A Shiloh Christmas Read online

  Dara Lynn’s crawled up a crabapple tree so she can see better. The line of cars behind the fire truck is longer, more coming all the time. Then I see this dark-green pickup come barreling up over the hill. It slows down, like all the others, then swerves over onto the shoulder, front tires in the field.

  Judd Travers jumps out and starts running toward the bridge.

  “I got to see Judd,” I tell Ma, and I’m running up the road to meet him.

  By the time I get there, though, Judd’s standing still, one hand to his forehead, eyes fixed on the fiery woods across the creek and the blackened land behind it. Suddenly his legs seem to give way. He squats down there in the road and buries his head on his arms.

  I stoop down beside him.

  “Judd, you okay?” I say.

  “My dogs . . . ,” he’s saying, over and over.

  “I let ’em loose, Judd,” I tell him. “I don’t know where they went, but they run off.”

  He jerks around. “You got ’em out?”

  “Yeah, I was—”

  But I don’t get a chance to say any more, ’cause he’s got one arm around my shoulder so hard I almost sit down on the ground.

  “Thank you, Marty. Thank you,” he says.

  And then, almost as though he’d just thought of it, he says, “My trailer burned up, didn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” I say, and he just nods.

  We hear another car door slam and then loud crying, and it’s one of Judd’s neighbors. One of the Donaldsons, I think.

  “My house! My house!” the woman screams, and she just goes on screaming and screaming, pounding her fists on the roof of her car as neighbors put their arms around her.

  I’m thinking what Ma once said—that if there was ever a fire or a tornado coming, the one thing she’d grab once her children were safe would be the photo album of family pictures. And I wonder what this woman’s grieving most, or if it’s just all of it together.

  I can’t tell how wide the fire burned, but after a long while I see firemen coming through the burned-out woods from the other side. Sirens are still wailing, though, more and more trucks coming, wanting to be sure every last spark is out, and I suppose some men will be on duty all night long to see it don’t flare up again. On the other side of the bridge, the black branches of burned-out trees stretch to the right and left, on and on.

  Then I see Dad walking along the edge of the road way down, mailbag over his shoulder, past the line of parked cars, everybody gathering near the bridge. Figure he had to leave his Jeep, couldn’t get through.

  Firemen are pulling one of the hoses back to the truck.

  I wave, and Dad sees me at last.

  “Marty, are your ma and the girls all right?” he calls, and I nod. When he gets up to where I’m standing, he says, “I hear it took out some houses along Old Creek Road.” And then he sees Judd. “Judd, I’m so sorry . . . ,” he says.

  Judd lets out his breath, don’t say a word.

  “Listen. You’re going to stay with us tonight and have some supper,” Dad tells him.

  But Judd shakes his head. “Gotta find my dogs,” he says, and starts back along the road toward his truck.

  The Red Cross shows up with sandwiches and coffee for the firemen and the families who lost their homes. Five houses, along with Judd’s trailer, been burned to the ground, and six or seven more been smoke damaged real bad. An announcement goes out on TV that cots will be put up in Sistersville Elementary for folks to spend the night.

  Church is full up the next morning, and Dad comes too. Ma says it’s times like this that bring a community together, and now we got a pastor to help us through it. She was on the phone the night before, calling to bring a dinner dish to church, to be carried down to Sistersville. The food is placed on a table near the back before it’s transferred to a station wagon and driven off. So all the while I’m sitting in the pew with my family, my nose has the memory of ham and fried chicken, and I wish I’d eaten a bigger breakfast.

  It’s a somber service. Mrs. Maxwell plays “God Will Take Care of You,” and we sing all four verses. Then Pastor Dawes goes to the pulpit.

  “Our hearts are heavy this morning as we grieve with all the families affected by the fire,” he says. “But despite the destruction, no one lost his life, and Lord, we thank you for that, for if your eye is on the sparrow, as the Bible says, then it surely is on us.”

  I hear some “Praise the Lords.”

  But now the preacher’s restless-like; turns his body one way as he talks, then turns it the other. He leans over the pulpit and then rears back, like he can’t get comfortable any which way.

