An Early Winter

by Marion Dane Bauer

  He wonders if a bear's penis really is bone. But Granddad said it is, so it must be.

  For the first time, it occurs to him to wonder, too, what Franklin did to deserve being called "useless"—to deserve being sent away.

  He sighs and looks off into the dense trees on each side of the road. Maybe he should have retraced his steps around the end of the lake instead of starting out on the road toward Melvin's. Could he possibly have passed his grandfather on the way back to the campground without seeing him?

  Tim shakes his head, moves on. If he had gone back instead of heading out for the store, it would have taken him more than an hour to return to the place where he had tied the raft to the sapling. And he was pretty sure he wouldn't have found Granddad along the way if he had. Then he would have been left to walk the entire distance back to the campground again, this time in full dark, before being able to start for help. That's the important thing—to find help. He may be a dumb little kid, but he's not so dumb as to think this is a situation he can manage by himself.

  He keeps walking. His feet feel like clumps of concrete. Wet concrete. Wet and cold.

  He shouldn't have blamed Granddad for being mean to Franklin. He knows nothing of what happened between the two of them, but he knows his grandfather. He is kind, gentle, fair. More than one of Tim's friends has told him how lucky he is to have Dr. Leo as a grandfather, as a father, really. And he'd never needed to be told.

  "Granddad!" he calls.

  Silence.

  He puts one heavy foot in front of the other. When he doesn't hold his jaw tight, his teeth chatter in machine-gun bursts. Maybe he's going to die. It's silly to think about that, though. No one dies from a little bit of cold, a little bit of hunger, a little bit of being lost.

  Granddad won't die, either.

  Will he?

  Besides, even if Granddad is lost, Tim isn't. He knows where he is. He knows where he's going. To Melvin's to get help for his grandfather. Being lost and having a long way to go are two entirely different things.

  The wind sets the trees to groaning, rattles their leaves. The leaves sound dry, dead, though most of them haven't even begun to color yet. The whole world is rushing toward winter.

  Off in the distance beyond the lake, lightning flashes. A mutter of thunder follows. Tim counts. A thousand and one. A thousand and two ... A thousand and seven. Seven seconds between the lightning and the thunder. That means the storm is seven miles away. Maybe it will pass by instead of coming this way. Maybe he'll be lucky, and the rain will rain itself out on some farmer's crops. But this is harvest time. The farmers probably don't want rain, either.

  The road bends to the left and, coming around the curve, Tim stops abruptly, straining to see. There is a dark lump by the side of the road just ahead. Big enough to be a bear this time.

  But what is a bear doing sitting there so still? Is he watching? Waiting for his dinner to come tripping by?

  Tim gives himself a shake. Now he's being silly. But still, he can't seem to find the strength to start forward again. Maybe he should—But no. He's not going to turn back to the campground and the pickup truck. He has come too far. Besides, a locked camper is no good. He's on his way to get help. His grandfather is out there somewhere ... needing him, counting on him, and he has to get help.

  He puts one foot down, then the other, moving forward by inches, closer to the black lump. It doesn't stir.

  Then he remembers. Never take a bear by surprise. Make noise. Any kind of noise. If bears know you're in the area, they'll move out on their own. They don't want an encounter any more than you do.

  The first time Tim opens his mouth, nothing happens. A gargle. A squeak. Something between a frog and a mouse. Hardly a sound to frighten a bear.

  The second time he manages to form the word on his tongue, to get it past his lips in a whisper. "Granddad."

  The third attempt comes out as a shout. "GRANDDAD!"

  Silence. The black lump doesn't budge. But then Tim hears the sound. Not a bear's low growl, which is what he expects. This sound is softer, sadder.

  Someone is sobbing.

  For an instant this clear sign of human misery is more terrifying than the snarl of any bear. Tim freezes, his feet rooted to the gravel road, though he wants more than anything else he can think of to run. But then the moon, which has been slipping in and out of the gathering clouds, shines through once more. A figure takes shape, sitting on a large boulder by the side of the road. Pale sheen of hair. Pale hands. Even the lighter squares of the plaid shirt reflect the thin moonlight.

