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

last letter in the stack was a short note from my father, full of wishes for me: he hoped I enjoyed the food of the Lighthouse, he wished he could send me a pumpkin from their garden patch, he hoped I enjoyed my sewing as my mother did. I suppose that sometimes you and your little cousin enjoy tossing a yarn ball between you. Does your uncle take time to explain the workings of the Lighthouse to you? Will you take time to write to your father who loves you? Both your mother and I miss you .
Touch
    The winter gales on the Island resulted in our bringing out caps and coats and scarfs and mittens, but sometimes Frannie and I took off our mittens to touch the rounding of the Giant. And what did the sense of touch tell us about the Giant? He too had his temperature, and that was changeable. He had his sunny side. It was recalcitrant during the morning hours, retaining its night coolness, but by afternoon, if you spread your hand on the stone, it gave back warmth greater than your own, and so, noticeable. The stone could really grow quite warm, warmer, say, than the udder of a goat, when you laid your hand against that hairy bag.
    So, we stepped, feeling with our hands as though we had gone blind and the tower were the shaft of our giant cane, around the base.
    Yes, when we rounded the turn to due north, the Giant’s skin became cooler to the touch and finally cold and clammy. He had a pelt of rough lichens there, flat, scaly, and branching like gray fire. After we knew him well, we became sorry for his north side and its perpetual cold. We warmed stones in the sun, carried them to his backside, and nestled them up against him. True, it was like warming no more than a few toes of a person; still it was something. (And, Frannie and I agreed, we very much liked having a warm brick for our toes when we slid into our beds those cold nights.)
    And so we got to know the Lighthouse by touch (both texture and temperature) as well as by sight.
Smell
    He did have an odor —we noticed it in the thawing of spring—as all rocks do. It is the moisture in them that gives them an aroma, and we believed that if the Giant had no moisture he would crumble into a great pile of dust. We agreed on that, but I said there was really no danger of dilapidation, for he was something like a wick. He was rooted in the Island, so its spring-fed fresh water was available in abundance and could be wicked up from the lower stones to the higher ones, as needed.
    If there were many bright days with no rain, sometimes we splashed a pail of fresh water from the cistern against his lower stones.
Taste
    Did we taste the Giant? Frannie proposed it. No, I replied, for I was fastidious about my mouth. But, I allowed Frannie to kiss the lichen-crusted stone with her lips, as though he were an holy icon, the mighty thighbone of God, and I stood beside her and sang a hymn, such as they sang in my father’s church, God of Wisdom, God of Power, changing the words to suit me: Sign of Safety, Sign of Silence, Sing we to Thy Speaking of the Light, and thanked him many times for his palpable being.

CHAPTER 11 : Winters, Summers
    W HEN FRANNIE jumped into her father’s arms and thrust her hands boldly into the burning hair atop his head, the sensation I felt was envy . O, to be so little!
    â€œYou’re like a torch, Papa,” she said, tugging at his topknot.
    He smiled down at me. “What do you say, Una? Am I now your Uncle Torchy?”
    Frannie pulled a tuft of his red hair, as though to test how well it was rooted to his head, but he made no move to stop her. I smiled at them.
    I remembered my father, sitting on a stump, holding me on his lap. “Now, I’ll put on your golden gloves,” he had coaxed; he slid his fingers over each of mine, starting with the thumb and saying with each stroke, a word: “Do-unto-others-as-you”—changing hands—“would-have-them-to-do”—and then he buttoned the fanciful gloves,