  “But what is God’s message?” he’s saying. “Brothers and sisters, the Lord has sent both a drought and a fire upon us. What will it take to turn us back to God? In the last perilous times of this earth, the Bible tells us, men will become proud, boastful, and haters of God. Children will be disobedient to their parents, unthankful, unholy. . . . ”

  I’m glad Becky is downstairs putting pictures of Jesus in a sticker book.

  “Let us use these punishments to look into our own hearts. Have we lived up to the Lord’s teachings? Have we demanded obedience of our children? Have we preached the gospel to our neighbors?”

  Pastor Dawes takes out a handkerchief folded into a four-inch square and wipes his forehead. Then he goes on quoting the Bible, but somehow I think he’s leavin’ a lot out: “The Bible tells us that if a neighbor acts unholy and neglects to hear the church, ‘let him be unto thee as a heathen man,’ lest worse things fall upon us. . . . ”

  What the heck does that mean? I wonder. Seems to me the preacher’s saying that if us church folks aren’t to blame for the drought and the fire, then somebody else is, and we got to find out who.

  One thing I’ve decided on my own, though—I’ve got to tell Ma and Dad that I let Judd’s dogs out. I was disobedient in going over there, because I knew they wouldn’t want me anywhere near that fire. But maybe this is one way to show Dad he can trust me to tell him stuff. He’ll be angry, knowing the chance I took, but he’ll be glad I’m not keeping it from him neither.

  Don’t think it’s just me; everybody seems unsettled as we’re leaving the church. Some edge around the ones in the doorway who are shaking hands with the preacher and go right out to their cars. Others stay to tell him it was a thoughtful sermon, gave us something to think about.

  We pass Doc Murphy, getting in his old Ford sedan.

  “What did you think of the sermon?” Dad asks him.

  “Well, I’ve heard worse, and I expect the pastor’s given better,” he says.

  Dad has the car radio on to hear if anyone knows yet how the fire started. A reporter’s talking how donations of food and clothing are being brought to Sistersville Elementary, and Dara Lynn wonders if people will still be sleeping there when she and Ruthie go to school the next day.

  “I don’t think so,” says Dad. “Some of them are waiting for relatives to come pick them up, and some are moving in with neighbors. I’m going down this afternoon and see how I can help—take folks to the drugstore to get things they need; drive them to the bus station.”

  I can see right off that Dad and I aren’t going to do any work on the new addition today. I was planning to tell him as soon as we got home about how I let Judd’s dogs loose, but now I’m not sure.

  A woman on the radio’s talking about how the Lord blessed her, because the fire came right up to the edge of her lawn and stopped. Didn’t even get as far as the kids’ swing set, she says. But why would God save her house and let the others burn to the ground? I’m wondering. If I had saved Judd’s brown dog and let the white one die, wouldn’t that be wrong? How come it’s okay if God does the exact same thing?

  When we pull up to the house and get out, we see a trail of paw prints going up the porch steps and over to the window in our living room. And the glass is all smudged on the outside where an animal has been close up. Inside, Shiloh is barking up a
storm.

  eight

  “LOOKS LIKE SHILOH’S BUDDY CAME by while we were gone,” Ma says, opening the door to let him out. Shiloh likes to explore the woods with a black Lab that comes over from time to time—the Ellisons’ dog.

  But just to be sure it wasn’t Judd’s dogs, I follow Shiloh around to keep him safe while he does his business before I take him back inside. Dad’s already at the table, and Ma takes a roast from the pot.

  “C’mon, girls,” Dad says. “Let’s eat.”

  We’re passing around the pole beans and turnips, and Ma says, “I don’t know, Ray. Can’t see how anything Pastor Dawes said this morning is helpful right now. Pastor Evans would have talked about the love this community has shown each other in the past, and how we’re called on now to be as generous as we can.”

  Dad reaches over and cuts up Becky’s meat for her. “Well, I suppose most preachers have a favorite subject they like to talk about, and Dawes sure seems to have a lot to say about sin.”

