Free My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath

have many more rice dinners, I suppose.
    â€œI saw Mr. Thomson,” I say. “Was he here all day?”
    â€œYes. Troubled man. He is trying to work something out where there is nothing to be worked out,” she says. “Can you set the table, Jane?”
    I take down the mismatched plates and start to put them on the picnic table, but a terrible sound comes from down the beach and we all race there to find Mrs. Spinnaker standing, staring at the horizon and screaming. Horace has been swept out to sea by a wave too big for him. Mrs. Spinnaker, who doesn’t swim, is hopping up and down on the beach yelling, “Save him! Oh, save him!” There is no one else here and she does not see us approaching. She is calling to the universe.
    My mother calmly takes off her long skirt and runs into the surf in her underpants and T-shirt and starts to swim. The tide is going out and there must be a current; it keeps pulling my mother sideways. Horace is bobbing. Sometimes we don’t see him as he disappears, and then Mrs. Spinnaker screams. My mother is not swimming hard and then I see why not. She is trying to let the current take her toward Horace and I know she is saving her strength for the swim back. They are a long way out. Finally we see her grab him but now I am worried about her. She is going to have to swim against the current to get back to shore and she is just a dot.
    â€œWhales!” says Max, who has come out of the house with Hershel and Maya.
    â€œThat is Mama,” I say, and then we are all quiet. Everyone is clasping their hands and no one is saying a word.
    It takes my mother a very long time to make it back against the current and the tide and when at long last she comes upright, she is unsmiling. Horace is shaking and miserable-looking but alive. She hands him to Mrs. Spinnaker, who has a towel ready and wraps Horace quickly in it and runs back to her cottage with him. My mother sits down right there in the sand, with her wet hair plastered to her face.
    I remember the spaghetti sauce and run back inside. The bottom of it is burnt. I turn the burner off and put some rice on to cook. I have never made rice before but I have seen my mother do it a million times.
    My mother comes in finally and takes a shower to clean off the salt and sand and warm herself up and by the time she is done I have dinner on the table. She looks at me and touches my shoulder as she takes her place. “I am so lucky,” she says.

The Seer
    My Sixth Adventure
    I t is Sunday again. Just as we have finished cleaning up and getting the boys into their better shirts, there is a knock on the door. It is H. K. Thomson and my mother does not seem surprised to see him. He is wearing a bow tie and has a carnation in the buttonhole of his seersucker jacket. My mother greets him calmly and continues gathering the boys’ shoes and then we are out the door. He is going to church with us. I have seen him at church often with his sister, Caroline, but she is not with him now.
    It is a morning of sea breezes and mists on the beach and we run down it, leaving my mother to walk with H. K. Thomson. It is good to run in my dress. I like the feel of my bare legs moving freely in a way they can’t in pants. I think it is sad that men never get to feel this. Except Scottish men with their kilts. The boys don’t seem to care about being so imprisoned, perhaps because they have never known the freedom of legs in a skirt. Their cuffs are full of sand when they get to the parking lot and we have to dump them as well as their shoes. H.K. doesn’t take his shoes off to dump the sand and looks vaguely irritated at the delay while we all desand ourselves meticulously.
    Once we are free of sand we run down Main Street to our little white-steepled church. It is packed. A lot has happened this week and everyone wants to get a load of Nellie Phipps, preacher and jailbird. But she acts as if nothing unusual has happened