An Early Winter (3 page)

"But Grandma would never put you in a nursing home," Tim protests finally. "I know she wouldn't."

Granddad snorts. "Don't be so sure. I've heard. I've heard her talking on the phone to your mother. She's going to sell the house. Then she'll have 'enough money,' she says." His voice rises to a falsetto imitation of Grandma's when he says "enough money."

"That's why your mother's come back ... to help Sophie get the house ready to sell. 'Sharper than a serpent's tooth..."'

He doesn't finish, but Tim knows the rest of the quote. He's heard his grandmother use it before, though never about his mother.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.

"No!" he cries. Just as he had cried to his mother earlier. What had she been talking about then? A nursing home? Is that what all the explaining had been about? He should have listened.

He had been so sure that he was going to come back here and fix everything that he hadn't seen any need to pay attention to what the adults were planning.

But sell the house? His grandfather's house? His father's house. His! Sell the house and shut Granddad away in a nursing home?

Tim knows about nursing homes. There isn't one in Sheldon, but Beckwith, the next town to the east, has one. He's been inside it, even. The Sunday school kids from the Lutheran church used to sing carols over there at Christmas every year. People are always talking about how "nice" the Beckwith nursing home is. And maybe it does have pretty wallpaper. Polished floors. Nurses who wear pastel colors instead of that institutional white.

But the whole place is filled with old people.
Really
old! The kind of old people who sit hunched over in wheelchairs or shuffle along the corridors with walkers. The kind of old people who look at you and don't even seem to know you're there.

Granddad in a nursing home? No way. Not in a thousand, million years.

But what could he do? What could any kid do?

Him and his dumb plan. Here he'd thought all he had to do was to come back and stay with his grandfather, get him kind of plumped up, like a pillow that requires a good shake and a few pats to be right again.

But he should have realized the adults would be making plans, too.

"Granddad," Tim says, and this time his words come out settled, certain. "I have an idea. A better idea than going for ice cream. I know exactly the kind of adventure we need."

Granddad waits, his head inclined to one side.

Tim is so filled with pride—his grandfather is depending on him for his very life!—that he has a hard time speaking. "You and me ... we ... can run away."

"Run away?" The expectation in Granddad's face slides into confusion. "Where would we go?"

But Tim has the answer to that, too. The absolutely perfect answer. "We'll go camping. Just like we used to do. We'll go out to Silver Lake, go fishing—get us a mess of sunnies, maybe even a walleye or two. We'll eat berries, mushrooms..." Tim hates mushrooms, but that doesn't matter. He'll learn to like them. "We'll live off the land." He grips his grandfather's arm. "And we won't come back until we're good and ready. Grandma can't put you in a nursing home if she can't find you!"

For a long moment, Granddad stares. Then his mouth starts jerking at the corners, and for a moment Tim thinks, to his horror, that his grandfather is going to cry. But he shakes his head and says, so sweetly, so reasonably that Tim almost wants to cry himself, "That won't help, you know. We'd have to come back sooner or later. And soon as we did, she'd pack me off to that blasted nursing home for sure."

"But don't you see? If you show them you can still take care of yourself—out in the woods, even—they'll have to know you're okay. Someone who can do all that can't possibly belong in a nursing home."

Granddad studies Tim for a long time before a slow smile begins to spread across his face. "Sophie would love to have a good mess of sunnies to fry up," he says.

Tim waits.

"Fishing!" Granddad's eyes shine. "I haven't been fishing for ... not since before you and your mama went off with that Paul fellow."

Went off with that Paul fellow.
Tim can't help but cringe.

But then, as quickly as it came, Granddad's smile fades. "Keys." He plunges his hands into his pants pockets and withdraws them again, empty. "Sophie took my keys to the Buick. She says I'm not to drive anymore."

Not drive!
Tim's hope fades like his grandfather's smile. He knew that. It's one of the things Grandma was talking about in the kitchen. And the state forest preserve and the Silver Lake campground is ten, maybe fifteen miles outside of town. Too far to walk, that's for sure. Paul would take them. Paul would take Tim just about anywhere he asks to go. But they can hardly ask Paul to help them run away.