  “He doesn’t seem like a happy man,” Ma goes on, and then she stops, glancing at Dara Lynn and Becky, like she’s already said too much.

  “Well, Ruthie thinks he’s mean!” says Dara Lynn.

  “You shouldn’t be going around repeating that,” Ma tells her. “Everyone probably thinks their parents are mean from time to time.”

  “Bet you tell your friends I’m mean,” Dad jokes.

  Dara Lynn’s got her mouth full, but she shakes her head.

  “No? What about that time you were squeezin’ that squeaky toy on and on and I told you to stop and you didn’t?”

  Dara Lynn’s eyes open wide with the memory. “And you grabbed it out of my hands and threw it out the back door and we never did find it.” Her face is full of delight and mischief. Anytime Ma or Dad makes a mistake, she rolls in it, like a dog rolling in something nasty.

  “Actually, we did,” Dad says. “I found it, anyway. It was out there in the tall grass, and I ran over it with the lawn mower.”

  Both girls gasp and stare at him, then start to giggle.

  “So wasn’t I mean then?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Dara Lynn decides. “But you never made me mix up all the food on my plate and put it in my milk and drink it.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Dara Lynn, don’t exaggerate,” says Ma.

  “I’m not ! Ruthie told me. When she was in first grade, she was playing around with her food—dropping pieces of bread in her milk—and her dad said she had to mix up the leftover food on her plate and put it in her milk and drink it down for all the starving children in Africa.”

  “Let’s not repeat things like this in front of a four-year-old,” Dad says, nodding toward Becky, who’s staring, mouth open.

  Ma changes the subject, but after Becky slides down from her chair to go watch the cartoon channel, Ma says, “Dara Lynn, I don’t mean to pry into your friends’ lives, but has Ruthie ever said that her father hurt her in any way?”

  “He hurts her feelings!” Dara Lynn says defensively. “But he don’t hit her or nothing that I know of.”

  “Well, please tell us if he does,” Ma says.

  After Dara Lynn goes into the living room to watch TV with Becky, Ma’s rinsing off dishes in the sink, Dad’s there with his coffee, and I figure this is as good a time as any for my confession.

  “I got something I want to tell you,” I say, and get it over with fast. “I let Judd’s dogs loose before the fire got there.”

  I think I’ve said it clear enough, but they look like they don’t understand.

  “What do you mean, before the fire?” Dad asks.

  “I mean . . . before the fire got that far,” I tell him. “Just before the firemen came.”

  Ma grabs the back of her chair and slowly sits down, dish towel in her lap. “You went over there?” she asks. “That’s where you were?”

  “Marty!” Dad puts his coffee down so hard it thumps the table. “What in the world were you thinking?”

  “I know I shouldn’t have, but Judd was at work and I knew his dogs couldn’t get out, and—”

  “You risked your life for two dogs?” cries Ma.

  And even though the three of us are trying to keep our voices down, Dara Lynn’s right there in the doorway, taking it all in.

  “I had my escape all worked out,” I say, which wasn’t entirely true. “I could see the flames way back in the trees, and I promised myself if it got up to twenty yards behind me, I’d drop my bike and roll down the bank into the creek.” Telling it now, I leave out the part about trying to save my bike, too.

  Dad lets out his breath and pushes away from the table, then just sits there staring at me. “You think fire’s that predictable? Don’t you think a spark could set the brush on fire along the creek and travel faster than you were going on your bike? Marty, you could have been trapped before you knew it!” His face looks all pulled out of shape.

  I swallow.

  “I could have kept this secret,” I say, like maybe I’d at least get points for that. “I didn’t have to tell you.”

  “I’m just so—so—astonished at your poor judgment!” Ma says. “I can understand how you’d want to save those dogs, but can you even imagine the grief you’d put us through if anything happened to you?”

  “I just . . . just didn’t think it would,” I answer. “But now, I see how it might. . . .” And then I shut up and wait for my punishment.

  Dad shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say,” he says at last.

  I don’t know either. Seems like every time I get in real trouble, it’s over a dog.

