Ten Thousand Truths (4 page)

“January 1915 is the first
National Geographic
we have. My grandmother said that her father began subscribing to the magazine when she was ten years old. They kept getting it just about every year after that except for a few years during the Second World War. I still get it. It wouldn't seem right to stop now.”

Amelia walked over and opened a door on the far wall and Rachel could see that it led into her bedroom.

“You can come through this room from your bedroom to reach the hall and the front staircase. Feel free to read any book you like. They are in no special order except for the
National Geographic
s, which are organized by month and year. I'd better go down and make sure that the crust of my pie isn't burning and finish making the cobbler. Take your time and look over the books if you want, then grab the laundry from downstairs and put it away. You can put the towels in the cupboard in the bathroom downstairs, then bring the basket up here and leave it on the trunk in the hall. We can all put our own clothes away later.”

Rachel didn't know where to start. This was probably the most books she had ever seen in one place besides the public library. There hadn't been anything to read at the Harriets' except for a couple of Reader's Digest condensed books. She picked up an armload of books that were stacked on the chair nearest to her and carried them through the door into her bedroom. She couldn't get over the fact that she could walk right into a room next door and pick anything she wanted to read from hundreds of books. Right next door were enough books to fill her craving to read other people's stories so she wouldn't have to think anything about the miserable story of her own life. She sat on the side of the bed for just a minute or two before heading down to get the laundry.

“I was right about the cobbler, wasn't I?” asked Zac as he pulled down the tailgate of his truck. Supper was finished, Raymond had gone to the lake, and Chelsea, Crystal, and Amelia were doing the dishes. Rachel had been told to help Zac unload the firewood.

Zac began to fill his arms with wood. Rachel followed his lead by placing some sticks across her arms and then setting them down on the pile in the woodshed the way he did. Even if she wanted to talk to Zac, it felt like any words she might say were stuck in her throat. She had never had trouble talking before, and as a matter of fact she had constantly been told by Bob to shut her smart mouth. Rachel always pretended that it was a compliment to be told she had a smart mouth even though she knew very well that it wasn't what Bob meant. It seemed to Rachel that the drunker he got, the smarter her mouth got. Sometimes her mouth got so smart that he would try to slap it, though he almost always missed. His aim got worse the more he drank, too.

Rachel would've liked to ask Zac some questions. Where did he live? Did he live by himself? What was wrong with Amelia's face? Why did Chelsea and Crystal not seem to talk to anyone but each other? Where was the school around here? Questions kept coming to her brain, but she never opened her mouth. Instead she just continued to load the wood in her arms, carry it into the shed, and place it on the neat stack, trying not to walk into Zac as he did the same. Zac wasn't asking her any questions either, and she was glad about that. Talking about herself was one thing she definitely hated doing.

It was dark when they finished unloading the wood. Rachel looked toward the house and suddenly it hit her that she was staying here. She would have to sleep in this place and she started to feel a nervousness she hadn't felt all day. It wasn't like she hadn't been dropped in strange places before, and it wasn't anything great sleeping in her old room at the Harriets', but this place was so different. It was so quiet here. There was no sound of traffic, no voices, no police sirens, and no lights to be seen.
How am I going to sleep here?
she wondered.

“I'm going to take the raspberries up to the Farmers' Market in the morning and you can come with me if you want,” Zac said as he walked back toward his truck.

He closed the tailgate and turned to face Rachel, who still had not said a word. “I can show you some of the sights of the peninsula. You might want to see where the school is, though if you're anything like I was at your age, the last thing you want to think about right now is going back to school in September. If you want to come, be ready by 7:30.”

Zac jumped into the driver's seat of his truck. “Look at those stars,” he said, pointing up at the brilliant canvas above them. “You don't see a sky like that in the city.” Then he closed the door, put the truck in gear, and drove away.

Rachel stared up at the sky as she walked back toward the veranda. The stars were almost hypnotizing. “Look at the stars!” she remembered Caleb saying when he was little. “There must be a hundred of them!” She and her mom had teased him about that for a long time. Rachel saw a brighter star moving through the sky. She closed her eyes and silently spoke their names before she turned and ran into the house.

Rachel fell asleep quickly. She didn't hear a thing until Amelia knocked on her door in the morning. She got dressed, went through the book room, down the front stairs, and into the bathroom. She washed her face quickly before heading into the kitchen, which smelled of frying bacon. Zac was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee.

Amelia served Rachel up a plate of blueberry pancakes. “If you want to help Zac at the market this morning, you can keep a dollar from every box of raspberries you sell,” she said as she set the syrup on the table. “The girls bagged some yellow beans yesterday, so they can have the money from those. Raymond gets half the egg money this week. Did you know that a fresh egg will sink but a stale egg floats? Oh, and the lake today, when do you want your hour?”

Zac stood up and set his cup beside the sink. “It's going to be a hot day, Amelia. I'll take the kids swimming later when we get back from the market. Are you ready, Rachel?” He walked out the door without waiting for an answer.

“I'll take my hour after supper,” Rachel told Amelia. She rolled the last bite of pancake through the syrup left on her plate, finished it, and hurried to put on her orange sneakers.

Rachel carried the first wooden tray of raspberries to a long table on the veranda of the log building that housed the Kingston Farmers' Market. People were already waiting at the table and one woman reached for a box as Rachel set the tray down.

“I'll take three boxes of raspberries,” the woman said. “And two dozen eggs please.”

Rachel looked at the coins in the coffee can Zac passed her. She counted the change before she put the woman's money in. Rachel had always kept a bit of the change when Margaret or Bob had sent her to the store. They never seemed to count it and never caught on. But today she was going to keep track of all the money and give every cent back to Amelia. It was too early to take that chance.