  "Granddad," he says again, quietly this time. "You're here. At last." Clearly Granddad had been heading for Melvin's, too.

  The sobbing doesn't stop, doesn't even diminish, and Tim walks slowly, tentatively toward the figure, as though his grandfather were, indeed, some wild animal who might startle at his approach. He crouches by the boulder and reaches out gently to touch the woolen sleeve.

  To his relief, the sobbing subsides. Granddad straightens his back and stares at Tim, his eyes almost glowing in the half light. "Franklin," he says at last. "Have you come to rescue me?"

  "Yes," Tim says. "I've come to rescue you."

  Granddad continues to stare so intently that, for a moment, Tim thinks he must be beginning to understand. Oh, of course, he will say. You are not Franklin. But the close perusal doesn't bring Tim back to his grandfather's mind, because he says, "I'm an old man, Franklin. Old before my time. I'm not even a vet any longer. Did you know?"

  "You'll always be a vet," Tim says.

  "No." Granddad shakes his head. "No. I gave it up. Had to. Almost killed a kitten. Belonged to a little girl." A spasm of shivers passes through him, but whether he is reacting to the cold or to the memory, Tim can't tell. "Pretty little thing, that kitten. I meant to spay it. All I meant to do. Caught myself with the needle in my hand, ready to put the poor creature down. That's when I knew."

  Tim doesn't have to ask what his grandfather knew. He lowers himself to the boulder, too, waits for whatever will come next. They sit side by side, each wrapped in his own night.

  "I'm worried about you," Granddad says finally, and though he hasn't used the name this time, Tim knows he is talking to Franklin still. "You've got to kick the coke." He peers directly into Tim's face, unblinking. "I told you you couldn't come home again until you were clean."

  Coke? Clean? Tim can't make it out. Is his grandfather talking about drugs? Was Franklin on cocaine? Is that the "problem" everyone has mentioned? Someone should have told him. He had a right to know such a thing about his own father.

  "I won't let you stay." Granddad shakes his head violently. "I won't let you do damage to that girl ... to that baby. I won't..." He half rises from the boulder, but he doesn't get very far before dropping back again. Then he is weeping once more, his stocky shoulders shuddering, his breath coming in rough gulps.

  "It's all right, Granddad," Tim says. "It's all right." And it is.

  He puts both arms around his grandfather's solid shoulders and rocks him, rocks him.

  TWELVE

  Home

  The sunlight shining through the flaming top of the maple awakens Tim. When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is his old Winnie-the-Pooh bedspread folded across the bottom of the bed. He is home. Home!

  He sits up, stretches cautiously. His muscles are sore from the rowing. Probably sore from sitting so long in the cold and the wet, too.

  He doesn't know how long he and his grandfather sat on the boulder, waiting to be rescued. He knows that the storm arrived, soaked them both thoroughly, and moved implacably on. He knows that his grandfather cried sometimes and that he, Tim, held him.

  He held him till the lights of the car appeared. Then Tim ran out into the gravel road, waving his arms, and the car came to a skidding stop and Paul leapt out, shouting, "Tim! Tim!" Only then had he started bawling.

  And there was Mom in the front seat, blubbering, too.

  She'd known, she'd s
aid, she'd been absolutely certain. She'd told Grandma a hundred times that Tim would be taking good care of his grandfather.

  And that was when he realized what he had known all along, too. That his mother and Paul would find him. That they would search and search, asking everyone they knew—even Dr. Hutchins, even crabby Melvin—until they figured out where the two of them had gone.

  Tim lies back again. His gaze rests on the flaming tree beyond the window. The morning is windy, and one branch taps insistently against the roof. Will he ever push open the window, grab that branch, and climb down the maple, surprising everyone by walking in the front door? Probably not, but then there are some paths his father took that he doesn't have to follow.

  A knock on the door, softer than usual. His grandmother has always had an uncanny knack of knowing the minute he is awake. She can be at the other end of the house—in fact, she probably was—and she knows when he opens his eyes.

  "Come in, Grandma," he calls.

