“Hey, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Ryerson was counting the marbles in his cache and stopped at the interruption. “You made me lose count. What?” he demanded.
Josh scratched his head, leaving a gray smear of dirt on the blond hair, and finally asked the question that had been puzzling him for weeks. “What’s a adventure?”
Chapter 22
THE LITTLE GRAY LADY of the Sea was as good as her nickname on Thursday morning. A thin haze of fog covered the shoreline, and above the island, the sky was a somber iron gray. The town came awake to its never-changing sounds—the morning chimes of the Congregational church tower, the clang of the smith’s hammer, the crackle of canvas catching wind, the shushh of waves beneath pilings, and the rumble of wooden wheels on cobblestones.
A pair of freight wagons pulled up before the gaping door of the cooperage, where only the fireplace and tool bench remained as before. Two stevedores jumped down and headed inside to begin rolling heavy barrels out and loading them. A gnarled old cooper with a head of hoary curls stood beside a long, lanky younger one, whose blond mane tangled about his face like beached kelp. A slow coil of blue smoke lifted above their heads as the younger man put his arm around the older one’s shoulders, squeezing hard.
“Well, old man—”
A stretch of poignant silence slipped by.
“Aye, son, she’s been a good ol’ place.”
They lifted their eyes to the rafters, the small window above the tool bench, the worn steps to the lodgings. The voice of a woman dear to both of them drifted back in memory, calling
them to breakfast, to supper, to bed. Together they stood in the confines of the building that smelled of cedar and pipe smoke and always would.
Josiah removed the fragrant brier from his teeth and spoke quietly. “I’d like a few minutes alone with y’r mother. Go on now, get y’r woman.”
Rye drew a deep, quivering breath, let his eyes pass one last, lingering time across the walls of the cooperage, then answered throatily, “Aye, then, we’ll meet y’ at the wharf.” He squeezed the burly shoulders once more, then turned quickly toward the street.
With a long-legged leap, he mounted a wagon, gave a single sharp whistle, and peered back over his shoulder to find a large yellow Labrador bounding onto the scarred boards behind him. The dog jogged eagerly to the forward end of the wagon and rested her jaw over the back of the driver’s seat, gave a few wags, and they set off.
At the bottom of Crooked Record Lane, the vehicle lurched to a stop while the man squinted up at a quaint little saltbox with silver-brown weatherbeaten shakes. A woman appeared at the door. She was dressed in a traveling cape of dove gray wool over a simple dress of lemon yellow gingham and a matching bonnet with a satin bow knotted just behind her left jaw.
She raised a gloved hand to wave in greeting, and a boy slithered around her skirts, caught sight of the lanky cooper, and stared at him with a surly expression. But at sight of the child, the dog broke loose and loped forward in her aging gait. The sullen look changed to one of surprise. The winsome eyes and mouth opened in dawning delight, and Josh could resist no longer. He came to meet the dog halfway, falling to his knees in the middle of the path, scrunching his blue eyes shut as the Lab bestowed a wet hello to the rounded curve of the boy’s face.
“Ship! Ship!” Instinct made him begin to ask the man, “Is Ship ...” Then, remembering, he turned to ask his mother instead. “Is Ship goin’ with us?”
“Why don’t you ask Rye?”
He looked up at the tall cooper he had once liked so much. “Is Ship goin’ with us?” Josh asked at last.
Rye came near, dropped to one knee, and gave the dog’s flat head an affectionate rumple. “Why, o’ course she’s goin’ with us. Nobody should be without a watchdog where there’re wolves and bears and raccoons t’ raid the storehouse.”
“W ... wolves ’n’ b ... bears?” Josh’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Aye, but we won’t have t’ worry, not with Ship along.”
“Is it really gonna be a adventure?”
“Aye, son. And have y’ made up y’r mind yet if y’r goin’t’ talk t’ me while we make it, or are y’ bound to keep a button on that lip?” Lowering his voice, Rye added, “It hurts y’r mother and me a lot, y’ know. Especially y’r mother. She wants t’ see you happy again, but she wants t’ be happy, too.” He paused, then declared softly, “We both love y’, Josh.” Josh’s eyes dropped to the dog. In a small voice, he said, “Jimmy, he said ... well, he said your papa ... well, if he’s goin’ along, he’ll be my grampa.”
