What We Take For Truth

by Deborah Nedelman

“Well, isn’t that the best yet?” Walt grinned. “Good ol’ Jackson, figured out a way to keep you around and make you happy about it. That’s just gotta be the best yet.” He reached out and pounded her on the back.

  “So, you want a job? There’s a lot to do.” Grace settled herself and tried to make her tone business-like: “You’d have to give up the booze for the duration.” She knew how this went with Walt. When he had a chance to work, if the responsibility weren’t too high, he’d throw himself into it and stay sober. Till the job was done.

  He winked at her and gave a small nod. “I could probably manage.”

  “And you gotta promise me you won’t let anybody see the inside till it’s done. Especially Rose. I don’t want her to see it till I’m finished.”

  “What you gonna do, Grace? Paint it pink and fill it with flying elephants?”

  Walt, one of the few folks in town who liked to use her given name, was no art appreciator. Grace had learned early on not to expect any praise for her painting from this guy.

  “Something like that. Right now, though, I just need a place to live.”

  “OK. I’ll see what I can do.” Walt put the cup down on the bench.

  She grasped his slightly shaky hand in hers and shook it. “Are you ready?”

  He wiped his other hand over his face and stretched his legs out in front of him. Then he shook himself and stood. “All right. Let’s take a look at this place.”

  ***

  As Walt investigated, taking in the antique wiring, she explained her vision for a small galley kitchen just to the right of the front door—a simple stove, sink, refrigerator, and a few cupboards. She could do a lot with a little. Most of the space would stay a single open room where she’d have a table and maybe a couch or a couple of chairs in front of the fireplace. She’d need lights and a telephone.

  “I’ll sleep up there.” She pointed to the narrow loft space that she hadn’t actually seen yet. “I suppose I’ll need a ladder.”

  Walt’s eyebrows rose and he pursed his lips. “Guess so.”

  “The bathroom isn’t bad,” she said as she pushed open the door to the tiny space. “Needs new fixtures and a light. A shower would be nice.”

  “You got simple tastes if you call this ‘not bad,’ girl.” Walt shook his head and gave a low whistle. “Jackson complained how his grandpa lived in this place. With nothing. Coulda afforded it fine, he was just a miser. Look at this wiring, Parrot. It’s a miracle he didn’t burn the place down. We gotta bring more power in here. You want a stove, a refrigerator? You’ll need a two-twenty. I can do that, but it’ll take a few bucks.” He peered under the sink. “The plumbing’s probably shot—you’ll want to hook up to the town sewer; this thing was probably on an old septic somewheres.” He stood up and faced her, “I can manage this. Take me awhile. Might need a bit of help. But if you got the money, there’s plenty of guys who need the work.”

  “I’m leaving it up to you, Walt. But I plan to get this place cleaned up as soon as I can and start sleeping here. You’ll have to work around me.”

  Grace had been stomping down the webs in the corners as they talked. Now she pulled a rag from her back pocket. She made a single swipe across one windowsill and the rag was black with thick dust.

  “I’ve got to fill this bucket,” she picked up a pail she’d found under the bathroom sink. “I’ll be back.”

  The closest source of water was the outdoor spigot in the mill yard. While Walt continued with his inspection, she walked over and managed to fill the bucket before Patrick caught sight of her.

  “What the hell, Parrot?” He stuck his head out of the office door. It was startling to see him there in shirtsleeves. It had never occurred to her that Pat might work in the office instead of out in the woods.

  If she’d done what Prosperity expected, Grace would have married Pat as soon as they graduated and she’d be pregnant by now. But when he’d told her his big plan for keeping the mill going and demanded her help, everything had changed. She’d broken her promise to her father only once in her life when she’d told Pat about the owl’s nest. But when he pushed her to show him where it was, Grace couldn’t go that far; her refusal had meant the end of their relationship.

  “Hey. I just need some water.” Who was she kidding? She’d never be able to keep this project a secret. “I’m moving into the old cabin. Need to clean it up a bit first.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Pat stepped out of the office. Blinking in the sunlight, he stood looking at her. “Plannin’ on sharin’ it with the ghosts?”

