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Show •68 to shore under my tree. Evidently I hadn't done it right or like Tom Sawyer, my father was playing a joke on all of us. Watching that little piece of bread bobbing on the water I discovered that I cared more for it than for all the heroes and happenings of literature. Even the best books are only words after all; there is a cry direct from the heart that has no syntax; it needs no vocabulary. The heart has reasons that reason doesn't know, the French say. I wedged myself firmly in my father's tree and opened his copy of Moby Dick to the beginning. I had brought it along in anticipation of a fruitless day; I was certain that Adam wasn't hiding in that murky river, and even if I was wrong, I thought, how could they sift through all the muck and debris to find hin? Our stretch of the Willamette had been used as an informal garbage dump for a hundred years and it doesn't have a strong current that would have scoured the bottom. That's why they were using divers instead of dragging with a hook. "Call me Ishmael." Except for the ivory leg and the terrible white scar my father had been a quieter Ahab, a Nantucketer trapped on an island of his own making. He chased all his life after an idea only to see it turn and bite him at last. If he jumped, that is, but I didn't believe he had. From my perch I could see over the low roofs to the other |