On the other side of the point, Cove Harbor lay like a bite taken out of an apple, a sheltered half moon rimmed in great pink rocks, an enormous lone boulder standing on the shingle beach. The tide was far out; rocks and boulders wore beards of wet green moss and were pebbled with mollusks and barnacles. There were a few sloops and catboats bobbing at their buoys, canvases lapped tight and buttoned around their masts. A fleet of dinghies bumped at the foot of the long catwalk that extended like a finger out from the gray wooden dock. One boat, a long, low, racing sloop with lines like a deer in flight, stood ready to cast off, it seemed to me; its sails were up but loose, flapping gently in the little wind, and there were canvas bundles on the coaming, and a wicker hamper covered with cloth. But there was no one in evidence aboard her. The name on her transom read Circe. I peered around the harbor and saw no one. Peter was not in sight.
I stood still in disappointment, the stark beauty of the harbor and shore losing much of its impact. I thought perhaps Peter might be in the clubhouse, and went up the shallow steps and tried the door, but it was locked, and the salt-scummed windows were shuttered over. I turned away slowly. Peter and Parker Potter had evidently gotten clear away. There seemed no recourse but Mother Hannah and morning calls in the simple morning dress I did not own.
“Ahoy, there,” someone called, and I turned to see a young man coming out of the clubhouse.
“Ahoy,” I answered, shielding my eyes to look at him. The peculiar dazzle of the sun was directly behind him, and I could only see that he was short and stocky and had very red hair. The light on it was like live coals.
“You can only be the new Mrs. Chambliss,” he said, coming down the steps into the shade of a great overhanging blue spruce. Without the light I saw that he was perhaps Peter’s age, and had blue eyes screwed up into slits against the sun and a deep mahogany tan that was striking with the hair, until he came close enough for me to see that his entire face was a mass of freckles run together, like a mask. It should have been grotesque, but it wasn’t; the snub nose and small white teeth gave him the look of a young boy, and a chipped front tooth added to the Huckleberry Finn aura. His hair hung in his eyes and his shirt sleeve was out at the elbow and there was a brownish stain on his white pants. Something in his bearing told me he was not a worker or an employee; he just missed swaggering, with his barrel chest and short legs and rolling walk. Suddenly I knew who he was.
“Parker Potter, I’ll bet,” I said. “Oh, good; then you all haven’t left yet. Is Peter in there? Oh…I’m Maude Chambliss. Well, but that’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“Well, but it is,” he said, the smile widening. It stretched almost literally from ear to ear. His eyes all but disappeared into his cheeks, showing only a feathering of white eyelashes. His brows were nearly white too.
“No, Peter’s gone to Micah Willis’s boatyard up the bay, to see about getting the Hannah in the water,” he said. “He thought you were going to sleep in. Said you were dead to the world when he left. I think he thought maybe his mother had plans for you.”
Something in his slow voice and the way he said “dead to the world” made me redden from neckline to hairline again. The narrow eyes rested for a moment on my chest, as if he could, like the old women earlier, read the stigma of the night before through the stuff of my sweater.
“She does,” I said crisply, “and I’d better get on back before she comes home. I just thought maybe…I’ve never done any real sailing and I thought Peter might—”
“Stay a minute,” Parker Potter said. “I’d love to get to know you better one-to-one like this, instead of at the inevitable tea or whatever your mother-in-law or my mother or whoever will give for you. You’re a surprise; old Peter never said a word about you. I can see why; I’d be tempted to keep you to myself too. He said you were something to look at, but he didn’t say you were a fair knockout.”
“I really can’t,” I said, acutely uncomfortable in his presence. Somehow he commanded the air around him. It was a different thing entirely from the power Peter had, and his father.
“Look,” Parker said, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m all bark. Peter’s just about my oldest friend in the world; he’d have my hide if he thought I made his bride uncomfortable. Sit and talk to me while I stow some stuff on the Circe. I’d like us to be friends. My wife, Amy, met you for a minute last night and said how nice she thought you were.”