  “Hmm.” She hoped she looked less rattled than she felt. She had to stop herself from thinking about all the things they’d promised each other and how much she’d loved him. He was a stubborn idiot. He was fighting to keep things from changing and that was just stupid. Everything changed.

  “Thanks for the water. I’ll need a bit more. Later.” She lifted the bucket. “Oh, and I might need to use your Porta-Potty occasionally,” and she walked out of the yard, leaving him staring after her.

  Chapter 5

  Once he got a good look at things, Walt realized he could handle the wiring by himself. He showed her where Jackson had begun the process, back when he thought he might use the place as part of the mill. That was before, when the mill was going strong.

  Walt would need to disconnect the old fuse box, so the brittle knob and tube could be pulled. He could see where Jackson had planned to connect a circuit breaker box and pull in more power from the mill. He’d have to get some conduit to shield the wires, run them along the edges of the walls—wouldn’t want to cut into those logs. The job had to be done right if Grace was going to live there.

  The next morning he took a shot of whiskey to settle his hands, filled a thermos with coffee, and took his tools over to the cabin. Grace met him at her door with a bright smile. “Good morning! I didn’t think you’d get here so early. This is great! You’ll finish the job in no time at this rate.”

  The energy she emitted nearly bowled Walt over. He took a step back.

  “Whoa. Hold your horses, there, kiddo. First things first.” He stepped inside the cabin and put his tools down. Grace had taken a crowbar and pried the wooden boards off the windows. The glass was undamaged and with a little scouring they let in a surprising amount of daylight.

  “Can’t do anything on the wiring until we get the power company to send a guy out. Once he gets here, we should be able to get you wired in a day or two.”

  “Can you work on the plumbing in the meantime?”

  Grace’s shoulders dropped and a whiny deflation crept into her voice. “Getting someone from Mountain Power to come up to Prosperity’ll take forever.”

  “Oh, not necessarily. I know a guy. He owes me. Would probably work off the clock if I asked him to.” Matter-of-fact. “Meanwhile, I gotta pull all these old wires anyway.” Walt took in the changes that had happened since yesterday. “You sleep here last night?”

  Grace’s sleeping bag and camping pad were spread out under one of the windows. “No, but I think I will tonight. I’m gonna go pick up a chair from the secondhand store. I’ve got a lantern.” She indicated a kerosene lamp she’d placed on the small table.

  Walt nodded. “Yeah. Well, be careful with that thing indoors. And don’t go using that fireplace until I’ve had a chance to check out the chimney.” He began unpacking his tools.

  “Yes, sir.” She gave him a mock salute. “By the way, I’m not a complete idiot. I had enough sense to hire you, remember?” She picked up her purse and walked to the door. “I got things to do.” And she left him to his work.

  ***

  Knowing her aunt would be at the café by now, Grace headed back to the house to get the bags she’d packed for Seattle. She wrote a note and stuck it on Jane’s bedroom door: I’m gone. The room is vacant. Thanks for the loaning it to me. Grace.

  As soon as she’d cut herself off from the comforts of home, Grace began to realize she had a problem. It was going to be a
few weeks at least until she had a stove and refrigerator. Even in winter when there was no logging and money was tightest, Grace had never wanted for a good meal. Now she didn’t have the facilities to cook for herself and she was damned if she’d go to the Hoot Owl to eat.

  “Don’t be a ninny, girl. Jane’ll feed you.” Walt had laughed when she’d asked if she could use his kitchen. “Hell, your money is as good as anyone’s!”

  “Yeah. Well, maybe and maybe not, as Kev would say. She hates that I’m staying in town. She’s been after me to leave Prosperity soon as I graduated, thinks I’m a fool for staying.”

  Walt looked like he was going to say something in Jane’s defense, but Grace didn’t want to hear it. She lifted her jacket from the hook she’d put up by the door. “I’ll clean up your place and feed you. Just let me eat there and we’ll be even.” Grace didn’t wait for a sign of agreement from Walt before she walked out of the cabin and headed for Sherman’s store to stock up.

