Grandpère Read Online Free PDF Page B

finished with Bella. “When you asked her how John was, she told you all the things he had, not how he was. I tell you, girl, that is a bad thing about these times. We’ve all been taken over by things. Things are so important to that lady that she doesn’t know if her son is happy or not. She is measuring his happiness by how many things he has.”
    He is not usually so blunt. Normally when someone annoys him, he gets sarcastic and makes up little barbs that he throws around for a couple of days to laugh at. “Lyle Dixon is a good kid. He just got liquored up one night and had an accident, killed some of his good friends. The memory of that will hurt him all his life. He doesn’t need that woman wishing him bad.”
    Now I understand. The Dixons are related to him through his second wife. He knows the boy. I placate him. “Grandpère, if it’s his first offence and he’s sorry, the judge will go lightly on him.”
    “Just the same, just the same,” he answers. He doesn’t say any more.

    The summer goes by quickly, and before we expect it, the first September snow flies. The blossoms on the hanging baskets are frozen solid with all their colours intact, crowned by delicate powdery snowflakes. The air is frosty, and snow covers every surface, making everything look clean and sparkling in the fall sun. How dazzling it all looks. I love the first snowfall of the year.
    The sun melts the snow to a muddy glop by afternoon, but frost has killed all the tender plants in the garden and the yard. I fall into harvest mode, making a list of the things I have to do before freeze-up. At the top of the list is firewood.
    We have an electric furnace, but in the cold weather nothing throws warmth like a wood stove, so we need a fair pile of firewood. Often my sons cut wood for us during their visits. This year they were cutting up the slab pile on the sawmill landing; all I needed to do was get it to the woodshed. They had offered to haul it, too, but it’s a chore both Grandpère and I like doing.
    We take the four-wheeler with its trailer. It doesn’t hold much, but with a few loads a day we soon fill the shed. Today we go for four trips, heaping the slab chunks so high that the trailer tires go half-flat. Grandpère tells me to go ahead and do what I want while he finishes piling it. None of it is heavy or needs to be split, so I go to the greenhouse to salvage what I can.
    The tomato plants stand taller than I do. None of the green ones show that transparency that means frostbite, although the vines are quite limp and look kind of sad. I pick the tomatoes, for they will ripen one by one in the house all fall, supplying us with fresh tomatoes till Christmas or better. Peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and squash all need to go into the house. I go back to get the four-wheel bike, sure that the trailer must be empty by now. The dogs have been whining at me for the past half hour, and now they run ahead of me.
    To my surprise the trailer is still quite full. No sign of Grandpère. The dogs are standing by the edge of the porch, looking at me. I say, “What’s wrong, boys?” But as I get closer I see what’s wrong.
    Grandpère is lying in the wet grass, his hat on the ground beside him and his jacket open as though he’s sleeping in the summer sun instead of in a puddle of wet grass and mud. I just stand for a moment looking at him, breathless, wondering if he is dead. Then I notice that his chest is moving. He’s waking up. I go to help him up, wondering if he’s had a heart attack or a stroke and what I should do.
    He gives me such a blank look that I am immediately scared.
    “Who are you?” he asks me. I’m still wondering how to answer that question when he asks in the same wondering tone, “Where am I?”
    Now I know I can’t answer, so I help him up to the house and into the bathroom. He keeps asking where we are and calls me Clementine. Then he calls me Annie. I answer to both. He’s so wet and muddy that I tell