Shiloh (3 page)

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 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 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 says 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 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

“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 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.

“
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 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?”

“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 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 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 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.

“Shiloh,” I tell him, as though he knows it's his name, “Judd Travers isn't never going to kick you again.”

And the way his eyes look at me then, the way he reaches up and licks my face, it's like it seals the promise. I'd made a promise to Judd Travers I wasn't going to keep, Jesus help me. But I'm making one to Shiloh that I
will,
God strike me dead.

I set him down at last and go over to the creek for a drink of water. Shiloh follows along beside me. I cup my hands and drink, and Shiloh helps himself, lapping it up. Now what? I ask myself. The problem is looking me square in the face.

I got to keep Shiloh a secret. That much I know. But I'm not going to keep him chained. Only thing I can think of is to make him a pen. Don't like the idea of it, but I'll be with him as much as I can.

I take him back to the shadbush and Shiloh lays down.

“Shiloh,” I say, patting his head. “Stay!”

He thumps his tail. I start to walk away, looking back. Shiloh gets up. “Stay!” I say again, louder, and point to the ground.

He lays back down, but I know he's like to follow, anyways. So I pull him over to a pine tree, take the belt off my jeans, loop it through the raggedy old collar Shiloh's wearing, and fasten the belt to the tree. Shiloh don't like it much, but he's quiet. I go down the path and every so often I turn around. Shiloh is looking at me like he won't never see me again, but he don't bark. Strangest thing I ever see in a dog, to be that still.