An Early Winter

by Marion Dane Bauer

  "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.

  Granddad looks from Dr. Hutchins to Tim, obviously confused. Tim keeps his fingers crossed, hoping his grandfather won't contradict him.

  "Oh well, then," Dr. Hutchins says, "of course. You may certainly borrow the camper. You just tell Paul that it's parked back behind the garage at my house and the key is under the mat on the driver's side. He can come and drive it away."

  Tim tries to look casual, as though he had known all along that Dr. Hutchins would lend them the camper. But relief leaves his knees suddenly watery.

  "The three of you go and have a good time," Mrs. Hutchins chirps, giving that great mane of hair another toss. "I'm sure that old truck will be glad to be camping again. We've been so busy with the practice, we've hardly had a chance to use it the whole summer long."

  "It's kind of you," Granddad is saying. "Truly kind. My grandson here," he puts an arm around Tim's shoulders, "wants to go fishing ... real bad."

  "I do," Tim agrees as he reaches for the handle of the door.

  When they emerge together into the September sunshine, Tim feels like leaping into the air, clicking his heels together, shouting. His plan is going to work. In every way it will work.

  "Well, boy," Granddad says, "are you ready for an adventure?" His eyes sparkle like deep water. Like the water where the walleye are waiting.

  "I'm ready. I've never been more ready for anything in my whole life! We haven't been fishing since forever." Tim dances a little jig in the middle of the walk.

  Granddad stops to watch, his face glowing. When Tim stands still again, his grandfather lifts a hand and traces the contours of his face, running the tips of his fingers down Tim's cheek and, very gently, along his jaw.

  Tim leans into the hand, his heart filled to overflowing.

  His grandfather speaks softly but distinctly. "It has been forever," he says. "Forever and forever. Why did we let it get to be so long, Franklin?"

  FIVE

  Making Change

  It doesn't matter, Tim reminds himself for the hundredth time. It doesn't matter that Granddad called him Franklin. He's made that little mistake hundreds of times before. Thousands of times, probably. And not just since he's been "sick," either. He'd been doing it as far back as Tim can remember. Even Grandma slips and calls him Franklin sometimes. Mom's the only one in
the family who doesn't do it, but then she never says the name Franklin at all. Not if she can help it, anyway.

  The camper rattles along the county road that will take them to the state forest preserve and Silver Lake. The road is narrow, with lots of bumpy tar seams and potholes in the concrete, but the seams and the potholes don't matter. Nothing matters but getting to the lake, getting out the fishing poles stowed in the back of the camper, getting Granddad away from these peopie who are so sure he can't do anything right anymore.

  Tim glances over at his grandfather, at the familiar hands, square and competent, resting on the steering wheel. How unfair for Grandma to tell him he can't drive anymore just because of one little accident! There is nothing wrong with Granddad's driving. He drives the way he always has, like a man in charge of his world. He drives like a man who is glad to be taking his one and only grandson camping.

  In fact, from the time Tim located the camper parked behind the Hutchins's garage and found the key under the floor mat, Granddad has taken over. He knows exactly what to do, where to go. Just as Tim had been certain he would.

  Granddad speaks without taking his eyes from the road. "I used to take your dad fishing at Silver Lake." He says it as though he is beginning one of his stories, but then he goes silent.

  Tim isn't surprised when nothing more is forthcoming. He has always been hungry for information about his father, but no one in the family—including his grandfather—has ever been willing to give more than the briefest, most unsatisfactory answers. No, we don't know where Franklin went. We don'/ know why he went, either. He had problems, that's all.

  It was obvious that a man who would abandon his wife and unborn baby had problems, but what kind no one would say.

  Was he in trouble with the law? Was he sick? Had he gone off somewhere to save his parents and his young wife the pain of seeing him waste away?

  Tim used to go through Grandma's old photo album studying the fuzzy-headed baby in Grandma's arms, the little boy with knobby knees grinning from a tricycle, the teenager with his arm around a girl who isn't Tim's mother. He used to stare and stare at those pictures, trying to figure it all out. Who Franklin Palmer was. Why he didn't bother to wait around to meet his own son.

  The worst part of not knowing his father is not knowing what to think about him. How to feel. Tim used to know a boy named Billy Pritchard whose dad regularly got drunk and beat up Billy's mom and Billy and his older brother, too. Billy hated his father. He'd say it to just about anybody. "I hate my old man!" And strange as it might seem, sometimes Tim used to envy him that fierce hate. At least Billy felt something. A good solid hate would be better than the blank that expands inside Tim's gut every time the subject of Franklin Palmer comes up.

  He has tried hating his father. He has tried loving him, too. Either one is like pumping air into a leaky tire. The moment he quits pumping, the tire goes flat.

  Today, though, he's not sure he wants the ghost of the boy Franklin standing between him and his grandfather. This trip is too important to include anyone else, even his father.

  Tim's stomach gives out a complaining rumble, and he lays a hand across it. He isn't sure what time it is—the clock on the dashboard is broken—but they must have missed lunch by at least an hour. Probably more. "I'm starved," he says. "How about you?"

  Granddad shrugs. "I guess we'll have to catch a fish or two," he says. "Cook them over a fire."

  That's what Tim had suggested, of course. Just the two of them, living off the land. Still, he is awfully hungry. "We'll have to stop at Melvin's for bait, though. Don't you think? Couldn't we pick up some food there? Just bread and peanut butter. Maybe hot chocolate, too. To tide us over until we can catch some fish." Melvin's is a small gas station, bait shop, and grocery store, the last sign of civilization before they enter the state forest.

