Jacob Have I Loved (3 page)

All the way through I had expected my parents to stop her, invoking, if nothing else, the nearness of the neighbors. But no one had. And now, she had finished and was waiting for our applause. It came in the form of a smile working at the firm corners of
my father's mouth. Caroline laughed happily. It was all she desired.

Surely Momma would protest. Instead she handed Grandma a cup to drink in her chair. “Here's your cocoa, Mother,” she said. Caroline and I went to the table for ours, Caroline still smiling. I had a burning desire to hit her in the mouth, but I controlled myself.

That night I lay in bed with an emptiness chewing away inside of me. I said my prayers, trying to push it away with ritual, but it kept oozing back round the worn edges of the words. I had deliberately given up “Now I lay me down to sleep” two years before as being too babyish a prayer and had been using since then the Lord's Prayer attached to a number of formula “God blesses.” But that night “Now I lay me” came back unbidden in the darkness.

“If I should die…” It didn't push back the emptiness. It snatched and tore at it, making the
hole larger and darker. “If I should die…” I tried to shake the words away with “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for behold, thou art with me…”

There was something about the thought of God being with me that made me feel more alone than ever. It was like being with Caroline.

She was so sure, so present, so easy, so light and gold, while I was all gray and shadow. I was not ugly or monstrous. That might have been better. Monsters always command attention, if only for their freakishness. My parents would have wrung their hands and tried to make it up to me, as parents will with a handicapped or especially ugly child. Even Call, his nose too large for his small face, had a certain satisfactory ugliness. And his mother and grandmother did their share of worrying about him. But I had never caused my parents “a minute's worry.” Didn't they know that worry proves you care? Didn't they realize that I needed their worry to assure myself that I was worth something?

I worried about them. I feared for my father's safety every time there was a storm on the Bay, and for my mother's whenever she took the ferry to the mainland. I read magazine articles in the school
library on health and gave them mental physical examinations and tested the health of their marriage. “Can this marriage succeed?” Probably not. They had nothing in common as far as I could tell from the questionnaires I read. I even worried about Caroline, though why should I bother when everyone else spent their lives fretting over her?

I longed for the day when they would have to notice me, give me all the attention and concern that was my due. In my wildest daydreams there was a scene taken from the dreams of Joseph. Joseph dreamed that one day all his brothers and his parents as well would bow down to him. I tried to imagine Caroline bowing down to me. At first, of course, she laughingly refused, but then a giant hand descended from the sky and shoved her to her knees. Her face grew dark. “Oh, Wheeze,” she began to apologize. “Call me no longer Wheeze, but Sara Louise,” I said grandly, smiling in the darkness, casting off the nickname she had diminished me with since we were two.

“I
hate the water.”

I didn't even bother to look up from my book. Grandma had two stock phrases. The first was “I love the Lord,” and the second, “I hate the water.” I had grown fully immune to both by the time I was eight.

“What time's the ferry due?”

“The same time as always, Grandma.” I wished only to be left to my book, which was a deliciously scary one about some children who had been captured by a bunch of pirates in the West Indies. It was my mother's. All the books were hers except the extra Bibles.

“Don't be sassy.”

I sighed and put down my book and said with greatly exaggerated patience, “The ferry is due about four, Grandma.”

“Doubt but there's a northwest wind,” she said mournfully. “Likely to be headed into the wind all the way in.” She rocked her chair slowly back and forth with her eyes closed. Or almost closed. I usually had the feeling she was watching through slits. “Where's Truitt?”

“Daddy's working on the boat, Grandma.”

She opened her eyes wide and sat up straight. “Not tonging?”

“Tonging's done, Grandma. It's April.” It was spring vacation, and here I was sitting all day with a cranky old woman.

She settled back. I thought she might tell me not to be sassy once more for good measure, but instead she said, “That ferry of Billy's is too old. One of these days it's going to sink right there in the middle of the Bay, and no one will find neither plank of it never again.”

I knew Grandma's fears were idle, but they stirred up a little fuzz ball of fear in my stomach. “Grandma,” I said, as much to myself as to her, “it's got to be okay. Government's always checking it out. Ferryboat's got to be safe or it won't get a license. Government controls it.”

She sniffed loudly. “Franklin D. Roosevelt thinks
he can control the whole Chesapeake Bay? Ain't no government can control that water.”

God thinks he's Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“What are you grinning about? Ain't nothing to grin about.”

I pulled in my cheeks in an attempt to appear solemn. “You want some coffee, Grandma?” If I made her some coffee, it would distract her, and maybe she'd let me get back to my book in peace.

