‘“I have cellars in my house here with passages into the Ocean,” Laughter-Lynn said when they were at breakfast.“Row-boats come into them all the time and ship-boats often.The name of one of my cellars is Drowned Ghost Cellar, and all of the ghosts of my house are drowned-man ghosts.I do not have such impressive visitors to my house as my mother has to her Castle.No Angels come here, except one sometimes.No Giants, except one very small one.No Sioga, except Ocean-Goblins.The three ghosts of my house I love the most are my three drowned husbands.”
‘“I want seaweed to eat for breakfast,” the Jane said.“I don’t want this other stuff.”
‘“I’ll get you some,” said the child servant.“I’m Katie.”
‘“Will these sea-castings further our Quest for Reality?” Hieronymous Talking-Crow asked.
‘“Oh, I think so,” Laughter-Lynn said.“Judgment Day Morning, when we shall all of us understand every secret and every reality, comes when the land shall give up its dead.But the sea gives up its dead every morning in my big cellars, and there are a lot of secrets revealed and shocking realities come to port.Oh, here’s one of my house ghosts now.He is my second drowned husband, Ship Captain Cornelius.”
‘“Charmed,” said the ghostly SeaCaptain in his ghostly SeaCaptain’s weeds, and he bowed to all of them.“Have you seen our Great Circular Stairway that possibly was not built by living hands?It is one of the Three Wonders of our house and one of the Seven Wonders of the World.It runs from the Monsters’ Den which is two levels below the booming ocean itself to the Sky Studio that is unsupported save by the winding stairway.”
‘“The Stairway was built during the tenure-in-life of SeaCaptain Cornelius here,” Laughter-Lynn said proudly.“He was at-land for a month then and was in the house.I came home one evening and there was the beautiful Circular Stairway completed.And there was the Sky Studio new in the sky like a large head on the end of a long corkscrew neck.The whole thing would have taken a crew of five carpenters five weeks to do, except for the portions of it that would have been quite impossible to do at all.”
‘“It was Saint Joseph who did it,” said SeaCaptain Cornelius. “I knew him by the pipe that he had in his mouth.It was made with a Gouging Tool out of the very tag-end of a board.Those Galilean carpenters will not waste a thing.I also knew him by the tobacco that he was smoking in his pipe.Those frugal Galilean carpenters smoke a mixture of nine parts aromatic redwood sawdust and one part of strong shag tobacco.It has a pleasant smell.‘I will work for a noon meal,’ he said (he was a tall-straight man), ‘ I can repair anything, anything.’‘There is a step on the stairway that needs fixing,’ I said, ‘but I don’t have a board at hand to repair it or I’d do it myself.’‘I have everything I’ll need,’ he said, and he opened a very small package that he had.It contained a small saw, a small hammer, three nails, a very small board of wood, and two little panes of glass, one of them clear and one of them clouded.I noticed the name on his small package, Joseph Jacobson, so then I knew for sure that he was Saint Joseph; for the father of Saint Joseph was named Jacob.I gave him a noon meal of Dutch bread and ewe-milk cheese and codfish, and a cup of light medlar wine.Then I went to take my afternoon nap which I always take whether on sea or on land, whether in life or in death.And in my sleep I heard a hammer with a melodious ring to it, very pleasant.But even in my sleep I wondered ‘He has only three nails, and how can he be doing so much melodious hammering with them?’Then when my nap was finished (it’s always finished within half an hour) I found the Galilean carpenter Joseph Jacobson.‘The step is fixed,’ he said.‘Really I did a little bit more than fix the step.I built a new stairway.That was the least I could do for you when the codfish and the medlar wine were so good.And now I will give you a gift of a new pipe already filled and lighted.’I took the pipe from him and puffed it.It was wonderful.There is nothing like that mixture of aromatic redwood sawdust and strong shag tobacco.It is the same pipe that I am smoking right now.It has never needed to be refilled nor relit.I saw the Circular Stairway then and was delighted almost out of my skin.It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.I went up to the floor above me and I went down to the floor below me.I did not notice then that it went very much further up and down.‘I believe that you are the best carpenter who ever lived,’ I said.‘No,’ he told me, ‘my son was a much better carpenter’.”
-R. A. Lafferty, East of Laughter (1989), pp.77-79
