleeping peacefully in his hammock and the first
mate was off watch, Sam would talk wistfully of the glory days of
cargo schooners and of their recent swan song, during the great
Florida land boom.

"Ay, you happened onto the scene at almost
the exact moment of its collapse, looking back," he would say, his
voice filled with superstitious awe. "If only you'd seen it at its
peak. Lumber, pipe, granite, cement, fixtures and such, shingles
and shakes—all thrown helter-skelter on the decks of leaky
schooners which'd been dragged from their graves in muddy banks and
forced back into service. Some of them made it down the coast in
one piece; some didn't. It were a regular traffic snarl out there,
in any case. As for ashore! Why, it were madness! Folks running
around like headless chickens, waving money at anyone with a bit of
land to sell. I heard of a snippet of dirt in Miami sold for $800
one year, and $150,000 three years later. From Palm Beach on
down—madness." He'd shake his head in wonder. "I'll never know
why."

Laura would smile and stand a little closer
to her husband as he nudged the wheel to port or starboard.
"Because people want to be able to look out at the sea at the
Virginia,
and other ships like her."

"Well, they'd best look while they can,
because there's but a handful of us left, and we'll not be out
there much longer, far as I can tell."

"Yes, we will," Laura always answered with
the exact same serenity. "We have a stout little ship, and you work
so hard."

"Could
you be happy in a rust bucket,
girl?" Sam would suddenly ask, his voice warm and urgent. "Should
we go over to steam?"

"Never! Of course not! Where's the poetry in
it? And besides, the wind is free. I know how much that appeals to
your Downeast temperament," she'd add in a teasing voice.

"Ay. Well, we'll hold on, then. As long as
we can. But I wish you could've seen us in the glory days."

****

For three years the
Virginia
plied
her trade, operating out of Newport, Rhode Island, and contracting
to carry granite, gravel, railroad ties, shooks, ice, soft coal,
quahogs and oysters up and down the East Coast, with Sam and Laura
eking out a living, occasionally putting something by. All of the
profits were poured back into the boat, and it showed: every year
the
Virginia
looked a touch smarter, every year she flaunted
a new bit of finery on her decks or below. These were not her
halcyon days, but neither were they hard times.

Then, in the summer of 1929, Sam went a
little wild and bought a steam-driven yawl boat to pull the
Virginia
through the calm spots, and a rowing dory for young
Neil, who at two-plus years did not yet have quite the arm span to
reach both oars.

"Don't you worry none," said Sam confidently
to his wife, filling his pipe. "He'll grow into it."

When the Crash came later that year, Newport
hardly felt a thing—at first. As the market plunged and fortunes
fell, some of the locals even cheered: the irresponsibly rich were
getting theirs at last. Oh, there was a little belt-tightening all
around: the Fall River Line, which employed thousands of Newporters
on Long Wharf to maintain their fleet of steamships, trimmed down
to a five-day work week. The Torpedo Station on Goat Island, a
federal facility, eventually stopped making torpedoes on Saturdays.
One or two trade unions took pay cuts. Still, no one really worried
when the first grand estates went up for auction for back taxes and
mortgage payments. Hardly any of the domestics employed in the
summer cottages were locals, after all. The only Newporters
affected seemed to be the butcher, the greengrocer, and a
shopkeeper or two.

But as the sudden horror of 1929 rolled on
into the shock of 1930, then spread worldwide for three more years
of numbing despair, even Newport cried out in pain. Thousands of
laborers and craftsmen were thrown out of work. Masons and
plumbers, painters and carpenters were put to work "leaf- raking":
grading fields, cleaning beaches, planting shrubs. The less lucky
and the overly proud were turned out of their tenements and homes.
Millworkers turned ugly, rioting in nearby textile towns.
Newporters became afraid.

