A Shiloh Christmas Read online

  “Rachel?” I call.

  The crying stops right off. Silence.

  “Hey, Rachel?” I say again.

  And then a soft voice says, “Who’s out there?”

  “Me. Marty Preston. David Howard’s here too. And my dog. I wanted to interview you for our assignment. Why are you in there?”

  No answer.

  “You want out?” says David, and without waiting any longer, he slides the bolt and opens the door.

  Rachel’s standing there, nose all red and runny, and all she says is, “Wait. I have to use the bathroom.” And she makes a run for the house.

  We stare at each other.

  “What the heck . . . ?” says David.

  “You suppose she and Ruthie were playing a game and Ruthie forgot she was in there?” I say, trying to figure it out.

  We look around the shed. Everything in order. Garden tools on hooks, hose all coiled up, baskets of hand tools—trowels and hammers and screwdrivers . . . Rachel could probably have pounded one of those aluminum walls down if she had to. But where is everybody?

  A couple minutes later, Rachel comes out the back door, and she goes straight into the shed.

  “Lock the door again,” she says. “Hurry!”

  ten

  “WHAT?” I SAY.

  But there’s panic in her voice. “Hurry!” she says again. “Before my dad gets back.”

  “He put you in here?” David asks, holding the door fast as she tries to close it.

  “Please!” Rachel begs. “I’ll really get in trouble if you don’t.”

  “I just wanted to do that assignment,” I tell her again.

  “We’ll do it at school. At lunchtime, maybe, okay? Please, just close the door and lock it.”

  We close the door.

  “Where’s your ma and Ruthie?” I call out.

  “At the doctor. I’m being punished. You really need to leave,” she tells us. “Lock the door.”

  And her voice is so panicky that we slide the bolt. But we don’t ride off. No way are we going to leave her here like this. What if there was another fire in the neighborhood and she couldn’t get out? The preacher would do this to his kid?

  There’s no house close on either side, but we get on our bikes and take them back to the stand of trees where we can’t be seen. And we sit there on a fallen tree trunk, our eyes on that shed. I got a finger around Shiloh’s collar and tell him to sit.

  It’s ten minutes before the preacher’s car shows up. We hear the car door slam. Then the front door of the house. But nobody comes out.

  The anger inside me is churning around like a lunch gone bad.

  “If I was in that shed, I’d be tearing the place down,” I tell David, my jaws tight.

  “I’d call the police when I got out,” David whispers back.

  “She don’t even have a jacket, and it’s really cold in there. Could have got one when she went in the house, but then, I guess, he’d know she’d been out.”

  After a few more minutes, David says, “Think we should tell the police?”

  But just then the back door opens and the preacher comes down the steps. He walks out to the shed, his back straight, arms down at his sides. You’d think he was in the army.

  “Are you ready to be obedient?” we hear him call to Rachel.

  I guess she don’t answer, because he says, “I’m waiting to unlock the door, Rachel.”

  And when she still don’t answer, either his heart or his curiosity makes him open the door. Rachel pushes past him like a soldier herself— won’t give him so much as a look.

  He grabs at her arm. “I asked if you—”

  “I hate you! I hate you!” she screams, and jerks her arm free. Then she breaks into a run, crosses the yard, and thunders up the back steps. Door slams.

  Preacher stands there a long moment looking up at the house, his face a puzzlement. Then he puts one hand to his forehead and stays that way a good six, seven seconds. Looks like a man who’s lost his way and can’t make out the map. Then his shoulders lift in a slow kind of sigh, and he walks back to the house.

  David and I spend the next couple hours riding around, asking folks if anyone’s seen two stray dogs, a brown and a white one, but no one has, and finally David goes on home.

  That night, after the girls are in bed, I tell Ma and Dad about Rachel in the shed. Don’t want Dara Lynn hearing any of that and spreading it around school.

  Ma listens with one hand over her mouth, then turns to Dad. Both of them been sitting together on the couch, feet sharing the footstool, watching the news.

  “Ray, I think it’s time to do something,” Ma says.

