Rye scratched the dog’s jaws, then got to his feet, whispering, “Let’s go, girl.”
They walked side by side through the somnolent town, the dog’s warm bulk pressed against Rye’s leg. The cobblestones were shiny and damp, but they soon left them behind for a sandy street that led eventually to the foot trails of Shawkemo Hills, which were still shrouded in fog as Rye and Ship made their way toward Altar Rock, the highest spot on the island.
They climbed up and sat side by side as they’d done a hundred times before, the rangy man folding his limbs, crossing his calves, and wrapping his knees with both arms, while beside him the dog sat on its haunches. Like a pair of monoliths, they awaited the spectacle they’d many times shared, and as it began the man rested a hand on the dog’s back.
Summer was near her solstice, the dawn silent-still. In those last purple minutes before the sun intruded, the harbor lay like a mirror beneath tier upon tier of lavender mist. Between these foggy strata, the undulations of the island appeared like purple mountains whose feet were made of nothing more than the ocean’s breath.
Then up stole the sun to peer over the sea’s rim and cast her red-hazed eye over Nantucket, transforming those fog arms into lazy, pink limbs, now stretching, now flexing, now moving restlessly, yawning awake in ever widening chasms until the red-gold of morning spilled through.
The harbor’s forest of masts was a study in stillness, each craft with its twin lying beside it on the glassy surface of the water.
And for that moment, at least, it seemed that all creatures of earth, sky, and sea waited, as did Rye and his dog—silent, respectful—paying homage to the spectacle of light and color that announced the day.
Then one by one the coots swam out, wrinkling the reflections of masts, spars, and stays in their search for silver minnows. The spotted sandpiper made her first run along the deserted shore, stopping to teeter in her drunken way, as if intoxicated, too, by the show just staged by morning.
Next came the gulls, lazy scavengers awaiting the first moving boat to follow, and with the gulls, their sisters—the terns—awaiting the first moving boat to lead.
Below Rye, the bell in the Congregational church tower tolled its peaceful wake-up peal over the harbor town, and a first catboat eased from its slip, then another and another, heading for the place called the “cord of the bay,” just inside the bar, where bluefish schooled now that June was here.
Rye lingered as long as he dared, till his spine grew numb and the dog’s stomach growled, along with his own.
The scent of wood smoke drifted up from the fires of blacksmith, candle maker, tryworker, and baker. Soon the repetitive clang of the smith’s hammer sounded from below, and the scent of ship’s biscuits baking in beehive ovens told Rye he must go.
Reluctantly, he got to his feet and, followed by the yellow Labrador, made his way back down through the heathland to the quayside, where weathered wooden doors were now turned back as shops came to life. He passed the ropewalk, and from within came the rumble of steel wheels riding steel rails as the forming machine rolled backward, twisting yarns of manila into strands of rope. From inside the shop of a ship’s carver came the soft rap of hammer on chisel, and farther up the street Rye nodded good morning to the clerk who was tacking up a sign in a window: “Spermaceti Candles—Exceeding all Others in Beauty and Sweetness of Scent when Extinguished—Duration Double that of Tallow Candles.”
Ah, Nantucket—even though at times he felt trapped by it, he loved it just the same. He had forgotten the beauty of these intermingling sounds and smells and sights that seemed to symbolize the close correlation of all the island’s livelihoods.
Rye stopped to buy a roll for his breakfast, ordering Ship to wait outside the shop until he emerged, eating a crispy bun. He offered one to the dog, and took another home for Josiah, who’d just arisen, his cold pipe already between his teeth, awaiting its first tamping of the day.
They set to work together, hooping a thirty-gallon wet barrel whose staves had been soaking overnight. They worked amiably now, for Rye’s testy temper of the previous day seemed to have evaporated, replaced by a barely concealed eagerness that Josiah could not quite understand until later that morning, when Rye jogged up the steps to their lodgings above and then returned a few minutes later, whistling, in clean shirt and ducks, his hair neatly brushed.
Offhandedly, he announced, “Those oranges took the edge off y’r tongue. I’ll run out and get y’ y’r day’s supply.”
