Shiloh Season

  David and I work at putting together his puzzle of the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Takes about two hours, with Mrs. Howard helping sometimes, and when we’re all done, all we’ve got is a lot of light and dark lines; looks like blue burlap up close, with names printed on it: Galapagos Fracture Zone, Continental Shelf, Bounty Trough, Bonin Trench. Heck, I figured there would be fish and pirates’ treasure chests and sunken ships on the bottom, not just lines.

  Mrs. Howard, though, she’s pointing out the Marianas Trench on the map.

  “That’s the world’s greatest ocean depth,” she says. “Almost seven miles deep.”

  I’m thinking what it would be like to go seven miles straight down in the ocean. Ma’s granddaddy worked in a coal mine, but he didn’t go down any seven miles. Quarter mile, maybe, and that’s scary enough.

  Dad was supposed to pick me up at four but it’s almost four thirty when he shows up. I don’t mind, ’cause Mrs. Howard gets out some pumpkin pie, and this gives me time for a second piece.

  When I get in the Jeep, Dad says, “Didn’t mean to be late, but I drove down to the hospital to look in on Judd. Took longer than I thought. Doctor wanted to talk to me.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Wanted to know if Judd had any relatives around here, and I couldn’t think of a one.”

  “How is he?”

  “They operated on him last night. Had some internal injuries, like Doc Murphy said. Ruptured spleen, couple broken ribs, left leg broken in two places, fractured collarbone, skull fracture. . . . Still, his condition is stable.”

  “He’s going to live, then?” I sure didn’t sound very pleased.

  “I think so. But it’s going to be a while before he can go back to work.”

  “How about hunting?” I ask.

  “That I don’t know, son.”

  Then I know I have to do it.

  “Dad,” I say. “I got something to tell you.” I swallow.

  Dad looks over at me, and then he pulls the Jeep off the road and turns off the engine. Don’t say nothing. Just sits there studying me.

  I take a big breath and tell him everything. Tell him how I’d blackmailed Judd into giving me Shiloh by promising not to report him to the game warden. And when I get all that out of my system, I tell him about Shiloh and me out on the road by Doc Murphy’s, and how I’m pretty sure it was Judd who took a shot at us.

  Didn’t exactly plan it this way, but when you got two things to tell, one of ’em scarier than the other, it’s the scary one your dad will fix on every time.

  “He shot at you, Marty?” he says. “He shot at you and you never told me?” He’s so worked up he forgets all about the blackmail. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “ ’Cause I didn’t see it would help. Just make you mad and Judd madder. I figured I’d stay clear off the road till we got this thing settled.”

  Dad tips back his head and closes his eyes.

  “Marty,” he says finally. “Sometimes I’m stubborn and sometimes I’m cross, but don’t you ever keep something like this from me again. Somebody takes a shot at one of my children, I want to hear about it. I want you to promise . . . ”

  “I promise,” I say, quicker than he can blink.

  And when Dad starts up the engine again and don’t say one word about the blackmail, I’m so happy and relieved to have it out and over with I almost start to whistle. Then I figure that with a man in the hospital, half his bones broke, it’s no time to be whistling, no matter what I think of him.

  • • •

  It’s the talk of the school on Monday. Everybody’s heard by then, and everyone’s added a little something extra to the story.

  “You hear about Judd?” says Michael Sholt. “Drove his truck right off the bridge and into the creek.”

  “Split his head wide open,” says Fred Niles.

  Sarah Peters says Judd’s dogs were with him and all of ’em drowned, and by the time the bus pulls into the school yard, we got Judd Travers dead and buried already, dogs along with him. I see now the difference between truth and gossip.

  Miss Talbot tries to sort out fact from fancy, but because I’m the only one who really saw Judd lying inside his truck, she takes my version and says we’ll find out later what the newspaper has to say.

  Then she says it might be nice to make a big card and send it to Judd from our sixth-grade class. The thing about folks from the outside is that as soon as they move to where we live, they want to change things—make them better. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I guess, except she don’t—doesn’t—understand how long we’ve been hating Judd Travers.

  The room is so quiet you can hear Michael Sholt’s stomach growl. Fact is, it might be “nice” to make a card, but there’s not a single person wants to sign it.

  Miss Talbot senses right away what the problem is. She says that the wonderful thing about the English language is there are enough words to say almost anything at all, and if you don’t want to say something one way you can say it another.

  “What could we say that would be both helpful and honest?” she asks.

  “We hope you get well?” says Sarah, but the rest of us shake our heads. Nobody wants him driving drunk along the road anytime soon.

  “We’re sorry about your accident?” says David.

  But the truth is we’re not. Nothing else seemed able to stop Judd Travers from knocking over mailboxes and backing his truck into fences. He could have run over Shiloh.

  Finally I raise my hand. “What about ‘Get Well’?” I say.

  We vote for that. It’s more like a command than a wish. Miss Talbot gets out this big sheet of white drawing paper and folds it in half. On the outside, in big green letters, she writes, “Get Well!” And on the inside, in different colored pens, we take turns signing our names.

  Some of the girls draw flowers at the ends of their names. Fred Niles draws an airplane, which don’t make a bit of sense. When it comes my turn, I do something I didn’t plan on, but somehow it seems right: I put down two names: Marty and Shiloh.

  By the time Judd comes home from the hospital, the leaves are beginning to fall. Halloween’s come and gone. (I was a pizza and David was a bottle of ketchup.) Judd’s black-and-white dog didn’t have rabies, and the county says they’ll keep it until Judd can take care of his dogs himself.

  The neighbors on one side of Judd took one of his other two dogs to care for, and the neighbors on the other took the third. Still another neighbor drives his tractor mower over to Judd’s and mows his grass, and Whelan’s Garage fixes his truck up for him and parks it in front of his house for when he’s ready to drive again. All the dents are gone.

  It was Dad who drove Judd home from the hospital. Ma had shopped the day before and sent along two big sacks of groceries. Dad helped Judd get into the house with them.

  Told us later that Judd said hardly a single solitary word to him the whole time. Just sat looking straight ahead. Got his neck in a brace, of course, and a big old cast on his leg. Sits without turning left or right because his ribs are mending.

  “Did you tell him we were the ones who found him?” I ask.

  “I did,” says Dad, “but it didn’t seem to make much difference to him, one way or another.”

  I rake leaves at Doc Murphy’s that Saturday. He asks if I know how Judd is doing.

  “Ma says there’s a visiting nurse comes twice a week,” I tell him.

  Doc shakes his head. “Some people seem to have a string of bad luck they can’t do anything about, and other folks have a string of bad luck all their own doing,” Doc says. “Guess Judd’s had a little of both.”

  I can only think of the kind he got himself into. “What’s the kind he couldn’t do anything about?” I ask.

  “Getting born into the family he did,” says Doc.

  “Did you know ’em?”

  “Knew who they were. Lived in a house couple miles from here, other side of the creek. Mostly I heard stories from some of my patie
nts, 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.

  “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.

  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.

  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, ’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 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 table scraps, but buy him t
his 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 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?”