I smiled at him. “I liked her too,” I said. “She has a wonderful laugh. I’ll stay for a minute. Maybe until Peter comes back. Do you know how long he’ll be?”
“Well, until after lunch anyway,” he said. “He was going to check the boat out with old Micah. It takes a while, after the winter. Tell you what, though. If you’d like, I’ll sail you around there in Circe. It’s not so far by water.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
“Come on. It’ll be a nice surprise for Peter, and it’s really a treat for me too. Not many women up here sail. I never met one who wanted to learn. I can’t get Amy near my boat.”
I looked at the slender white sloop swaying on the calm water. Sun danced on its brass fittings, and a little wind bellied its sails slightly. Far out the water looked as still as glass, and the hard, cold blue of the deep water outside the cove was going mild and milky. The air was stilling on my face, and the glare of the sun softened in my eyes. It seemed a lovely morning for a short sail, and I thought it would please Peter for me to appear at the boathouse already acquainted with his boyhood friend and already versed in the rudiments of sailing. It was, I knew, a passion with him.
“Well, if it won’t take too long…?”
“Have you home for lunch,” he said. And grinned widely again. “You better do it while you can, Miss Maude. Once Peter’s mother gets ahold of you, you can kiss mornings on the water goodbye. Ask my Amy. She spends most of her mornings ferrying Mother and Mamadear around. It’s not going to be much different for you.”
“You convinced me,” I said.
“Thought I would.”
Outside the harbor the wind picked up, and the Circe heeled into it. At first it was only a gentle dipping, the slightest rolling wallow. But it accelerated rapidly. My heart tightened with something near panic. I felt absolutely certain that if the lee rail dipped an inch farther we would be precipitated into the water. Out here it looked terrible, deep and dark and lightless, the opaque indigo of endless night and cold. I clutched the railing with white fingers and grinned in terror at Parker.
“Does it usually get much rougher than this?” I said.
He smiled the face-eating smile again.
“Rougher? This is the calmest I’ve seen the bay in a long time. It’s almost a flat calm, and we usually get those only in August. Hell, I’ve sailed Circe with the lee rail two feet under white water and all hands hanging perpendicular. Today will be like a stroll with your grandmother.”
It didn’t help much. I realized then that I would never sail with Peter. The sense of losing control and balance was simply too awful. It would happen whether there was a flat calm or a gale.
“It’s better below,” Parker said. “There’s no fixed horizon to measure the roll against. Why don’t you go down to the cabin for a little while? Look around, stretch out on one of the bunks. I think Amy put some hot coffee in a thermos too; it’ll be in one of those ditty bags. We’ll be there before you know it.”
“Thanks, Parker,” I said humbly. “I’ve only done Charleston Harbor sailing before now. It’s not the same thing.”
“I know,” he said. “I won’t tell on you.”
I crept down the hatchway into the cabin of the sloop. It was dark and snug and friendly, like a warm teak womb. Everything was spare and neat and tucked and buttoned up, and the bunks—two fore and two aft—were covered in the ubiquitous Hudson Bay blankets and had small fat white pillows tossed about. The bags and basket sat in the tiny galley. I fished in them and pulled out a thermos of coffee and poured a cup and drank it sittin
g on one of the bunks. Parker was right; the rolling seemed less here. I peered out a salt-scrimmed porthole and saw the horizon tossing and swallowed hard and pulled the little curtain over the port. After that it was better.
“Okay below?” Parker yelled.
“Just fine,” I called.
“I’ll sing out when we’ve sighted the boatyard. I’m going to take her out into the bay a way so we can have a straight beat in.”
“Fine.”
I found a damp, curled copy of Yachting and leaned back in the bunk to look at it. It seems hard to believe now, but with the dimness and the rhythmic rolling and the close warmth, I was asleep inside five minutes. When I woke, the boat was not rocking any more, the slap of water against the hull had stopped, and I could hear no sound. I sat up quickly and banged my head on the bulkhead and straightened my slacks and sweater and groped my way up the companionway stairs. The light was peculiar, thick and white and lightless. Had I slept until late afternoon? Why had he not wakened me?
