A Shiloh Christmas (2 page)

But it's a good season for fixing up a place, and Dad's building an extra room at the side of our house. It'll be a big bedroom for him and Ma, so I can have their old one. My sisters got the bedroom I used to have. Two girls in two beds meant I got the living room couch.

Dad thinks he'll have the new room done by Christmas, and I can't wait. Then when David Howard comes over to spend the night, we'll have a door to close, and believe me, I'll have a lock on it Dara Lynn won't be able to open in a million years.

Only chance Dad has to work on it, though, is Sundays. The other six days of the week he's a mail carrier, driving the back roads in his Jeep. Starts his day up in Sistersville casing mail for over three hundred families. After he delivers that, he drives to the post office in Friendly and does the same thing there. Pulls up to each mailbox along the road, lifts the flap, and stuffs the letters inside.

Sometimes I go along to help, especially when the new catalogs come out. What I like best is when I open a flap and find that Mrs. Ellison has left him a piece of walnut cake or the Donaldsons have put in a loaf of banana bread. We eat it right there in the Jeep.

On this last Saturday of August, though, David Howard—my buddy—bikes up from Friendly after lunch, and we're setting out with my wagon along Middle Island Creek, looking for empty bottles I might get the deposit back from Wallace's store. Aluminum cans I can get a few pennies for at the junkyard. Everything I earn goes toward the bill I owe Doc Murphy for sewing up Shiloh after that old German shepherd attacked him. That was a year ago, not more'n a week after Shiloh come to me a second time, and I'd built him a little shack up in the woods where my folks couldn't see him. And that old shepherd got in—had Shiloh cornered.

Right now I figure we've found about a dollar forty cents' worth of cans and bottles, but we've also got us an August sun so hot it'd melt the candles on a birthday cake, wouldn't even have to light the match. Shiloh trots along beside us, but I won't let him go in the water.

“How much more do you owe Doc Murphy?” David asks me.

“Not sure,” I say. “May be an old man by the time it's paid off. But I do yard work for him sometimes too, and he takes that off the bill.”

“You sure must love that dog,” David says, wiping the sleeve of his black T-shirt across his forehead. Got a picture of a dragon on it, breathing fire, which don't make him any cooler. He's not got one ounce of fat on his body. Used to be he was heavier'n me, but now every pound he's got is pure energy.

I can see the white steeple of a small church through the trees up ahead, and David says, “Hear you're getting a new preacher.”

“That's right,” I tell him. “Been three years since we had a preacher at all. I can hardly remember the last one. Now the church is all scrubbed up. Ma and the girls are going to service tomorrow, but I'll be helping Dad build our new addition.”

I'll be interested, though, 'cause a lot of my
whys
are in the preacher's department. Like, last fall, when Dad and I were watching football on TV, a reporter asks this quarterback how come he played so well this time, and the quarterback says it's all the Lord's doing. And then, couple weeks later, another team beats 'em, and the reporter asks the guy on
this
team how he managed to make that terrific touchdown. And
this
guy just points
one finger toward heaven. What I want to know is what God's got to do with football, and just whose team he's on. Makes me cross-eyed trying to figure it out.

“What's that up there?” David says.

We slog through the weeds and jump a ditch. Shiloh's nosing around something that looks to be an old wood chair somebody's thrown down the slope, got one leg broke. Something's different about this chair, though.

David grabs the back of it and sets it up, all lopsided. It's got wooden arms, but near the end of each one, somebody's fastened a big clamp. You can open and close them like a crab's claw.

“What kind of contraption you figure this to be?” I say.

David studies it a minute. “It's for holding somebody still, is what I think,” he says. “Maybe a doctor's chair for giving shots to little kids.”

“Dad could fix that leg,” I say.

“If they'd wanted it fixed, they wouldn't have thrown it away,” says David. He studies it some more. Then he starts to grin. “Could turn it into an electric chair, you know.”

David Howard has the wildest imagination of anyone I ever met. You could tell him that a man was missing
when he got on the bus at Friendly, and by the time we got to school, he'd have that man's body shot twice through the head and thrown in the Ohio River. But he's got me grinning too.

“Okay,” I say. “I'll take it.” And we both of us carry that chair up the bank and set it in my wagon. I almost laugh out loud, thinking how I'll play electrocution with Dara Lynn—Dara Lynn in the chair, of course. Don't know what that new preacher would say about playing that, but it's something to do the next time I have to watch the girls for Ma.

Back home, though, I carry that three-legged chair to the old shed behind the chicken coop. More I think on it, I give up the idea of playing electrocution with anyone. Too old for that, for one thing. Plus, then I'd have to explain what electrocution was to Becky, and a four-year-old wouldn't understand the logic in that anymore'n I do.

Going to save it for Halloween—put an old straw man in it, with a square head, arms in the wrist clamps, wires attached to his head, and a metal bolt going clear through it: Frankenstein in the laboratory, right out there on our front porch. Halloween's a big deal in West Virginia.

While Ma and the girls are at church the next morning, Dad and me manage to get the roof on the new addition, and the waterproof sheets that'll cover it till we buy some shingles. Wanted to be sure we get this done before it rains, but don't look like that's about to happen anytime soon. We're pretty proud of ourselves, though—still bragging about it while we all sit down to Sunday dinner. Becky don't want to talk about roofing, though.

“What's ‘trespasses'?” she asks, pushing all the gravy to one side of her plate so it's not anywhere near touching her lima beans.

“Sins,” says Dara Lynn, important-like.

