Ahab's Wife

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  We stood some minutes watching the much more peaceful scene beyond the Lighthouse of the beacon bonfire. At a short distance from the fire sat the pile of driftwood, almost the same shape and size as the burning pyre. Unhurried, from time to time a figure would pass between the waiting stack and the burning one.

  As we watched, I heard an unfamiliar sound behind me, a line flapping against the stone column of the Lighthouse. Turning to look, I saw high up, extending from the lantern house, a projecting wooden brace, which the men used with rope and pulley to raise and lower large parts of the lenses. The rope dangled and swayed indolently beside the long stone side of the tower. Suddenly it seemed to me like a gallows. I put my hand to my throat.

  “Let’s go in,” Frannie said, as though she knew my thought.

  AS WE SAT beside our tame and friendly fire inside, I thought of the frenzied spectacle of the whale ship’s try works. I knew the furnaces were built of brick on brick on the wooden deck, and I thought of the men furiously working as though to contain and appease the flames. From the passing merchant vessel, the fiery whaler must have seemed the living image of nightmare—a ship aflame. I remembered Kit’s saying that he should like to try whaling. There was in Kit himself something smoldering, if not bursting into flames.

  Finally I fell asleep in my chair, till, too soon, I saw the dawn and felt Aunt shake me, saying that soon the men would come in for breakfast, and I should go to my bed.

  I lay in my room and listened to them come in, their voices strange except for Kit’s. Why should they be alive and not my father? Who were they to me? And yet each of these workmen was son or father or friend, I knew, to some person whose grief would be as real as mine if their bodies fell lifeless.

  They ate with right goodwill, but after a time I heard Kit asking my aunt if something was wrong and where were Frannie and I. “Really?” I heard him say, when she answered. “Really?” with a sharp sympathy and surprise in his voice. He said no more.

  When the others rose from the table to set about the day’s work, I heard Aunt tell Kit that he might look in on me, that she was sure I was awake. So Kit came and sat on the bed. I turned my back to him and looked out my window, and he rubbed my back in kind circles and said over and over that he was sorry, in a low voice so as not to awaken Frannie.

  He often spoke my name.

  CHAPTER 20: A Comb

  THE NEXT DAY, Kit had careful and hard work to accomplish. I had no heart for watching, but several times he sought me out and passed a few cheerful words with me. It was balm to me. He had the gift of tact, and always I knew that he had my loss in mind, that he respected my grief, and yet—his tone of speaking seemed to say—here’s life, here’s someone who cares that you grieve, here is affirmation for who you are, Una.

  Aunt often stopped to kiss my cheek, and Frannie hugged me almost till I dreaded her approach. Uncle was always there with his quiet understanding, but Kit with his newness diverted me. At one point, he put a small box of maple candy on the table, simply saying, “I brought this for all of you, from Boston.” Then later, he stopped to tell me the candy had come from Vermont, and how they tapped the maple trees and boiled down the sap.

  That evening, he asked Aunt if he and I might walk together down by the water. While Aunt hesitated, Uncle spoke up and said that it would do me good, and I felt grateful to Uncle.

  IT WAS THE FIRST NIGHT of the Fresnel lens, and I was astonished by the boldness of its beam. It appeared to flash round and round, like a reaching arm. The swoop of it bothered the edges of my mind, and yet there was a determination about it that I felt myself drawn to and that I admired.

  Kit averred that the new light could be seen as far as twenty miles out to sea. The old light had come to seem as familiar and restful to me as a fire in our fireplace, but this one had a relentless energy. Powered by clockworks, which Uncle wound, a “revolving eclipser,” or shield, rhythmically moved in front of the lamp.

  “It seems to say,” I remarked, “ ‘I shall rule the sky.’ ”

  Kit laughed.

  The beam actually seemed to push against the clouds, to stroke them back. I was glad for the familiar plashing of the waves, and we sat on the dock with our legs hanging over the edge.

