Black Frost Read Free Page B

a watch and read
your Grandpa’s journal. We’ll talk about it some more then.”
    “Alright. Listen, why don’t I throw some
lunch together. You look like you have this under control.”
     
    I retreated to the kitchen to ponder his
words. Dad wasn’t prone to alarmism and completely lacked the
imagination that I had shared with my grandfather. That he would
react that way to a strange wound on a possum carcass was out of
character.
    I put together a couple of thick ham and
Swiss sandwiches, cracked open cold cans of diet Pepsi and set out
some potato chips, all under the watchful eyes of Charm who was
hoping for scraps. Dad wandered in at my call. We spent lunch
talking about the last pieces of Bob, Sr.’s estate, then dad packed
up his papers and headed to the door.
    “Ian, where’s your GrandFather’s shotgun?” my
father asked suddenly, pausing in the doorway.
    I pointed to the coat rack in the little
entry way by the back door where we were standing. It was solidly
screwed to the wall, hand-crafted of pine, with a rather boxy top
and six coat pegs below. I touched the hidden lever on the back and
the front of the long rectangular top popped open on springs.
Inside the narrow space lay my GrandFather’s ‘social’ shotgun, just
as he had left it.
    My father reached in, grabbed the gun, and
broke the action open, pulling out the round from the top barrel.
He handed the shotgun to me, not looking up from his examination of
the shell. After a moment he held it up from my inspection.
    “Steel shot – BB size,” he said, his white
eyebrows arched.
    “Steel? Why would gramps use steel?” I asked.
I hadn’t looked at the gun or its load of ammo since moving in.
     
    For those of you new to weapons, steel shot
is usually used for waterfowl, to avoid leaving poisonous lead in
the waterways. Leastways, that’s the old use for steel shot. We’ll
have a new need of it now.
    Looking at the three inch shell, it was
clearly labeled ‘steel shot, BB’.
    “That’s a pretty good question, Ian” my
father said, then waved as he headed out. I watched him walk to his
Ford Expedition, his right hand unconsciously tugging his light
jacket down to cover the butt of the .45 he habitually wore, even
in retirement. I automatically reloaded the round into the shotgun
and put it back in its hiding spot, latching the coat rack lid
shut.
     
    I cleaned up from lunch and looked at the
clock. There were a few minutes, I decided, to look at the journal
before I needed to get back to my knives.
    I started with the last entry first. We had
found grandpa dead, in his bed, on May 28 th . The last
journal entry was the night before.
     
    May 27- Was outside this morning , looking up
at the house, noticed hole in the guest bedroom mesh. Climbed up on
roof and found that they had cut a small opening. Chilled me to the
bone. Didn’t think they could get through steel mesh! Don’t know if
any got in the house. I repaired hole and reinforced. Checked
house, no sign. Pray I didn’t miss one.
     
    It didn’t make much sense, especially the
part where my eighty-nine year old grandfather climbed on the roof.
It made me wonder if that exertion was the cause of the stroke that
killed him.
     
    I have a very clear memory of the day we
found him. I was coming over to work on our latest knife order and
my father was just coming over to check on grandpa.
    When we entered the house, the sense that
something was wrong was immediate and palpable. The coffee wasn’t
made, and there was no sign he had been up for breakfast. Grandpa
was up every day by six’o’clock, day in, day out, for as long as I
could remember.
    We called to him but there was no answer and
the house felt empty of life. Part of my brain was telling me that
the worst had happened; while another part was worried he had
fallen and broken a hip or something. My father didn’t say
anything, but his face reflected similar fears.
     
    By unspoken agreement we entered the