  “Been awhile since I cleaned the fridge,” Walt called after her. Then he went back to work.

  ***

  For too long folks in town had little to gossip about that didn’t bring their own desperation to mind. The idea that Grace wasn’t leaving Prosperity offered a spark of hope, and talk jangled through town like a pocket full of change. Conversations at the post office, in the secondhand store, the tavern—any place but the café—were full of speculation about Grace and the cabin.

  “Somethin’s up between Jane and Parrot. Haven’t seen Parrot at the Hoot Owl for days.”

  “I heard Jane kicked Parrot out.”

  “Did you hear Jackson left Parrot the old cabin? She’s got some work to do if she’s gonna live in that shack!”

  “Well, the lock’s off the door and I think I saw Walt deVore hanging around there.”

  ***

  A couple of days later Grace stepped out of the cabin and found Kev on the street looking up at her door.

  “That’s a haunted house. Not suppos’d to go in there. “

  “Hi, Kev.” She knew she’d have to deal with this eventually. “It’s not really haunted. It belongs to me now. I’m painting it.”

  “You live here, not at your other house?” He shook his head. Change always troubled Kev.

  “Yes. I’m not going to Seattle. I’m staying here. At least for a while longer.”

  “And now you have a different house, so you can’t give me my pie?” Kev’s effort to connect the dots brought Grace up short.

  “Kinda. I guess that is kinda right.”

  “Maybe, maybe not?”

  “No, Kev, not maybe. You’re exactly right.”

  His grin was big enough to last the whole day. “Now Jane gives me pie. Right?”

  “Right. She’s got lots of pie, Kev.” Grace wondered how long that would go on.

  ***

  Walt finished up the wiring by Friday. Grace had spent the day looking for work in Cooper and a couple of the towns farther down the mountain. When she came home that evening a soft electric light was shining through the windows. She wondered how many chips he’d had to cash in to get the Mountain Power guy to put them on the fast track. He’d been pretty proud of his obvious pull, so she wasn’t going to worry about it.

  “Wow! You did it!” She pulled open the cabin door, but Walt had already gone home. He’d brought a small lamp and left it plugged into one of her new outlets. The camping lantern sat outside on the steps.

  In the soft light of the lamp she looked around the room and her breath caught in her throat. There in the corner on the floor was a telephone. Walt had mentioned that he might be able to get her a phone hookup, but she’d expected that would take weeks. She ran over to the old black instrument. It must have been something Walt found in his attic, practically an antique. Grace lifted the receiver. A dial tone!

  Without hesitation, she reached in her pocket for the piece of paper Jane had given her and dialed the number in Seattle.

  “Hey!” She laughed when her girlfriends both picked up at once.

  “You’re not really living in that crappy shack are you? That’s nuts.” Jenn had never had patience with small talk.

  “The city is even cooler than we thought, Grace!” Shauna rushed in. “When are you coming?”

  Grace looked around her and tried to recapture the excitement she’d felt a moment before. “I got a phone! And lights!”

  “What’s wrong with you, Grace?” Shauna was fed up.

  “Come on, get down here,” Jenn demanded. “We can’t keep your room empty much longer.”

  Now her own voice took on an irritated tone. “Yeah. Well, Rose asked me to get this place fixed up before I leave town. Should be done pretty soon.” Why was she lying? The sour taste of regret filled her mouth, but she swallowed it down. “You know what? You should go ahead and find another roommate if you have to. I’ll figure out something.”

  The city might be full of options and her friends might be happy there, but this cabin had been placed in the middle of Grace’s path and she couldn’t see her way around it. When she was inside the cabin—her home—the voices in the logs comforted her. And they called to her. The more time she’d spent there, the more her mind had filled with images. She couldn’t leave until she’d made her vision real.

  ***

  It had been well over a week since Jackson’s funeral. The new phone allowed Grace to check in without disrespecting Rose’s desire to be left alone.

  “Hello.” Rose sounded tired.

  “How are you? Are you ready for a visit?” Grace missed their dinners together and didn’t like the thought of Rose grieving all by herself.

