Frozen Stiff Read Free Page B

to tuck in and catch speeders, drank her coffee and stared at the two lines of rainbow, frost glinting in the milky sunlight.
    Ten miles down the road, she turned the car up the bluff. The plow had already been through and the road was slippery, but cleared.
    The Walker house rose over the crest of the driveway, an odd tower of a house, all the lights on in the early morning dawn, the sun barely topping the field. Amy was always amazed at these houses that lined the bluff, like masters of another race come to live among the peons for a while.
    A gorgeous fawn-colored Saab sat in the driveway, its tracks the only sign that marred the new snow. Amy parked the squad car behind it and got out. Still below zero, breathing in the cold air made her cough. Before she had even taken a step the front door was flung open and a blond-haired woman stuck her head out.
    “Thank god, you’re here. I can’t get him out of the snow.” The woman was crying and her hands were red.
    Amy knew how hard it could be to lose a pet. She walked up the front step. “Let’s see what you have here.”
    The woman was shivering, her skin was pale and her lips were turning white. Amy could tell she was going into shock. “Let’s get you in the house. You need to put a coat on.”
    The woman babbled, “I didn’t know what to do. I tried to uncover him, but it’s so cold. I think he’s frozen stiff.”
    “What kind of dog is it?”
    The woman looked at Amy in astonishment and said, “It’s no dog. He’s my husband.”
    New Year’s Day: 10 am
    Since he was old enough to sit at the kitchen table, he could remember this same red and white gingham tablecloth covering it. John Gordon sat in the kitchen, watching his 80-year-old mother pouring him a cup of her weak coffee, running his finger on the checkerboard pattern.
    He couldn’t quite imagine a world without his mother—Edna Wheeler Gordon. Not that they had always been close, but no matter how far he had gone, spun out from her, she had always seemed the center of the universe.
    His father had died when he was ten; he was killed when a tractor tipped over on him. After the funeral John’s mother had told him that he had to be the man of the house. His sister Beth had only been five, too young to help out much. Together, he and his mother had run the farm for over twenty years.
    If only he hadn’t taken that job in Oklahoma this fall, but they had needed the money. Farming wasn’t what it used to be and, in the winter months, he often needed to supplement their income. He should have known that his mother wasn’t up to being on her own anymore. But he had asked Beth to keep a close eye on her and had thought that would be all the help she needed.
    He watched Edna move slowly back across the kitchen floor and set the old coffeemaker down on the stove. Her knee was bothering her again, but she insisted she didn’t want that blasted surgery.
    “Why bother fixing something that I hardly use anymore? I’m not going to be around much longer,” she’d say.
    He hated to think of her alone in this house, but she was as stubborn as they come and she said the only way they’d get her out of here was to carry her feet first.
    Edna walked back across the floor and sank into the chair across from him with a sigh, soft like air escaping from a pillow. Her body looked like a pillow, stuffed into the faded house dress she was wearing with an old sweater thrown over the top.
    “Shit, you’re still angry,” she said.
    “Mom, I’m not mad at you.”
    “I thought you’d be happy about it. I really did. I know I’m nothing but a burden to you and I thought this would take care of your problems.” She turned her head down and her hands wrung themselves in her lap.
    Edna had told him she wanted to surprise him. She thought that he would be happy that she had sold the farm and for such a tidy sum. But he knew it was only about half the going value of the place, 200 acres of land right on the bluff