  She comes in. She is wearing a yellow sweat suit, yellow and bright as the morning sunlight. She stands looking down at him, her fists cocked on her hips. "So," she says, half accusation, half greeting, "you're awake."

  "Yes," he agrees. "I'm awake."

  Is she going to scold him now? Is she going to blame him for putting his grandfather at such risk? She has the right.

  By the time Paul and his mother arrived, Tim was struggling to remember everything Granddad had ever told him about hypothermia. He'd tried to get his grandfather to walk, just to keep him warm, if not to make it all the way either to Melvin's or back to the camper, but Granddad had no strength left for walking. Tim had been as frantic as the adults must have been back home. He knew that one sign of hypothermia was confusion, but he didn't know if the cold had anything to do with the way Granddad was talking.

  After a time, he had no longer known where they were. He forgot even about Franklin. Once he'd reached into the pocket of his wool shirt and pulled his hand out again. "That's my daddy," he'd explained, and he'd held the "picture" up for Tim to see. But his hands had been cupped around nothing.

  Grandma inclines her head toward the foot of the bed, and Tim moves his feet to make room. She settles on the bottom corner.

  "How is Granddad?" he asks.

  She folds her hands in her lap, studies them as though they might hold the answer to his question. Grandma is short and pleasantly round—chubby, she calls herself—but her hands are slender, her fingers, long. A piano-player's hands, she's always said. A piano-player's hands on a body without a scrap of musical talent. One of nature's jokes. Is Alzheimer's disease another of nature's jokes?

  "He's pretty confused still," she says finally, "but he'll be better when he's fully rested. Any kind of stress seems to put him over the edge for a time." She peers at Tim from beneath her finely arched dark eyebrows, but she doesn't smile. He notices particularly that she doesn't smile.

  He nods, enormously relieved.

  Silence fills the room. Not a bad silence, but Tim has no idea what might be coming next. He doesn't even know what he would like to come next.

  "Timmy," Grandma says.

  He winces.

  "Tim," she corrects herself, clearing her throat. "I don't know when I've been so glad to see anybody as I was to see you and your grandfather last night. I'd about decided I'd lost you both."

  "Were you really glad to see Granddad?" He shouldn't challenge her, he knows—not after what he put her through—but the question was lying there on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be asked.

  Her chin comes up. A soft, round chin, but when she thrusts it forward like that, it's a chin to contend with. "What do you mean by that, young man?"

  "Granddad says you're going to send him to a nursing home."

  Grandma stares at Tim, her eyes round and astonished. She must be surprised that he knows. "No one is sending anybody to a nursing home." She speaks slowly and deliberately.

  Would she dare lie to him? Tim pushes himself up on one elbow. "But he heard you talking to Mom ... about selling the house, about a place that will be better for him. I know he's forgetting things, but that doesn't mean he can't understand what people say right in front of him!"

  Grandma nods, once, twice. "Is that why you ran off with him? Because you thought I was going to put him in a nursing home?"

  "Yes." Tim waits, watching his grandmother's face for any sign of deception.

  She sighs. "I am going to sell the house."

  Tim flops back down in the bed, crosses his arms over his chest.

  She takes hold of one of his feet through the covers, gives it a small shake. "Listen," she commands. "I am going to sell the house, but I'm not putting Leo in a nursing home. As long as I can manage, he'll stay with me."

  "Where are you going, then?"

  "To Minneapolis."

  Tim comes bolt upright in the bed. "What?"

  "We're moving to Minneapolis, your grandfather and I. Your mother has found some senior apartments close by where you live. They have people there who can help me care for your grandfather."

  Tim drops back again. He can think of nothing to say.

  Grandma begins to massage his foot through the covers. "But Timmy..."

  This time he lets her get by with the name. Doesn't even make a face.

  "It's not the apartment we're moving for. It's you. It's your mother and Paul ... and especially you. He needs you. We both do." She looks at him steadily, gravely.

  "After yesterday ... you still want to be close to me?"

  "Why wouldn't I?"

  "I caused you lots of grief. I meant to cause you grief."