  Suddenly Kit pretended to shove me off.

  “What would you do if I did?” he asked.

  “Come back and push you,” I answered.

  “I believe you would.” He was pleased with me. “Can you swim?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  Finally he asked me if I was cold, and when I said that I was a little cold, he asked if I wanted to go inside. When I said no, he loosely put his arm about me.

  Here was comfort, I thought. If Giles had been with me, he would have done the same to warm and comfort me.

  Then Kit asked me a strange question: “What do you think of your body?”

  Something curled inside me. “No one has ever asked me that,” I said.

  He waited. What was I to say?

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I wonder how a girl, a young woman really, regards herself.”

  “With uncertainty,” I answered.

  “You move as though you were uncertain of nothing.”

  “What do you think of the soul?” I asked. Despite the light above us, the water was dark.

  “I am certain that I have none. I have a mind. People mistake it for the soul.”

  “Does Giles agree?” The waves kissed one another, a sweet and friendly sound.

  He sighed. “Giles is an agnostic.”

  “Why aren’t you an agnostic?”

  “I don’t always agree with Giles’s ideas.” There was a studied neutrality to his voice.

  “I don’t mean you depended on Giles to think for you.”

  “Nor do you. You have your own mind and body.”

  I looked back at the lighted house. I would have liked that night to believe that my father had a soul and that it dwelt in the heaven he espoused. “Do you think we are nothing after death?” Kit did not reply. I felt he was sad to have no comfort to offer on that score.

  “Did your mother describe the funeral?” he finally asked.

  “She’s bringing his ashes with her.”

  “That’s morbid enough,” Kit said.

  I had no reply. Who was to criticize anyone’s funeral practice? My father had left an instruction in his pocket to burn his body as though he were a pagan Greek. But I did not tell Kit. Could my father have given up his God for gods?

  “I suppose we should go,” I finally said.

  “Wait.” He took a small package from the pocket of his jacket. “A gift. Don’t let it fall out.”

  I peeled off the crumpled newspaper and there was a spiny shell.

  “It’s a Venus comb,” he said. “Remember I drew a picture of one for Frannie. I bought it in Boston.”

  It was sharp-pointed, delicate and beautiful. “Could I really comb my hair with it?” I asked.

  “Let’s try,” he said, and reached up and boldly pulled out a hairpin.

  “No, I don’t want to,” I said quickly.

  “Well then, I get to keep the pin,” he said and put it in his pocket. “Do you like the shell?”

  I did and, remembering my manners, told him so.

  “I’ll try it in my room,” I said.

  “If it works, I want you to show me sometime.”

  I stood up, remembering my father was dead, by his own hand. The Fresnel light swept and swept the sky.

  CHAPTER 21: The Fourth Letter

  THE NEXT DAY presented a mien of unusual fragility, a blue much more pale and washed than a robin’s-egg blue but with that uniformity of hue. It started with a dewy freshness, and, as the sun climbed higher, the day grew hotter and hotter, till even with the sea breezes there was a baking quality to the heat. In Kentucky, such an August day is called a scorcher, and it did seem that some implacable flatiron was upended near one’s body. In the face of the heat, we
were all helping to load the Petrel.

  Pearls of sweat hung in a line across Frannie’s forehead. Finally Aunt told her she must rest in the shade. She herself retreated to the cool of the stone cottage, but she left the door open to watch us. When I glanced her way, I saw Aunt leaning on the table and fanning herself. Uncle swabbed his forehead and announced that there was enough water to quench the fire of his hair.

  Inside each of us, I am sure, was the dreadful hollowness of my father’s death, but outside, the world and its weather went on and felt free to burn and scorch us. That I would never see my father again seemed an impossible idea. (And how strange to carry a mere basket to a boat while my mind was haunted with death, was reeling from the suddenness of the reality of death.) Even more impossible: that I probably could, if I chose, look at a container of ashes and think that that once was he. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It was a quotation he liked, an idea to make one humble. But he himself had always borne his body with pride.

