Shad Run

by Howard Breslin

“Wait,” he said, thickly, “there’s no need—”

  “Oh, yes, there is.” Lancey, breathing rapidly, sounded calmer than she looked. “That clatter should fetch the whole von Beck family. You might ask the daughter to accommodate you, Master van Zandt. She’s willing!”

  Then, she was gone. He stared at the empty doorway, heard the swift patter as she raced, barefoot, down the stairs, the gabble of voices that greeted her below.

  “Well, I’m damned,” said Dirck van Zandt.

  CHAPTER 3

  LANCEY QUIST STOOD ON THE BLUFF OVERLOOKING THE RIVER, listened to the water, thought she could smell the tang of the tide. She wrinkled her nose, sniffing, threw her arms wide in sudden exhilaration. Her river was open again, and a quickening of her blood seemed to answer the slap of the wavelets.

  The late moon was a pale disk, riding high, only revealed at intervals when the drifting cloud-mass beneath it parted. No stars were visible, but the darkness had thinned enough so that the girl could see the solid range along the western bank defined against the sky. Still restlessly prowling the valley, the night wind brushed through the trees, kicked whitecaps from the black current. It had lost its power to make Lancey shiver.

  Well, of course, she thought, now that I’m dry clad, or nearly. The one damp petticoat wasn’t bothersome, and her soggy wool cap was in a pocket with her stockings.

  She was sure her excitement came from the thaw, not claret. The long walk home had dispelled the last effects of the wine.

  Now, as she counted the lights dotting the clustered shacks along the riverbank, Lancey recognized them as festive torches. The fishermen were sitting up late, greeting another season with talk. They’d be making plans for the morrow, boasting of past catches, guessing at future prices. As they did every year when the ice broke.

  This was familiar! This was where she belonged! She wanted to rush down, join the family discussion around the fireplace. She stood still, reviewing her night’s adventure.

  “God and Nicholas,” Lancey said, “but I nearly lost more than those skates!”

  She laughed, but felt her cheeks burn. There were comic memories aplenty. The innkeeper’s pallor at the thought of his damaged tableware. Hilda von Beck’s rigid disapproval. Her own hasty dressing behind the settle in the inn’s big kitchen, and the way she scampered out the door! And—funniest of all!—Dirck van Zandt’s face as she last saw it. But mixed with these things was one disturbing, undeniable fact.

  She had liked van Zandt’s flummoxing, liked it even though she knew where he was steering! Her whole body had responded to his caresses; her skin had tingled with a strange, delightful gooseflesh!

  “Like a harlot,” Lancey said.

  Word and judgment came from the long sermons she’d so often heard in the stone Dutch church. She might better, she admitted, have listened more and squirmed less. The dominie had thundered against such sinful practices at least twice a month. Why, then, did she feel no guilt, but only a scornful disdain for her yielding?

  Considering, the girl chewed her lip. Honesty forced her to certain conclusions. There was pleasure in such dalliance even with a stranger. It had little to do with love, morals, or matrimony, was as physical as a cool swim on a sweltering day! But the careless swimmer, in strange waters, was apt to be swept away, sucked under.

  That was the reason for her scorn. She, Lancey Quist, had almost let herself be cozened by the first rogue in a ruffled shirt who tried it!

  Lancey knew her upbringing to be moral but not strict, rough but not slovenly. She was wise in the ways of the riverfront where raw spirits, male or liquid, gave due warning by their very crudeness. She remembered her dead mother barely, New Paltz, the place of her birth, not at all. Though she could walk the crooked lanes of Poughkeepsie blindfolded, the fishing settlement below the bluff was her true habitat, her oyster bed.

  She went down to it now, trippingly in spite of the darkness. Her sureness on the path gave Lancey an added sense of security about her emotions. Dirck van Zandt had shown her that the horseplay, the snatched kisses, of earlier years was over. She was sixteen, a woman now, and fair game. An ability to run, or duck, or claw, was no longer enough because she would have to watch herself as well as the boy.

  “Man,” corrected Lancey, mentally reviewing her male friends. Most of the fishermen were married, or too old. Of her former playmates only Jan Elmendorf could be considered a swain. She’d had to box his ears last Independence Day when rum made him ardent, but he still came visiting. The dolt eyed her like a cow, and had about as much to say.

