Free Winter Is Not Forever by Janette Oke Page B

out here to take care of you ’til you get back on your feet.”
    So Aunt Lou and Sarah moved out to the farm to nurse Grandpa back to health. Doc had sent him to bed with orders that he was to follow; Aunt Lou and I both knew he wouldn’t obey if she wasn’t there to insist.
    I was sorry that Grandpa was sick, but it sure was a treat to have Aunt Lou and Sarah. Uncle Nat came out as often as he could. He missed his “two girls,” as he called them, but he was awfully good about it.
    It took Grandpa a couple of weeks before he was out of bed, and even then he had to lie down often because he was too weak to do much. In that time Sarah, crawling incessantly, had learned how to stand by herself. One morning I came into the kitchen, and she deserted her toy to crawl to me and pull herself up by my pantleg.
    “Hey! You’ll be running footraces soon!” She laughed, bouncing up and down on pudgy baby-legs.
    I was really sorry to see Aunt Lou and Sarah leave for town again. The house would seem strange and empty with them gone.
    By March, winter had still not given up, and we were short of feed for the livestock. I worried about it each time that I doled out the hay and oats.
    Grandpa must have sensed it, mentally measuring the feed each time I went out to chore. I didn’t say anything to him about it but one morning at breakfast he surprised me.
    “About enough for two more weeks, eh, Josh?”
    I nodded silently.
    “Can you cut back any?”
    “I think I’ve already cut back about as much as I dare.”
    “Any chance of buying some feed off a neighbor?” Uncle Charlie asked.
    “I’ve asked around some,” I admitted. “Nobody seems to have any extra.”
    “We’ll go out an’ take inventory and see—” Grandpa started to say, but Uncle Charlie cut him short.
    “You’ll do nothin’ of the sort!” he snorted. “Doc says yer to stay in out of the cold fer at least another two weeks.”
    “But Josh needs—” Grandpa began and Uncle Charlie waved his hand, sloshing coffee from his coffee cup.
    “I’ll help Josh,” he said. “Nothin’ in here that needs doin’ today anyway.”
    Grandpa didn’t argue any further, and after Uncle Charlie had washed up the dishes and I had dried them and set them back on the cupboard shelf, we bundled up and set off to take inventory.
    It didn’t take much figuring to know that we’d be short of feed. Uncle Charlie said what we were both thinking.
    “If spring comes tomorrow it won’t be in time.”
    By noon we had completed our calculations and headed back to the warmth of the kitchen. Grandpa had fried some eggs and sliced some bread. That, with cold slices of ham and hot tea, was our noon meal. I inwardly longed for Lou’s full dinner meals again.
    While we ate, Grandpa and Uncle Charlie juggled numbers and shuffled papers until I felt a bit sick inside. I wasn’t sure where this all was leading us. I had never remembered a time when Grandpa and Uncle Charlie had had a tough time making it through the winter—but maybe it had happened and I just hadn’t known.
    In the end I was dispatched on Chester to take a survey among the neighborhood farmers. If there was any feed for sale, our dilemma would be solved.
    But it wasn’t that easy. Everywhere I stopped I found that the other farmers were in the same fix as we were. There just wasn’t going to be enough feed to make it through this extrahard winter.
    With a sinking heart I headed for home. I decided to stop at the Turleys’ on my way, more to see how Mary and her mother were doing than to check for feed. Mr. Turley fed several head of cattle and he didn’t raise much more feed than we did.
    When Mary opened the door, she looked genuinely glad to see me. I was even a bit glad to see her.
    Mrs. Turley was busy darning some socks, and she sat there near the fire rocking back and forth as she mended. She seemed quite content and peaceful, even though she must have known that her husband, too, was facing a tough