A. Blinken The other day a good friend about my age died of a heart attack. He was the first of my friends to die of old people’s disease instead of what we considered to be the "natural causes" meaning accidents, and anger. Suddenly, I was a member of the group that dies of failing bodies. Granny Wise is an expert member of that group, so, early, I bought Danish and bacon and a bottle of Jack D, and I went up to see her. I got to her cabin before eight; the sun hadn’t crept down the canyon yet and there was a carpet of diamonds across the rocks and glittering jackets on hollyhock scarecrows. The air smelled of burning oak and boiling coffee. I knocked on the weathered door and Granny shouted "friend or relative?" "It’s me, Granny." After a minute she opened the door. "Who died," which is what she says when anyone shows up early and unannounced. "Herc," I said. Granny spied the bottle and said, "thanks, boy," and snatched it from my hand and stowed it up in her "no grandkid cupboard." "I thought we might sip some of that and chat about Herc and whatnot." Granny grinned and said, "Grim Reaper ticklin’ your spine, eh? OK, we can talk in a little while, but while you’re here, would you load the wood barn? It’s a long way to the pile for my old legs." It wasn’t like Granny to complain about her joints, so I shrugged and moved about two cord of oak and pine from the pile in the sun to the little shed beside the house. By the time I was done Granny made the bacon and Danish sandwiches. I settled at the table, but she said, "gobble it standing, I thought we’d get the last of the potatoes out of the ground. It kills my back to bend over like that." We went to the sunny spot where she and Grandad Wise made the garden long ago. Granny sat on the bench and graded the spuds I dug and hauled by the greens. Then I totted creaking, fraying bushel baskets of spuds to the cold cellar beside the stream. It was getting past noon, I said, "Granny, you know Herc wasn’t that old, only two years older than me." She nodded, "Oh, that’s how we figure what old is, your age? Herc got as old as he’d get. Speakin’ of that, come out here for a minute, there’s somethin’ we have to fix before weather sets in." We climbed the creek behind the house and she showed me a jam of logs and rock. "If that’s there come Spring I’m afraid it might break and wash the cabin. There’s bars and tackle in the barn, remember to stay up stream if you shift something." I got tools from the little barn and got cold and wet and bruised and damned near killed, but I shifted the boulders and logs and the little stream cleared itself before I’d gotten the tackle put up. "Granny," I said, stumping into the cabin, "I’m chilled, what about a shot of the Jack?" She handed me coffee and said, "sure, boy, but before you start restin’ on your wallet would you mind checkin’ the gutters? There’s a ladder in the barn." I gulped the coffee and put the ladder against the house, but the gutters were made from cedar, long before I was born, and the rotted leaves and tangled twigs did more to hold them together than strangle flow, so I picked at a few of the larger piles and put the ladder away. The sun was dropping below the ridge and the shadows swept toward the cabin. I clomped in, "Granny, can we talk?" "Course, boy, sit down." I sat, she slid a plate of kippered herring and pickled onions on the table, set two small glasses, gave me a teaspoon of the Jack. "You’ve lost a lot of friends, Granny." She tossed down some kipper, an onion and a shot of JD, gave a little shiver and said, "Herc died a baby, bad hearts run in his kin. You can die young, or you can live long enough to be a burden on your kin. It ain’t your concern, A.B. See how you feel right now? Tired and warm? That’s your concern. You carry wood and clear the crick every day, and you’ll live the right number of days, and beyond that, it ain’t your concern. Now, beat it, I got a friend comin’ over tonight. And no more whisky until you’re done with this. Need some grass?" "No, thanks, Granny," I told her. "Take a basket of spuds home." On the way down the hill, I still thought about Herc, and all of us.