I put my head out into whiteness so dense and impenetrable that I felt it in my nose and mouth and on my face. I could see nothing. I could not see my hand at the end of my arm. There was no sound from Parker.
“Parker?” I cried softly, and my voice came out in a flat, treble squawk. It had no resonance, no dimension. Fog. Peter had said that sound was peculiar in the fog.
“Right here,” Parker’s voice replied, sounding at first far far away and then directly in my ear. I slewed my head around but saw nothing. Then I saw his dark shape bulking up out of the whiteness, almost at my fingertips.
“I’m sorry, Maude,” he said. “I should have seen it coming. We hit it right off Orcutt, a solid bank. I think it’ll probably lift soon. It’s the nighttime fogs that last. I’ve dropped anchor and we’ll just wait it out below and have some lunch. Don’t worry.”
I stepped back into the cabin and he came down, pearled all over with droplets, his red hair darkened with wet. He loomed large in the small space, and I could feel the damp heat of his body. I bumped into him a couple of times and finally retreated out of the way into the bunk.
“Is it going to make us terribly late?” I said. “Peter will be worried to death.”
“I doubt it. When he finds the Circe gone and you gone, he’ll figure it out. He knows the only thing to do in fog is drop anchor and wait. And he knows I’m the best sailor on the cape.”
He reached past me for the basket, and I smelled a warm gust of whiskey. I looked closely at him. His face was flushed and his eyes glittered. He had, I thought, been drinking for quite a while. I had seen no bottle. Suddenly I was afraid.
It was in the inside pocket of his parka. He fished it out and poured a generous tot into two cups of coffee and passed me one. Then he leaned back in the opposite bunk and lifted his cup and said, “Cheers, Mrs. Chambliss,” and smiled.
“I don’t want any,” I said. “I don’t drink much.”
“Time you learned, then. Everybody up here over the age of twelve drinks. We’d go nuts in the evenings if we didn’t. Come on, down the hatch. It’ll take the fog chill out of your bones.”
“I’m not cold. It’s very warm down here.”
He smiled. It was the same smile, but all the Huckleberry Finn had seeped out of it.
“It is, at that,” he said. “Why don’t you just skin out of that heavy damp sweater? There’s bound to be something dry around here that’ll fit you.”
“I’m not wet, either,” I said.
“Well, here’s to…good sailing, Mrs. Chambliss. Maude. Pretty Maude from way down South.” He drained the cup. “Whooeee. Just what the doctor ordered. You sure about that drink?”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” I said. “Ah…how long have we been stopped? How long was I asleep?”
“Don’t have my watch on and can’t see the sun for the fog, but I’d say it was around midafternoon,” he said. His voice was slower and thicker, and his eyes had drooped into slits.
“Midafternoon! Parker, we have to go back,” I gasped. “Peter will be frantic, my mother-in-law will kill me—”
“Sweet thing, the only way we could possibly go back now is for you to go out on the bow with a long stick and lie down and hold it straight out so you could feel any rocks before we hit ’em, and for me to steer absolutely blind, going by just what I remember of this coast and what you tell me. I remember a lot but I ain’t a genius, and you sure ain’t a sailor. It’s too dangerous. And it would take just as long as waiting it out here. So you might as well quit worrying and make yourself comfortable.”
“I don’t like this one bit,” I said. I thought I might begin to cry soon.
“It doesn’t have to be so bad,” he said. “It could be fun. I can think of a way to make the time pass real quick.”
I felt my cheeks flame and crossed my arms over my sweater. I knew that the wet fog had molded it to my breasts. I looked at the basket.
“You said something about lunch.”
“Feel free,” he said, not moving. “There’s probably some sandwiches in there, if you can stand pimento cheese. You’d think after four years Amy would catch on to the fact that I hate pimento cheese. And there’s sure to be apples. Old Amy never goes anywhere without apples.”
“Can I get you anything?”
He held up the bottle. It was more than two thirds empty. He must have been drinking steadily ever since I came below the first time.