  What do you think of your body? Kit had asked.

  That it’s melting, I could have said today. I heard one of the men say he wished for lemonade. The packing finished, but the wind and tide being wrong for sailing, we were all rather at loose ends in the heat. The crew were young, and some of them went wading where the sea was shallow, and others dug for clams and promised us a clambake for supper.

  Uncle came into the cottage (whose stony walls, I thought, made it seem humid and confining instead of cool) and said to Aunt that he had half a mind to send Kit and me to pick plums for a cobbler. Aunt said rather sharply, “Send her if you like, Torch. It’s on your head.”

  Torchy looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean, Agatha?”

  “I don’t like his eyes. I never have.”

  Uncle glanced at me apologetically. “If you like, Una, you can go.”

  “Wear a hat,” Aunt called after me, and I snagged one of the straw ones hanging from the pegboard beside the door. I closed the door carefully to keep the heat out and quietly so as not to jar Aunt’s nerves.

  My eye found Kit immediately, sitting barefooted on the dock, with his trouser legs rolled up. The hairiness of men’s legs appalled me, being inexperienced. I expected Kit to stand up when I approached, but instead he lay backward on the boards and looked up at me, squinting.

  “You have a plan,” he said.

  “We could walk over the meadow and pick plums.”

  “Fran, too?”

  “We can ask her.”

  So we took a basket and started out, but first I sent Fran back for a hat, and when she went in, her mother told her to stay home. It seemed capricious on Aunt’s part, and Frannie was much disappointed when she came back to tell us.

  “Don’t worry,” Kit said. “This evening I’ll pick out a whole cupful of pecans just for you to eat.”

  Nonetheless, Frannie’s head dropped.

  “And,” he went on, “I have a present for you, Fran. Three buttons, and one has ruby glass in it.”

  Now Fran looked up happily, and I thought highly of Kit for his kindness to her.

  “I like your hat,” he said to me as we walked single file along the path. I could feel his eyes on my back, and I held my shoulders straight.

  If I had been walking with Giles, it would probably have been a silent walk. Each would have left the other to enjoy what there was to see. But Kit kept up a steady line of patter, and I found myself amused and laughing and paying almost no attention to where I was. We were on some high road together, going to some giddy place.

  It was too hot for butterflies or hummingbirds, but we saw a cottontail scuttling through the grass. And then the fringed shadow of a hawk.

  “Is that your friend?” Kit asked.

  I knew he meant the eagle I had battled. “My eagle fishes the sea,” I said. “That’s just a redtail. Uncle says there are too many rabbits here.”

  “I should bring you my fox,” Kit said.

  I hadn’t known he had a pet, but he told me he had raised a vixen and a friend back on Nantucket kept it for him.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” I didn’t know why I was suddenly curious.

  “Charlotte,” he answered.

  I felt my heart stop. My face grew hot, and I was glad I was in front. Quickly I knew I must say something.

  “Are you old friends?” I asked.

  “I knew her before I went to sea for the first time.”

  “And how did you meet Giles?” Giles, after all, was the person I had chosen. I felt unsteady.

  “He was also on his first voyage out.”

  “Do you still think of going on a whale ship?” I pictured the blazing tryworks.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  I did not answer. How could I be a passenger on a whaler? It had only been an impulse to say I wanted to go a-whaling. And now my mother was coming. Perhaps she would want me to return to Kentucky with her. Surely she would. Suppose she let me choose?

  We walked past the scrub cedars. There was the jagged stump, but Uncle had sawed up the trunk and taken it home to cure in the attic. Small piles of sawdust lay on the ground where he had worked.

  “Maybe you’ll go back to Kentucky,” Kit said, as though he read my thoughts. “You could always marry a pig farmer,” he added impishly.