Rye’s expression softened, and his voice went lower. “Aye, son.”
“And ... and you’ll be my father?”
From the doorway Laura watched, her heart filling her breast with wingbeats as the man in the dark breeches, light sweater, and jaunty black fisherman’s cap bent near his son with one arm braced upon a knee.
“Aye, son. I am y’r father, as y’ve known for some time.” Josh raised uncertain eyes, very much like those that looked down on him. “Will I have to call you Papa?”
Rye swallowed, studying the piquant face of his son, realizing how difficult it was for the child to accept the sudden changes thrust upon his life. In a kind, caring voice, Rye answered, “Nay, Joshua. I think there’ll only be one man y’ll ever think of as Papa. Nothin’s goin’ t’ change that, you know. Y’ can keep on lovin’ Dan as much as y’ ever did.”
“But I won’t see him no more, will I?”
“Michigan’s a long way from Nantucket, Josh. I’m afraid not. But maybe when y’re grown up, Nantucket won’t seem so far. Then y’ can come back for a visit.”
Unmoving, Laura waited, willing the child to make peace with his father so that their lives might know their rightful share of contentment.
Josh was silent for a long time, hunkered before Rye half despondently. The dog took a desultory lick at Josh’s chin, but he seemed unaware. At last he raised his eyes to the blue eyes in the tan face above him. In a very businesslike voice for a five-year old, he declared, “I decided I’ll call you Father.”
Their eyes searched, questioned, and Rye’s body strained with repressed love for the boy. Suddenly they moved as one, Josh shooting to his feet, Rye’s arms widening, and for three thundering heartbeats they were chest to chest as love had its irrepressible way.
Seeing father and son healing at last, Laura’s eyes misted. Joy burst through her heart, and she thought now the best time to intrude upon the scene.
“Are you two going to stay down there all day or are you going to come up here and help me carry things out to the wagon?”
Josh backed away. Rye looked up toward the top of the path, then slowly got to his feet. Stretching his long legs into a calculatedly lazy stride, he began moving toward her while commenting in an undertone, “Y’r mother’s lookin’ quite saucy t’day.”
The child looked up the long man beside him. “What’s saucy?”
But only Rye’s rich laughter answered his son’s question as they mounted the path together. At the step, Rye hooked one boot over its edge, leaned on the knee with both palms, and let his gaze rove over the floor-length cape and the long triangle of yellow gingham it revealed.
“And what are you laughing about, Rye Dalton?”
“Is that any way t’ greet y’r groom on his weddin’ day?”
Her jaw dropped. “Today!”
“Aye, t’day. If I have t’ commit mutiny t’ get the captain t’ perform the ceremony. That is, if we don’t miss the Albany packet while we stand here yammerin’.”
With a gay smile she swung inside, followed by Rye, Josh, and Ship.
The house was stripped of all its former warmth and appeared forlorn now, its furnishings having been systematically rifled. Those that remained were to be sold by Ezra Merrill, and appeared sadly abandoned in the small rooms, which had been divested of all personal items. Rye avoided analyzing his surroundings, quickly tipping a barrel instea
d and shouldering it through the door. It was a day that would, by its very nature, repeatedly plunge them from optimistic joy to nostalgic sadness. The best they could do to get through the difficult moments of tugging memory was to put them behind as quickly as possible and look forward.
But when the last of the barrels was loaded and Rye returned to the house for the two black satchels that remained, he found Laura with her back to the door, running her gloved fingertips reminiscently along the edge of the fireplace mantel. Nearby, the doors to the alcove bed were opened, its tick and quilts gone, leaving it nothing but a hollow wooden box. Rye watched Laura’s eyes turn to it and linger. Next she moved to the beckoning door of the linter room, and he stepped up quietly behind her shoulder. She glanced back at him, unsmiling, then together they gazed inside at the wooden bedstead.
“I’ll make y’ a new one,” he promised softly, understanding that she truly did not pine to take the old one along, but that it deserved this moment of elegy. Upon it their marriage had been consummated. From it he had gone to sea. Upon it Joshua Dalton had been born. And to it Dan had come.