The morning went quickly and by about 11:00 everything had been sold. Zac had let Rachel do all the selling and had spent most of his time walking around and talking to people. He had even brought a few people over to the table to meet Rachel, as if she were some celebrity or something. He knew a lot more about her than she thought he did. He knew her last name, her age, and what grade she was going into. One woman said that her daughter was going into Grade 8, too, and that she would tell her to look out for Rachel when school started. Zac also introduced Rachel to a man named Roger and told her he would be her bus driver. He shook her hand and joked about her always being able to get the back seat since Amelia's kids were the first kids on the bus in the morning.

Zac bought a loaf of bread, some doughnuts, and a couple packages of meat before they got in the truck and started for home.

“Why doesn't Wart—I mean, Amelia—come to the market herself?” asked Rachel.

Zac slowed down a bit and turned toward Rachel. “She doesn't leave home,” he said.

At first Rachel thought Zac was going to say more, but he didn't. She wanted to ask about Amelia's face. Nobody had said a word about it and Rachel wondered how anyone could ignore it or pretend it looked normal.

“This is Macdonald Consolidated School,” Zac said as he pulled into a driveway in front of the school and shut off the truck's engine. “It goes up to Grade 8, so you'll go here for one year, then move on to Hampton High School when you start Grade 9.”

Rachel looked out at the big building. “Did you go to this school?” she asked.

“Yes,” Zac answered.

“Are you Amelia's son?” Rachel blurted out, realizing she hadn't even considered before that he could be Amelia's son. He didn't call her Mom, though.

“No. I was a foster kid just like you. I ended up at Amelia's when I was eleven years old. Let's get you home. We're just like a Brinks truck sitting here with all the money you made this morning.” Zac laughed and pulled out of the schoolyard.

They were turning on to Walton Lake Road when Rachel spoke again. “I don't know how to swim.”

“Don't worry about that,” Zac said. “I'll teach you.”

Rachel passed the coffee can to Amelia as soon as she walked into the kitchen. Amelia stood up, wiped her wet hands on a towel, and set it on top of the fridge.

“I'll get you to count it after you eat lunch. How did it go? I suppose Zac found lots of people to gab with and left all the work to you. He does like to take someone with him so he can make the rounds. We've already eaten. There's some corn on the cob in the pot on the stove, but before you sit down go holler to Zac to come have some, too. We've been cutting up mustard pickles all morning. You can ask Raymond what he was crying about. He chopped the onions. I'm just finishing up the cucumbers and then we'll be done. I'll stop talking and let you go get Zac.”

Rachel cleared off the kitchen table and washed the dishes she and Zac had used. Zac had left in a hurry, remembering he had to get home and put the meat he'd bought into the freezer. Amelia had covered the ingredients for the pickles and set them on the counter in the pantry. She was now drinking tea from her pansy cup. The other kids were sitting at the table waiting for their money. Amelia passed the can to Rachel and asked her to count it and divide it up.

Rachel already knew exactly the amount, but carefully counted it out loud, separating the bills and the change right down to the pennies. She began reciting the amounts for each of the things they sold.

“We sold all the raspberries and that was $77.50. We made $20 from the yellow beans. The eggs sold almost as soon as we got there and that gave us $18.00. That gives us $115.50. There was $5.00 in change to begin with, so the total is $120.50.”

Rachel began scooping up the money to put back in the can, but Amelia stopped her, saying, “You can take your money and give the kids what they get. Give Zac $20.00 for gas when he gets back. You may have to hide it in his glove box. He always refuses to take it, but if he finds it later he keeps it. He needs money as much as the rest of us.”

Rachel kind of liked the sound of being included in that
us.
She also liked how it felt to be trusted. Being trusted was not something she was used to. She counted out the $9.00 for Raymond and passed it to him. She gave the twins each $10.00. She set aside a $20 bill for Zac and then counted out $31.00 for herself. She put the rest of the money back in the can and passed it across the table to Amelia.

“I don't deserve the $31.00,” Rachel said. “I only picked two boxes yesterday.” She held out the money in her hand.

“But you did your part,” Amelia answered. “That's what we do around here. And when we all do our part, we all share in the rewards. Now why don't you take your money upstairs and get your bathing suit on? Zac will be back in a couple of minutes and it's a perfect afternoon for a swim. I'm going to pick some raspberries while you all go to the lake. You can help me when you come back up, if you like.”

Amelia grabbed a straw hat off a peg by the back door and headed outside.

When Rachel got to the lake, the dogs, the kids, and Zac were already in the water. She'd put shorts and a T-shirt on, as the only bathing suit in her stuff was way too small. She couldn't even remember for sure if it had been hers. It might have belonged to one of the other kids at the Harriets' and been put in her dresser by mistake. Raymond was wearing shorts and a huge T-shirt that was literally ballooning out around him as he waded out past his waist. The twins were already swimming and Rachel was pretty sure they would be wearing matching bathing suits.

Zac saw Rachel walking down the path and walked up to meet her. “The first thing you need to do is get wet. All I want you to try to do today is get your face wet. You decide how you want to do that. If you don't mind getting your face wet you can learn to swim underwater. When you can do that, the rest comes easier.”

Sam ran toward her and dropped his stick. He shook his wet body and Rachel laughed as she felt the water drops hitting her.

“I may as well just run right in,” she said as she kicked off her sneakers. “I'm already wet!”

Rachel sat on the dock after supper for her hour alone. She looked at the glasslike water and thought back to this afternoon. Zac had said she'd done really well for the first day. She hadn't minded getting her face wet, and by the end of the afternoon she was letting herself lie facedown in water that was up past her knees. She hadn't floated exactly, but she had let herself go more and more.