  "Melvin has that good salami," Granddad says.

  "Salami for you," Tim agrees. "Peanut butter and jelly for me." He is not fond of salami, especially the kind Melvin sells ... heavy with garlic and with little white blobs of fat all through it.

  "Salami for you," Granddad repeats. "Peanut butter and jelly for me."

  Tim considers correcting him, but there is no need. He's probably just joking, anyway.

  For the next few miles they talk about this and that. The time Tim caught a big muskie and was scared so badly by the fish's teeth that, before Granddad could stop him, he had cut the line rather than bring it into the boat. About Brandy, Granddad's lovable old dog, the last in a long line of golden retrievers all bearing the same name. Brandy had died last winter at the grand age of seventeen, and while everyone else was grieving, Grandma had announced, in that no-nonsense way of hers, "I'm not housebreaking another puppy, so don't even think about it."

  "I don't know how Sophie can live without a dog around," Granddad says now.

  She's mean, Tim thinks. But he knows better than to say it.

  Besides, she's never been mean to him. Though how she could come up with the idea of a nursing home is more than he can understand.

  "And then," Granddad adds, "she went and gave Marmalade away."

  Tim doesn't comment on that. Marmalade was Grandma's orange tabby cat, and Tim was the one she'd given him to. She'd figured the cat would just "fade away" if Tim didn't take him to Minneapolis. That's what she'd said, anyway. The truth was, she'd known how much Tim was going to miss that old cat curled into a purring ball at the foot of his bed.

  Tim shifts in his seat. He wishes his mother had let him bring Marmalade back with him instead of leaving him with a neighbor. Now they were going to be separated for sure.

  They are approaching a turn onto a narrow gravel road. The road runs across an open meadow until it disappears into the shadow of the dense forest. A ramshackle frame building with a faded sign proclaiming MEIVIN's stands at the corner. Granddad makes the turn into the parking lot in a single sharp movement so that the back wheels fishtail a bit when the vehicle hits the gravel.

  They sit side by side, waiting for the plume of their dust to drift away from the camper. The store looks deserted, but then Tim can't remember a time when it didn't. Granddad has always referred to Melvin's as a not-for-profit store, existing, as far as anyone could tell, merely to give Melvin an excuse to live alone here at the edge of the woods.

  Tim steps out of the camper, sniffing the air, so different from the air in the city. Different, even, from the air in Sheldon. Plants. Good, clean dirt! He can almost smell the lake, too, though they will have to follow the gravel road for two or three more miles before they reach its closest shore.

  Granddad climbs out on the other side of the camper and gives a long, lazy stretch. "What did we want at Melvin's?" he asks finally, peering over the roof of the camper at Tim.

  "Bait," Tim reminds him. "We need minnows. And bread and peanut butter, too." He doesn't mention the salami. Even if he doesn't have to eat it, he has to put up with Granddad's garlic breath after he does.

  "Ah, yes." Granddad winks. "Just checking to see if you remembered."

  Tim winks back. Grandma would have scolded Granddad. She would have tried to make him admit that he had forgotten, yet again. He's heard her do it a million times. But he's not going to be like that.

  Inside, the store smells of raw meat, wooden floors, and another smell, lush and comforting, that always reminds Tim of summer rain. That's the bait tanks. Granddad has brought the bait bucket from the back of the camper, and he heads for the minnows. The sign says CRAPPIES, $2.50 A SCOOP.

  Tim goes in search of the peanut butter and a loaf of bread. Melvin's carries Wonder Bread, he remembers. Grandma bakes her own bread, and she won't allow Wonder Bread in her house. She calls it "baked air." And considering that you can take a slice and roll it into a ball no bigger than a marble, the name is apt. She doesn't understand, though. Just because she makes great homemade bread doesn't mean a person can't love Wonder Bread as well. Tim even likes the way it flattens out and sticks to the roof of his
mouth when he eats it. He finds some cocoa, too, and a small jar of grape jelly.

  He sets his purchases down on the counter in front of Granddad, who is discussing the weather with Melvin. Granddad looks over the choices he has made, then picks up the jar of peanut butter. "Mouse bait," he says.

  Melvin pushes up the front of his shirt to scratch his round, hairy belly. He nods, his eyes half closed. Does he recognize the story that's coming?

  "Granddad—" Tim cuts in, but his grandfather has already begun.

  "When I was a young man, I spent a summer working in a fishery in Alaska. And was that work! Standing on the slime line hour after hour, slitting open fish, scooping them out." He gives an exaggerated shudder. "But even worse than standing up to your elbows in fish guts, worse than the occasional grizzly we met walking back to our quarters, were the mice. They took over the shacks where we lived. They ran across our faces when we slept. One of them even ran up inside my pants leg one evening when I was sitting on the edge of my bunk, reading."

  Tim has definitely heard the story before. He heads back into the aisles of groceries, Granddad's voice trailing after him.

  "The other fellows I worked with devised a trap. You take a bucket, see, and you fill it half full of water—"

  Melvin interrupts. "That will be seven dollars, even."

  "You fill it half full of water," Granddad repeats, increasing his volume. "Then you put a string across the top, and you put the string through a cardboard roll. The kind left over from toilet paper or paper towels, you know?"

  "Seven dollars," Melvin says again. His voice is flat, bored.

  Who cares if the man knows the story? He doesn't have to be rude. Tim finds himself standing in front of the meat counter, in front of the salami.

  Granddad raises his volume another notch, still ignoring the interruption. "You slather the roll with peanut butter, see? And you lean a board up against the bucket. Then you go to bed."