Shiloh Read online

  And then, the awful words: "Say, Judd, my boy was up here along the river this afternoon, and a beagle followed him home. Don't have any tags on his collar, but I'm remembering you got yourself another hunting dog, and wondered if he might be yours."

  I'm thinking this is a bad mistake. Maybe it isn't Judd's at all, and he's such a liar he'd say it was, just to get himself still another animal to be mean to.

  Judd hardly lets him finish; starts off across the muddy yard in his boots. "Sure as hell bet it is," he says. "Can't keep that coon dog home to save my soul. Every time I take him hunting, he runs off before I'm through. I been out all day with the dogs, and they all come back but him."

  I can hear Judd's heavy footsteps coming around the side of the Jeep, and I can smell his chewing tobacco, strong as coffee.

  "Yep," he says, thrusting his face in the open window. "That's him, all right." He opens the door. "Git on down here!" he says, and before I can even

  give the dog one last pat, Shiloh leaps off my lap onto the ground and connects with Judd's right foot. He yelps and runs off behind the trailer, tail tucked down, belly to the ground. All Judd's dogs chained out back bark like crazy.

  I jump out of the Jeep, too. "Please don't kick him like that," I say. "Some dogs just like to run."

  "He runs all over creation," Judd says. I can tell he's studying me in the dark, trying to figure what's it to me.

  "I'll keep an eye out for him," I say. "Anytime I see him away from home, I'll bring him back. I promise. Just don't kick him."

  Judd only growls. "He could be a fine huntin' dog, but he tries my patience. I'll leave him be tonight, but he wanders off again, I'll whup the daylights out of him. Guarantee you that."

  I swallow and swallow, and all the way home I can't speak a word, trying to hold the tears back.

  CHAPTER 3

  Idon't sleep more than a couple hours that night. When I do, I dream of Shiloh. When I don't, I'm thinking about him out in the rain all afternoon, head on his paws, watching our door. Thinking how I'd disappointed him, whistling like I meant something that first time, gettin' him to come to me, then taking him on back to Judd Travers to be kicked all over again.

  By five o'clock, when it's growing light, I know pretty much what I have to do: I have to buy that dog from Judd Travers.

  I don't let my mind go any further; don't dwell on what Judd would want for Shiloh, or even whether he'd sell. Especially don't ask myself how I'm supposed to get the money. All I know is that I can think of only one way to get that dog away from Judd, and that's what I'm going to have to do.

  My bed is the couch in the living room, so when Dad comes in to fix his breakfast, I pull on my jeans and go out to sit across from him in the kitchen.

  First he makes himself a lunch to carry to work. He drives his Jeep to the post office in Sistersville, where he cases mail for around two hundred families and delivers it, then comes back to the Friendly post office where he cases mail for two hundred more. Delivers that, too. Route takes him 'bout eighty-five miles on roads you can hardly git by on in winter.

  " 'Mornin'," he says to me as he stuffs a sandwich in a sack, then starts in on his breakfast, which is Wheat Ghex and any fruit he can get from our peach tree. He makes himself coffee and eats the cornbread or biscuits Ma saves for him from our meal the night before.

  "Can you think of a way I could earn myself some money?" I ask him, with this froggy kind of voice that shows you aren't woke up yet.

  Dad takes another bite of cornbread, looks at me for a moment, then goes on studying his cereal. Says exactly what I figure he'd say: "Collect some bottles, take 'em in for deposit. Pick up some aluminum cans, maybe, for the recycling place."

  "I mean real money. Got to have it faster than that."

  "How fast?"

  I try to think. Wish I could earn it in a week, but know I can't. Have to go out every day for a whole

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  summer collecting cans and bottles to have much of anything at all.

  "A month, maybe," I tell him.

  "I'll ask along my mail route, but don't know many folks with money to spare," he says. Which is what I thought.

  After Dad's gone off, Becky gets up before Ma, and I fix her a bowl of Cheerios, put her sneakers on so she won't stub her toes, and brush the snarls from her hair.

