The Dawning of the Day (45 page)

“Wait a minute, Randall,” he said without raising his voice.

Randall whirled. “
Sure
! What is it?” He bared his teeth in a smile.

“I guess you know what,” Nils said. He tilted his head a little as he looked down at Randall and seemed friendly, almost affectionate. “You aren't going to try to put anything over on me, are you, Randall? You been thinking up a good story about how that buoy got to be in your boat?”

“I don't have to think up no story,” Randall burst out. “I got Steve's warp caught in my wheel, that's all. You went high-tailing off before I got a chance to tell ye.” He sounded near tears. “I figger that's why you're suspicionin' me. S'pose
you
never got a warp in
your
wheel and had to cut it free, 'n' tell the man afterward, 'n' pay him if you spoilt the warp and lost the trap.”

“I've had to cut warps out of my wheel, yes,” admitted Nils. “But I never could figure a way to get the trap up and take the lobsters out of it before I cut it off. Kind of a hard chore to do.” He took his pipe out and pointed it toward the black and red buoy. Randall's watering eyes followed the pipestem. But Nils, while he pointed at the buoy, was watching Foss' bent head as he tied his punt painter. He raised his voice slightly.

“That buoy, there,” he said, “will convince just about any warden and any court that the man who cut it wasn't up to his neighbor's best interests. It will probably convince them the man ought to lose his license for six months while he meditates on his sins.”

Randall made an incoherent noise; he clawed at the neck of his jacket and finally got it open. “They're your brother-in-law's pots! He'd never make a complaint with no more evidence than that!” He looked around wildly, but Foss had moved away.

“Wouldn't he? Listen, Randall. Isn't this—” he pointed to the buoy again—“just what all of us have been waiting for, your crowd as well as mine? Just one thing to get the grappling into somebody's hide and put an end to this foolishness. Well, it was a tossup for a while whose hide it was going to be.”

Charles appeared in the door of his bait shed in the long fishhouse. “Looks like it's sunk real deep into that fat butt of yours, Randall,” he shouted. “You're the one to be hung up like a dead gull in a blueberry patch.”

“Shut up,” said Nils without looking at him. He watched Randall quietly.

Randall's head swiveled; he stared all around the beach. “You wait,” he muttered. “You just wait. You can't ruin me. My house, my kids—” He shook his head and hurried toward the other end of the beach. Foss was there, lighting a cigarette and talking with Asanath.

“Come on,” said Kathie, “let's take a walk up the road to the Homestead.”

“I'm going back to the Binnacle,” said Philippa.

“We can be taking a walk along the beach as well as anybody, can't we? Golly, if we just happened along, we can't help it!”

Philippa would have laughed at another time. She said coldly, “I've seen and heard all I want. More than I want.” She pulled her arm free of Kathie and turned back.

“
Look
,” said Kathie. “He's talking to Foss.”

Randall's voice came to them indistinctly, and they couldn't hear Foss at all, but they could see Randall's arms flung out in imploring desperation and the way Foss kept looking down at his cigarette. Then Philippa saw Fort take a few steps toward them from the big anchor and stop uncertainly.

Suddenly Foss dropped his cigarette, rubbed it out with a twist of his boot heel, and walked away from Randall.

“He's turned his back on him,” Kathie breathed. “Supposed to be his friend, and he's turned his back on him.”

Randall took a few blundering steps after Foss. Philippa felt a tremor of disgust with everyone concerned, with herself for being there, with Randall for his stupidity and his shameful terror, with Nils for his quiet cruelty, with the others for their indifferent stares.

Foss didn't turn. He walked faster as if in a few yards he would be forever out of reach of those frantic fingers. Fort ran down from the anchor and caught at his father's arm. Randall fought him off, and their voices rose in the quiet air.

“Don't speak to him!” Fort cried. “Don't even look at him! If I catch you doing it again I'll beat you to a pulp, even if you are my father!”

“Leggo!” Randall struck at Fort's hands. “You git! Git home with your mother where you belong!”

“This time I
am
going,” Philippa said. She went home without looking back to the beach.