I slipped my book under the sofa cushion because it had a picture of a great sailing vessel on the front. I didn't want Grandma upset because I was reading a book about the water. The women of my island were not supposed to love the water. Water was the wild, untamed kingdom of our men. And though water was the element in which our tiny island lived and moved and had its being, the women resisted its power over their lives as a wife might pretend to ignore the existence of her husband's mistress. For the men of the island, except for the preacher and the occasional male teacher, the Bay was an all-consuming passion. It ruled their waking hours, sapped their bodily strength, and from time to tragic time claimed their mortal flesh.

I suppose I knew that there was no future for me
on Rass. How could I face a lifetime of passive waiting? Waiting for the boats to come in of an afternoon, waiting in a crab house for the crabs to shed, waiting at home for children to be born, waiting for them to grow up, waiting, at last, for the Lord to take me home.

I gave Grandma her coffee and stood by while she noisily sucked in air and coffee. “Not enough sugar.”

I whipped the sugar bowl out from behind my back. She was clearly annoyed that I'd been able to anticipate her complaint. I could see on her face that she was trying to decide how to shift to something that I wouldn't be prepared for. “Hmm,” she said finally in a squeaky little tone and spooned two heaping measures of sugar into her cup. She didn't thank me, but I hadn't expected thanks. I was so delighted to have outsmarted her that I forgot myself and began whistling “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” as I returned the sugar bowl to the kitchen.

“Whistling women and crowing hens never come to no good end.”

“Oh, I don't know, Grandma, we might be terrific in a circus freak show.”

She was clearly shocked but couldn't seem to put
her finger on my specific sin. “Thou shalt not—thou shalt not—”

“Whistle?”

“Sass!” She almost screamed. I had clearly gotten the best of her, so I sobered to an elaborate caricature of humility. “Can I get you anything else, Grandma?”

She humphed and hemmed and slurped her coffee without answering, but as soon as I'd gotten my book again and was settled down on the couch and reading, she said, “It's onto four o'clock.”

I pretended not to hear.

“Ain't you going down for the ferry?”

“I hadn't thought to.”

“It wouldn't hurt you to think a little. Your mother's likely to have heavy groceries.”

“Caroline's with her, Grandma.”

“You know full well that little child ain't got the strength to carry heavy groceries.”

I could have said several things but all of them were rude, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“With bullets in your eyes. Like you want to shoot me dead. All I want you to do is help your poor mother.”

It was useless to argue. I took the book upstairs and hid it in my underwear drawer. Grandma was less likely to poke around in there. She considered modern female undergarments indecent and if not precisely “of the devil,” certainly in that vicinity. I got a jacket, as the wind would be chilly, and went downstairs. When I reached the front door, the rocking stopped.

“Where you think you're going?”

Fury began to swoosh up inside me. I kept my voice as flat as I could and said, “Down to meet the ferry, Grandma. Remember? You said I should go and help Momma bring back the groceries.”

She looked strangely blank. “Well, hurry,” she said at last, beginning to rock again. “I don't favor waiting here by myself.”

A small crowd of islanders had come by foot or bicycle and were already waiting the arrival of the ferry. They greeted me as I approached, pulling the red metal wagon that we used for hauling.

“Your Momma coming in?”

“Yes, Miss Letty. She had to take Caroline to the doctor.”

Sympathetic looks all round. “That child has always been so delicate.”

It was useless to withhold information; besides, for once, I didn't care. “She had an earache, and Nurse thought she ought to go have Dr. Walton check it.”

Heads shook knowingly. “You can't be too careful 'bout the earache.”

“Surely cannot. Remember, Lettice, when little Buddy Rankin come down with that bad ear? Martha thought nothing of it, and the next thing she knowed he got this raging fever. A pure miracle of the Lord the child didn't go deaf, they said.”

Little Buddy Rankin was a seasoned waterman with two children of his own. I wondered idly what fixed memory they would have of me in twenty or thirty years.

Captain Billy's son Otis emerged from the unpainted crab shipping shed. That meant the boat was coming in. He walked to the end of the pier ready to catch the line. Those of us waiting moved out of the lee of the building to watch the ferry chug in. It was small and, even before it was close enough to reveal its peeling paint, seemed to sag in the water. Grandma was right. It was an old boat, a tired boat. My father's boat was far from new. It had belonged to another waterman before he bought it,
but it was still lively and robust, like a man who's spent his life on the water. Captain Billy's ferry, though much larger, drooped like an old waiting woman. I buttoned my jacket against the wind and concentrated on Captain Billy's sons Edgar and Richard who had jumped ashore and were helping Otis tie up the ferry with graceful, practiced steps.