  Read once in a book about how some kids earned money baby-sitting. Boy, if / ever got paid even a nickel for every time I've taken care of Becky--Dara Lynn, too--I'd have a lot of dollars. I do a whole bunch of jobs that other kids, other places, get paid to do, but it wouldn't ever occur to me to ask for pay. If I asked Dad, he'd say, "You live in this house, boy?" And when I'd say yes, he'd say, "Then you do your share like the rest of us."

  Which is why I never asked.

  "More Ghettos," says Becky, and all the while I'm making her breakfast, I'm thinking the best route to take to find aluminum cans. By the time Dara Lynn gets up, wearing one of Dad's old T-shirts for her nightgown, I'd figured how I could double my can count. But when Ma gets up a few minutes later, she takes one look at me and guesses what I'm thinking.

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  "You got that dog on your mind," she says, lifting the big iron skillet to the stove top and laying some bacon in it.

  "Thinking don't cost nothing," I tell her.

  She just gives me a little smile then and sets about making my bacon crisp, the way I like it, and we don't say any more about Judd's dog.

  Must walk five miles that morning, and all I find is seven cans and one bottle. When Dad comes home about four, he hasn't found anybody looking for help, either, but he says, "The Sears fall catalog come in this afternoon, Marty. You got nothing better to do tomorrow, you could ride my route with me, help deliver 'em."

  I say yes to that. Know I won't get nothing more out of it than a soft drink at the gas station, but I like going around in the Jeep, riding over back roads like Rippentuck and Cow House Run Road with Dad. Can take a bag with me just in case, pick up any cans or bottles I happen to see.

  That night Dad and I sit out on the porch. Ma's in the swing behind us shelling lima beans for next day, and Becky and Dara Lynn's in the grass catching lightning bugs and putting 'em in a jar. Dad laughs at the way Becky squeals when she gits a bug in her hand. But seeing those bugs in a jar reminds me of Shiloh all chained up at Judd's, a prisoner as sure as

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  those bugs. Truth is, about everything reminds me of Shiloh. You once get a dog to look at you the way Shiloh looked at me, you don't forget it.

  "Got seventeen!" Dara Lynn shouts. "Aren't they pretty, Ma?"

  "Almost could turn off the electricity and let 'em light the kitchen," Ma says.

  "You going to let 'em go?" I ask.

  Dara Lynn shrugs.

  "They'll die if you keep 'em in a jar," I tell her.

  Becky, she comes over and crawls onto my lap. "We'll let 'em go, Marty," she says, and kisses me on the neck. A butterfly kiss, she calls it. Bats her eyelashes against my skin, feels like a moth's wings. She laughs and I laugh.

  Then far off I hear a dog. Leastwise I think it's a dog. Might could be a fox cub, but I think, Shiloh.

  "You hear that?" I ask Dad.

  "Just a hound complaining," is all he says.

  Next morning Dad gives me a nudge when he comes through to the kitchen, and I'm up like a shot. We ride to Sistersville and I haul all those catalogs out to the Jeep while Dad cases mail. Not everybody gets a catalog, of course, but anyone who places an order with Sears during the year gets one, so there's lots to load up.

  By quarter of nine, we're on the route; Dad pulls

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  the Jeep up close to the mailboxes and I stuff the mail in, turn up the little red flag on the side, if there is one. Some folks even wait down at the box, and then you feel real bad if you don't have anything for them.

  Dad knows everybody's name, though, and he always takes time to say a little somethin'.

  " 'Mornin', Bill," he s
ays to an old man whose face lights up like Christmas when we stop. "How's the wife doing?"

  " 'Bout the same," the man says, "but this catalog sure going to cheer her." And he sets off for his house, mail tucked under his arm.

  People even leave somethin' in their boxes once in a while for Dad. Mrs. Ellison always leaves a little loaf of banana bread or a cinnamon roll, and Dad saves it to eat with his lunch.

  After we finish Sistersville, we do the Friendly route, but as the Jeep gets up near Shiloh, my heart starts to pound. I'm thinking of closing my eyes tight in case the dog's around. If I see his eyes looking at me, they'll just drive me crazy. I can hear dogs barking when we're a half mile off from Judd Travers's trailer; dogs can pick up the sound of a Jeep that quick.