  She dismissed Jan with the rest, wondering briefly how you decided one certain man brought love. That thought, too, disappeared as she passed the last shack before her own, saw that the square of oiled paper in the window was tinted with light.

  Clouds hid the moon, but Lancey pictured her home in detail. Hendrick Quist had built carefully, and well. Several of the fisher shacks were bigger; none was more snug. The north wall and chimney were brick, and the narrow front was half-stone. It faced, south, onto a small yard that held the shed for the boat and a rack for drying nets. Lancey placed, without seeing, the two-plank pier that jutted into the river.

  Drawing a breath that enjoyed the sharper tang so close to the water, Lancey felt a rush of affection for her father. Hendrick had spent years of toil on the place. Whenever he couldn’t fish, he patched. Only this past winter he had reshingled the backhouse.

  Both halves of the Dutch door were hooked together, swung in as one when Lancey pulled the latch-string and pushed. Warmth, a compound of heated air, wood and tobacco smoke, visibly enveloped her as she entered.

  It was a rectangular room, with fireplace opposite the door, and its one window on the landward side. The walls were bare, whitewashed to the low ceiling of unpainted planking. There was no rug, but the wide floorboard-s gleamed like a holystoned deck. The small space was emphasized by the massive furniture that filled it. One corner was crossed by an open cupboard; another held the ladder to the loft above. A settle, its seat a chest, was under the window. The square table alone made passage difficult on either side. There were two armchairs, a stool, a hamper. Pegs on both sides the fireplace held up shelves for cooking utensils and foodstuffs; those flanking the door were hung with coats and hats.

  “It’s me,” said Lancey.

  Three faces were turned toward her. She judged that the others—her half-brother and small half-sisters—were abed in the loft. Her father merely removed his pipe and nodded. Ten Bush, her brother, gave her a half smile. Only her stepmother greeted her with cheery question.

  “You eat?”

  “Yes.”

  As she shrugged out of her coat the girl was puzzled. She hadn’t expected anxious queries about her absence until so late an hour, but complete indifference was a surprise. Besides, in spite of its normal look and crackling fire, the small room held an air of tenseness. Her entry seemed to have interrupted something.

  Hendrick Quist, feet propped on the wood box, finished carving a tholepin, inspected it. He was a short, solid man, with a body shaped much like the high, porcelain bowl of the pipe he was smoking. Like the pipe, too, he showed the use and handling of many years. The skin of Hendrick’s broad face was weathered to the color and texture of a russet apple. His bald scalp, a pink dome circled in back by a frieze of ash-gray hair, looked babyish by comparison.

  Closing his clasp knife between square, corded hands, Hendrick gazed at his daughter. His eyes, a pale, watery blue, were stirred by emotion as a pool is ruffled by a breeze. As always, the sight of Lancey reminded him of her dead mother, but his voice betrayed nothing of this.

  “Lancey, the river is open again.”

  “I know,” Lancey said. She drew the stool close, sat down. Hendrick, spoke as he rowed a boat, in a steady, even beat.

  “Soon we will all have to be busy.”

  Lancey saw the blue eyes flash toward her stepmother, on toward Ten Bush. Her brother had lounged back from the cand
lelight, sat motionless in shadow.

  “All,” repeated Hendrick. To emphasize the word he pointed his hooked pipe stem at each of his listeners in turn. “Even the small ones will have their tasks.”

  “So,” Lancey murmured. Her puzzlement deepened, mixed with wonder. It was not like her father to belabor the obvious with too many sentences. Every spring opened with a few weeks of bustle and preparation.

  “This year should be a good year.”

  Ten Bush, stirring in his corner, drew Lancey’s glance. At eighteen he was a lanky lad, with a big-boned frame not yet fully fleshed. Now, as he uncrossed and recrossed his knees, the girl realized her brother was nervous.

  “Depends,” Lancey said, “on how the fish run.”

  “They will run,” Hendrick said. “They always do. But this summer will bring more to eat them, buy them.”

  “The men for the convention, Pa?”

