Black Cat Weekly #8

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1Changes On Juniper Point

STEVE PURCHAS finished tamping earth around the last cedar post and crawled out from under the old fishhouse at the head of the family wharf. After inching around like a measuring worm for the last three hours, he was glad just to get his shoulders straight again. Besides, it had been hot enough to parboil him under there away from the breeze, and he wanted a swim. Strolling into the fishhouse, he changed his muddy dungarees for swimming trunks and ambled down to the float at the end of the wharf.

This afternoon he and the gulls had the Purchas Boat Basin to themselves. It was what Maine people call a blue-and-gold day, with deep water in Casco Bay rippling bluer than the sky in the sunshine, and most of the summer sailors had their boats out. Steve could count a dozen empty mooring buoys bobbing in the swell of the incoming tide, and with his father and Wait Webber both away, even the family boatshop was deserted. Diving into the water, he raced out to the black spar and back at top speed. Sticking a foot in Casco Bay any day was the quickest way to cool off that he had ever discovered, and right now Purchas Basin had apparently been kept in somebody’s refrigerator until he hit it. Staying in ice water to gambol around like a lamb on an Easter card was all right if you liked it, but it was not Steve’s notion of pleasure.

He hauled himself up on the float again in a hurry and sprinted for the fishhouse. Maybe I’d better get a move on, he thought when he looked at his watch. His father and mother had driven to the Brunswick Station to bring back the people who had rented his grandfather’s house for the summer. Dr. Cobb and his daughter were due in Juniper Point practically any minute, and it occurred to Steve rather belatedly that his mother would think something slightly more formal than bathing trunks was indicated for his first meeting with Miss Cobb. He yanked on a clean T-shirt and the flannel slacks he had brought along as he came down to work after dinner, and ran a pocket comb hastily through his red hair.

But there was no sign of the family Ford when he emerged from the fishhouse so he roamed on across the Point to see whether the carpenters had finally managed to shingle the one completed wing of the building under construction on the east shore. Steve had a stake in that wing, and he eyed the completed roof with approval. Those shingles meant that he was employed as of tomorrow, July first, instead of having to fiddle around until Dr. Cobb’s office and workshop were made usable. At present, the other buildings planned were only holes in the ground, but by the end of August, when they would be finished, the whole setup would be the Carriker Marine Biological Laboratory; and next summer would see it in full operation.

Steve prowled interestedly around the laboratory site. With college ahead of him, he needed a summer job, and it was unexpected luck to have a full-time one develop almost on his own doorstep. Generally he was a Jack-of-all-trades, patching garage roofs, painting houses, helping to dig wells, and mowing grass for the summer people whose cottages were sprinkled along the road and the shores of Harpswell Neck. Probably he would not be much more than a Jack-of-all-trades this summer either, but off and on this spring he had seen enough of Dr. Cobb, the lab’s research director, to decide that he would like working for him.

A few die-hard old-timers who sat around Randall’s Store argued that the laboratory was the worst tomfool nonsense that had hit South Harpswell yet; but in Steve’s opinion, if the Purchases could stand the laboratory on Juniper Point, where nobody except their own family had lived for two hundred years, the rest of the town would survive comfortably. As a matter of fact, it had taken Dr. Cobb nearly six months to persuade Captain and Mrs. Purchas to part with land for the proposed Carriker Laboratory. Like a lot of others, they had agreed from the first that a marine biological laboratory was a thoroughly sound idea, but they had decided objections to its construction on their property. To Captain Peletiah, good fences still made good neighbors; and, for Juniper Point, Purchas Basin and Bar Island Cove were good fences. He wanted to keep any neighbors on the far side of those coves, not to have them moving in on top of him, especially if they were part-time summer residents. In the end, however, their increasing respect for both Dr. Cobb and the laboratory project had made the Captain and his wife capitulate; but Steve knew that they were still occasionally uneasy.

He frowned a little, remembering the long family discussions through the winter months. He had got a job because of the laboratory and he admired Dr. Cobb; but it was hard to imagine Juniper Point with summer people underfoot all day every day. Now that the time had actually come, he was uncomfortable himself. Then suddenly he began to grin. What was he worrying about? Over across Bar Island Cove his brother Bob’s best friend, Seth Green, was burying a load of trash in the Colony rubbish pit. Next winter Seth would be a senior at Bowdoin; this July he was claiming to be the only college-educated garbage man in the state of Maine. If Seth could manage to work for a dozen different summer families at the Colony, he ought to make out all right with only one. This Miss Cobb was supposed to spend most of her days wandering off with a paintbox anyway. She certainly wouldn’t get in his hair so long as she didn’t get any idea that he was her personal errand boy just because he worked for her father.

A raucous blast set the echoes grumbling and started Steve down the path that twisted its roundabout way along the shore through stands of pine and birch back to Purchas Basin. That horn meant that Wait Webber, his father’s right-hand man, was tying the Maquoit up at the wharf and wanted help unloading the crates of stuff he had picked up in Portland for Dr. Cobb’s office. At the same time, off beyond the bend in the Point road, Steve finally heard his father’s car rattling over the planks across the salt marsh, but he did not bother to change his course. He could dust off his best manners after he had lent Waity a hand.

Jogging through the woods, he rounded the tip of Juniper Point to walk up the west shore. Well ahead of him, past the fishhouse, he could see Waity manipulating the Maquoit’s hand winch, methodically hooking big crates on its arm and swinging them over to the landing. Exactly what happened next Steve was never quite sure, but he thought Waity started the arm with a heavy load toward shore and failed to get out of its path when he straightened up. At any rate, the crate caught him full on the back of the head, and he toppled overboard like a lumpy sack of potatoes.

Steve’s feet pounded on the path. The water at the landing was deep, for his father and grandfather had had Purchas Basin blasted out years ago, and Waity had gone over without even a grunt. He must have been unconscious, and with the currents eddying around the wharf, he was likely to get wedged in the pilings.

Steve ran desperately. Right now the distance between himself and the landing float seemed twice as long as usual. All that he hoped was that his father or Dr. Cobb had happened to see the accident; one of them might be nearer. He couldn’t tell what was going on now that the fishhouse was beginning to block his view, but suddenly he heard feet running down the wharf. Then he was tearing around the building himself and racing out to the float. Ripples warned him that the other person had dived in, and he checked himself a second to take a hasty look. There was no sense in fouling things up by landing on somebody’s back, but there was not even a shadow under him. Kicking off his shoes, he went over in a long dive.

To the right, a little below him, someone was struggling to pull Waity loose from the piling, and Steve went down fast to help. Catching the unconscious man under the arms, he shoved him forward so his wedged foot could be freed. Then, with Waity supported between them, the pair of rescuers shot to the surface. Brawny arms thrust an oar within Steve’s grasp, and Captain Purchas hauled them alongside the float where he and Dr. Cobb lifted Waity out and began to work over him.

Steve started to turn to see if his companion needed help, but his mother was ahead of him, her hand already outstretched, and he climbed out on the float to sit there panting. The other person flopped, dripping, beside him.

“I’m Linda Cobb,” she said between gasps. “I guess you’re Steve Purchas. Hi!”