  I get Judd's mail ready for him. He hasn't got any catalog coming, but he's got two other magazines that'll probably warm his heart-- Guns and

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  Ammo and Shooting Times. Why don't he take a magazine about dogs, I'm thinking--teach him how to be kind?

  All the dogs is chained when we get to his place, so none's waiting for us at the box. But Judd is. He's got a big old sickle; is cutting weeds along his side of the road.

  " 'Mornin'," Dad says as the Jeep pulls up.

  Judd straightens his back. His shirt's all soaked with sweat, and he wears this brown handkerchief tied around his forehead to keep the sweat from running in his eyes.

  "How you doin', Ray?" he says, and comes over to the Jeep with his hand out. I give him his mail, and he even stinks like sweat. I know everybody sweats and everybody's sweat stinks, but seems to me Judd's sweat stinks worse than anyone's. Mean sweat.

  "How come you aren't at work?" Dad says.

  "You think this ain't work?" Judd answers, then laughs. "Got me a week of vacation coming, so I take a day now and then. This Friday I'm going hunting again. Take the dogs up on the ridge and see if I can get me some rabbit. Possum, maybe. Haven't had me a possum dinner for some time."

  "Dogs okay?" Dad asks, and I know he's asking for me.

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  "Lean and mean," says Judd. "Keep 'em half starved, they'll hunt better."

  "Got to keep 'em healthy, though, or you won't have 'em long," Dad says. I know he's saying that for me, too.

  "Lose one, I'll buy another," Judd tells him.

  I can't help myself. I lean out the window where I can see his face real good--big, round face, whiskers on his cheeks and chin where he hasn't shaved his face for five days--tight little eyes looking down on me beneath his bushy brows.

  "That dog that followed me home the other day," I say. "He okay?"

  "He's learnin'," Judd says. "Didn't give him a ounce of supper that night. Just put him where he could watch the others eat. Teach him not to wander off. Got him back in the shed, right now."

  My stomach hurts for Shiloh. "That dog," I say again. "What's his name?"

  Judd just laughs, and his teeth's dark where the tobacco juice oozes through. "Hasn't got a name. Never name any of my dogs. Dogs one, two, three, and four is all. When I want 'em, I whistle; when I don't, I give 'em a kick. 'Git,' 'Scram,' 'Out,' and 'Dammit'; that's my dogs' names." And he laughs, making the fat on his belly shake.

  I'm so mad I can't see. I know I should shut

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  my mouth, but it goes on talking. "His name's Shiloh," I say.

  Judd looks down at me and spits sideways. Studies me a good long time, then shrugs as the Jeep moves forward again and on along the river.

  CHAPTER 4 "M

  arty," Dad says when we're around the bend, "sometimes you haven't got the sense to shut up. You can't go tellin' a man what to call his dog."

  But I'm mad, too. "Better than callin' him 'Git' or 'Scram.'"

  "Judd Travers has the right to name his dog anything he likes or nothing at all. And you've got to get it through your head that it's his dog, not yours, and put your mind to other things."

  The Jeep bounces along for a good long mile before I speak again. "I can't, Dad," I say finally.

  And this time his voice is gentle: "Well, son, you got to try."

  I eat my peanut-butter-and-soda-cracker sandwiches with Dad at noon, plus the zucchini bread Mrs. Ellison had left in her mailbox for him, and after all the Sears catalogs and mail is delivered, we head back to the Sistersville post office. I get my Coca-Cola at the gas station while Dad finishes up, and we start home. I forget all about looking for cans

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  and bottles. The can I'm holding is the only one I got.

  "Judd Travers goes hunting near every weekend, don't he?" I ask Dad.

  "I suppose he does."

  "You can shoot at just about anything that moves?"

  "Of course not. You can only shoot at what's in season."

  I'm thinking how, 'bout a year ago, I was fooling around up on the ridge and come across a dead dog. A dead beagle, with a hole in its head. Never said anything because what was there to say? Somebody out hunting got a dog by mistake, I figured. It happens. But the more I think on it now, I wonder if it wasn't Judd Travers shooting a dog on purpose--shooting one of his own dogs that didn't please him.

