Jacob Have I Loved
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Even I, wanting so much to believe, could tell it was mimeographed. The only thing typed in was my name, and that had been misspelled. I was a fool, but I’m proud to say, not that big a fool. Heartsick, I ripped the letter down to its last exclamation point and flung it like confetti out into the water.
August and February are both alike in one way. They’re both dream killers.
The next day the orange tomcat reappeared. It was the same cat, I’m sure, that had scared Call and me that time four years before when we had decided to investigate the house, and the same cat that the Captain had finally driven out after the first week or so he had lived there. The cat marched in through the open front door as though he were the long-absent landlord popping in to check out the tenants.
The Captain was furious. “I thought I got rid of that fool thing months ago.” He got his broom and took after the huge tom, who calmly jumped onto the kitchen table. When the Captain took a swing at him there, he leaped daintily to the floor, taking a cup down with his tail.
“Damn it to hell!”
I had the capacity to imagine such language, but neither Call nor I had ever really heard it spoken. I think we were as fascinated as we were shocked.
“Captain,” said Call, when he recovered himself slightly, “do you know what you said?”
The Captain was still stalking the cat and answered impatiently, “Of course I know what I said. I said—”
“Captain. That’s against the commandments.”
He took another futile swing before he answered. “Call, I know those blasted commandments as well as you do, and there is not one word in them about how to speak to tomcats. Now stop trying to play preacher and help me catch that damn cat and let’s get him out of here.”
Call was too shocked now to do anything but obey. He ran out after the cat. I started laughing. For some reason, the Captain had at last said something I thought was funny. I wasn’t just giggling either. I was belly laughing. He looked at me and grinned. “Nice to hear you laugh, Miss Wheeze,” he said.
“You’re right!” I screeched through my laughter. “There’s not—I bet there’s not one word in the whole blasted Bible on how to speak to cats.”
He began to laugh, too. Just sat down on the kitchen stool, the broom across his knees, and laughed. Why was it so funny? Was it because it was so wonderful to discover something on this island that was free—something unproscribed by God, Moses, or the Methodist conference? We could talk to cats any way we pleased.
Call reappeared carrying the struggling tom. He looked first at the Captain and then at me, apparently baffled. He had never seen us laughing together, of course. Maybe he didn’t know whether to be pleased or jealous.
“Who—who—” puffed out the Captain. “Who is going to take that damned animal back to Trudy Braxton?”
“Trudy Braxton!” I think both Call and I yelled it. We had never heard anyone call Auntie Braxton by her Christian name. Even my grandmother, who must have been nearly the old woman’s age, called her “Auntie.”
After the first shock, my feeling was one of pleasure. It really was. I no longer wanted the Captain to be a Nazi spy or an interloper. I wanted him to be Hiram Wallace, an islander who had escaped. That was far more wonderful than being a saboteur to be caught or an imposter to be exposed.