A Shiloh Christmas

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  At some point he remembers to call the roll, and when he says, “Rachel Dawes?” I look around and see the new girl answer. The preacher’s daughter? She sees me looking at her and stares right back, not a trace of a smile. Must be a rule against it in that family.

  Rest of the week goes okay; I like some classes better than others. David Howard invites me to stay over at his place Friday night, so Ma lets me put some clean underwear and a toothbrush in my backpack, and I get off the bus with him down in Friendly.

  I don’t guess anyone really feels as easy in another person’s house as he does in his own, but I like being at David’s just the same. It’s sure quieter when you don’t have sisters. David don’t even have brothers.

  “How’s the new addition coming, Marty?” his dad asks as he spears one of the small red potatoes on his plate and pops it in his mouth. Got his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows—just came home from work. Big lock of sandy hair falls over his forehead, same color as David’s. Cheeks are dotted with tiny pits that make him look rugged, like he’s climbed mountains or something. Far as I know he’s worked for the Tyler Star-News a long time.

  “Well, we got the frame up and the roof on, but no windows,” I say. “Dad wanted to get the roof on before it rains.”

  “No telling how long that will be,” says David’s mom. She and Ma have the same blue eyes, but Mrs. Howard wears her hair down to her shoulders, and Ma keeps hers tied back with a rubber band. “Does your mother have a garden? I tried cherry tomatoes this year, but they’re not doing very well. Everything needs more rain.”

  “Our garden dried up fast,” I tell her. “Preacher told everyone to pray for rain, but I don’t see no sign of it yet.”

  “I don’t see any sign of it either,” she says, looking toward the window, and the way David grins, I know I should have said any instead of no.

  I’m trying to get a chance to eat my baked ziti, I think that’s what they call it—good, too—but then Mr. Howard says, “What’s Judd Travers up to these days?” and I see David grin some more, ’cause he knows I’m trying to eat.

  “Seems to be doing all right. Works part-time at Whelan’s Garage,” I tell him, studying the hot macaroni at the end of my fork. And when David’s dad begins again, I hurry it to my mouth and swallow it down.

  “A woman called the newspaper a couple days ago to say that a man who looked like Judd Travers ran off the road and left tire tracks through her flower garden before he sped off again,” Mr. Howard tells us. “Said it was almost dark, so she didn’t get the license number, but it was a blue pickup with only one brake light working.”

  I’d managed to get two bites chewed and swallowed in time to say, “Judd’s pickup is green.”

  “The sheriff evidently told her the same thing, but she says it was too dark for her to tell exactly.”

  “If it was that dark, how did she know it was Judd Travers?” asks David.

  “She just said she was pretty sure, that’s all. Wanted me to do a news story about it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” says David’s mom. “What did you tell her, Steve?”

  Mr. Howard sprinkles more cheese on top of his ziti and says, “I told her there was such a thing as a slow news day, but we weren’t that slow, and she hung up on me.”

  We all laugh.

  The Howards live in this two-story house with four bedrooms, one of them for Mr. Howard’s computer and nobody in another. The bed just sits in it waiting for someone to visit.

  David’s room is full of maps and books and puzzles. There’s a map on the wall he got from the Tyler County Highway Department, showing every road and river in the whole county—Sellers Road, Cow House Run, Dancers Lane. We take a blue pencil and trace every single back road and creek we’ve explored so far.

  We play this game—take this plastic robot apart and see how fast we can get it back together—and then we watch TV for a while and listen to a band David likes called Dust and Falling Objects.

  When David stays overnight at my house, we spend most of our time outside, playing on the tire swing, or exploring down around the old gristmill by the bridge. But we have to spread our sleeping bags out on the living room floor, and we don’t have a minute’s peace till the girls have gone to bed. Even then, Ma and Dad are still up in the kitchen—hear everything we say.

  At David’s, though, we sleep on bunk beds, and he always lets me have the top, even though that’s where he sleeps when I’m not there. More than anything, I want a room of my own. I think it was when I had to give up my bedroom when I was nine that I began to fight with Dara Lynn. Who wouldn’t, being kicked out of his own bed?

