Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson Page A

find Call and located hima hundred feet away on the path toward the village. He had stopped running. I felt a surge of gratitude for him. He hadn’t deserted, not really.
    â€œYour friend, too,” the old man said, putting his periscope down on a table and smiling warmly through his white beard.
    I licked my mouth, but my tongue was almost as dry as my lips. Franklin D. Roosevelt was hanging the Congressional Medal of Honor around my neck, saying, “Without regard for her personal safety, she entered the very stronghold of the foe.”
    â€œCa-all.” My voice cracked wide open on the word. “Ca-all.”
    He started back in a sort of zombielike walk. I could feel the presence of the man in the window above me. Call came up and stood right behind me, his breath coming from his open mouth in noisy pants. We were both fixed on the form above us.
    â€œWon’t you come in and have a cup of tea, or something?” the man said invitingly. “I haven’t had any visitors since I got here except for an old tomcat.”
    I could feel Call stiffen like a dead fish.
    â€œHe acted like the place belonged to him. I had a time convincing him otherwise.”
    Call butted me in the back with his stomach. I butted him back with my behind. Good heavens. Here we were on the very trail of a spy and Call was going to get upset by a ghost—a made-up ghost, one I had made up. Annoyance drove out panic.
    â€œThank you,” I said. My voice was a little too loud and there was a distinct quaver in it, so I tried again. “Thanks. We’d like tea, wouldn’t we?”
    â€œMy grandma don’t allow me to drink tea.”
    â€œThe boy will have milk,” I said grandly and flounced around to the front door. Call followed at my heels. By the time we got around the house, the man was there, holding the door open for us. Without regard for her personal safety…
    There was very little to sit on inside the house. The man pulled a rough plank bench around for Call and me, and after he’d put a kettle on a two-burner propane stove and puttered about his kitchen a bit, he came in and sat down on a homemade stool.
    â€œNow. You are—”
    I was still in the process of deciding whether or not counterspies gave their actual names in a situation like this when Call spoke up. “I’m Call and she’s Wheeze.”
    The man began unaccountably to laugh. “Wheeze and Call,” he said gleefully. “It sounds like a vaudeville act.”
    How rude—to sit there laughing at our names.
    â€œIt would be better if it was Wheeze and Cough. Still, Wheeze and Call is pretty good.”
    I sat up very straight on the bench. To my utter amazement, not to say disgust, I realized that Call was giggling. I gave him a look.
    â€œIt’s a joke, Wheeze.”
    â€œHow can it be a joke?” I asked. I almost said “It’s not funny,” but I stopped myself in time. Fortunately, the kettle whistled, and the man got up to make the tea. I gave Call a glare that should have stopped the tide, but he kept on laughing. I’d never heard him laugh in my life and here he was shrieking like a gull over garbage about something that was just plain insulting.
    The man handed me a mug of very black tea. “I’ve only got tinned milk,” he said to Call while returning to the kitchen.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Call said, wiping the tears off his face with the back of his wrist. “Wheeze and Cough,” he repeated to me. “Don’t you get it?”
    â€œOf course I get it.” I was trying to figure outhow I was going to get down the black stuff I had been handed. “I just don’t think it’s funny.”
    The man came back from the kitchen carrying a mug. “Not funny, eh? Oh, well, I’m out of practice.” He handed the mug to Call. “It’s half tinned milk and half water.”
    Call tasted it.