  “Those, yes, Lancey. They come to vote on this Constitution matter. Aye or nay. To join or not. For us that is not important. But they must eat.”

  “June,” Lancey said, “is late for shad unless—”

  Hendrick raised his pipe to interrupt. He said: “How the shad run, the shad decide. What we do, depends on us.”

  For the first time his wife joined the conversation. Hester Quist was a big woman, amply curved. Her plain, pleasant face became almost handsome when the large mouth smiled, and the gray eyes twinkled. She winked at Lancey as she spoke.

  “Like always, Hendrick.”

  It was, Lancey knew, an attempt to prod Hendrick’s speech to a faster pace. The husband, unhurried, puffed smoke as he considered the remark, then nodded.

  “As you say. Like always.” The broad head turned as Hendrick faced his son. “You hear, Ten Bush?”

  A sigh that flattened a candleflame was Ten Bush’s only answer.

  “Good,” said Hendrick, accepting it. “Then that is settled.”

  “What is settled?” Lancey was completely bewildered. Nothing she had heard had posed a problem or offered a solution. Her father had returned to his pipe, and the girl’s voice sharpened. “Why do you say this to Ten Bush?”

  “Ten Bush,” explained Hester, not waiting for her husband, “wishes to ship out with the men from Claverack Landing.”

  “Whaling?”

  Lancey’s surprised question brought the pipe from her father’s lips. He leaned forward, the pale eyes troubled, and his tone quickened.

  “Whaling! Shad, sturgeon, peelican, salmon—these are not any more enough! Whales Ten Bush wants to go after. A long voyage. Years, maybe! With those mad New Englanders from upriver!”

  “They are not mad,” Ten Bush said with quiet gravity. “There is money from whale oil cargoes. Good York State money even in these times. They have proved that these last few years. And they pay wages.”

  Mouth open, Lancey stared at her brother. That he spoke at such length made the discourse important, the tension understandable. Compared to Ten Bush even Hendrick was a prattling parrot. Lancey’s childhood closeness with her brother had always been a silent one. She could not remember him in a single wordy argument.

  “Leave the river?” she asked, disbelief in her tone.

  “The river,” Ten Bush said, “flows to the sea.”

  Why, she thought, he means it! He really wants to go voyaging. The evening’s adventures were erased from her mind by the realization. Ten Bush, the reliable, the steady, was eager to leave the family!

  Hendrick Quist, trying to watch both son and daughter, sighed. These children by his first wife had his deepest affection, though he tried to be fair to all the rest. He saw Lancey, eyes narrowed, quickly adjust herself to face the new problem, and it was another reminder of her mother. So had pert Cecile Delancey looked when New Paltz was horrified by her marriage to a roving river sloop sailor.

  “Ebb and flood,” Lancey said. “If you must sail why not a packet to New York?”

  “It is not the same,” Ten Bush said.

  He, too, Hendrick decided, in spite of his Dutch features, now showed his mother’s French blood. For Ten Bush it was almost the first time, and Hendrick was troubled. A man liked life to follow a regular order as the tides the moon. His distress made his deep voice a trifle harsh.

  “We need you here, son.”

  “Lancey can do anything I do.”

  “You are eldest.”

  “Old enough to choose, Pa?”

  Unless you knew these two, Lancey thought as she listened, you would think both mild and reasonable. Neither spoke loudly, nor with gesture. That Ten Bush replied at all to his father’s statements betrayed her brother’s strong feelings.

  The girl glanced at her stepmother. For all her plainness Hester had a noble forehead that swept up to braided hair which age had turned to white gold. Now it was wrinided with a frown warning Lancey the clash was serious.

  “Is it a girl’s place to row?” asked Hendrick. “To go out on a night drift and cast net?”

  “When have we gone out without Lancey, Pa?”

  “Ten Bush, I said it was settled.”

  “Well,” said Hester, smoothly, “suppose we see what Lancey thinks.”

  Lancey recognized this as a plea for peacemaking. She and her stepmother were old friends, had been since Hendrick’s marriage. Hester, practical and earthy, had never tried to discipline her stepchildren. She had treated Lancey, at six, as another woman in a world made difficult by men.

  “Lancey?”