  We’ve already taken our showers—they have city water, so they don’t have to worry about a well running dry—but David jokes that he can smell my feet, so I hang one leg over the edge of the bunk so he can get a really good whiff. Then he tattoos a word with his finger on my bare sole, see if I can guess what word it is, and when we tire of that, we wait to see who falls asleep first.

  David says, “You know what? Dad’s writing a story for the newspaper about the oldest residents in Tyler County, and he interviewed a man who knew Judd Travers’s dad.”

  “Yeah?” I say. “What’d he know about him?”

  “Says he kept to himself, same as Judd, and was as mean as a junkyard dog,” David tells me. “Every one of his kids ran off as soon as they had the chance. All except Judd. He was the youngest, I guess.”

  “Why’d they run off?” I ask.

  “This man said Travers beat and cursed his kids. Told Dad he was about the most hated man around. Whole place was a dump. Old cars and tires and rusty lawn mowers so you could hardly see the ground. Nobody wanted to live next to that, and there wasn’t a single person who liked him.”

  Including Judd, I’m thinking.

  David’s getting sleepy now, I can tell. Beginning to talk slower.

  “Dad won’t put any of this . . . in his story, of course. And then their place burned down . . . and finally Judd got a trailer . . . of . . . his own. . . .” His voice trails off, and he’s breathing deep.

  How come Judd stayed? I wonder. Why was he left to take the beatings and cursing all by himself?

  Just another why to add to my list, I guess. But if all a kid remembers is a dad telling him what a worthless, no-account boy he is, don’t he grow up thinking everyone else looks at him the same way? And wouldn’t it make him angry . . . and sad and scared and about every other kind of hurtful feeling there could be?

  There’s a whole lot about Judd Travers I don’t know.

  four

  I’D STARTED HELPING OUT AT John Collins Animal Clinic last summer, ’cause I love animals and I want to be a veterinarian someday. Takes a ton of money to be a vet, I know—once you get through college, there’s even more college. But if that can’t happen, I’d like to be a veterinarian’s assistant. This takes training too, but I can learn a lot just being a volunteer sometimes on Saturday mornings.

  Dad drives me there on his way to work. Dr. Collins’s clinic is attached to his house, and I’m early, so I just sit out on the steps, till he comes over and unlocks the door.

  “Didn’t think you’d be around much once school began,” Dr. Collins says, big old smile on his face. He is one tall man—six foot four. Big head. Big ears. Big hands.

  “I’ll come whenever I can,” I tell him. He did a good job treating a skin disease Shiloh had last June and I like him a lot.

  “Well, I sure won’t say no to that,” Dr. Collins says. “You know what to do, so I’ll go back and finish my coffee. Be with you in a while.”

  I pull on the gray cotton “kennel suit”—shirt and pants like the scrubs a surgeon wears. These have JCAC embroidered on the pocket—John Collins Animal Clinic. First thing I do is open the door to the dog run, let out the dogs that are spending the weekend here while their owners are away. The two setters, the spaniel, and the retriever go lickety-split along the fence, jumping around on each othe
r and yipping, so glad to be out and stretch their legs a little. While they’re tumbling around out there, I change the towels at the bottom of their kennels and refill their water bowls.

  The spaniel comes in once and looks up at me, waiting for breakfast. “Not yet,” I tell him. “Go finish the conversation with your buddies.”

  Then I concentrate on the patients. Talk to ’em real gentle. Dr. Collins hangs a little sign on the cage of any animal likely to bite, and I don’t mess with those. Every animal has his name on a card above the latch.

  “How you doin’ today, General?” I say to a bulldog who had a leg amputated. He’ll go home today if there’s no infection, I expect. I give him a good rub behind the ears, then lift him carefully and pull out the blanket beneath him, put in a clean one and change his water.

  “Oh no, not you again,” I say when I see the striped tabby hissing at me, cage around the corner. Been in a couple times before, after a fight. “You don’t never change, do you? How you expect to have any friends, you’re so crabby?” And I remember the scratch he left on my arm last time he was in.