  And this time it’s caused a second problem. . . . Now I’m going to worry every minute Shiloh’s outside that Judd’s dogs will come by and tear into him. Don’t know if they’ve calmed down any or are still half-crazed over the fire.

  I lay low that afternoon, doing my homework for math. Still got till the end of the semester to interview Rachel and write her biography, so I put that off once again. Read the other autobiography I’ve chosen for English. I’ve already read Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers, not no accident I chose that, I guess, and now I’m reading one by Gary Paulsen.

  I help Dara Lynn with her spelling, trying not to do or say anything that will make things worse between me and my folks. Dad telling me that he don’t know what to say is almost worse than a punishment, because it don’t clear up anything at all.

  He spends the afternoon in Sistersville, and when the Jeep pulls in about five o’clock, Judd’s pickup is right behind it. Dad comes into the kitchen—Judd waiting there in the doorway.

  “Lou, Judd got a sleeping bag from the Red Cross, and he’d like to sleep outside here for a while and see if his dogs don’t come back,” Dad says.

  Judd shifts his feet uneasily. He looks tired—needs a shave.

  “I could stay right out on the porch and be gone when you wake up in the mornings,” he says. “I’ll try not to be any trouble.”

  “Well . . . of course, Judd! But you’re not sleepin’ anywhere till I get some dinner in you,” Ma says.

  “Thank you, but I had me a big supper down there at the school,” Judd says.

  “Listen. We’ve got an old tent we’ve used for family camping,” Dad tells him. “Why don’t we set that up, and you can leave your things in there while you’re at work—not have to be clearing out every morning. At least it would be someplace to stay while you’re thinkin’ what to do.”

  Judd turns that over awhile in his head. “Appreciate it. Thanks.”

  I feel bad that the first thought going through my head was that Ma might put me back there in the girls’ bedroom and let Judd have our couch. That he’s agreed to live in a tent seems to make us all happy.

  I put on my jacket and follow them outside—help clear away some brush to make a level spot where we can set up the tent, no tree roots digging through the ground—and I bring Dad’s hammer so he can pound in the stakes.

  Ma gets together some t
owels and soap, a jug of water, a flashlight, a basin . . . I don’t know what all . . . and gives them to Judd for his tent. A pillow. A blanket. Dad even finds him a Coleman lantern back in our shed. There’s a rickety old outhouse up in the woods, girls won’t go in if you paid ’em a hundred dollars, but Judd says it’ll do.

  “Is Judd going to live here now?” Becky asks. She never liked him much before, and I don’t know that she likes him any more now.

  “Till he figures out his next step,” says Ma. “He wants to be outdoors so his dogs can find him.”

  “Do you think they’ll ever come back?” asks Dara Lynn.

  “Only thing he’s got left, besides his truck. Sure hope so,” says Dad.

  And this would be the perfect time for one of my parents to turn to me and say, Marty, you did a brave thing, rescuing Judd’s dogs, even though it was dangerous.

  But they don’t.

  There’s no Halloween up here this year. Most times cars drive up full of children, take them from one house to another for trick-or-treats. Sometimes older kids ride up in the back of a pickup, and that’s most fun of all.

  But this year, with all those burned-out houses across the creek, and the ones full of smoke on their walls, don’t seem like a time for celebrating. So the Lions Club down in Sistersville puts on a Halloween party for kids four to twelve. I don’t want to go—it’ll just be little kids there—but Ma wants me to keep an eye on the girls. She looks in her ragbag and finds old torn shirts and ripped-out pants for our costumes. Then she stitches a couple patches on them, messes up our hair, and smudges our faces with ash from the potbellied stove in the living room.

  “Look at us, Daddy!” Becky crows.

  Daddy puts down his magazine. “Why’ve you got your good clothes on?” he asks.

  “Daaaddy!” the girls cry, and he laughs.

  He goes to the closet for his jacket and finds a dirty old cap of his. Puts it on my head, and I grin at myself in the mirror. If I find I’m the only one there from middle school, I can just pull the cap half down over my face.