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horse, the buggy rattling across the yard. I watched him through the window, the cross of its mullions interpreting the scene, as he drove from the left side of the window tothe right, and out of sight. I thought of him as a crusader; I saw his head as though it were encased in a gleaming helmet. I saw him as zeal-driven as those warriors of old, violent in their love of Christ, approaching unbelief with raised sword. I had read Ivanhoe, one of two or three dozen books my mother kept in the humped trunk.
    Once my father did not drive away, but stood in the cabin door holding the buggy whip. My mother stepped before him and said only “No.”
    He went into the yard and lashed the little stump where I liked to sit till foam came to the corners of his mouth, and he fell in a faint. Then my mother tore a strip from the hem of her green dress, wet the cloth, went to him, and bathed his forehead. She crooned his name, Ulysses, Ulysses.
    That night my mother asked me if I would consent to live with her sister. “She is a Unitarian,” she said again. And when I asked my mother what that meant, she said, “With her, you can believe what you will. Only your behavior must be according to what is commonly held to be good. You must be kind. As you always have been.”
    And that is how I came to live at the Lighthouse.
    The Lighthouse itself became my church, my single tall tree trunk, my faith in stone and earth, and, eventually, my conduit to the sky.

CHAPTER 6 : The Steamboat
    M Y MOTHER and I journeyed downriver by buggy to start our voyage up. (Is it not the case that many a life journey starts out in the opposite direction to its destiny?) Our land was located some twelve miles north of the Falls of the Ohio, where the city of Louisville had sprung up at the portage. Steamboat travelers, as well as freight, were obliged to disembark on the upriver course and to change boats, Louisville being the northernmost port for those who had traveled up the Mississippi and then branched to the right, leaving the muddy waters of the Mississippi for the clearer water of the Ohio. Though the falls were rather low, they were unnavigable.
    The night before our journey, our trunks standing like dark twins before the small summer fire, my mother had negotiated with my father that she alone would drive us to the Falls and then hire a boy to return the buggy, as she would travel with me all the way to her sister’s home.
    â€œCertainly you will return, Bertha?” An anguish masked my father’s eyes—not that I was being escorted to a tiny island populated by only one family but that my mother might decide not to return to him.
    For a moment I dared hope that she would not return, but a glance at her loving, loyal face, even before she spoke the words he needed to hear, told me otherwise.
    The morning of our departure, after loading the trunks, he seated himself on my stump in the yard. I almost passed him without looking at him—for I loved my Kentucky home that I was being forced to leave—but I could not. He loomed like a black rock whose size and shape I must register in order to pass safely around. But I looked in his eye, and it was as though lightning leapt from both of us! Instant and powerful, undeniable connection!
    â€œUna!” He ejaculated my name, and I ran to him for a farewell embrace.
    His hands on both my shoulders, he pushed me back to look again into my eyes. His voice choked, he croaked, “Doubt not that I love you.” I made one quick nod and fled to the buggy.
    From my seat I looked back at him as the wheels began to turn. I waved, one quick pass of the palm through the air— his style of wave—and thought now we were reversed, now he sat on the stump and I rode away in the buggy. I knew that he was sad . And much more.
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    A S WE PASSED through the woods, though it was a warm day, my body felt cold, especially my hands, which were clinched tight into fists. On