Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund Read Free Book Online Page B

fascinated me on cows and on the goats and seemed quite comely there.
    My uncle Jonathan had crisp red hair, and freckles, like Frannie, all over his face and arms to match. He was clean-shaven, and his hair stood up thick and tall and bright. I wondered if he could get a cap down over his hair, but perhaps he didn’t need one.
    When he caught me staring at his head, he said, “All lighthouse keepers must have red hair, you know.”
    I gasped.
    â€œShould the light go out, I myself would stand at the high window and glow.”
    I bowed my head in confusion.
    The white goat cheese bubbled in a wrought-copper chafing dish, in the center of the table where we could all reach it. “Now, take your toast,” Uncle said, “and spoon the cheese on it. Here are the herb leaves—dill, sage, and thyme—roll the herb you like best between your fingers”—he did so to illustrate—“and sprinkle it over the cheese. Careful not to burn your tongue.”
    I did burn my tongue the first time, but then I noted how they all held the toast and melted cheese before their mouths and blew on it before biting. So between the talking, sometimes in the middle of the sentences, there were little huffs and puffs of breath. In a blue bowl there was a pile of stiff, dark green vegetable, all dried, and Aunt told me it was seaweed and good for me.
    Glancing toward the small window at the end of the table, I saw twilight was coming on. Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Agatha and Frannie, with my mother joining in, began to sing a song about a lighthouse keeper, but I did not know the words. While they sang, Uncle put a hurricane glass over the candle, the glass settling nicely into a circular groove in the wood of the candlestick holder. I could well imagine that he would not want to climb all the way to the top only to have his candle extinguished accidentally. Then he went to a low door in the side of the room and opened it. The stone steps, quite steep, began at once and bent around the inner wall of the tower.
    â€œThe steps are blocks of Belgium granite,” my mother said through the singing, “brought over as ballast in the ships.”
    Uncle bent down and passed from the house to the shaft. His voice took on an echo in the tower, and I saw the circle of light disappear.
    â€œSing la, ” my aunt commanded, “till you know the words,” and so I did, with loud and lusty LAs, for it was nicer to join in than to hang back. We seemed most peculiarly snug, we two girls and two women, with the colorful driftwood fire—red, blue, green, yellow flames like feathers—the strange food on the table, and the pretty copper chafing dish. Even the window through which I could see the graying sky was peculiar, for its walls were stone and very thick-sided. I watched the light outside gray until it matched the stone.
    Soon we could not hear Uncle’s voice at all, he was so high up. A chilly wind blew down the tower, and Aunt told Frannie to close the door, but I felt uneasy that the door be closed behind him while he was ascending the stone vault.
    Then Mother and I sang them a slave song, “Go Down, Moses”—rapt, Frannie breathed, I want to learn it —so we sang it again till she had the words and her eyes glowed with the heroism of Moses. Then Agatha and Frannie sang “Loch Lomond” with a jaunty Scottish accent. After a while, we sang marching music, and Uncle came through the wall, or rather the wooden door in the wall, blowing a harmonica. The notes came and went with his breathing, and his mouth slid back and forth.
    â€œMake a square,” he called, and we all hopped up and circled and danced, Aunt Agatha making the call. What a jolly evening, my first at the Lighthouse, and how my mother’s eyes sparkled beyond their loving glow!
    That was not all. Tired out, we sat before the fire, and Frannie passed around saltwater taffy, and Aunt Agatha read Lord