Read Online Grandpère by Janet Romain - Free Book Online

who have taken an extra day off. I pack them huge lunches and give them all bags of produce from the root cellar. We wave goodbye from the living room window, and suddenly four kids and four adults seems quiet.
    It’s warm again today. Grandpère falls asleep in the sun, and so does the baby. Patty goes outside with the three older boys, and Clint and I sit down to a cup of coffee in the kitchen.
    He nods at the old man. “Feeling his age this winter, eh, Mom?”
    I tell him quietly about Grandpère’s little stroke but am quick to add that he hasn’t had any more.
    “You know you can call me whenever you need me,” he says.
    I know he’s talking about when death comes calling. I’d planned to tell him what Grandpère wants me to do when he dies, but for some reason I don’t.
    “If he gets too much for you to handle, maybe Rose can get him into the home,” he says.
    “That’s the reason he’s here, so he doesn’t have to go to the home,” I reply.
    “Mom, you’re not getting any younger, and he is so old. All I’m saying is that maybe he will get harder to look after, and if that happens, we’ll help pay for him to live there.”
    “That’s very generous of you, Clint, and I thank you for the offer, but right now we’re doing fine.”
    I give him a big hug, but he’s not much of a hugger — usually a tenth-of-a-second squeeze and a couple of shoulder pats — but today he returns my hug generously and kisses my cheek. It makes tears come to my eyes, and I am surprised to see his eyes full too. I pat him some more and tell him not to worry about us, we’re fine.
    The next morning Clint’s family leaves, too, and suddenly it’s really quiet. It’s still warm, so Grandpère and I put on our jackets to go outside. At least we try, but the sleeves of both our jackets are sewn shut. It sends us into giggles and much speculation about who did it. My bet is on Sarah, but Grandpère thinks maybe Parker.
    The kids have brought us wire grippers to go around our boots, and we stretch them on. Wow! You could walk over glare ice with these on. I show Grandpère how I can run on the ice.
    “I think maybe I will walk,” he says, “but if you want, you can run circles around me.”
    I decline.
    I haven’t tended to the chickens for days, since the kids have done the chores. The chickens haven’t laid well, and I think the commotion has put them off, but now I find the reason. One old hen likes to sit on the eggs in her nest and stay there while her friends crowd in beside her and lay theirs. Today she’s sitting on twelve eggs, and I guess that none of the boys was brave enough to stick his hands in the nest for fear of getting pecked — and not willing to admit it to anyone either. I tell Grandpère we are having a lot of eggs tomorrow, and we laugh about the kids being scared of chickens.

Chapter Four
    New Year’s Day is bright and sunny but cold. The thermometer dips to minus thirty, and we decide to stay home. We’ve been invited to Rose’s for dinner, but I phone to cancel, and she understands. We promise to get together soon.
    Grandpère says his New Year’s resolution is to tell me more about his life so I can write it down for him, if I’m still willing. “I better get to it before I’m too old to remember it or too dead to tell it.” He grins to show me neither death nor age is weighing on him very heavily. “There was always work to do at the Fort. I worked most of the time in the bush, but many of the people moved in from the bush. Louisa’s sister, Francine, and her husband, my cousin Tsa’a’lax — that means Angry Eyes — moved in and built a place beside us. In town they called him Alex. Francine did not like to live in the bush, and Alex said it was getting harder and harder to find the animals that we always lived with in the woods.
    “Many trappers who were not our people were taking all of them, he said. He said these people took all the animals they could find and didn’t