Shiloh Season (12 page)

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from some of my patients, but the stories were so much alike there was bound to be a little truth in them."

"What did they say?"

"Mostly about old man Travers beating his kids. They get out of line, he'd take a belt to them. The buckle end, mind you. Neighbors said they could hear those kids yelling sometimes clear down the road. Once or twice somebody called the law, but nothing much was done."

"What happened to them? Where did they all go?" "Most of the kids ran away as soon as they could, moved away, or got married. Judd was the youngest, and when the others left and old man Travers got peeved, Judd got his share of it and the others' share as well. Then there was a fire, and that house went up like a torch. Mrs. Travers died, but Judd got out, and his dad, too, but old man Travers died a week later of a heart attack. That's when Judd moved on down the road into that rental trailer. Been there ever since. Far as I know, he doesn't have a girlfriend. Hardly any men friends either. Just him and those dogs, and the way he treats 'em, you could hardly call them friends."

"You'd think that a man who missed out on kindness would want to be kind to his dogs," I say.

"You have to learn kindness, Marty, same as you learn to tie your shoes," Doc says. "And Judd just never had anyone to teach him."

I think about that a lot. All I can figure is that Judd would rather be the grown-up who does the beating, not the kid who's getting beat. Doesn't seem to realize they ain't-aren't-the only two choices he's got.

That afternoon when Dad comes home from delivering the mail, I ask if maybe we can go visit Judd.

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"I don't think I'd try it, Marty," he says. "I've been taking his mail right up to his door so he don't have to climb down those steps to get it. I always rap on the door, ask how he's doing. I know he's there. But he never answers. Neighbors tell .me he does the same with them." "You figure he'll stop drinking now?"

"I doubt it, but I hope I'm wrong. They say a man has to reach bottom before he stops. If this isn't bottom, I'd sure hate to see what is."

What I'm wondering is whether Judd looks in the mirror each morning and decides he can't stand what he sees. Never wanted a dog that was lame in any way. Never wanted a dent or a scratch in his pickup. Now it's him that has the scratches and bruises and broken bones. I heard a couple men talking about how Judd might get it in his head just to shoot himself, and I'm wondering how I'd feel if he did.

Don't know that I'd be too sorry, 'cause once he's well, we got the very same problems we had before. Judd'll be just like he was, only meaner.

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Sixteen

The next day, though, just because I ask, Dad and I get in the jeep and drive over to Judd's. Seems strange to park across the road from his trailer and not be greeted by a bunch of yelping, snarling hounds.

November sun is shining down on Middle Island Creek, and you'd never think that inside that trailer is a man as wretched and mean and sad as a man can get. His grass has been mowed again, probably for the last time this year, but all his shades are pulled, like he don't want one ounce of sunlight trying to sneak its way into his house and cheer him up.

We start across the road to where Judd's board sidewalk begins. The trailer door opens. There is Judd, big cast on his leg, holding his shotgun.

"What you want, Ray Preston?" he calls. Still wearing a neck brace, I see.

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We stop dead still. "Marty and I just wanted to stop by, say hello," Dad calls back.

"Well, I don't need no hellos," Judd says. He's not exactly pointing the gun at us, but he's not pointing it away, neither.

"You need any groceries, Judd? Anything I can pick up for you?" Dad asks.

"Don't need nothing."

"Well . . . okay. We're just concerned about you. Everyone is."

Judd gives this little laugh-so weak you could hardly call it that-and closes the door again.

"Well, son?" says Dad. "Looks like that's that."

But something in me just don't give up. If kindness has to be learned, then maybe Judd's got some lessons coming. If I don't try, and Judd ever hurts Shiloh, how am I going to feel then?

Soon as we get home, I say, "Ma, you suppose we could fix up something every day to leave there on the steps along with Judd's mail? Something to eat?"

"I think that's a fine idea, Marty," she says. "When I was making bread this morning, I was thinking of giving him some."

That evening, I wrap up a loaf for Judd, and next day Dad takes it along with him and puts it right outside Judd's door.