There has to be another answer.

And then it dawns on him. The solution. The absolutely perfect solution.

"The pickup camper," Tim says.

Granddad frowns. "That's gone. She sold that to—"

"Grandma sold it to Dr. Hutchins. Last spring when he bought your practice." Tim speaks quickly, urgently. "But he's an okay guy. If we go by the clinic and ask if we can borrow the camper, just for a little while, he'll let us, I'm sure."

For a long moment Granddad just sits there, kicking at a patch of broken concrete in front of the bench. Tim watches him, wondering if he heard, if he understood.

Finally, though, Granddad straightens his shoulders. The smile he had cut off earlier plumps out his cheeks. "That young whippersnapper," he says. "Calls himself a vet? Why, I've forgotten more than he ever knew."

"That's for sure, Granddad. That's for sure."

Granddad nods his head, once, twice. "We'll go fishing."

Tim sighs. This plan will work. Once he gets his grandfather away from all that talk about "burning down the house" and "hurting children," he'll be fine. Everyone will have to see that he is fine.

Tim rises from the bench. "Come with me," he says.

Granddad stands, too, and they start toward the veterinary clinic. For the first time since Tim returned to Sheldon, his grandfather's shoulders are back, his head high, his step light.

And the humming racket in Tim's head has turned to pure song.

I'm going to take care of Granddad. Granddad will take care of me. We'll show them. We'll show them all.

Granddad bursts into the Sheldon Veterinary Clinic the way Santa must drop down chimneys, full of good cheer and an absolute certainty of his welcome. Seeing him back within these walls makes Tim feel warm all over. Granddad was always most fully himself when he was at the clinic. Why he'd decided to quit his practice and why Grandma had been so ready to sell it, Tim has never understood.

Mrs. Hutchins, Dr. Hutchins's wife, is standing behind the new counter they have installed. The counter makes the place look more formal. The counter and the beautiful young woman standing behind it, too. Mrs. Hutchins is wearing a silky green blouse.
Not exactly the kind of clothes a person wears who is truly going to help out around a veterinary clinic
, Tim can't help but note.

"Dr. Leo! How good to see you," Mrs. Hutchins calls. "And Timmy. You're back in town!" She tosses her head, which causes her tawny mane of hair to swirl and resettle.

Tim nods, though inwardly he can't help but bristle at the
Timmy.
The name is bad enough coming from his mother and his grandmother.

"How are you?" Granddad is saying. "How's business? Have the farmers been having trouble with milk fever lately?" And then, before Mrs. Hutchins can answer any of his questions, "Is your hubby here? Do you suppose Timothy and I could have a word with him?"

"Sure, he's here, Dr. Leo," she says. "But he's with a patient now. Gould the two of you wait for a few minutes?"

Granddad looks over at Tim, as though it's up to him to decide.

"Sure." Tim deepens his voice. "We can wait. For a little while, anyway."

Apparently satisfied, Granddad nods and turns to the waiting room.

A rather portly middle-aged man sits in one of the orange plastic chairs holding an equally portly cat. The cat is long haired with a cross-looking, snub-nosed face. She reminds Tim of the principal of his new school.

"Muffins!" Granddad exclaims, addressing the cat.

Tim has heard his grandmother comment that during the last couple of years of his veterinary practice Granddad had increasing difficulty remembering the names of the people he served, but seemed never to forget the name of an animal patient. In fact, she claimed he could walk down the aisle of a milking parlor and name every cow—"Bessie, Milly, Fiona"—but afterward not remember the name of the farmer so he could send out a bill.

Granddad approaches Muffins. In response, the cat narrows her eyes, flattens her ears, and opens her triangular pink mouth in a prolonged hiss.

"Ah-ha!" Granddad exclaims. "She remembers me!"

Everyone laughs.

Granddad reaches out slowly and begins to scratch Muffins's chin, the place along the jaw bone where every cat in the world loves to be scratched.

Muffins accepts the attention, stretching her neck to assist him in reaching exactly the right spot, but when he quits scratching, she hisses again.

Everyone laughs once more.