The
Virginia
was not immune to the
economic crisis. Contracts to haul fell off steadily. The second
mate was laid off, and then the first. Sam's brother, young and
inexperienced, came down from Maine to replace them; he was all Sam
could afford. The
Virginia
whiled away her days at anchor in
various New England harbors, while Sam scoured the waterfront for
loads to haul. Still, Sam and Laura were reasonably
self-sufficient. They paid no taxes, and the wind was free.

Sails, however, were not free, and neither
was paint. The
Virginia
had not been hauled out in two
years. Her bottom was foul; she lumbered like a bathtub through the
water, despite repeated scrubbings by Sam and his brother Billy.
Her rusted iron fastenings bled freely through her peeling
dark-green topsides. The patches on her sails had patches. When
Billy managed to blow up the Scotch fire-tube boiler on the yawl
boat through sloppy maintenance, Sam very nearly keelhauled him.
They were living on the edge, and the strain was beginning to
show.

Eventually Roosevelt and the federal
government began to put together a new deal for the downtrodden,
and all eyes turned to Washington. But Sam refused to look. "I'll
not go on the dole and abase myself before my son," he stoutly
maintained. "Besides, I'd rather starve at sea than stand in a soup
line ashore. But we ain't about to starve, girl: tomorrow we pick
up a load of quahog shells in Bristol; we're bound for New
York."

"Just the shells? What for?"

"Pills, jewelry, ground cover. Who
cares?"

It was a foul and smelly business; Laura
wrinkled her nose at the prospect. Sam pulled a ferocious face in
mockery of hers, whereupon Laura stuck out her tongue at her
husband and he grinned.

Despair was widespread, but it was not yet
universal.

Chapter 2

 

The
Virginia
was returning from New
York—empty of cargo, unfortunately—and bound for Newport harbor. As
she rounded Fort Adams, the wind that howls off that flat spit of
land caught her sails and laid her over on her ear. She hesitated,
gathering energy, then went charging forward, pushing a white,
curling wave ahead of her, a lively dog with a bone in her teeth.
No one would have guessed that she was sixty-two years old.

She was a show-stopper, all right, and one
of the reasons was that her captain was wrapped around her fore
topmast, eight and a half stories above the water, working madly to
free up the fore topsail halyard which was jammed in its block.
Someone might have asked why Captain Powers hadn't dropped his
topsails before now, but that would've been unkind. The fact was,
Captain Powers—despite his Downeast caution—liked to put his vessel
through her paces now and then, and this was one of those times. It
was just bad luck that the halyard jammed.

From her position behind the wheel, Laura
understood perfectly well that they were running out of time,
running out of room. Sam had to get the topsail down soon or she'd
have to take the
Virginia
back out into the Bay, where
they'd have the room he needed to clear the block and drop sail.
She squinted up at her husband, then scanned the anchorage area.
There wasn't room to swing a cat. The America's Cup Races were in
town (for the second time), and so were a lot of important yachts.
An Astor or a Vanderbilt entering the harbor just then would have
been looking around for a peer; Laura was looking around for a
hole.

From eighty feet above her she heard the
cry, "Round up!"

She found a narrow slot, put the helm over,
and headed into the wind. To her relief she saw Sam take in the
topsail, bundle it, and lash it. Quick as a flash Billy, part
monkey, scrambled up the ratlines of the foremast, swung himself up
onto the crosstrees, and did the same to the main topsail while
young Neil gazed aloft longingly from deck level and glared at his
mother the tyrant who never let him do anything important. Within
seconds both brothers had scrambled back down to deck level and
were bringing in the jibs. By the time the
Virginia
was
about to lose way, the five-hundred pound anchor was pulling the
first fathoms of chain through the hawsepipes. It was a nice
recovery to what could have been an embarrassing display of
overconfidence.

The grin on Sam Powers's face as he walked
aft to his wife was a little defensive. "You damn near stuck the
bowsprit up the ass of that steam-yacht ahead, girl," he said,
getting in the first punch.

"It's not as though you gave me much
warning," Laura said sharply.

