Free Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

having run out of fingers—“unto-you.” Then he cautioned me, holding both my hands tightly, “Whenever you do wrong, Una, the gloves come off. You must then say the verse again and put them on with new resolve.” I also remembered his hand, when I was twelve, swooping for my cheek, and the impact that turned my head. And after that picture, another appeared, unwanted, of him framed in the narrow door, his whip in his hand, of my mother rising, standing between us, saying, “No.”
    Uncle Torchy began to hum and to waltz around, holding his little daughter against his chest.
Sound
    That night when I lay in bed, I listened to the wind humming in the tower. Did the Giant emit sounds? Along with Stillness one of his great attributes was Silence . Yet when the wind, like a horsehair bow, rubbed him as though he were a long stone string, he sang.
    Or did the breath of God make the Giant into a lone Pan-pipe? I fingered the hard stone wall beside my bed. As the velocity of the high wind increased, the column of air inside the Giant’s long hollow throat was set to mournful vibrating. I wailed back till I woke Frannie, andshe left her warm bed to crawl in with me to offer comfort. Don’t be homesick, she whispered. I’m here .
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    â€œI EXPECT the Camel to appear any day,” Uncle said to me at breakfast. “Are your letters ready?”
    â€œI have one for every month for my mother.”
    â€œAnd for your father?”
    â€œI’ll write him at the end of summer.”
    Uncle only slightly frowned, but he looked away.
    Aunt said quietly, “We understand.”
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    A BOVE ALL , Aunt Agatha was a pacifist who was unyielding in her abhorrence for violence. She labeled war not only the greatest of human evils but also the silliest. One summer evening, while we stood on the beach to enjoy the sunset colors, she told us—she seemed blushing, in that light—of women in ancient Greece, who had withheld their bodies from their husbands as long as they pursued war. That, she believed, was probably the only effective way to end strife among men.
    Uncle Torchy put in the statement that sometimes the Greek men loved each other, like sailors at sea without women. Not only his red hair but the skin of his face and bare arms reflected red.
    Auntie said firmly, “Wait till she’s sixteen, Torch.” She took Frannie’s hand and walked back toward the cottage.
    Since there were so few of us on the Island, Aunt Agatha’s views about war were of remote importance to me—our peace, marked off by the inevitable shadow of the Giant, seemed unending—but Aunt’s attitude toward education was an immediate matter—one from which my spirit, if not my mind, benefited greatly. She said that Plato believed children should not learn to read till they were ten, but instead spend their time with music and exercise—so Frannie was exempt from formal instruction. Since I came to the Island at age twelve, my reading (and I did a lot of it) was acceptable. But Frannie, now age five, lived a life as free as the goats’, and more so, for she could come inside, or thrust her nose in the roses, if she liked. Of course, she was curious about her small island world, and whatever questions she asked, at five, atsix, at seven, were promptly and kindly answered by both my uncle and aunt, but they volunteered no information whatsoever, as far as I could make out.
    This seemed a bit of a lapse to me, and that second summer with Frannie on the Island, I endeavored to tell Frannie everything I knew so that she would not grow up ignorant. On June 1, I told her that I was a University of One, Una University, and that all day she should listen to me talk. I traced the letter U in the sand and said it had two sounds, when the U was like the vowels in moon, or in Una, and, in that U-sound in university, when the U-sound was like you . Promptly I moved on to what I likened