"Cats are intelligent creatures," Granddad pronounces. "Far more intelligent, I can't help but believe, than dogs. I know folks assume dogs have more brains, because a dog can be taught to obey. But think about it. Does it take more up here"—he taps his forehead—"to be a leader or a follower? What do you say, Timothy?"

It was a discussion they'd had before, and Tim knows how to answer. "It takes more brains to think for yourself," he says.

Granddad nods, pleased with the response, as always. "I can tell you about intelligence in a cat." He seems to be speaking not only to the man or to Mrs. Hutchins behind the desk or to Tim but to a room full of people who aren't here. The people of Sheldon he left behind when he quit his practice, perhaps. "I knew a fellow who had a cat. She was female, and as will happen if no one takes care of the situation, every spring she had a litter of kittens."

Tim knows the story. It's one Granddad once read to him from an encyclopedia about cats. Only he's never before heard him tell it as though it had happened to someone he knew.

In the story, the cat's owner didn't want the trouble of finding homes for a litter of four or five kittens, so when they were born, he drowned all but one kitten and left that one for the mother cat to rear. The next spring when the kittens came again, he did the same thing. The spring after that, the cat became pregnant again, but this time produced only one kitten. The owner was surprised, but relieved. After all, no one likes killing kittens. Then, four or five weeks later three more kittens came out of hiding.

"See," Granddad says, concluding his story, "she left one kitten out for everyone to see, because she knew that one would be safe, and the rest she kept tucked away. Now, don't you think that's smart?"

Mrs. Hutchins and the man agree that was, indeed, smart. Tim agrees, too. Because the story does prove the cat's intelligence, no matter whether it came from a book or from Granddad's own experience.

Dr. Hutchins appears from behind the door of the examining room. "Leo!" he says. "How good to see you. What are you doing here?"

"Just telling old Muffins here a story," Granddad says, and Dr. Hutchins looks confused. Tim notes with satisfaction that young Dr. Hutchins doesn't seem to know who Muffins is. It will be a long time before he will know his practice the way Granddad did.

Granddad nods in Tim's direction. "We came to ask a favor," he explains, "my grandson and me."

Dr. Hutchins smiles. One front tooth overlaps the other crookedly, giving him a slightly nerdy look, but he seems friendly enough.

"That old pickup camper I sold you a while back..."

"Yes?" Dr. Hutchins's glance slides cautiously to his wife.

Tim bristles. Why is the man looking at his wife that way? And what does he need her here for, anyway, pretending he's got some kind of big city clinic that requires a receptionist up front to greet the patients? When people brought their pets to see Granddad, they knew when his office hours were and they just came. No one had to greet them, to tell them to sit down and wait.

Tim was the only help Granddad ever had ... or wanted, and he didn't waste his time standing out front greeting people, either. He did important work like cleaning out the cages and walking the dogs. Sometimes he went out to farms with Granddad, too. He'd even helped deliver a calf once.

"Well, you see," Granddad is explaining, "it was Sophie's idea to sell the thing. Never mine. I'm not such an old man that I—"

Tim interrupts. "We'd like to borrow it. That's all. Just for a little while. If you don't mind, that is."

"Going fishing, Tim?" Dr. Hutchins asks. Again he checks out his wife in that sneaky way. You'd think the man couldn't do anything without her approval, couldn't even decide whether to loan a lousy secondhand camper back to its real owner or not.

"Yes," Tim says firmly. "We're going fishing."

"Just you and your grandpa?" It's Mrs. Hutchins asking now.

Tim suddenly understands the territory they are in. Grandma has talked to these people. Heaven only knows what she told them about his grandfather when she sold them the clinic and the camper. Now they have it in their heads that he's not to be trusted anymore. Not even with a camper he's repaired, driven, gone camping in for years and years!

"Not just us," Tim says, his words tumbling over one another in his urgency to get them said. "Paul, too. You know Paul Boyce? He married my mother. He's busy right now, so he told Granddad and me to come ask about using the camper. The three of us using it, that is. But Paul's the one going to drive and everything like that."

Tim is not a good liar. Never has been. When he is through with that jumble of words, his palms are itching with sweat and his face burns.