Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

Author:Jodi Picoult
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Legal, General
ISBN: 9781416549185
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-01-01T17:59:55.971000+00:00

Plain Truth

TEN

Ellie

O C T O B E R

A fter three months with the Fishers, I sometimes found it hard to believe that not so long ago, I thought a crimper had something to do with curling one’s hair, and that being shocked referred to a person, rather than a bundle of wheat. Preparations for Katie’s trial fell, unfortunately, in the middle of harvesting season, and any hopes I harbored about getting support from her family in the creation of our insanity defense were quickly put to rest. In Aaron Fisher’s mind, getting the tobacco in on time and the silos filled were the household priorities.

And like it or not, I was part of that household.

I walked along behind Katie in the rich tobacco field, three acres so lush that they might have been a rice paddy. “This one,” she said, instructing me on which leaves were ready to pick.

“They all look the same to me,” I complained. “They’re all green. Aren’t you supposed to wait until things start to go brown before you pick them?”

“Not tobacco. Look at the size, here.” She snapped a leaf off and set it gently in a basket.

“Think of all the lung cancer, right here in this field,” I murmured.

But it didn’t bother Katie. “It’s a cash crop,” she said simply. “With dairy farming, it’s hard to turn a profit.”

I bent down, ready to snap off my first leaf. “No!” Katie cried. “That’s too small.” She held up another, larger leaf.

“Maybe I should just jump ahead to the next step. Stuffing it into pipes, or sticking the surgeon general’s warning on the box.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “The next step is to hang it, and if you can’t figure out the picking, I’m not going to let you get close to a five-foot-long sharpened stick.”

I laughed and bent to the plants again. As much as I hated to admit it, I was in better shape than I’d ever been in my life. My work as an attorney had always exercised my mind, but not my body; by default, living with the Fishers, I was stretching the limits of both. The Amish believed that hard physical labor was a basic tenet of living, and almost never employed outsiders as farmhands because they couldn’t live up to the standard workday. Although Aaron had never said as much to me, I knew he was expecting me to break down in a citified, sobbing puddle, or sneak from the fields for a glass of lemonade before harvest was finished-things that would point to the obvious fact I wasn’t one of them. All of which made me even more determined to do my share, if only to prove him wrong. To that end, I’d spent a week in early August standing bundles of wheat on end as the cutter spit them out, until my back was knotted and my skin was covered with chaff. I’d matched the rest of the family in that field, minute for minute. In my mind was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.