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

congregation.”
    At supper, as we enjoyed the squash and sweet red peppers from our garden, Frannie asked her mother, “Why does Billy butt the tower?”
    Agatha laughed and told us that he did it once each year, at the end of summer. “He rebels against Authority.”
    â€œHe tests the tower when he himself is fattest and strongest,” Uncle said.
    â€œIt must give Billy some satisfaction,” Agatha went on ruefully, “to crack his head against rock.”
    â€œWhat do you think of God,” I asked, “for testing the loyalty of Job?”
    â€œI think it is wrong for the strong to test the weak, though it is natural for the weak to test the strong.”
    â€œAgatha, Agatha,” Uncle said, looking up from the sweet potato gashed richly open on his plate, “how can you lay down such ready maxims?”
    â€œBilly is much weaker than the Giant,” Frannie said.
    â€œYou call the tower the Giant?” her father asked.
    â€œI think of it sometimes as Jack’s beanstalk,” Aunt Agatha said.
    â€œIt looks like a chimney,” I said. “It’s snug against the house like a chimney. Like a chimney that grew out of control.”
    But in my heart, I adopted Frannie’s idea—that the tower was a Giant, and I would use all my senses to know him, and then, I would offer him a challenge.
Sight
    That night, as I lay in my bed, I wondered what it would be like to live under a mountain instead of a lighthouse tower. ( Condense the plot, my mother used to instruct me, after I had lived the experience of reading a novel. Can you abstract meaning, she would ask with a smile, after the pleasure of poetry.) I wondered if the Lighthouse were not just a condensed and abstracted mountain. Height was the feature they shared, and stone . But had I leaned a shoulder against a mountainside, it was likely that close at hand there would have been other mountains to look at, for nature rarely throws down just one of a kind.
    Part of the power of the Lighthouse, however, derived from its singularity.
    In Kentucky, I had lived next to a river, and sometimes the Ohio was indeed a running of gray, though more often brown with mud, or, occasionally, reflective blue of the sky, and sometimes all a glitter with sunlit silver spangles. At this time of year, the river water would be floated by autumn leaves, especially the sycamore, which liked to grow near water. Did it matter so much that the river’s gray was horizontal and the stony Other vertical? I thought not. Or that the river if marked off stretched for miles, and the tower, after all, rose only in feet and yards? In its length, the river curved and bent, and while that had a graciousness, some credit had to be given to the Lighthouse for his straightness. Perhaps if there were no gravity, he would stretch up for miles, curving sinuously as smoke, as he climbed the sky. As my consciousness rarefied toward sleep, I decided that when I compared the spectacle of the Lighthouse to the river, it was His Highness’s Stillness that ought to be emphasized and capitalized. And did stillness mean permanence ? Eternity?
    Â 
    T HE LETTERS my mother sent from Kentucky arrived that fall in a bundle, brought out to us on the Camel . I half dreaded to open them. I did not like to think about the life I was missing in Kentucky. Her letters, though, were almost boring. They described the animals heard or seen in the woods and the gatherings of neighbors for church or harvesting. I used the corner of one of the envelopes to clean under my nails, as I sat beside the hearth.
    â€œDon’t do that,” Aunt suddenly said.
    â€œWhy?” I was surprised by her tone.
    â€œIt’s not respectful to your mother.”
    â€œGet a toothpick,” Uncle said kindly, “if the garden dirt is under your nails.”
    When winter fell, the river would be frozen and closed to steamboats, and there would be no letters. The