  Dad mutes the TV and thinks for a minute. “I don’t see that we’re called to do anything,” he says.

  “Why not? I think we should report it,” says Ma.

  “We report that a girl’s been locked in a shed for a while as punishment, we got to report every family we know who still gives their child a spanking, or takes a switch to his legs.”

  “Then maybe we should!” Ma says fiercely, and Pa takes both feet off the footstool, places them firmly on the floor.

  “Lou, a parent’s got a right to discipline his kid,” he says. “Maybe not the way we’d do it, but one will sit his child in the corner, the other puts his child in the shed. I can’t go sayin’ one’s okay, the other’s not.”

  “Even if he puts a child in the shed, out in the cold, and locks the door? And drives away?” Ma says. She realizes her voice is too loud and sinks back against the couch cushion.

  “Marty don’t know how long he was gone for sure. Don’t even know if the preacher maybe parked somewhere nearby where he could keep an eye on things. You said yourself we’ve never seen either of those girls with cuts or bruises on them.” He turns to me, still standing in the doorway. “You ever see Rachel come to school with a black eye?”

  I shake my head. “But I never looked at Rachel and saw happy, either.”

  Dad leans forward and puts his head in his hands. “You’re right about that,” he says. “Never saw a member of that family look happy, to tell the truth. But you don’t go reporting a family for not being happy.”

  Ma’s got her arms folded across her chest, and she’s tapping one elbow with her finger. “I’m going to see what I can find out from Mrs. Dawes,” she says. “Judith and I are working together on the Thanksgiving dinner we’re serving the families that were burned out. I’ll find a chance to talk with her then.”

  “Where you going to have it?” Dad asks.

  “I think we can squeeze everybody in that basement room at the church. A few of our other families are going to eat with them, so they won’t feel so much like charity.”

  I know right away that one of those families will be us, having our Thanksgiving dinner there this year to keep the Old Creek Road families company. But what I’m feeling is that everything’s hanging, nothing settled: we don’t know what’ll happen to Rachel; the burned-out families don’t know what’s going to happen to them; Judd don’t know if his dogs will ever come back; and I don’t know when I’ll get a room of my own. Don’t even know how long it’ll be before my folks feel good about me again. Wish I’d be punished, just so I could have it over and done with.

  Sometimes I think I can handle bad news better than I can handle being unsettled, everybody just waiting. . . .

  Monday, Rachel won’t look my way, and I try not to look at her, either. I know she’s embarrassed by what we saw at her place, and I don’t know what to say to her about it. Just before we get on the bus to go home, though, she says, “If you want to interview me tomorrow, we could do it over the lunch period.”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll look for you.” That’s something to be happy about.

  But when Dad comes home from work, he don’t look all that happy and don’t have much to say. Stands at the kitchen window drinking a glass of cold tea Ma left for him in the refrigerator, looking out over the yard.

  “Hard
day?” Ma asks, reaching into the cupboard.

  Dad sighs. “Yeah . . .” He takes another drink of tea. Finally, “And I said something I shouldn’t.”

  Don’t know who he’s talking to, but I look up from my homework there on the table. Ma takes down the cinnamon can and opens the lid. “What was that?” she says.

  “Ed Sholt was raking leaves when I stopped at his box this afternoon, and you know how he’s always felt about Judd. Well, he can’t go on claiming that Judd set that fire when it’s been proved how it started, so he says, ‘Ray, somebody says you got folks living in a tent on your land. That true?’ I can tell he’s spoiling for a quarrel, so I just say, ‘I got a guest camping there for a while.’”

  Dad turns away from the window. “Ed says, ‘Isn’t there a regulation against that?’ And . . . well, my back was hurting and I wasn’t in any mood for that nonsense, so I say, ‘If there is and your house ever burns down, Ed, I’ll make sure you don’t move in.’”

  Ma gives him an exasperated look. “Oh, Ray . . . ,” she says.

  Dad goes on: “I just closed his box and drove off, but he yelled something after me, about keeping Shiloh away from his geese, or he’d come home full of buckshot.”

