6. After Dinner
Leticia Walker Reed retired to her room on the second floor of Waterwood on the top of the hill overlooking Walker’s Mill. She actually scampered, she noted, so full was she with girlish enthusiasm. Her creek-side room offered a view five miles downstream, past the cattle range, over the fields and down into a grove of trees that ran into Walker’s Mill. The Mill used to grind all the grain from the many farms in Placer County. The railroads changed the business of the town – that and the fact that every acre of land was owned by a Walker or a Reed and had been for fifty years. The Walkers, who owned the mill and most of the land around it, gave the property on which Waterwood was built to the Reeds as a wedding present. This was before the Walkers died, leaving the rest of it to their daughter and son in law.
Except for six seasons at University, Leticia had lived in this room her entire life. Now that she had taken all the University of California could give her, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Language and a Master of Arts in English, Letty didn’t know what to do. She knew what her fantasy was: to run off with a handsome, intriguing stranger who would totally devour her. She hoped that she wouldn’t end up like Darling Emily, too weak and too smart to do anyone let alone herself any good. She thought she might like to work in the family business but couldn’t really get excited enough about any of it.
Then she decided that she needed to go incognito, to hide out between the musty pages of a well-written book. This is what she had always done. She was 12 or thereabouts before she realized she was rich. Just after she stopped being Clementine and right after she saw how deferentially the townspeople treated her, her mother and father – and anyone named Walker or Reed the first time she rode to town in her mother’s Brougham.
Leticia Walker Reed rarely went to town. Tutors had come from San Francisco to teach James and her. She was always the favorite, he always trouble maker. After studies, James would run wild on the property, ride his pony or get someone to take him into town but Letty would retire. Sink into the depths of leather and language. All her books were brought by the tutors, many of whom never lasted more than a year. Then, during her fourth or fifth year of studies, she asked a question Miss Olson couldn’t answer.
“Well. I’ll have to go into town the next chance I get and order a book on the subject,” said Miss Olson in response to a question on American History. The fact that there were books that would tell you all you wanted to know – and that you could just go to town and order them – was a turning point in Leticia’s life. She determined, from that moment on, that she would learn everything there was to learn from every book she could get her hands on.
Then, after an informative ride into town with Miss Olson, and, after she learned exactly how much money for books she had at her disposal, Letty went a little wild on books. Finally, her parents came to understand how much money was being spent on books – it was after Letty had discovered such things as catalogues and newspapers and libraries. It was Uncle James who had the idea of putting Letty to work to earn her book allowance. She did sums for the bookkeepers, filed correspondence, took notes and, finally, wrote all the correspondence for her father and uncle. When she left for University, Abolphus and James Reed had to hire two secretaries to handle the workload.
The library in Walkers Mill is named after Leticia Walker Reed who insisted, just before she was accepted to the University of California, that the other children in her community have access to the books she did. Every purchase Letty made from the catalogues at the general store held the twin thrills that of devouring it’s contents and that of giving of the knowledge to untold thousands of people after her. Her mother taught her that books can live on after she grew out of them and her mother oversaw the building of “Letty’s Library after she went away to school. Sometimes Letty ordered two of the same book, knowing well in advance that she wouldn’t be able to part with it when the time came. All of her books – even the duplicates – reside in “Letty’s Library” now. All except the large black-leather-bound journal she now held.
And what a book it was!