  Ten Bush made the name a question. Hendrick repeated it silently with raised eyebrows. The girl felt a stomach flutter of panic. No matter what she said she could not please them both.

  “Well,” Lancey said, “I—I’m not sure I know. It’s so—so sudden like.”

  She spoke no more than truth, and she was troubled. The Nantucket whaling men had fascinated the whole valley on their arrival four years before. Together, she and Ten Bush had watched the sturdy vessels beat upriver; even Hendrick had commented on their differences from the familiar river sloops. Her brother had rowed her north to watch the Yankees hammer together the houses they’d brought in sections from the New England coast.

  Since then the whaling fleet had grown to twenty-five ships, and the whalers spoke of their home port as Hudson. These things made interesting gossip, but Ten Bush had shown no desire to go awhaling.

  “Would they take you, Ten Bush?” asked Lancey, still stalling.

  “Yes. I have asked.”

  “He asked,” Hendrick said, “those people. Not me.”

  At the hint of emotion in his father’s voice Ten Bush clenched and unclenched his hands in mute apology.

  “There is no harm in asking,” said Hester with a quick smile. “If you don’t ask, you don’t find out. There was no need for Ten Bush to speak until the ice broke.”

  Lancey wet her lips, aware they were all waiting for her words. Ten Bush moved forward into the candlelight and the girl could see his face. His eyes were a darker blue than his father’s, but he had the same square jaw. A lock of hair, fine and pale as corn silk, was tumbled over his forehead. The girl had an impulse to reach out and brush it back.

  He wants me to approve, she thought, noting her brother’s intent gaze. Hendrick, too, showed anxiety. The curved pipe hung from his teeth but he wasn’t smoking.

  “This is not an easy thing,” Lancey said. “I cannot understand wishing to leave the river. It is our life and it is good. Soon it will be better, with warm days, the boat out and fish running. Truly, the convention men may bring more custom, but, even without, summer is the happiest time.”

  Hendrick gave a grunt of agreement. Ten Bush merely waited.

  “But I am not Ten Bush,” Lancey said, smiling. “He has the right to think as he pleases. Only I do not believe we need him for the fishing, Pa. I can row as well, and almost as long. If he should leave—”

  “There is no if,” said Hendrick, gazing at his daughter in pained amazement. “I said it was settled,
Lancey.”

  “All right, Pa,” Lancey said.

  She knew that nothing was settled. Hendrick could forbid Ten Bush to go, but could not prevent it. Any more argument could only cement her father’s decision. She needed time, to talk to Ten Bush alone, to soothe Hendrick’s outraged feelings.

  “I will hear no more of this,” said Hendrick, glowering.

  Lancey didn’t dare turn her head. She dropped one hand by her side, wriggled the fingers. The table hid the motion from her father. It was a signal that she and Ten Bush had often exchanged in childhood, a warning to hold his tongue.

  “All right, Pa.”

  Ten Bush’s reply brought three sighs of relief. Hendrick coughed to muffle his, and fussed with his pipe, shaking the dottle into the fire. Lancey realized that her father, too, had dreaded more violent conflict. Smiling, she glanced at her brother, saw her smile reflected. He was willing to leave his future to her.

  “I’m sleepy,” Hester said, and yawned.

  Hendrick, rising to stretch, said, “Let’s take a last look at the weather, Ten Bush.”

  This was, for all its gruffness, a peace offering, an admission that the battle was over, forgotten. Ten Bush, following his father to the door, sealed the truce with an amiable question.

  “We staining net tomorrow?”

  “If it’s coming fair.”

  Hester Quist waited until the door closed behind them, then grinned at her stepdaughter. The big woman shook her head.

  “Men!” she said.

  “Those two,” Lancey said, “are too much alike. Stubborn Dutch.”

  “Don’t I know? I was right glad to see you, Lancey. The tempest was blowing up in here before you came. It ain’t a second wife’s place to butt in between a man and his son.”

  “You favor Ten Bush’s going?”

  “That ain’t for me to say either. Hendrick’s my man, Lancey. But when you’re the age of Ten Bush, it’s not good to want something that bad and not get it. The boy couldn’t be more het up if he wanted a female instead of a whale. Only you waved him off he’d have wrecked everything.”