I felt myself sway under a wave of grief. I forced air into my lungs and blinked to clear my vision.

The tray reached its full extension and clicked into place. Grandma stared unflinching at the ceiling, eyes open, mouth set, still as stone.

We all gaped at her in silence for several moments.

Kenny was the first to speak. “She looks dead all right,” he said. “Roll her back in.”

The whisper of a sound stuck in the corner. A hiss. We all pricked our ears and concentrated. I saw the very slightest tightening around Grandma’s eye. The hiss again. Louder this time. Grandma sucking air through her dentures!

“Hmmm,” Kenny said. “Maybe she’s not dead yet.”

“You should have cranked the unit down,” Spiro offered. “This baby’ll go down to zero. She wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes if you’d had it at zero.”

Grandma made some feeble movements on the tray.

“What’s she doing?” Spiro asked.

“She’s trying to sit up,” Kenny said. “But she’s too old. Can’t get those old bones to cooperate, huh, Granny?”

“Old,” she whispered. “I’ll show you old.”

“Shove the drawer back in,” Kenny said to Spiro. “And fix the freezer setting.”

Spiro started to roll the tray in, but Grandma kicked out with her feet, stopping the slide. She had her knees bent, and she was pounding against the steel with her feet, clawing and knocking inside the drawer.

Spiro grunted and rammed the tray home, but the tray was inches short of clicking into place, and the door wouldn’t close.

“Something’s stuck,” Spiro said. “This won’t go in all the way.”

“Open it up,” Kenny said, “and see what’s wrong.”

Spiro eased the tray back.

Grandma’s chin appeared, her nose, her eyes. Her arms were extended over her head.

“You making problems, Granny?” Kenny asked. “You jamming the drawer with something?”

Grandma didn’t say anything, but I could see her mouth working, her dentures grinding against each other.

“Get your arms down at your sides,” Kenny told her. “Stop fucking with me. I’m gonna lose my patience.”

Grandma struggled to get her arms out, and finally her bandaged hand popped free. The other hand followed, and in that hand was the .45 long-barrel. She swung her arm straight from the shoulder and squeezed off a round.

We all hit the floor, and she fired again.

Silence followed the second shot. No one moved but Grandma. She elbowed herself to a sitting position, and took a moment to settle.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Grandma said into the silence. “Do I have any more bullets in this here gun? Well, with all the confusion, what with being locked up in a refrigerator, I plum forgot what was in here to start with. But being that this is a forty-five magnum, the most powerful handgun in existence, and it could blow your head clean off, you just got to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky today? Well, do you, punk?”

“Christ,” Spiro whispered. “She thinks she’s fucking Clint Eastwood.”