For the first time today, Rye touched her, in much the same fashion he had touched his father. “Come,” he encouraged softly. “It’s time t’go.”
They turned from the bedroom doorway, crossed the keeping room with lagging steps that echoed in the still space where once their laughter had lilted. There was no laughter now. They stepped from the house, shut its door for the last time, closing it on a phase of their lives both sweet and sad. The stark white scallop shells clicked together in the familiar crunch that had meant home for so long. Halfway down the path, they turned one last time to impress the image of the little saltbox into their memories.
***
If it was difficult saying good-bye to their dwellings, the scene on the wharf was impossible. Everyone was there—Jane and John Durning and all six of their little stair-steps; Jimmy Ryerson and his parents; Dahlia Traherne; not only Hilda Morgan, but Tom and Dorothy as well; Chad Dalton and his parents, along with a large entourage of Dalton relatives— even Cousin Charles with his wife and three children. Joseph Starbuck had come, and Ezra Merrill and Asa Pond.
And standing in the background at the fringe of bravely smiling faces, looking as if she was trying to hold back tears, hovered DeLaine Hussey.
And, of course, there was Dan.
He was one of the last to arrive, and at first as he stole up quietly behind DeLaine, Rye and Laura were unaware of his presence. Laura was in the arms of Dahlia, who pressed a cluster of recipes into her daughter’s palm. “These’re your favorites from when you were a little girl.” The tears started then and grew more insistent as Jane bestowed the next goodbye, a fierce hug in the middle of which she released a shattering sob beside Laura’s ear. Rye was being passed from aunts to uncles while Josh and Jimmy Ryerson knelt one on either side of Ship, surrounded by Josh’s cousins, all of them for the moment jealous of Josh’s adventure, his acquisition of the dog, and the possible dangers of bears and wolves.
But then Cap’n Silas motioned the crowd to clear space for the stevedores to drive the wagons to the gangplank and unload them, and as the crowd parted, Rye and Laura glanced up the chasm to find Dan there, the thumbs and forefingers of both his hands slipped inside his vest pockets, a beaver hat on his head, and an expression of tight control on his face.
The eyes of the departing couple swerved to each other, then back to Dan, and a hush seemed to fall over the crowd before a self-conscious chatter swelled again.
The last of the barrels was loaded aboard the Clinton, and suddenly everyone winced as the deafening steam whistle blew over Steamboat Wharf.
The sudden jarring sound was so overwhelming it set Laura’s heart thumping—or was the reaction caused by the sight of Dan, still hesitating twenty feet across the wharf, restraining himself just as she was?
But then Josh spied Dan and lurched to his feet, running the length of the wharf. He flung himself into the arms of the man who knelt down, then scooped the child up, and clung to him a last time while a woeful wail carried above the wharf.
“Papa ... Papa ...”
Cap’n Silas commanded, “All aboard!”
The steam whistle shrilled again while over Josh’s shoulder Dan Morgan blinked and tried valiantly not to let his tears spill over.
Laura lifted pleading eyes to Rye, and even as her feet began moving, she felt Rye’s hand grasping her elbow, hurrying her toward Dan. Dan set Josh on his feet and met Laura halfway. As her arms went around him, his hat was knocked onto the silvery boards of the wharf, but nobody seemed to notice. Rye’s eyes had locked with those of DeLaine Hussey, and he nodded a silent good-bye while she pressed trembling fingers to her lips.
Laura felt Dan’s heart slamming piteously hard against her breasts before she pulled back to look into his face. His lips were set grimly against his teeth, but his nostrils trembled while he blinked repeatedly. She lay a gloved hand on his cheek and managed two shaky words. “Good-bye, Dan.”
He seemed unable to trust himself to speak. Then, to Laura’s dismay, he suddenly pulled her against him once more and kissed her full on the mouth. When he put her away, her tears had wet his cheeks, and she realized Josh was standing alongside, looking up at all three of them.
Rye’s hand met Dan’s in a solid handshake, and their eyes joined in a last farewell.
“Take care of them, my friend.”
“Aye, y’can be sure of it.”
Their voices were unnaturally deep with emotion, and their four hands clung, gripping so hard the knuckles turned white.