  Now I jump in the conversation: “Shiloh don’t chase geese! He’s a fraidy-cat when it comes to geese.”

  Ma leans back against the counter. “Ray, you know how quick-tempered Ed Sholt is. You didn’t have to say what you did.”

  “Okay, I already said I shouldn’t!” Now Dad turns on her. “What’s done is done. I’m not afraid of Ed. I was just . . . thinking of Shiloh.”

  What if Shiloh really did chase his geese? I’m thinking. What kind of life is it for a dog if you have to keep him inside all the time?

  I don’t know how good an interview it’ll be in a noisy cafeteria, all the hollering and laughing and chairs sliding in and out. David agrees it’ll be a better interview if he’s not there. Embarrassing enough for her to face the one of us.

  There’s a certain table in the cafeteria that nobody likes to sit at, right next to a table reserved for teachers. Only a couple kids there, so Rachel and I place our trays down at the other end. I decide right off I’m not going to mention the shed.

  Get my notebook and pen ready. “Guess maybe I should find out where you lived before you moved out here,” I tell her. “Can start with where you were born, if you want.” Then I take a bite of my ham and cheese and pick up my pen. Rachel just sits looking down at her chicken salad.

  “It was because I was watching a program he didn’t like,” she says. And I know she’s not going to let it pass.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I wasn’t going to ask—”

  But it’s the shed she wants to talk about. “I don’t see anything wrong with the program. The other girls are allowed to watch. When he found out I’d turned it on again, he pulled me out to the shed and locked me in it.” She’s speaking softly so nobody else can hear.

  I take a big breath. “Rachel,” I say. “It’s none of my business, but has your dad ever hit you? Things like that?”

  “I wish he did hit me!” she says, though I don’t believe her. “I think I’d rather have that and get it over, than be told how I’m rotting my mind and disappointing my family and disobeying my father and losing my chance at heaven and . . .”

  She picks up her fork and jabs at her salad like it’s something evil. I take another bite of my sandwich, chewing in slow motion. Don’t know what to say.

  Rachel gives this little shrug. “Okay. Biography: We moved here from Weston. My dad had a church there for a while. I’m not sure where we lived before that—down around Hinton, I think. Ma told me once we’ve moved seven times since I was born. What else do you need to know?” Her words come out all choppy and cold.

  “Well . . . what do you like to do when you’re not in school? Any hobbies?” I ask.

  Right off I can see her face relax some.

  “Dance. I like all kinds of dance—ballet and modern and jazz. I just like moving to music,” she says. “When both of my parents are out, I put on this CD and Ruthie and I dance together in my room. I wish I could take interpretive dancing. I saw that on TV once and really liked it.”

  “Maybe you’ll turn out to be a dancer,” I say, trying to think of something cheerful.

  She looks at me like I just said pigs can sing. “Are you kidding? I can’t even watch it on TV. Dad wouldn’t let us go to the Halloween party because there might be dancing at it.”

  “Oh. Well, you ever go places on your own? I mean, do you have a bike?” I ask.

  Rachel shakes her head. “Wish I did. I think about leaving all the time. Once I’m eighteen I will, maybe. But what would Ruthie do? She never fights back, so I do it for her.”

  “Your ma ever stick up for you?”

  “She tries, but gives up. Never helps. You won’t put any of this in the article, will you? About that, and the shed?”

  “’Course not,” I say. Then, changing the subject, “What’s the worst part about moving to a new place? I never did.”

  “Having to start all over at everything,” she says. “New school, new church, new dentist, new doctor . . . I have a lot of earaches, so a neighbor suggested a Dr. Murphy. Is he nice?”

  “He’s the best,” I tell her. I start to say he stitched up my dog, but figure that’s maybe not the right kind of recommendation to give out. For the rest of the lunch period she talks about the things she and her little sister like to do together—how she’s teaching Ruthie to knit, and how once, in the last place they lived, they got this big piece of cardboard and used it to slide down a long, grassy hill. She’s also started piano lessons.

