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

of sight. Too high, it was true, for an island family without state aid to contemplate, but low enough for me to dream and work toward. It seemed to me that if I could get off the island, I would be free from hate and guilt and damnation, even, perhaps, from God himself.
    I was too clever to pin all my hopes on crabs. Crabs are fickle creatures. They always know when you need them too much and pick precisely that season to make themselves scarce. I must give the impression, therefore, despite my early risings, that I didn’t much care how lucky we were. When wewere on the water, poling through the eelgrass, I took pains to say at just about dawn, “This is the nicest time of day, isn’t it, Call? Who cares if the crabs are here or not? Let’s just relax and enjoy ourselves.”
    Call would give me a look that indicated that I had lost my mind, but he was smart enough not to think it out loud. I can’t swear that I fooled the crabs, but our catches were good that summer. Still, I wasn’t going to count too heavily on crabs. I began casting about for other ways to make money.
    I found what seemed a sure thing in the back of a Captain Marvel comic book in Kellam’s store. I even squandered a dime of my hard-earned cash to buy the book, which I hid with my other treasures in the underwear drawer.
    WANTED : Song Lyrics
    Cash for your poems!
    Cash. That was a word to make the creative juices flow. The fact that most of the poetry I’d ever read came off tombstones didn’t stop me. I listened to the radio, didn’t I?
    There’ll be bluebirds over
    The white cliffs of Dover
    Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
    There’ll be love and laughter
    And peace ever after
    Tomorrow, when the world is free.
    Any idiot could figure it out. Two rhyming lines, stuffed with romance, a third that neither rhymes nor makes sense right away, two more romantic ones, then the third that also rhymes with the earlier unrhymed one and sort of makes sense.
    When the gulls fly over the Bay
    They cry that you’re far away.
    But we didn’t part.
    Though you’re far across the sea,
    You’re not far away to me,
    You’re in my heart.
    It had all the elements—romance, sadness, an allusion to the war, and faithful love. I fancied myself the perfect lyricist—romantic, yet knowledgeable.
    I tried it out on Call in the boat one day.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œThe girl’s boyfriend is away at war.”
    â€œThen why are the gulls crying? Why should they care?”
    â€œThey don’t really care. In poems you can’t say plain out what you mean.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œThen it’s not poetry anymore.”
    â€œYou mean a poem’s supposed to lie?”
    â€œIt’s not lying.”
    â€œGo on. Ain’t neither gull on this Bay up there boohooing ’cause some sailor’s gone to war. If that ain’t a plain out lie, I don’t know what is.”
    â€œIt’s a different way of talking. Makes it prettier.”
    â€œIt ain’t pretty to lie, Wheeze.”
    â€œForget about the gulls. How about the rest of it?”
    â€œThe rest of what?”
    â€œThe rest of my poem, Call. How does it sound?”
    â€œI forget.”
    I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling at him and then with super patience read it through again.
    â€œI thought you’s going to forget about the gulls.”
    â€œNo, you forget them. How does the rest sound?”
    â€œIt don’t make neither sense.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œEither the guy’s away or he ain’t. You got to make up your mind.”
    â€œCall. It’s a poem. In real life he is far away, but she thinks about him all the time, so she feels like he’s real close.”
    â€œI call it dumb.”
    â€œJust wait until you fall in love.”
    He looked at me as though I’d proposed some indecent act.
    I sighed.