Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson Read Free Book Online Page A

their school primers, watermen learn how to read the sky and to head for the safety of a cove at the first glimmer of trouble. But the Bay is wide, and sometimes safety is too far away. In theold days, the watermen would lower their sails and use them as tents to protect themselves from the rain.
    This is the story that the old people told: Captain Wallace and his son, Hiram, had let down their sails and were waiting out the storm. The lightning was so bright and near that it seemed to flash through the heavy canvas of the sail, the roaring and cracking enough to wake the dead sleeping in the depths of the water. Now, a man who is not afraid at a time like this is a man without enough sense to follow the water. But to fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. This, Call’s grandmother said, was what Hiram Wallace had done: terrified that the lightning would strike the tall mast of his father’s skipjack, he had rushed out from under his sail cover, taken an ax, and chopped the mast to the level of the deck. After the storm passed, they were sighted drifting mastless on the Bay and were towed home by an obliging neighbor. When it became apparent that the mast had been chopped down, rather than felled by lightning, Hiram Wallace became the butt of all the watermen’s jokes. Not long after, he left the island for good….
    Unless, of course, the strong old man rebuilding the Wallace house was the handsome young coward who had left nearly fifty years before. He never said he was, but then again, he never said he wasn’t. Some of the islanders thought a delegation should be sent to ask the old man straight out who he was, for if he was not Hiram Wallace, what right did he have taking over the Wallace property? The delegation was never sent. April was nearly over. The one slow month of the watermen’s year was coming to an end. There was a flurry of overhauling and painting and mending to be done. Crabs were moving and the men had to be ready to go after them.
    â€œI bet he isn’t Hiram Wallace,” I said to Call one day in early May.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWhy would a man come to Rass in the middle of a war?”
    â€œBecause he’s old and has nowhere else to go.”
    â€œOh, Call. Think. Why would a person come to the Bay right now of all times?”
    â€œBecause he’s old—”
    â€œThe Bay is full of warships from Norfolk.”
    â€œSo? What does that have to do with Hiram Wallace?”
    â€œNothing. That’s just it, dummy. Who would want to know about warships?”
    â€œThe navy.”
    â€œCall. Don’t you get it?”
    â€œThere’s nothing to get.”
    â€œWarships, Call. What better place to spy on warships than from a lonely house right by the water?”
    â€œYou read too much.”
    â€œI suppose if someone was to catch a spy they’d take him to the White House and pin medals on him.”
    â€œI never heard of kids catching spies.”
    â€œThat’s just it. If two kids were to catch a spy—”
    â€œWheeze. It’s Hiram Wallace. My grandma knows.”
    â€œShe thinks he’s Hiram Wallace. That’s what he wants everyone to think. So they won’t suspect him.”
    â€œSuspect him of what?”
    I sighed. It was obvious that he had a long way to go before he was much of a counterspy, while I was putting myself to sleep at night performing incredible feats of daring on behalf of my embattled country. The amount of medals Franklin D. Roosevelt had either hung around my neck or pinned to my frontwould have supplied the army with enough metal for a tank. There was a final touch with which I closed the award ceremony.
    â€œHere, Mr. President,” I would say, handing back the medal, “use this for our boys at the front.”
    â€œBut, Sara Louise Bradshaw—” Franklin D. Roosevelt for all his faults never failed to call me by