  Dad's still talking: "We've got a new game warden in the county, and I hear he's plenty tough. Used to be a man could kill a deer on his own property anytime if that deer was eating his garden; warden would look the other way. But they tell me the new warden will fine you good. Well, that's the way it Ought to be, I guess."

  "What if a man shoots a dog?" I ask.

  Dad looks over at me. "Dogs aren't ever in season, Marty. Now you know that."

  "But what if a man shoots one, anyway?"

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  "That would be up to the sheriff to decide what to do, I guess."

  The next day I start early and set out on the main road to Friendly with a plastic bag. Get me eleven aluminum cans, but that's all. Could walk my legs off for a year and not even have enough to buy half a dog.

  The questions I'd tried not to think about before come back to me now. Would Judd Travers want to sell Shiloh at all? And how much would he want for him if he did? And even if I got Shiloh for my very own, how was I supposed to feed him?

  There aren't many leftover scraps of anything in our house. Every extra bite of pork chop or boiled potato or spoonful of peas gets made into soup. If we'd had enough money for me to have a dog and buy its food and pay the vet and everything, I would have had one by now. Dara Lynn's been begging for a cat for over a year. It isn't that we're rock-poor; trouble is that Grandma Preston's got real feeble, and she's being cared for by Dad's sister over in Clarksburg. Have to have nurses anytime Aunt Hettie goes out, and every spare cent we got goes to pay for Grandma's care. Nothing left over to feed a dog. But I figure to get to that problem later on.

  I wonder if maybe, in time, if I never see Shiloh again, I'll forget about him. But then I'm lying on

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  the couch that night after everyone else has gone to bed, and I hear this far-off sound again, like a dog crying. Not barking, not howling, not whining even. -Crying. And I get this awful ache in my chest. I wonder ,if it is a dog. If it's Shiloh.

  "I know you want a dog, Marty," Ma says to me on Thursday. She's sitting at the kitchen table with cardboard boxes all around her, folding a stack of letters and putting them in envelopes. Ma gets work to do here at home anytime she can. "I wish we had the money so every one of you kids could have a pet. But with Grandma seeming to need more care, we just don't, and that's that."

  I nod. Ma knows me better'n I know myself sometimes, but she don't have this straight. I don't want just any dog. I want Shiloh, because he needs me. Needs me bad.

  It's Friday morning when I hear the sound. Dad's off on his mail route, Dara Lynn and Becky's watching cartoons on TV, Ma's out on the back porch washing clothes in the old washing machine that don't work--only the wringer part works if you turn it by hand. I'm sitting at the table eating a piece of bread spread with lard and jam when I hear the
noise I know is Shiloh. Only the softest kind of noise--and right close.

  I fold the bread up, jelly to the inside, stick it in

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  my pocket, and go out the front door. Shiloh's under the sycamore, head on his paws, just like the day he followed me home in the rain. Soon as I see him, I know two things: (1) Judd Travers has taken his dogs out hunting, like he said, and Shiloh's run away from the pack, and (2) I'm not going to take him back. Not now, not ever.

  I don't have time to think how I had promised Judd if I ever saw Shiloh loose again, I'd bring him back. Don't even think what I'm going to tell Dad. All I know right then is that I have to get Shiloh away from the house, where none of the family will see him. I run barefoot down the front steps and over to where Shiloh's lying, his tail just thumping like crazy in the grass.

  "Shiloh!" I whisper, and gather him up in my arms. His body is shaking all over, but he don't try to get away, don't creep off from me the way he did that first day. I hold him as close and careful as I carry Becky when she's asleep, and I start off up the far hill into the woods, carrying my dog. I know that if I was to see Judd Travers that very minute with his rifle, I'd tell him he'd have to shoot me before I'd ever let him near Shiloh again.

  There are burrs and stickers on the path up the hill, and usually I wouldn't take it without sneakers, but if there's burrs and stickers in my feet, I hardly

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  feel 'em. Know Judd Travers and his hounds won't be over here, 'cause this hill belongs to my dad. Get me as far as the shadbush next to the pine, and then I sit down and hug Shiloh.

  First time I really have him to myself--first time I can hug him, nobody looking, just squeeze his thin body, pat his head, stroke his ears.