An Early Winter Read Online Free

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