“Got everything I need,” he said. “Almost everything, that is.”
I ate my sandwich, looking interestedly around the cabin as if I’d never seen it before. How on earth was I going to get through the time until we could get under way again? Could he even get under way, after that much whiskey?
“Tell me about the Circe,” I said brightly. “It’s a beautiful boat.”
“Damn right,” Parker said. “Had old Willis custom make it for me. All custom, even the bunks. Softest bunks in the State o’ Maine. Everybody says so. Come over here, Maude of my heart, and I’ll show you how soft these bunks are.”
“Parker…”
He got up off his bunk swiftly and came over to mine and dropped down beside me. Before I could even move his arms were around me, pinning me down, and his wet, loose mouth pressed hard over mine. His tongue probed at my teeth, and his right hand reached around under my sweater and cupped my breast.
I wrenched myself out from under him in one motion, like a frantic snake, with strength I did not know I had. He was very heavy, and his arms were hard with muscle. I pulled my arm back as far as it would go and slapped him across the face so hard that my palm hurt badly. He stared at me, eyes narrow and unfocused, the white print of my hand livid on his face. A narrow thread of blood started down across his chin from his lip.
I picked up the heavy metal thermos.
“If you touch me again I’ll hit you with this,” I said.
My voice was without breath and ridiculous. My arms and legs shook badly. It was an entirely useless threat, and I knew it. He was much stronger than I, and I was trapped with him in this cabin who knew how far out on this alien white bay.
“I want you to take me home right now,” I said. “If I have to lie out there with a stick for the next twelve hours I’ll do it. Peter would kill you if he knew about this.”
He smiled and straightened up, and I thought he was coming for me again and gripped the thermos harder, but he simply made a little salute and turned and went up the companionway.
“The lady wants to go home, home she shall go,” he said. “I think you’ll wish you’d stayed, though, Miss Maude. I wasn’t kidding about that stick.”
And he wasn’t. The next few hours were the stuff of utter nightmare. I lay on my stomach on the bow of the Circe with a long bamboo pole tied to my wrist so that I would not drop it, making sweeps of the invisible water and air so that the pole’s tip would strike any treacherous, protruding rock before the hull did. Parker had switched on the auxiliary engine, and we inched along in
the blind whiteness with him at the wheel, leaning forward as far as he could to hear me if I cried out, “Stop.” After thirty minutes I was wet through and shaking with chill, and my forearms ached. After two hours I was numb from cold and pain and not fully conscious. There was nothing in the world but whiteness and silence and the swish of the water as my pole sluiced through it, and the small, muffled cough of the engine. I hit rocks twice and we stopped and he steered out and around them, but Parker did not say another word to me. My universe closed down into one of cold and pain and fear. I had no sense at all of time passing. Later, Peter told me it was just past seven when we put into the dock at the yacht club.
But I never once wished we had stayed.
I was drifting, only half aware, when a muffled boom cut the thickness and a shower of colored lights arced and sizzled into the water close by. I jerked my head up and my arms, finally, gave way. The pole clattered onto the deck and slid into the water.
“What is it?” I tried to say. My voice could not get out of my raw throat.
“Fireworks from somewhere,” he said casually, as if we were strolling in a park.
His voice was as clear and strong as when I had first heard it. There was no trace of whiskey slur. Hours in the cold salt air had taken care of that.
“What does it mean?”
“It means we’re coming into somebody’s harbor where they’re waiting for us. I’d say it had to be ours.”
I dropped my head into my arms on the deck and began to cry.
We heard voices then, the sound of men shouting and one or two women. There was urgency and even fear in them. I heard Peter’s over the others: “Maude! Maude!”
Parker cupped his hands and shouted, “Out here! Coming in about ten yards off Cove Harbor Rock! We’re okay, but hope you have blankets.”
“Oh, Maude, thank God!” I heard Peter say, and all of a sudden we bumped hard into the dock and were home. As running feet began to pound down the catwalk Parker said, “You going to tell on me, Maude?”
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