  I pass him by and go on to the little kitten, got some kind of stomach sickness, mewing pitifully. Pen’s a mess. “Hello there,” I say, and pick her up, cradle her in my hands. Mews like a little squeak toy, and I rub the side of her face with one finger. Make a little bed for her in a box while I clean up her pen.

  “Good work, Marty,” Dr. Collins says when he comes in. Tells me that Chris, his assistant, won’t be in until eleven today. “Could you assist me in surgery?” he asks, and I am at that sink scrubbing up so fast you wouldn’t believe.

  What we’ve got, though, is a turtle—a large terrapin, actually, a land turtle. Dr. Collins says a neighbor brought it in early that morning—found it alongside the road with a cracked shell.

  I’ll bet this happens a lot—people find things and bring them in. Dr. Collins always does what he can, even though the turtle’s sure not going to pay any bill. He turns the terrapin upside down to check it more closely—make sure there aren’t internal injuries—and I help hold it.

  “Probably hit by a car, that’s my guess,” Dr. Collins says. “Turtles can’t breathe when they’re upside down, so we don’t want to keep him this way very long.”

  I didn’t know that, but I just nod, and Dr. Collins shows me how to tell male from female. We got a he-turtle here. The crack’s not so thin and fine we can push it back together and brace it, but not so wide that it’ll take fiberglass filler and epoxy to fill it up.

  “I think I’m just going to clean it out real well so it doesn’t get infected, wrap it in sterile gauze, and let it heal,” he says. “We’ll keep this fella around awhile and check on him. You could clean out that terrarium back there in the corner, and we’ll make him comfortable.”

  From the time I come in this morning to the time I leave, we have this turtle to mend, a new puppy for shots, a cat to keep for a couple days while her owner goes to a wedding, and a dog with a broken leg. When Chris comes in later—he and Dr. Collins are busy in the surgical room—I get to answer the phone. This is where the kind of soft, lazy language we use at home don’t—I mean, doesn’t—work. I know that if I’m going to be a veterinarian someday with a good job, I got to use good grammar, and I better start practicing now.

  Dad comes, picks me up at twelve thirty. We find a Wendy’s and pick up a few burgers, then eat them in the Jeep while we start delivering the rest of the mail. Dr. Collins is always glad to have me, but I think Dad likes to have me along too. He can deliver the mail a lot faster with somebody helping, and I like to think I’m good company. He pulls up to each mailbox along the road, I reach out, open the flap, stuff the mail inside, and we’re off again, hardly even come to a full stop.

  There are some roads I’ve never been on at all way up in the hills. New houses being built some places, old houses that should have been torn down in others; a new little restaurant on one corner, another shop going out of business—my dad knows ’em all. Signs along the way, TURKEY SHOOT, EVERY SUNDAY, 11 TO 3, says one. JESUS SAVES AND HEALS, reads another. And then there’s WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? HEAVEN OR HELL?

  I was thinking of starting a conversation about that last one, but if Dad says there’s a real hell, I don’t want to ruin my day.

  Mostly, I want to have more happy times with him to make up for lying last year when I was hiding Shiloh up in the woods. That was back when he belonged to Judd Travers, and I’d promised that dog he’d be safe. Wonder sometimes if it’s still on Dad’s mind.

  Wasn’t what I’d done, exactly—tried to protect Shiloh from Judd so he couldn’t be mistreated anymore—but that I’d kept it secret from him and Ma, and worse yet, lied about it. Lying is one of the worst things you can do in my family.

  The thing is, the first time I tried to keep Shiloh away from Judd, I was honest about it—told Dad how Judd treated his dogs back then, but he made me hand Shiloh over anyway, all trembling in my arms. Guess there’s a legal right thing to do, and a heart right, and anybody got a heart, I don’t know how he could give that shaking, whimpering dog back to a man who kicked him in the side with his boot the minute we let Shiloh out of the car.

  But that was last fall. Shiloh’s mine now, Judd’s changed—treats his dogs a whole lot better—I’m not lying about anything, everything out in the open. But sometimes, like, at dinner, if I don’t eat all my meat, Dad’ll say, “Not saving that for some other dog, are you?” the way I used to do. Or if I spend some time up in the far meadow, he might say, “You haven’t got something else hid up there, do you?” It’s all said as a joke, but I just wonder sometimes if he totally trusts me.