  Grandma gives his foot a squeeze. "Timothy Palmer, if there's one thing I've come to know, it's that everyone makes mistakes in this life. What counts is whether or not we learn by the mistakes we make."

  "Like Granddad did ... learned from his mistakes with Franklin?"

  She gives him a studying look. The look is trying to ascertain what he knows, but she doesn't ask. "Franklin was a ... a difficult boy," she says at last. "He was restless. Impatient. Quick to anger. So different from his father ... and so much the same. Leo tried hard, but yes, he made mistakes. We both did."

  She smoothes back her dark hair, then folds her hands again, those lovely, long-fingered hands. She looks up at Tim. "But when you came along ... well, you were a different boy, and we ... we could be different, too. Do you understand?"

  Tim nods. He thinks he understands. But there is one more question still. A question he seems to have waited all his life to ask. He sucks in a huge breath, and when he lets it out, the words come tumbling out with it. "Do you ever hear from him? Do you know where my father is now?"

  For an instant Grandma's lips tremble. Then she swipes a hand across her mouth, restoring it to firmness, and answers briskly. "No. We never hear from Franklin. I have no idea where he might be. I only hope that he is ... well."

  Tim sighs. What did he expect? That his father was going to hear of Granddad's illness and come running home to help?

  Grandma leans forward, peers into Tim's face. She speaks softly. "There's not a day, though, I don't think about him. Not a day I'm not grateful to him."

  "Grateful!" Tim is amazed. "Why would you be grateful?"

  "For bringing you to us," she says. And at last she smiles.

  Tim stands in the doorway to his grandparents' room, watching his grandfather in the bed. He is lying on his back, asleep, his chest rising and falling in a peaceful rhythm. Tim tiptoes closer.

  Granddad's eyelids are thin, almost translucent. The skin is smooth over his strong cheekbones. His nose is as finely carved as any eagle's beak. He could be some magnificent animal lying there sleeping, a bear, perhaps, or a lion.

  Tim touches his arm—not to wake him, just to know he is there—and his eyelids flutter, come open. He studies Tim solemnly for a moment, then asks, "Is it winter yet?"

  Tim glances out the window to the maple, dropping its leaves so heedlessly
. "Not yet, Granddad," he says. Ifs coming soon, he adds, only to himself. Too soon.

  Granddad's eyelids drift closed again, and Tim starts to turn away. But his grandfather reaches out and captures his hand, drawing him back to the side of the bed.

  "Did I ever tell you," he asks, "about the way we used to catch mice in Alaska?"

  "No," Tim says with the smallest trace of a sigh. "You never told me."

  And he is off, telling the story again. At one point he rises on an elbow, animated, flushed. When he gets to the part about throwing out the bucket of dead mice, Tim draws his hand away. Considering all the animals his grandfather has saved over the years, why is he stuck on this story?

  With the story done, Granddad lets his head sink back to the pillow and his eyes drift closed. Tim starts for the door once more. Maybe later, maybe after his grandfather has had more rest, he'll be able to talk about something besides winter and dead mice. The voice stops him in the doorway.

  "That was until I worked out a better way."

  Tim turns back.

  Granddad is grinning. "When it was my turn to set the trap, I didn't use the bucket." He props himself up again. "I just spread the peanut butter on slices of bread and left them in the middle of the floor by the door."

  "But what good was that?"

  Granddad chuckles. "That's what the fellows said. 'What good is that, Leo?' And I said, 'You just wait and see.'"

  Tim moves closer.

  "We went to bed and went to sleep. Slept fine. Not a single mouse came into the bunk room all night long. You know why?"

  Tim is beginning to get the picture, but he shakes his head, lays a hand on his grandfather's shoulder.

  "The mice spent the whole night nibbling that peanut butter. They were so busy licking that bread clean they had no time to bother us, and every single mouse went back to its nest in the morning, happy." Granddad's delight in his story is huge.

  Tim smiles. He should have known! But as quickly as the story and his grandfather's pleasure in it arose, they recede once more. Granddad's head drops back to the pillow again, and when Tim looks down at the familiar face, it has gone pale, the eyes dark.