Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson Page B

“Good,” he said.
    I waited for him to offer me something to put in my tea, but he didn’t. He just got himself a mug of the black brew and sat down.
    â€œMy real name is Sara Louise Bradshaw,” I said, forgetting that minutes ago I had decided against revealing my true name.
    â€œThat’s a very nice name,” he said politely.
    â€œMy real name is McCall Purnell, but everybody calls me Call.”
    â€œI see,” he said slyly. “If I want you, I just call Call.”
    â€œCall Call!” cried Call, as though it was the most original idea as well as the funniest thing he had ever heard. “Call Call! Did you get that, Wheeze? It’s a joke.”
    Good heavens. “I don’t suppose,” I said, loading my voice with significance, “I don’t suppose that you would tell us your name.”
    The man feigned surprise. “I thought everyone on this island knew my name.”
    Both Call and I leaned forward, waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t. I was puzzling it out, whether to press him further or to play it casually, when Call blurted out, “You don’t seem like neither spy.”
    The old man raised an eyebrow at me. I’m sure I turned the color of steamed crab. How do counterspies keep from blushing? He stared at me unmercifully for a minute. I was shrinking into the bench. “Why,” he asked accusingly, “why aren’t you drinking your tea?”
    â€œTin—tin—tin,” I stammered.
    â€œRin tin tin,” shrieked Call.
    The man laughed, too, but at least he got up and brought the tin of milk over to me. My hands were shaking with rage or frustration or exasperation, who knew which, but I managed to fill the mug to the brim with the thick yellowish milk. He waited in front of me until I had sampled the brew. I took a scalding sip. It was too hot to know how it tasted, but I shook my head to indicate that it was fine. Halfway into the mug, I realized I should have asked for sugar, but then it seemed too late.
    That was the way most of our early visits to the Captain’s house went. We decided, Call and I, simply to call him “the Captain.” On Rass any waterman who owned his own boat was called Captain So and So after he had passed fifty. I wouldn’t call him Captain Wallace, because he’d never actually claimed the name. I kept going to see him in the fading hope that he’d turn out to be a real spy and I could have a medal after all. Call kept going because the Captain told great jokes, “not like yours, Wheeze, really good ones.”
    At any rate, it was Call the Captain liked, not me. If I’d been a more generous person, I’d have been happy that Call had found a man to be close to. He didn’t remember his own father, and if any boy needed a father it was Call. But I was not a generous person. I couldn’t afford to be. Call was my only friend. If I gave him up to the Captain, I’d have no one.

6
    I t is hard, even now, to describe my relationship to Caroline in those days. We slept in the same room, ate at the same table, sat for nine months out of each year in the same classroom, but none of these had made us close. How could they, when being conceived at the same time in the same womb had done nothing to bind us together? And yet, if we were not close, why did only Caroline have the power, with a single glance, to slice my flesh clear through to the bone?
    I would come in from a day of progging for crab, sweating and filthy. Caroline would remark mildly that my fingernails were dirty. How could they be anything else but dirty? But instead of simply acknowledging the fact, I would fly into a wounded rage. How dare she call me dirty? How dare she tryto make me feel inferior to her own pure, clear beauty? It wasn’t my fingernails she was concerned with, that I was sure of. She was using my fingernails to indict my soul. Wasn’t she content to be