“Ayup, y’ do that.” The old one grinned around his pipestem.
This morning his grin was returned as Rye left the cooperage, again whistling, his step sprightly.
For both Laura and Rye it was a heady feeling, walking toward the square to meet. Innocent yet illicit, callow yet knowing; for though they’d been man and wife before and had shared the deepest intimacies of marriage, here they were plunged back to the beginning like sea-green children. As they approached the square from opposite sides, they were reckless spirits, straining toward that first glimpse of one another, hearts hammering, palms damp.
Laura picked out Rye with the canny instinct of a buffle-head diving for plankton. As his blond head moved toward her amid vendors, wares, and shoppers, she suppressed the urge to smile and wave, and the even greater one to hurry toward him.
It was hard to control the smile that wanted to burst over her face at the sight of him advancing, full sleeves luffing in the breeze, head bare to the June sun, his hair already coming in darker at the roots, and his eyebrows losing their bleached look even after so few weeks away from sea. And on his dark-skinned face she read the anticipation he, too, strained to conceal.
At his approach her heart went weightless, lifting with a fluttering expectancy every bit as poignant as during those long-ago days in the loft when they were learning together the thrill of first love.
“Hello,” he said, as if it were not the most glorious day ever created.
“Hello,” she answered, fingers trailing in a bin of parsnip seeds, as if parsnip seeds mattered in the least.
“It’s nice to see you again.” I love you! You’re beautiful.
“And you.” I cannot forget. I feel the same.
“Hi, Rye.” It was Josh, looking up. The man went down on one knee, producing the sarsaparilla sticks.
“Hello, Joshua. Did y’ come to hear the auctioneer again?”
Josh beamed, his eyes whipping from the candy to Rye’s face, then back again as he answered, “Aye.”
Rye laughed with fatherly ebullience. “ ‘Aye,’ is it? Yesterday it was ‘yes.’ ”
“I like aye better.”
Pleased, Rye gave the lad the treat and ordered, “Well, be off with y’, then. I’ll keep an eye on y’r mother.”
Immediately, Josh darted away. Laura studied Rye as he knelt with an elbow braced on a knee, his full white sleeve drooping on a tight blue trouser leg.
Just then he looked up at her and slowly straightened to his full height to stand beside her and savor the look of her, her brown eyes agleam before her gaze dropped again to the parsnip seeds.
“I’ve brought it,” he said softly, eyeing the square to make sure they were not being listened to or watched.
“Oh?” She tipped her head aside and peered up at him, then back at the seeds. When she refrained from asking what the gift was, he teased her by delaying the giving.
“Y’ have a lovely bonnet today.”
“Thank you.”
“And a lovely set o’ curls peepin’ around it.”
“Thank you.”
“And the prettiest mouth I’ve seen t’day.” It tipped up at the corners while her cheeks nurtured roses.
“Thank you.”
“And I wouldn’t mind kissin’ it again as soon as possible.”
“Rye Dalton, stop that!” She, too, looked around warily. He laughed and captured her hand in the bin of parsnip seeds.
“What is it you’ve brought for me?” she couldn’t res
ist asking at last.
He slipped the busk from inside his full sleeve and partially concealed the exchange under the seeds. Her color grew rosier as she hid it in her sleeve, unable to read what he’d written on it until she was alone.
“Oh, Rye, a busk!” Her eyelids flew up and she touched a fingertip to her throat.
“Will y’wear it?”
“I ... it’s very—”
“Personal,” he finished.
“Yes.” She demurely studied the seeds.
“And intimate.”
“Yes.”
She let her hand drift along to the bin of pumpkin seeds while he continued, “Like my feelings for you when I made it ... like my feelings for you right now.” He studied her forehead in the shadow of her bonnet, wishing she would meet his eyes again.
“Shh, Rye, someone will hear you.”
“Aye, they well might, so tell me you’ll wear it or I’ll shout t’ the square at large that Mrs. Daniel Morgan’s got somethin’ up her sleeve and it’s a scrimshawed busk carved by Rye Dalton.”