On Tuesday, though, Dad reports that the bread he'd left on Monday's still there. Judd had taken in his mail but left the bread outside. And you know what I'm thinking? It's not just the world he's mad at; he's mad at himself. Oh, it's partly that he don't want to take any kindness from the Prestons,

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'cause he don't-doesn't-know how to give any back in return. But when a man's sunk about as low as he can get, I'll bet he feels he don't even have a right to that bread.

"What did you do with the chicken I wrapped up for him this time?" I ask Dad.

"Just set it right there beside the bread," Dad tells me. Well, I thought, just like John Collins says, you leave it there long enough, he'll get hungry.

On Wednesday, Dad says that both the bread and the chicken are gone. Judd could've thrown 'em out, of course, but sometimes you got to take chances.

"What kind of mail does he get?" I ask my dad.

"Oh, magazines, mostly. Guns and Ammo. Shooting Times. Junk mail, bills."

"He ever get any letters?" "None I can remember."

After the first week of leaving food outside Judd's door, I decide I'll start sending a little note under the rubber band on the food package:

Last month a bee was chasing Shiloh. You should have seen him. Was running and looking behind him both at the same time, and he run into a bush. Thought that bee would drive him right down to the creek. Think Shiloh put his nose too close to a nest somewhere. He'll be a little more careful after this. Marty

We weren't the only ones taking food to Judd. Heard that some of the neighbors had been leaving casseroles and cakes outside his door from time to time. The food

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seemed to disappear, so we figure either Judd. was eating it or burying it, one or the other.

Still, we wonder, what's a man thinking and feeling when he don't never come to the door, don't never say thank you, sits in his house all day with the shades pulled? Sits there hating himself, I'll bet. Knows if he keeps up the way he was doing, he'll lose his job, and then he'll lose everything-trailer, dogs, guns....

Doc Murphy told me that he'd heard Judd was healing nicely. His body, that is. It would take some time for that leg to heal, but the visiting nurse said he was moving around a whole lot better than he had been.

I'm thinking about Shiloh and when I first saw him, all slunk down in the brush, so trembly and scared of me he couldn't stop shaking. Wouldn't even let me pet him-just crawled away on his belly. No trust left in him at all.

Thinking, too, of the other three dogs of Judd's the way he'd chained them up, so fearful something or somebody was going to come along and start a fight they couldn't win. All snarlin' and snapping, trying to keep themselves from being hurt.

And now that we got Judd all shut up in his trailer, I'm thinking how slowly, a little bit at a time, we got to teach him kindness. He was taking the food we left for him. That was a start.

Seemed like the only thing I could think of to write about in my notes to Judd was about Shiloh. Thinking back on things, it was the only thing we both cared about, though I guess we cared about Shiloh in different ways.

I told him how much Shiloh weighed now, when we took him to the vet. How we're not supposed to feed him

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table scraps, but buy him this balanced dog food, make his coat shiny. Told how we laughed ourselves sick once watching Shiloh take off after a mole burrowing along just beneath the ground. Fast as Shiloh could dig, that mole was tunneling away from him. Every last thing Shiloh ever did that would interest a live body in the least, I put down on paper. I figure if a man don't get any other letters, he's got to be interested in the only ones he gets.

The blinds come up in Judd's trailer. Nobody's seen him at a window yet, but he can't hardly keep from seeing out. One day I decide that all these notes I've been writing about Shiloh are just so much noise-just writing around and around what it is I really want to say to Judd. And what it is I want to say is that here's this little dog he kicked and cussed and starved, so scared of Judd he won't never even cross the bridge leading to the road Judd's house is on. Yet one night he meets up with Judd's truck out on the road. I still don't know whether Judd had been drunk and had hit the pothole the wrong way, or whether he'd seen Shiloh trotting down the road and was trying to hit him.

But here's this man pinned under his truck at the bottom of a bank, dead of night, quarter mile from any house except ours, and Shiloh could have sneaked on home without a sound. Judd could have died in the wreck that night. Might have, too. Nobody would have discovered him till the next morning. Maybe not even then.