From the gangplank, Cap’n Silas called, “Got a schedule t’ keep. All aboard!”
Then Josh was on Rye’s arm, looking back over his father’s sturdy shoulder at his papa. Tears streamed down his freckled cheeks, and the rooster tail at the back of his blond head bobbed with each long-legged step that bore him away. Laura, too, felt Rye’s commanding grip on her elbow and passed the sea of faces toward the boat with tears now blinding her completely.
***
They stood at the rail of the steam packet—Rye with Josh in his arms, Laura beside him, and Josiah on her far side. Ship whined and nudged between them, lunged up and caught her front paws on the port beam. There was a clunk and a lurch, then the cumbersome packet began to move, shivering to life with ponderous reluctance until the rhythmic clunk picked up speed and became the incessant heartbeat of the vessel.
Each of those at the rail had singled out a face on which to linger. For Josh it was Jimmy Ryerson, who waved one freckled hand and wiped his eyes with the other. For Laura it was Jane, who held her youngest and pressed a cheek against his hair. For Rye it was Dan, who had picked up his hat but seemed to have forgotten to put it on his head. But Josiah turned from the faces on the wharf to lift his gaze over the top of the bait shack and the candle shop beyond to the roof of a small wooden building scarcely visible in the distance. He dropped his hand to Ship’s head and stroked it absently. The dog whined, raised doleful eyes to Josiah, then watched the shore slip away into the mists of Nantucket Harbor.
They remained at the rail for a long time, with eyes cast astern toward the little spit of land they loved. As they passed the shoals, the projecting fingers of Brant Point and Coatue seemed to want to pluck them back and hold them. But the Clinton headed into the sound toward the long tip of Cape Cod, chugging along steadily until Nantucket appeared no more than a pebble floating on the surface of the water before it dwindled, then disappeared altogether in a haze of distant fog.
Laura shivered, glanced up, and found Rye studying her.
“Well, would y’ like t’ see our quarters?”
Our quarters. If anything had the power to wrest Laura’s dolorous thoughts from the place they’d just left, it was those two words.
“I guess I’d better, since we’ll be spending two weeks in them.”
The five passengers headed belowdecks. The Clinton was far less luxurious
than the steamboat Telegraph would have been, for though it hauled a capacity of thirty passengers, the chief purpose of the Albany packet was transporting cargo, thus the accommodations could scarcely be called cabins. Rye led them to two rooms that were little more than partitioned spaces, offering thin-walled privacy but little else.
As he opened the door and stood back in the narrow companionway, Laura peered inside to find, to her dismay, a pair of single bunks, berthed one above the other, a small bench seat bolted to the wall, a tiny shelf above, and a whale-oil lantern swinging from the overhead beam. But her eyes were drawn to the sight of her suitcase sitting beside Rye’s sea chest.
Before she could react, Josh pushed at his mother from behind. “Let me see!” He squeezed past and headed into the cubicle, but a restraining hand fell on his head and forced him into an abrupt about face.
“Not so fast there, young man! Y’rs is the next one!” Laura’s heart reacted with a flutter, and she wondered if Josh would put up any objection to being separated from her in the midst of all these strange surroundings and events. But she had little time to speculate, for there was a moment of confusion while she dipped inside the open door to let the three, plus Ship, pass along the companionway to the next door.
“Y’ and Josiah will be sharin’ this compartment,” she heard, then poked her nose around the doorway to find a second cubicle identical to the first.
“Me and Josiah?” Josh looked up dubiously at Rye.
“Aye, y’ and Josiah.”
“Where’s Mama gonna be?”
“Right next door.” Rye nodded toward the first cabin.
“Oh.”
At Josh’s unenthusiastic grunt, Josiah spoke up in his slow New England drawl. “Got somethin’ here I been meanin’t’ show y’, Joshua.”
Josh’s expression was skeptical as his glance passed from Rye to Laura. It was one of the weirdest moments of Laura’s life, hoping for approval from her son to sleep with his father! But just then Josiah bent to retrieve a small wooden carton with airholes along its sides. He sat down on the lower berth and gave the container his full attention, carefully placing his hands on its cover as if it were a magician’s box. Josh’s attention was captured.