  I try to think of things that would make a good biography. Since I asked her all the things she likes, I ask her to name something she hates. Then I wish I hadn’t, because she might think I’m trying to get her to answer, “My dad.” But no.

  “Having my picture taken,” she says.

  “Don’t know why. You got nice teeth,” I say, and that makes her laugh. She really does have a nice smile, just don’t use it very much.

  It’s a long morning at Dr. Collins’s clinic the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Dogs come in to be groomed, cats to be rid of matted-up hair on their bellies. Got a parrot losing its feathers, a snake—can’t tell if it’s dead or not. A rabbit’s got an eye infection. . . .

  “Everybody wants his pet looking nice for Thanksgiving,” says Chris, the vet’s assistant. He’s studying to be a vet and says it takes a long time to pass all the tests.

  You’ve got to know a lot to be a veterinarian. All humans have two eyes and ears and nostrils, two lungs and kidneys and arms and legs. All alike in that way. No feathers or scales or fur on any of ’em. But a whole lot of difference between a fish and a bird and a goat.

  I probably work harder that morning than I ever have at the clinic. After I clean up the poop in the dog run, I put fresh towels in the cages, wash all the dishes in a special solution, and refill all the water bowls. I put fresh straw in a rabbit’s cage and water in its bottle. I file records, answer the phone, make appointments, and check supplies in the cupboard.

  Around twelve thirty, I see Dad waiting in the Jeep, so I get my jacket.

  “I don’t know what we’d have done without you today, Marty,” Dr. Collins says.

  “Well, I like doing it all,” I tell him. “Except when an animal dies.”

  “I feel the same way,” says Dr. Collins. And then, “I almost forgot. Someone brought in an injured dog a couple days ago. Hit by a car, and he died right here on the table. Hurt bad. A brown coon dog . . .” He goes to a cupboard and pulls out a drawer, but my stomach’s already knotted up. “Had an old collar on him, but the letters were so worn I can’t make out the name. Any idea who he belonged to?”

  I know even before I look. It’s a cheap fake leather collar, and the owner’s name had been stamped on with some kind of machine in gold-colored lettering—A . .
. V . . . E . . . R . . . is all I can make out, but I know right off it’s Judd’s.

  “I’ll take it to him,” I say. “Judd Travers.”

  “You know him? Tell him we’re sorry, but the dog had internal injuries and died before I could do anything for him.” He shakes his head. “A dog runs free, these things happen.”

  eleven

  I SURE AS HECK DIDN’T want the job of telling Judd that one of his dogs was dead.

  If this had been a couple of years ago, it could have been Judd himself who killed it in a fit over how it didn’t snap to soon enough when he whistled. Like I said, he never even cared enough to give his dogs names. All he cared about was how they could help him hunt each fall. Now it was November—deer season—he don’t even have a gun. Those burned up too. Only thing he goes in the woods for now is to find his dogs.

  I think he first started to feel something for them back when I earned Shiloh from him; after Shiloh saved his life by letting us know Judd had run his truck into a ditch and was hurt bad; and then, when he saved Shiloh, by jumping in Middle Island Creek last spring when it turned into a river. After we fenced in Judd’s backyard for him, giving his dogs a place to run instead of being chained, they got more playful. And now that they’re gone, he misses a dog more than he ever thought he could.

  I couldn’t find my voice to tell Dr. Collins it was me who let those dogs out. I know he’d say it was better than letting them burn—I was giving them a chance. But I never thought they’d get all the way down here to St. Mary’s.

  When Dad picks me up, I tell him how worried I am of what Judd might do, he finds out one of his dogs got run over—start drinkin’ and drivin’ crazy. . . .

  “Marty, where you get the idea you’re responsible for what Judd does or don’t do?” says Dad. “He’s had problems before you ever came along. Judd’s a grown man—got to make his own choices.”

  I guess I’m worrying Judd might get the idea that he give up Shiloh too soon and want him back again—that Shiloh once and always will belong to him, no matter what, especially since I’m the one let those dogs out.