Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson Page B

How he heard me over the roar of the wind, I don’t know, but he was out on the porch before I reached the house.
    â€œSara Louise? Where are you?”
    I stood up, bracing my body as best I could against the wind. “Hurry!” I yelled. “You got to come to our house.”
    He came quickly, put his body in front of mine, and pulled my arms about his waist. He took my flashlight so I could grasp my hands together in front of him. “Hold tight!”
    Even with his stocky waterman’s body to break the wind, our journey back up the path was a treacherous one. The rain was coming down now like machine-gun fire, and the water from the marsh began to swirl up around our feet. The Captain cried out something to me, but his voice was lost in the moaning of the wind. Like all the rest of me, my hands were wet. Once they slipped apart. The Captain caught my left arm and held on tightly. Even when we got to the first picket fence, he heldon. The pain in my arm became the only real thing, a sharp point of comfort in the midst of a nightmare. In the narrow street the dark houses of the village gave us some shelter from the wind, but the water of the Bay was already washing across the crushed oyster shells.
    My father was not home when the Captain and I got there. The electricity was out. My mother, white-faced in the light from the kerosene lamp, was at the stove getting coffee. Grandma was rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes squinched shut. “Oh, Lord,” she was praying out loud. “Why don’t you come down and still the wind and waves? Oh, Jesus, you told the storm on Galilee, ‘Peace, be still,’ and it obeyed your word. Ohhh, Lord, come down now and quiet this evil wind.”
    As if in defiance, the moan of the wind shifted into a shriek. We were all so startled that it took us several seconds to realize that my father had come in the front door and was now pushing the old food safe against it. The door was leeward, but we all knew that later the wind would shift. We had to be ready.
    â€œBest douse the lamp, Susan,” my father said. “And the stove. Things get banging around downhere and we’ll have a first-class fire.”
    Momma handed him a cup of coffee before she obeyed.
    â€œNow,” he said. “Best be getting upstairs.” He had to shout to be heard but the words were as calm as someone telling the time. “Come along, Momma,” he called to Grandma. “Can’t have you floating away on your rocker.” He waved his flashlight toward the staircase.
    Grandma had stopped her litany. Or else the wind had swallowed it. She went to the steps and began to climb slowly. My father nudged me to follow. “Oh, my blessed,” Grandma was saying as she climbed. “Oh, my blessed. I do hate the water.”
    Caroline slept on. Caroline would probably have slept through the Last Trumpet. I started toward her bed to wake her up. Daddy called me from the hallway. “No,” he said. “Let her sleep.”
    I came back to where he was. “She’ll miss the whole hurricane.”
    â€œYeah. Probably will,” he said. “Better get off those wet things, now. Then you should try to get some sleep yourself.”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep through this. I wouldn’t want to.”
    Even through the shriek of the wind, I could hearhis chuckle. “Nope,” he said. “Probably wouldn’t.”
    When I had changed out of my wet things and cleaned myself off as best I could, I went into my parents’ room. Daddy had gone down and fetched Grandma’s chair so she could rock and moan as was her custom. Somehow, the Captain had changed from his wet clothes into my father’s bathrobe, which barely met at his middle. Daddy and Momma were perched on the side of their bed, and the Captain sat on the edge of the only other chair. They had lit a candle in the room, which flickered because of the wind