  I put my hands on my hips. “How dare you, Kit Sparrow! You’ll just say anything, won’t you? Somebody ought to gag you.”

  “Gag or tag? You couldn’t tag me if you tried.” He danced on his toes and darted away.

  I chased him hard, but I couldn’t catch him. He followed the path to the plum grove, and then turned and yelled, “King’s X! Home free!”

  Holding my side and panting, I dropped my speed to a walk. My hair had come loose and I was sweating rivulets. By the time I reached the grove, he had half eaten a plum.

  “Side hurt?” he asked. “You could run better if the whalebone didn’t pinch you.”

  A laugh burst from me, and that hurt my side, too. “Kit!” I said. “Don’t.” But he was smiling merrily, and I couldn’t be angry with him.

  He gave me a plum, and we sat down together in the shade of the trees. Though some breeze came up from the water, the heat was still smothering. The juicy plum seemed sweet and wet as sin. What was sin?

  “You remind me of my father,” I suddenly said.

  “A handsome man,” Kit said solemnly.

  “Restless. Full of energy.” I thought, but did not say, the word smoldering. Not an apt description for the moment, anyway, because Kit seemed at his leisure, assured and happy.

  As though to affirm my appraisal, he said, “I feel happy to be with you.”

  “Giles said we ought to enjoy talking.”

  He snorted. “When I first saw you, Una, fighting the eagle over your bonnet, I thought I had never seen such a woman. But there are some very conventional aspects to you.”

  “Was it you or Giles who called to me?”

  “I did.”

  “I have a scar on my hand.” I held it out to him.

  He slowly took my hand. Slowly bent and kissed it.

  I felt myself dissolve in brightness.

  Slowly he placed my honored hand on the grass and gazed out to sea.

  I wanted him to say something. Where were his manners and his gift of gab? But he would not. There was a perversity about him, a stubbornness. Why had Giles written me only one letter if he was fond of me?

  “Is—is…” I stammered. “Is Charlotte a special friend to you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Heaviness settled over me.

  “But she is not as special as you.”

  I wanted him to say more. Now I would wait.

  Finally he said, “Giles is the most unusual person I know.”

  “Yes,” I answered, content with simple agreement. Later, as we picked the fruit for the cobbler, I wished that I had said, You, too, are the most unusual person I know.

  Why should one want the unusual? I asked myself
. The exotic seashell, the arresting phrase? Concerning Giles, these were not real questions, at least for Kit or for me. I knew that Giles was a person to be cherished. He had some gift of spirit, not just of mind, that marked him as rare and valuable. Aunt had seen it. To Uncle and Frannie, it made less difference.

  But never with Giles had I felt so simply happy as I did picking plums with Kit. It was not Frannie but I who felt his allure. I slipped the pit of the plum he had given me into my apron pocket.

  When we started back along the path, I asked Kit to help me find my lost hairpins.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Una,” he asked, “are you really so conventional that you cannot return with your braid hanging down your back?”

  “I could if I chose,” I said.

  “No. You can’t choose. You can’t just say, ‘I was running and my hair came down.’ It doesn’t look respectable to you. They don’t expect you to come back any different from when you left.”

  “I’ll find the pins by myself.”

  He shrugged. I did find my pins, or enough of them. Beside the path I found my straw hat, too, which I hadn’t even known I’d lost.

  Kit laughed at me. I felt his will wash over me. I remembered his comforting arm across my shoulders. I expected him to tease me now about how the hat must have been unnecessary if I never registered its loss.

  But instead he grew serious and said, “That’s the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don’t even know that the wind of your own running is a thief.”

  BEFORE we reached home, I asked Kit to wait. I took off my hat and placed it beside my foot. I took out the pins and let my braid dangle below my waist. Then I took my fingers and loosed the braid so that all the hair spread wild and free. “I wear my hair as I wish,” I announced. “I’ll tell them so.”

  “Good for you,” he said. But he did not walk in with me.