But instead, the dog starts crying and whining, scared as he is of gettin' within a hundred feet of Judd Travers, and wakes us up. I don't expect Judd to jump up and down, I say in my letter. Shiloh don't expect no reward. Judd don't have to go around praising my dog. I just think he ought to

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know that it wasn't my dad and me who saved him that night, it was Shiloh.

I stick the note under the rubber band on the raisin rolls I package up for Dad to put on Judd's doorstep the next afternoon.

A day goes by. Two days. And then, on a Friday afternoon when Dad gets home from work, I say to him, "I want to go see Judd Travers."

"Now, Marty," says Dad. He's still sitting in the jeep. "You know what happened last time. What makes you think he'll let you in?"

"Nothin'. Just want to try, is all," I say. "I don't want to go on fighting with Judd and worrying myself sick about Shiloh."

"Well, hop in. Might as well go now as later," he says. "Wait just a minute, I'm takin' something," I say. And I go back to the porch where Shiloh is sitting, happy as a beetle on a rosebud, and gather him up in my arms.

"We're goin' visiting," I say. Shiloh licks my face.

I get in the Jeep, but I don't put Shiloh on the seat by Dad and crawl in the back, way I usually do. I fasten my seat belt and hold my dog in my lap.

Dad's giving me his puzzled look. "You sure about this, son?"

"No. But it's only a visit," I say.

Shiloh wriggles right over to the window and sticks his head out as Dad starts the motor.

"Be right back," I yell to Ma. She and the girls have their coats on, picking up black walnuts over by the shed. Shiloh hangs out the window, one paw on the sill, and

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the happier he looks, the more I wonder: Am I doing the right thing?

Shiloh's happiness lasts just till we get to the end of the driveway, because as soon as Dad turns right, he backs away from the window and looks up at me.

I stroke his head.

"It's okay, Shiloh," I say. I hold onto him, because I'm afraid when we go to cross the bridge he might try to jump out the window or something, run back home. I roll up the window. It's cold, anyway.

Dad eases the jeep around the pothole, and as we start over the bridge, the boards makin' loose rattly sounds beneath the truck, Shiloh sinks down in my lap, like all the wind is going out of him.

"It's okay," I say again. He licks my hand.

Once across the bridge, though, when we turn right again, Shiloh starts to whine-a high, soft whine down in his throat. I stroke his back. I'm remembering how, when he come to me for the first time, Dad made me take him back to his rightful owner. Owner, anyway. And how he had hunkered down on my lap, just like he's doing now.

I want in the worst way to let him know that this time is different. That I wouldn't let Judd have him for all the money in the world. Wouldn't never even loan him out. Just payin' a visit, is all. But there's no way Shiloh can understand. All he's got in his memory is the time I took him back before, and how Judd had kicked him when I let him out of the jeep-kicked him and shut him up in his shed and didn't feed him for a couple days.

I swallow. Just hearing my dog whimper and feeling his body shake, I think, how can this be the right thing, to do?

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We get to Judd's and park on the creek side. Shiloh is really whimpering now, scrunched up on my legs like he's trying to grow roots.

I hug him in my arms as we get out.

"I'm not puttin' you down," I say. "You're mine for as long as you live. I promise you that."

He licks my face again.

We cross the road and go up the board sidewalk to Judd's trailer. Go up the steps.

Dad knocks on the door, and Shiloh snuggles up against me, don't make a sound. Figure he's thinking if he don't make any noise, Judd may not notice.

Nobody comes. I know Judd's there, 'cause I can hear the TV going.

Dad knocks again.

The TV goes off. Nothing happens.

"Judd," Dad calls. "Got a visitor here to see you."

Still no answer. I'm thinking maybe this is a sign that I should turn around right this minute and go back. Think maybe Judd is going for that shotgun. Will tell himself that if it wasn't for the dog, he wouldn't have started drinking heavy, and if he hadn't started drinking heavy, he wouldn't have hit that pothole the way he did, and if he hadn't hit the pothole, he wouldn't be laid up with a broken leg right now.

Then the door opens, but only a crack. "What you want?" Judd's voice.

Shiloh is shaking so hard I think he is gonna shake right out of my arms.

"Got someone here to see you," Dad says pleasant-like, and steps aside. I move over to where Judd can see me through the crack in the door.