Her fire was almost out and she rebuilt it, wondering if a cup of strong tea would take away the faintness in her stomach. Kathie came in a few minutes. “I know you think I'm awful,” she said cheerfully, “but you might's well hear the end of it. Randall kept fighting Fort off, and finally Fort said, ‘Well, you can go fry in hell for all I care,' and he stomped off up toward the woods. Young Charles went right behind him. Maybe they'll make up now; it's out in the open and Fort doesn't have to keep it locked in any more.”

“Keep what locked in?”

“He had such an awful fight with his father about bothering gear that he wouldn't go to haul with him any more.” She said it as a simple, unassailable fact, as obvious as the weather.

“Of course everybody knows Randall didn't do
all
the damage, and what he did he
had
to do because Foss told him to. Foss owns him lock, stock, and barrel. But Randall's that stupid, he'd cut off a trap in the face of everybody and get made an example of.”

I'll never ask this child another question as long as I live, Philippa thought, but almost at once she asked it, out of her astonishment. “How do you know all that for the truth?”

Kathie's eyes narrowed; she lifted her head with that indefinable air of assurance. “Oh, I told you once,” she answered casually, “I know almost everything that goes on. I keep my ears open.”

S
teve came on the mail boat on Saturday morning. It was not too cold for December, and most of the women who had stayed under cover all week appeared at the store. Viola came out at last, with a fading bruise on one angular cheekbone and a small cut almost healed along her jaw. The story of the quarrel's end was somewhat blurred, since Foss and Asanath had arrived and driven away the spectators just when it appeared that Syd was to corner her in the pantry. Syd had dropped back to his usual obscurity since the occasion, but Viola's laughter rose again above the other voices by the door. Joanna edged closer to Philippa and murmured, “She's in fine fettle today. Maybe he just succeeded in tuning her up.”

When the boat whistled outside the point, there was a general stirring, but only a few went down the wharf. As Joanna and Philippa came out of the shed, the northwest wind struck them across their faces. The
Ella Vye
was rolling through the whitecaps in the tide rip. “There's Steve standing outside the pilothouse,” said Joanna. “He hates a fuss. I can't see him making an example of Randall alone when the rest have all been mixed up in it. But something will have to stop them, somehow.”

They stepped over to one side where a stack of traps gave a little shelter from the wind. Terence Campion appeared from the shed. He nodded at the women and went out to the end of the wharf, where he stood braced against the wind with his hands in his pockets. There wasan air of energy and determination about him. He kept his eyes fastened on the
Ella Vye
.

Asanath Campion came out onto the wharf. He glanced around at the women and grinned. “Ain't a very summery mornin', is it?” Foss came a little behind him but said nothing. Joanna went across the wharf toward the boat, but Philippa hung back. She wished she had not come; it was hard, after even this few days' separation, to greet him before people as if there were nothing between them.

Without apparently hurrying, Terence reached the head of the ladder before Joanna did. He leaned down and took Steve's bag; Philippa saw Steve's surprised smile as he looked up at Terence. He came over the top of the wharf, his dark eyes narrowed and good-natured going past Terence, Joanna, and the boys guiding the loads of freight to the wharf. He is looking for me, Philippa thought. In a moment he will find me. Her face felt frozen in a conventional smile.

Terence spoke, and Steve looked back at him. Philippa couldn't wait after all. She went slowly out by the traps, passing Asanath and coming up to Joanna. Then she heard what Terence was saying. He spoke in a flat voice, ignoring everyone but Steve.

“I'm getting my licks in first,” he said. “They'll all be at you by the time you reach the store.” He nodded across the water at the road going by the Binnacle.

“Well, what is it?” Steve asked patiently.

“Randall's been at your traps,” Terence said. “I don't know what the damage is, but I'll make it good, every cent of it, if you'll leave him alone.”

“Randall?” Steve stared at him. “Good Lord! What's
he
in it for?”

Asanath drawled from behind Philippa, “Ask my boy what
he's
in it for. It's none of his business; he ain't got the money to throw away. Randall made his bed, now let him lie in it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Steve. He put his hand on Terence's shoulder. “I guess you hadn't finished what you were saying.”