  How do you ever explain loving a dog so much I done what I did? Shiloh came to me to help him when he first run away. Followed me home. Looked at me with those big trusting eyes, like Please help me! Guess you have to experience it yourself to feel it. But it made me sick in my stomach to give him back to Judd Travers. And I was the happiest person in the entire world when Judd finally said he’d let me keep Shiloh if I’d work for him for forty hours, and I did. He worked me harder than I’d ever worked in my life, but I got me a dog.

  Now there’s a blue sky up above, a breeze coming in the car window, and Dad’s got the radio on, listening to a ball game. I open Mrs. Ellison’s mailbox and there’s a paper plate with a half-dozen chocolate-chip cookies on it. And they’re still a little warm. She must have put them out in her mailbox only a minute before we pulled up.

  That makes Dad smile, and we both of us wolf those cookies down and wave at the window, can’t see whether she is there or not.

  “You think you could help me on the house tomorrow?” Dad asks. “Be nice if I could get the siding on while the weather’s dry. There’ll be a lot of work to do on the inside, but I’ll save that for cold or rainy weather.”

  “Sure, I’ll help!” I say, like he’s just offered me a malted milk to go with the cookies. But I mean it, too. All I want for Christmas is that room to be done so I can have the other bedroom. Already know what’s going up on my wall—a poster of the best basketball player for the West Virginia Mountaineers; a photo of David and me crashing bumper cars at the county fair last summer, and about a dozen pictures of Shiloh.

  If Dad and Ma’s concerned about lying, they ought to pay more attention to Dara Lynn. First off, she argues the point.

  “It don’t say ‘don’t lie’ in the Bible,” she tells Dad at the dinner table that night. She’s talking about her new friend Ruthie, the preacher’s younger daughter, who rides the school bus with her every day. Dara Lynn’s in third grade, Ruthie’s in second. “I looked up the Ten Commandments, and it’s not there.”

  “‘Bearing false witness’ is the same thing, so stop it,” says Dad.

  “Dara Lynn, you’d argue the sun didn’t rise, just to be arguing,” Ma tells her, reaching over to shove Becky’s cup of milk back a little farther from the edge of the table.

  What brought the dis
cussion on this time is that Ruthie, according to Dara Lynn, claims her daddy don’t let nobody touch his Bible when it’s open. Can never set anything on top of it, and never, ever set it on the floor. Dara Lynn gets going good and next thing you know she’s telling us that if you ever do touch his Bible when it’s open, you got to walk three times around it saying the Lord’s Prayer. She’s almost got David Howard beat when it comes to exaggeration. We got to divide everything she tells us by half—half true, half story. And don’t none of us believe the part about Ruthie having to walk three times around the Bible saying the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Either you or Ruthie’s got an imagination as big as Nebraska,” Dad says to Dara Lynn. “And I don’t think her mama would like her telling stories about her daddy every day on the school bus, ’cause we’ve been hearing a lot of them lately.”

  Ma told me once that Dara Lynn acts like she does—first-class pest and storyteller—is because she’s the middle child in the family. Hasn’t got the privileges of the oldest or the advantages of being youngest, and the only way she can figure to get attention is by acting out.

  Can’t say how many times I’ve made the vow to be kinder to Dara Lynn. Even promised Jesus once I’d give up quarreling with my sister for Lent. Maybe once I get me a room of my own, we’ll make peace again.

  five

  I DIDN’T NEVER HAVE TO bring up that question about hell, because my sisters did it for me.

  All Sunday morning, Dad and I work on that new addition. Ma takes the girls to church, while I’m all sweaty clear down to my underwear. Wouldn’t care if the sky opened and drenched me good.

  I hold up big slabs of plywood while Dad nails ’em in place. We got the frames for the windows ready, but there’s a whole lot of work ahead. I stick by Dad every minute, though. Hand him tools, bring him a Pepsi, pick up any nails he drops, hold the boards while he saws . . .