Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson Page A

As if she owned both him and Call. Call, who had always belonged to me because nobody else besides his mother and grandmother would have him, and the Captain, who finally through all our troubles and misunderstandings had become mine as well. Now, because of one afternoonof giving away a batch of drugged cats, she thought she could snatch them both for herself. I muttered something angry but unintelligible.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Wheeze?” she asked. “Don’t you think we ought to help the Captain get ready for the storm?”
    There she was, trying to make me look bad in front of Call. Her voice had its usual sweet tone, and her face was all concern. I wanted to smack it. “Go on down,” I said to Call. “We’ll get there when we can.”
    Later the four of us boarded up the Captain’s windows. Call, Caroline, and the Captain were calling back and forth cheerfully while we worked. The Captain didn’t want to move anything to the second floor, and he laughed away my fear that the water might rise higher than his front stoop. We carried our hammers and nails and boards up to Auntie Braxton’s and started on her windows. Before long my father joined us, and with his help, the work was quickly done.
    â€œWant to spend the night at our place, Hiram?” my father asked.
    The Captain smiled quickly as though thanking my father for calling him by name. “No,” he said.“But I thank you. Any port in a storm, they say, but I take home port if I got a choice.”
    â€œIt’s going to blow mean tonight.”
    â€œI wouldn’t be surprised.” But the Captain gathered his tools, waved, and headed for home.
    I was a sound sleeper in those days and it was my father, not the wind that woke me up.
    â€œLouise.”
    â€œWhat? What?” I sat up in bed.
    â€œShh,” he said. “No need to wake your sister.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œThe wind’s come up right smart. I’m going to go down and take off my motor and sink the boat.”
    I knew that to be an extreme measure. “Want me to help?”
    â€œNo, there’ll be plenty of men down there.”
    â€œOkay,” I said and turned over to sleep again. He shook me gently. “I think you better go down and get the Captain. Bring him up here in case it gets worse.”
    I was fully awake now. My father was worried. I jumped up and pulled on my work overalls over my nightgown. The house was shuddering like Captain Billy’s ferry.
    â€œIs it raining yet?” I asked my father at the frontdoor. The wind was so loud that it was hard to tell.
    â€œSoon,” he said, handing me the largest flashlight. “Better wear your slicker. Now you take care and be quick.”
    I nodded. “You, too, Daddy.”
    The blow came up faster than even my father had guessed. Every now and then I would grab the paling of one of the picket fences lining the street to steady myself against the wind. It was blowing from the northwest, so making my way southeast toward the Captain’s house, I had the feeling that at any moment the wind might lift me off my feet and deposit me in the Bay. When I reached the last house, where the narrow street turned into a path across the marsh, I went down on my hands and knees, shoved my slicker up out of the way, and crawled. The wind seemed too powerful now to tempt with my upright body.
    If our house had been shaking, protected as it was in the middle of the village, imagine the Captain’s, hanging there alone so near the water. The beam of my flashlight caught for a frightening moment the waters of the Bay, which the wind had whipped into a fury. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolishman, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house….
    I began to cry out the Captain’s name.