Terence looked at his father and at Foss behind him; the one brother wore a patronizing smile that did little to soften his bony face, the other stared coldly. Like two figures set barrenly in a modern painting, Philippa thought. And Terence was like them, physically shaped in their image. He was an uncanny mirror of them both, first in the cold stare and then in the corrosive smile.

“I wasn't figgering on saying anything more,” he said. “But now I guess I will. The reason I'm going good for Randall is because he's no more a crook than anybody else. He's been at your traps, sure, but he was drove into it. The Campions kept him in their ranks when they thought they could use him. But he hasn't been much good. Kind of stupid. So now they see fit to turn their backs on him.”

“Son,” said Asanath. “You're talking too much.” He scratched his head and looked sadly perplexed. “There's times lately when I don't think the boy's well.”

“I've never been so healthy,” said Terence. He kept his eyes on Foss now, whose expression never changed. “Randall's crime—according to some—wasn't cutting off somebody's traps. It was getting caught at it. Foss twisted him into it; he clubbed him over the head with his kids and his house and his boat, and now Randall can go to hell on wheels. My old man could have stopped it. They all listen to Asa like he was the Almighty himself. But he sat back and gave Foss his blessing.” He laughed suddenly, but his eyes didn't change. “Know what? Foss and Vi don't even breathe unless Asa tells 'em to.”

Foss turned abruptly and walked away. Asanath said, “That's an awful hard statement to make about your family, son. In a war, even the enemy don't think much of a traitor.”

“I'm glad you admit it's a war,” said Terence.

“I was just generalizing.” Asanath's gaze moved over Terence, down to his feet and up again to his face. He smiled distantly. “I wonder what your brother Elmo would think of you now.”

There was a flicker across Terence's lashes as if he had been slapped, and Philippa's hands clenched in her coat pockets. She implored Terence silently not to lose his temper and give his father a weapon. Steve stood with his head bent forward a little, staring at a crack in the wharf as he listened.

Suddenly Terence let out his breath hard through his nostrils. “That's a good question, now,” he said. “What would he think of all of us? He'd think we were a passel of fools, wouldn't he? Getting a foot-holt on a place like this where you can set traps in your dooryard and catch lobsters in 'em, and then proceeding to foul our own nest!”

Asanath stood there listening with a stiff, distant dignity. “I suppose,” his son said in a brutal parody of his father's drawl, “that Elmo would say, ‘Go to it, fellers, this is what I was fighting for.'”

Asanath was pale. “You were never like the rest of us. I ain't surprised at the way you're acting now. And you always hated Elmo.” He walked away.

“
Hated
him!” The words jolted out of Terence. “Sure, I always did! That's the big joke!” His father didn't hear. Philippa put her hand on Terence's arm.

“I don't know what it's all about, Terence.” Steve spoke quietly, “but I won't get after Randall. You keep your money. We've all got to carry part of the cost of this mess.”

“I meant it,” Terence protested. “As soon as you figure out the damages, you come to me.”

“All right, all right,” said Steve. “I will, I promise you.” He put his hand on Terence's shoulder. “Now promise me something. Go and straighten things out with the old man. It's an awful fix, to have trouble between father and son.”

“Straighten what out?” said Terence. “It'll never be straightened out. When they can't think of any other way to knock me flat, they bring it up about Elmo. They tell me I hated him, they'll always believe it, and they'll always hate me for being the one that's alive.” He put his hands into his pockets and watched a load of laths come up the wharf. Without looking at the others, he said, “I'm sorry I hauled you all into the mess.”

“We were in it anyway,” said Joanna.

“Clear to our necks,” Steve added.

“Thanks,” Terence said, and left them.

A
few mornings later Philippa awoke with an unpleasant start to the raw red light of sunrise in her room. She could not remember ever seeing such a crude and ugly glare. She tried to shut her eyes against it, but the impression persisted; her small room seemed filled with the fierce glow. She got up finally, shivering, and looked out. The east flamed, but the rest of the sky was gray, and the sea was a flat dark gun-metal.