  “Hello, Grace. No, my dear. Thank you, but I need more time.” Rose sighed deeply before she added, “Are you making any progress on that old cabin?”

  “Yes! Walt’s helping me. I’m calling you from the cabin. He got a phone line set up. It’s great. I’m living here now.”

  “Oh, my! I thought it was such a crazy idea of Jackson’s. Are you OK there?”

  “Actually, I love it. I can hardly wait to show you what I’m doing. But not quite yet.”

  “Well, I’m not ready to go into town anyway. That’s good you have a phone. I can call you if I need some groceries or something.”

  “Of course.” Grace gave Rose her phone number. “I’m thinking of you every day.”

  ***

  Walt brought Tom Jameson’s son, Ed, to help him get a ditch dug for the drains and pipes to connect the cabin to the sewer.

  “We’ll be at this for a couple of days, Parrot. You need to go pick out a shower stall and the fixtures. Here’s a list of what we’ll need.” Walt handed her a brown strip of paper ripped from a grocery bag, his large scrawl running down the page. “They’ve got all that stuff down at the plumbing supply in Everett.” He turned to get back to work, then stopped. “Oh, yeah, Clett’s got a toilet and sink still in boxes in his garage from that remodel he never got around to. We could pay him a bit for it. But you need to go buy yourself some other stuff. I can put in a little kitchen, but I mean little. So go find a sink and something like an apartment-size stove and fridge. Might have to go to Seattle for all that.”

  “OK if I take your truck again?” Grace had been using Walt’s old pickup over the last week. He’d given her the keys and not asked for them back.

  He waved off her question. “Just go.”

  “OK. But hold off on that toilet and sink from Clett for a bit, ok?”

  What Grace hadn’t told anyone, though Walt might have suspected if he’d paid the least attention to her artistic efforts, was that she’d already picked out her appliances. Right after her first view of the inside of the cabin, Grace’s painterly vision had taken over. She’d borrowed Walt’s truck and after a frustrating job search in Cooper, she’d gone down to Everett. She wanted lots of color. Maybe her taste was connected to memories of sitting in Annie’s lap looking at pictures of tropical birds in that old bird book. Maybe it was her
effort to fight against the ubiquitous gray and green of the mountains. Whatever it was, with the money Jackson left her, Grace was able to feed her hunger.

  She’d found a three-burner stove and a small refrigerator—the stove was deep red, the refrigerator fresh spring green. The kitchen sink was the most immediately rewarding find—the floor model was an eye-catching canary yellow and it was on sale. She’d grabbed it with glee, telling the salesman she didn’t want anything delivered until she called him.

  “Sure. Clett’s not going to get rid of them any time soon; they’re blue. Who ever heard of that?” Walt laughed.

  Grace, headed back into the cabin, spun around. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Bright blue. Must a been a close-out sale.”

  “On second thought, we should help Clett out.” She was trying to sound thoughtful and hesitant, but her mouth was puckered with barely contained delight. “Go ahead, then. I can live with blue.”

  She ran errands for Walt and continued a halfhearted job hunt, but the whole time Grace was consumed with her ultimate vision for the cabin. Her head was filled with images, colors, techniques for getting the effect she was after. The walls of this old cabin were the canvas for her imagination, not just the frame for her shelter. When she went to Everett for plumbing supplies, she also stopped at the art supply store.

  While the men worked outside, inside Grace began to paint. She started near the front door in the curved space between the two bottom logs. Studying the way the shadows fell in that space, she began mixing colors on her palette. It took awhile to create the perfect range of green tones for a creature she’d only seen in a book, but once she had the colors right, she stopped thinking. Her hands and her brushes knew how to shape the tiny frog; she trusted them. When she’d placed the minute dots of white in his eyes, bringing him to life, her whole scheme fell into place. This was what she’d dreamed of doing since she was able to hold a crayon. Her mother’s spirit filled the cabin.

  “Look, baby.” Annie’s voice rang in her daughter’s head. “See his red eyes? And he has blue feet!” Her mother’s hands holding the book, the warmth of Annie’s body as Grace snuggled close: Grace’s fingertips tingled as the memory filled her.