“What's ‘sin'?” asks Becky.

“Anything that makes Jesus sad,” Ma tells her.

Dad's passing the chicken platter around the table. “So how'd the preacher do? You like his preaching?” he asks Ma.

She don't answer right away. “I think it takes a new preacher time to settle in,” she says at last.

I figure that's about as lukewarm an answer can get without any ice on it.

“Wouldn't hurt him to smile a little,” Dara Lynn says.

“That's true,” says Ma. “But he's probably nervous his first day.”

“I sure wouldn't want preaching for a job,” I say, and wonder if Dad can tell I've got a piece of chicken in my hand under the table, and Shiloh's sniffing it out.

“Marty, quit feedin' that dog at mealtime,” Dad says.

He can tell.

“Marty always feeds Shiloh at the table,” Dara Lynn pipes up.

“Just butt out!” I tell her.

“Would you two stop squabbling?” says Ma.

“They're making Jesus sad,” says Becky in a pitiful little voice, and suddenly all of us start laughing. When your littlest sister begins preaching at you, you know it's time to quit.

S
EPTEMBER STARTS OUT DRY TOO.
The corn in people's gardens looks like it's ready for Halloween. A small shower or two just leaves folks panting for more, and I have to take a bath in Dara Lynn and Becky's water to help save it. Gross.

The faucets in our house are hooked to an electric pump that brings water up from a well. Dad won't let us use the hand pump anymore till the drought's over—wastes too much when the water comes splashing out.

Two days before school begins, Judd Travers stops by in his pickup.

Shiloh can tell the sound of his truck before any of us even know it's coming. He'll be there in the shade, tongue hanging out, waiting for a breeze, and all at once
his jaws snap shut and his ears lift up. His whole body tenses, eyes fixed on the lane, and it'll be five, six seconds before we hear anything. Another five before we see the front end of Judd's pickup making the turn this side the lilac bushes.

Ma's just finished a wash in the machine on our back porch. In good weather she likes to dry the clothes outside to save on our electric bill.

“Give me every piece of worn clothing you two are even
thinking
about wearing to school the first couple weeks,” she tells Dara Lynn and me, “'cause I can't speak for how much water is left in the well after today.”

I give her a pair of jeans and a couple T-shirts, and she's on me right away about socks and underwear, so I have to go back and look in the corner of the closet where I keep my stuff. I come out with a handful of those. Dara Lynn, of course, has a bushel basket full, and when Ma gives a little cry, Dara Lynn says, “Well, I'm
thinking
about wearing all of it.”

But finally the clothes are washed, and I help Ma hang them on the line. It's Dara Lynn's job to hand them to us a piece at a time. I'd just clamped a clothespin onto a shirt when Judd Travers pulls up in the clearing.

“Hi, Judd!” Ma calls, as he opens the door and sets one leg out on the ground. “How you doing?”

“Makin' out okay,” he says, dragging his bad leg out after the good one. “How you?”

“Doing fine.”

Shiloh's on his feet now, but he don't start toward the house. Just standing there watching, his tail as still as a fence post.

Judd's got small eyes, close together on his face, and a mouth that don't seem to open as wide as it should, like the words are coming out the corners when he talks.

He makes his way around the sheet Ma's hung on the line and comes over where Dara Lynn's waiting with a sock in her hand, ready for Ma to take it. “On my way down to the store,” he says. “Hear Wallace is stocking up on gallon jugs of water, and wondered if you could use some.”

“Folks are putting in a supply already?” asks Ma, resting one hand on her hip, the other on the clothesline, and Dara Lynn, squatting there on the ground, sinks down into the grass and sits cross-legged. “Sure hope it don't come to that.”

“Me either,” says Judd, “and the price'll go up if it does. I got no well, so got no choice. But thought I'd stop by in case you wanted me to get you some.”

“I appreciate it,” says Ma. “But so far the well's putting out. We're careful, though.” She motions toward the
clothes basket. “Have to think of all the different ways I can use the wash water before I throw it out. Wish we could have saved our corn.”

Judd nods. “My tomatoes are all dried up.” He looks over at Becky, who's hanging on the tire swing, waiting for me to come over, give her a push. “You like tomato sandwiches, little gal?”

Becky only wrinkles up her nose, and he laughs.

“But thanks for stopping by to ask,” Ma says. “We're going to hear the new preacher again tomorrow. You heard him yet?”

Judd looks down at the ground and spits sideways. “Ain't much for preachin',” he says.

“Well, you ever get the idea to go, you're welcome to sit with us.”

Judd gives a halfway nod and turns toward his truck again.

“You want me to bike over and help unload the jugs when you get back?” I ask.

“Think I can handle that okay, Marty. But if you find time to come by, chase my dogs around a little, they'd like that,” Judd says.

“I will,” I say. I know Shiloh won't be coming with me, though. Judd starts back to his pickup and sees Shiloh standing off under the tree, just watching. For
a minute he pauses, like maybe he'll go over and stroke his head, but then he heads for the truck and drives off down the lane.

Here's the thing: If you're a stranger, and you stop, pat Shiloh on the head, talk to him in a kind voice, Shiloh's tail will start wagging the next time he sees you, he's your friend. He remembers. But if you treat him mean, if all he knows from you is a kick in the ribs, a chain holding him to a tree, suppertime comes and you forget to feed him, he remembers that too. And no matter how Judd tries—even saved Shiloh's life once—I can never get Shiloh to cross that bridge over Middle Island Creek and go visit the man who used to own him. Wonder if he ever will.