Jacob Have I Loved

The Captain smiled quickly as though thanking my father for calling him by name. “No,” he said. “But I thank you. Any port in a storm, they say, but I take home port if I got a choice.”

“It’s going to blow mean tonight.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” But the Captain gathered his tools, waved, and headed for home.

I was a sound sleeper in those days and it was my father, not the wind that woke me up.

“Louise.”

“What? What?” I sat up in bed.

“Shh,” he said. “No need to wake your sister.”

“What is it?”

“The wind’s come up right smart. I’m going to go down and take off my motor and sink the boat.”

I knew that to be an extreme measure. “Want me to help?”

“No, there’ll be plenty of men down there.”

“Okay,” I said and turned over to sleep again. He shook me gently. “I think you better go down and get the Captain. Bring him up here in case it gets worse.”

I was fully awake now. My father was worried. I jumped up and pulled on my work overalls over my nightgown. The house was shuddering like Captain Billy’s ferry.

“Is it raining yet?” I asked my father at the front door. The wind was so loud that it was hard to tell.

“Soon,” he said, handing me the largest flashlight. “Better wear your slicker. Now you take care and be quick.”

I nodded. “You, too, Daddy.”

The blow came up faster than even my father had guessed. Every now and then I would grab the paling of one of the picket fences lining the street to steady myself against the wind. It was blowing from the northwest, so making my way southeast toward the Captain’s house, I had the feeling that at any moment the wind might lift me off my feet and deposit me in the Bay. When I reached the last house, where the narrow street turned into a path across the marsh, I went down on my hands and knees, shoved my slicker up out of the way, and crawled. The wind seemed too powerful now to tempt with my upright body.

If our house had been shaking, protected as it was in the middle of the village, imagine the Captain’s, hanging there alone so near the water. The beam of my flashlight caught for a frightening moment the waters of the Bay, which the wind had whipped into a fury. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house….

I began to cry out the Captain’s name. How he heard me over the roar of the wind, I don’t know, but he was out on the porch before I reached the house.

“Sara Louise? Where are you?”

I stood up, bracing my body as best I could against the wind. “Hurry!” I yelled. “You got to come to our house.”

He came quickly, put his body in front of mine, and pulled my arms about his waist. He took my flashlight so I could grasp my hands together in front of him. “Hold tight!”

Even with his stocky waterman’s body to break the wind, our journey back up the path was a treacherous one. The rain was coming down now like machine-gun fire, and the water from the marsh began to swirl up around our feet. The Captain cried out something to me, but his voice was lost in the moaning of the wind. Like all the rest of me, my hands were wet. Once they slipped apart. The Captain caught my left arm and held on tightly. Even when we got to the first picket fence, he held on. The pain in my arm became the only real thing, a sharp point of comfort in the midst of a nightmare. In the narrow street the dark houses of the village gave us some shelter from the wind, but the water of the Bay was already washing across the crushed oyster shells.

My father was not home when the Captain and I got there. The electricity was out. My mother, white-faced in the light from the kerosene lamp, was at the stove getting coffee. Grandma was rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes squinched shut. “Oh, Lord,” she was praying out loud. “Why don’t you come down and still the wind and waves? Oh, Jesus, you told the storm on Galilee, ‘Peace, be still,’ and it obeyed your word. Ohhh, Lord, come down now and quiet this evil wind.”

As if in defiance, the moan of the wind shifted into a shriek. We were all so startled that it took us several seconds to realize that my father had come in the front door and was now pushing the old food safe against it. The door was leeward, but we all knew that later the wind would shift. We had to be ready.

“Best douse the lamp, Susan,” my father said. “And the stove. Things get banging around down here and we’ll have a first-class fire.”

Momma handed him a cup of coffee before she obeyed.

“Now,” he said. “Best be getting upstairs.” He had to shout to be heard but the words were as calm as someone telling the time. “Come along, Momma,” he called to Grandma. “Can’t have you floating away on your rocker.” He waved his flashlight toward the staircase.

Grandma had stopped her litany. Or else the wind had swallowed it. She went to the steps and began to climb slowly. My father nudged me to follow. “Oh, my blessed,” Grandma was saying as she climbed. “Oh, my blessed. I do hate the water.”

Caroline slept on. Caroline would probably have slept through the Last Trumpet. I started toward her bed to wake her up. Daddy called me from the hallway. “No,” he said. “Let her sleep.”