His willful teasing made Laura delight in being with him. Now she smiled prettily, raising her eyes, which had a teasing glint of their own. “And just what did you write on it?”
“What was on m’ mind from the minute I sailed away from y'”
“Will it make me blush?”
“I hope so.”
It did, when she got home later. She read the verse with a curious mingling of guilt and arousal; nevertheless, she secretly sewed the busk into its casing, where it rested intimately between her breasts through the days that followed. To have such words pressed against her skin did, indeed, keep her aware of Rye’s wish to possess her again, and forbidden though it was to dwell on the thought, she did. She was woman, and carnal, and having the busk touch her was like having Rye touch her, tempt her, every minute of the day.
“I’m wearing it,” she volunteered breathlessly the next time they met.
His eyes lit up with a knowing glint, and he lazily examined her bodice while the new dimple creased his right cheek. “Show me where.”
She interlaced her fingers, folded her arms between her breasts, and rested her chin on her knuckles while all about them fishmongers sold ‘blues.’ “Here.”
“How soon can I take it off y’?” he asked, raising her color to a very telling hue.
“Rye Dalton, you’ve not changed one bit.”
“Thank God, no!” He laughed, then sobered only a little. “When?”
“You’re harassing me.”
“It’s me bein’ harassed. I want to take y’ up into the bayberries and crush a few while I do what I wrote on that busk ... and more.” Her flustration was his only reward as she blushed prettily and turned away to buy butter.
There followed a heady string of sun-swelled days during which Rye and Laura met that way, hearts, thoughts, and eyes communicating even before they reached each other across the square. They gave themselves these meetings as consolation, neither asking where the encounters were leading. They never touched—they couldn’t. And they never met privately—they dared not. But their eyes spoke messages that voices could not, except on those rare days when they were gifted with a few sterling minutes alone. Then, the brief intimacies they spoke threatened to undo them.
Summer came on full, enticing them to roam the island’s beloved floral landscape as they had years ago. In the village of Siasconset tame ivy thickened and greened upon the small silvery cottages of ‘Sconset’s narrow lanes while poison ivy climbed merrily up the trunks of scrub pines in the wilds. Bayberry and heather carpeted the heath while in the swamps and lowlands the wax myrtle glistened. The delicate lavender blossoms of the trailing arbutus, nicknamed the mayflower by the Pilgrims who’d first found it, gave way to the fragrant blooms of pasture roses. Marsh marigolds burst forth like droplets of sun fallen to earth while the higher slopes broke out in Solomon’s seal and false spikenard.
Laura and Rye, meanwhile, hovered on the brink of accepting the invitation of the hills that seduced them with the promise of privacy. But before privacy became theirs, Dan Morgan paid a call at the cooperage.
Rye, his back to the door, was arranging the staves of a slack barrel into a temporary hoop when he heard Josiah say, “Well, been some time since I seen you, young feller.”
“Hello, Josiah. You’ve been well, I hope.” But Dan’s eyes were on Rye, who continued working without turning around.
“Got no complaints. Business is good, fog’s been scarce.”
Dan directed his glance back to Josiah. “Working on the order for the Omega’s next voyage?”
“Aye, we are,” the old man confirmed, then, following Dan’s glance back to Rye, he decided it would be provident to quietly disappear for a while.
Silence fell as Rye set the final two staves in a wooden band that held them at the bottom while they flared out on top like the petals of a daisy.
“Could I talk to you a minute, Rye?” Dan asked with strained courtesy.
The cooper glanced up briefly, then back down at his work. He took up a windlass to loop its rope about the petallike staves. “Aye, go ahead.” He began cranking the windlass handle and felt Dan move close behind him while the ropes began squeakily closing up the daisy petals.
“Word has it you’ve been seeing Laura in the square each day.”
“We’ve run into each other a time or two.”
“A time or two? That’s not the way I’ve heard it.”
“Might have been a few times, come t’ think of it.” With each turn of the crank the staves cinched closer, the rope drawn as taut as the facial muscles of the visitor.