My father had walked up. He smiled at me and touched my arm in greeting. For a happy moment, I thought he'd spied me from his boat and had come on purpose to say hello. And then I saw his gaze turn toward the hatch of the under deck passenger cabin. It was Momma he had come to meet and Caroline, of course. Hers was the first head out of the opening, wrapped against the wind in a sky blue scarf. Just enough of her hair had escaped to make her look fresh and full like a girl in a cigarette ad.

“Hey, Daddy!” she called out as she came. “Daddy's here, Momma,” she said back over her shoulder toward the cabin. Our mother's head appeared. She was having more trouble on the ladder than Caroline, for, in addition to a large purse, she was trying to negotiate a huge shopping bag.

Caroline, meantime, had skipped quickly around the narrow deck and jumped lightly to the dock.
She kissed our father on his cheek, a gesture that never failed to embarrass me. Caroline was the only person I knew who kissed in public. It was simply not done on our island. At least she wouldn't try to kiss me. I was sure of that. She nodded, grinning. “Wheeze,” she said. I nodded back without the smile. Daddy met Momma halfway round the deck and took the shopping bag. No unnecessary touching, but they were smiling and talking when they got off the boat.

“Oh, Louise. Thank you for bringing the wagon. There're still more groceries in the hold.”

I smiled, proud of my thoughtfulness, conveniently forgetting it was Grandma who had sent me down to the dock.

Two other island women emerged from the cabin door, and then, to my surprise, a man. Men usually rode up top on the bridge with Captain Billy. But this was an old man, one whom I had never seen before. He had the strong stocky build of a waterman. His hair, under a seaman's cap, was white and thick and hung almost halfway down his neck. He had a full mustache and beard, both white, and was wearing a heavy winter overcoat, despite the fact that it was April. And he was carrying what I imagined
one might call a “valise.” It must have been heavy because he put it down on the dock as he waited quietly with the rest of us for Captain Billy's sons to hand up the luggage and groceries from the hold.

Momma pointed out her two boxes, which my father and I loaded precariously onto the wagon. They were too large to fit into the bed of the wagon, so we perched them slantwise, tilting down into the middle. I knew I would have to go slowly, for if I hit a bump, there were likely to be groceries all over the narrow street.

All the time I was watching the stranger out of the corner of my eye. Two more ancient bags and a small trunk were brought up and put beside him. By now everyone was staring. No one would have so much baggage unless he planned to stay for quite some time.

“Somebody meeting you?” Richard asked, not unkindly.

The old man shook his head, staring down at the luggage piled around him. He looked a little like a lost child.

“Got a place to stay?” the young man asked.

“Yes.” He lifted his overcoat collar up as though to protect himself from the cold island wind and
jerked his hat down almost to his bushy eyebrows.

By now the crowd upon the dock was positively leaning in his direction. The island held few secrets or surprises beyond the weather. But here was a perfectly strange man. Where had he come from, and where was he planning to stay?

I felt my mother's elbow. “Come along,” she said quietly, nodding a good-bye at my father. “Grandma will be worrying.”

I had seldom felt so exasperated—to have to go home in the middle of this unfolding drama. But both Caroline and I obeyed, leaving the little scene on the dock behind, making our slow progress up the narrow oyster-shell street between the picket fences that enclosed each house. The street was only wide enough for four people to walk abreast. The crushed oyster shells underfoot rattled the wagon so that I could feel the vibrations in my teeth.

There was such a scarcity of high land on Rass that for generations we had buried our dead in our front yards. So to walk down the main street was to walk between the graves of our ancestors. As a child I thought nothing of it, but when I became an adolescent, I began to read the verses on the tombstones with a certain pleasant melancholy.

Most of them were more bravely Methodist in flavor.

My favorite was for a young man who had died more than a hundred years before, but to whom I had attached more than one of my romantic fantasies.

He had been only nineteen. I fancied that I would have married him, had he lived.

I needed to concentrate on the groceries. Momma still had the large shopping bag. Caroline
could hardly bear to go as slowly as the two of us had to, so she tended to skip on ahead and then come back to share some of the details of her trip to the mainland. It was one of these times when she was walking toward us that she suddenly lowered her voice.

“There he is. There's that man from the ferry.”

I looked back over my shoulder, being careful to keep my free hand on the grocery boxes.

“Don't be rude,” Momma said.

Caroline leaned toward me. “Edgar is pulling all his stuff in a cart.”

“Hush,” Momma warned. “Turn around.”

Caroline was slow to obey. “Who is he, Momma?”

“Shh. I don't know.”

Despite his age the man was walking remarkably fast. We couldn't hurry because of the wagon, so he soon overtook us and walked purposefully down the street ahead as though he knew exactly where he was going. There was no longer any sense of a lost child in his manner. The Roberts' house was the last one on the street, but he walked right past it, to where the oyster-shell street gave way to the dirt path across the southern marsh.