It had become a tender subject, this issue
of seamanship, ever since it became clear that Laura's grasp of
celestial navigation was better than her husband's. Laura was good,
and Sam was jealous. But she did not—she could not—handle the helm
as well as he, and he liked to remind her of it whenever it was
convenient.

"Hey now, he said with a gentle smile of
remorse, chucking her under the chin, "you're not half bad for a
girl."

She knew that he meant it as a rave review,
but it irritated her just the same. "Don't do that! Don't patronize
me."

"Paternize? Meaning I wonder what?" He put
on his stupid look, the one he preferred to wear whenever Laura
ventured past his working vocabulary.

She was too tired to fight. "Meaning we're
out of rice and almost out of coffee. I'll have to go ashore before
supper. I need some money."

"Yeh, and the starboard water barrel's about
dry as well," he said, throwing his shoulders back in a stretch and
rubbing his ribs. "Me 'n Bill will tend to that while you're gone.
Will you be taking the boy? We can use him to steady the
skiff."

"Well, that depends. I don't suppose there's
enough for me to buy Neil a new pair of overalls? He ripped his
everyday pair again." She was still smarting over her husband's
remark. "They're beyond mending, you know," she added cuttingly,
drawing blood; Sam Powers hated to be found wanting as a
provider.

"I don't know as the little ruffian deserves
to cover his nekkedness," he said gruffly. "The next time I see him
skylarkin' in the ratlines, I'll shoot him down like a Canada
goose. Damn scalawag."

But secretly he was pleased by his son's
fearlessness, so he added, "I reckon them cuffs ain't been within
four inches of his ankles for months now." It was settled: new
overalls for Neil.

Laura was happy; she liked to buy things.
She favored her husband with a summer smile and whispered, "I'll
bring you a treat."

"Never mind about treats," he growled. "Just
bring me supper."

Laura looked around her: Neil and Billy were
busy lowering the yawl-boat from its davits. No one else was near.
Before Sam knew what hit him, she pressed her lips to his in an
electric kiss, then quickly withdrew with a look of devilish
innocence.

"Ay. Get back soon," said her husband in a
surprised and husky voice.

Ashore with Neil, Laura felt as she always
did when she stepped off the decks of the
Virginia:
as if
she'd been catapulted into the future. The narrow, crowded streets
were filled with autos and trucks. Grim, impatient deliverymen
bobbed and weaved among pleasantly bewildered tourists. Sailors,
yachtsmen, locals, ex-millionaires, shoppers, and the unemployed
were all thrown together, creating a potluck ambience that set
Newport apart from other towns its size.

The town was filled with people Laura should
have understood: people on the move. But she felt no more kinship
with them than she did with the clannish, tightly knit citizens
back in Danske. She held herself apart from mankind, brushing up
against its edges only occasionally.
It's because I haven't
yet
found what I want
, she told herself
.
It's
out there somewhere; I just don't know where.

"Mama, can I have an ice?" asked Neil, whose
head was swiveling left and right to take in the sights around him.
Newport was his favorite harbor.

"However can you ask? Do you suppose money
grows on trees?" She hurried her son along. Shops would be closing
soon.

"Those fellows are eating ices," said Neil,
jerking his head toward two young dandies his age clad all in
white.

"You are not those fellows, and lettuce
costs six cents a head. As long as there's a drought and produce
costs so much, there won't be ices. Besides, they rot your
teeth."

"Can I join a baseball team then? I hardly
know how to play."

"I don't think so, Neil. They wouldn't be
very tolerant of your travel schedule. Besides, Billy plays with
you quite a lot."

"Billy plays catch with me. It's not the
same at all," said Neil, scarcely hiding his contempt of his
mother's ignorance. "I don't know anything about sliding into
second base, or stealing third, or about sacrifice flies. Nothing
except what I've read. What good is that?" he demanded with
disgust.

BOOK: By The Sea, Book Three: Laura
6.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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