“I want it stopped!” Dan ordered.
“We’ve talked in the square before a hundred watchful eyes and with the boy right there beside us.”
“People still talk—it’s a small town.”
The staves were now joined, ballooning out at the middle. Rye reached for a permanent metal hoop, placed it around them, and tapped it down with mallet and drift. “Aye, it is, and they all know she’s my wife.”
“Not anymore she’s not. I want you to stay away from her.”
At last Rye’s hands fell still, and his eyes met Dan’s. “And what’s she had t’ say about that?”
Dan paled and his jaws tensed. “What’s between us is none of your business.”
“What’s between y’ is my son, and plenty of my business.” This was one fact Dan Morgan could not deny and the one that sent fear piercing through him. His voice trembled slightly. “You’d use him to try to get her away from me?”
Rye spun away angrily and flung the tools onto a high tool bench with a clatter. “Damnit, what do y’ take me for, Dan? He has no idea I’m his father. I’ve no wish to turn the boy against y’, nor t’ make him pick between us. She’s only brought him t’ the square so I could see a little of him, talk to him, get acquainted.”
“He tells me you bring him candy sticks, and the other day he showed me a whale’s tooth he said you carved for him.”
“Aye, I gave it to him, I’ll not deny it, but if y’ were in my place, could y’ keep yourself from doin’ the same?”
Their eyes met, Rye’s expression defensive, Dan’s angry. Nevertheless a shaft of grudging guilt shot through Dan, followed by a lonely premonition of what it would be like if he himself were asked to withdraw as the boy’s father. But he went on sternly.
“Since the day Josh was born, I’ve watched him grow up. I was there beside Laura that day while you were off to sea, where she’d begged you not to go. I was there for his christening, and when he got sick for the first time and she needed moral support and somebody to talk her fears away. And after we were married, I took my turn walking the floors with him at night when he got whooping cough and teeth and earaches and the ... the hundred things that make babies cry! I was there for his first birthday, and every birthday after that, while you were off ... whaling!” Now Dan turned away. “And I never once loved him
less because he was yours. Maybe I loved him more because of it, wanting to make up to him for the fact that he’d ... lost you.”
Rye glared at Dan’s shoulders. “So what do y’ want now? My thanks, is it? Well, y’ve got ’em, but not the right to keep me from seeing him.”
Again Dan swung around angrily. “And her along with him?”
Their eyes clashed while they faced off, one on each side of a half-made barrel, then suddenly Rye swung to work again, flipping the barrel over to begin hooping its other end. “I said I expected you t’ fight for her, so did y’ expect any less of me? Be happy I haven’t come up there t’ claim that bed y’ take her to—it belongs to me, too, y’ know.”
The cruel barb stung, and immediately Dan retaliated. “And I think it’s all you want her for, judging from things I remember.”
“Damnit, man, you go too far!” Rye Dalton roared, his fists bunching as he took one menacing step forward, the mallet still in his right hand.
“Do I? Do you think I was so ignorant I didn’t know what the two of you did together all those times you ran off alone when we were sixteen? Do you think I didn’t suffer, wanting her then while I watched her scamper after you as if I weren’t even alive? But if you think I’ll let her do it again, you’re sorely mistaken, Dalton. She’s mine now, and I paid dearly, waiting to have her to myself.”
Anger and embarrassment bubbled up in Rye, for like most who’ve stolen kisses, he never suspected others had guessed. “I love her,” he said unequivocably.
“You left her.”
“I’m back. Suppose we let her make the choice?”
“I’m her legal choice, and I intend to see to it these meetings stop.”
Almost nonchalantly now, Rye picked up a hand adz and began evening off the irregular ends of the staves. “Y’ve a right t’ try,” he granted. “Good luck.”
Having gained no more than he’d expected, Dan gave up, frustrated by the fact that Rye denied nothing and was waging a fair fight, frustrated even further by the fear that his rival might win. He turned on his heel and strode angrily out the door, swinging past Josiah, who sat indolently on an upturned keg out front.