Saving Shiloh (8 page)

But Dad's been delivering the JCPenney spring catalog, and he's too tired to take on my worries. “You'd think it was Christmas all over again, the way folks were waiting for 'em,” he says. And then, “Ooof,” as he sits down at the table and pulls off his boots. “I don't ever want to get up again. Think I'll spend the night right here in this chair.”

Ma laughs and rubs his shoulders.

“I am going to stretch out on that couch and not move except to eat,” he tells her.

Telephone rings, and I answer.

It's Judd.

“What kind of fence did you say it was?” he asks.

I blink. Swallow. “Green yard fencing, the wire kind,” I tell him, and swallow again. The cheese crackers are dry in my mouth.

“Well, I don't want no gate. Don't want anybody sneakin' in, lettin' my dogs loose again.”

I stare at the clock above the sink. “What time you want us to come over tomorrow?” I ask.

“Not before nine, that's for sure.”

“See you tomorrow, then,” I say, and hang up.

I am suddenly so quiet my hand freezes there in the box of crackers. Dad is telling Ma about the deliveries he made that day, and I slip the crackers back on the shelf. Go stare out the window. Now how in the world am I going to tell my dad I volunteered him to put up fencing at Judd's?

“Ground's softening up,” I say finally. “Good time to work in the yard.”

Dad gives me a sideways glance. “You want to work in the yard, Marty, you got my blessing.” He reaches for the mug of coffee Ma pours for him, warm him up a little.

I try again. “Dad, what if you was to find that tomorrow's your one good day to do a really fine deed for a person? And what if I said I'd help out?”

Dad slowly slides that coffee mug back on the table, turns to me, and says, “What in the world have you done now?”

I tell him about Doc Murphy's fence, and what a good thing this would be for Judd's dogs.

“Marty, just two seconds ago you even mention Judd's name, you're spittin' nails!” Ma says.

“Well, a person's got a right to change, hasn't he?” I plead, lookin' at Dad. “Didn't you say you believe in second chances?”

Dad gives such a long, drawn-out sigh you'd think there couldn't be that much air in a human lung.

“We'll see how I feel tomorrow,” he says.

Tired as I am, I don't sleep so good. What if Judd changes his mind? What if we haul all those posts over to Judd's tomorrow and, out of sheer spite and meanness, he says to get 'em off his property, he don't want 'em there? Worse yet, what if after all this work, Judd
does
turn out to be the one who murdered the man from Bens Run, and I'm doin' all this work to please the devil?

Next day Dad says he feels better. Not good, but better. The sun helps, so he wants to start early, get it over with, and we drive to Doc's to load that fencing in the Jeep, then make trips back and forth to Judd's till it's all there. I know there's a hundred other things my dad would rather be doing, but when he's got a chance to do what's right or to do what's easy, he can work the legs off most any man in Tyler County.

Judd comes outside, and if he's not exactly friendly, he's helpful. But I never knew that putting up a fence could take so long or be so hard. First thing we do is measure to see just how much of it we can use, bringing it right up to Judd's trailer so's he can step out his back door and into the dog run. Then we lay those posts where they're going to go, and Dad and I take turns with the shovel, digging the holes and packing the dirt in around the posts till they're rock solid. Judd can't do any digging, but he helps uncoil the fencing and fasten it in place. We put the extra behind his shed.

It's well into afternoon before the job's done, and when Dad and me get home, we both stretch out on the living room rug and don't wake up till dinner.

“Judd was about as pleasant today as I've seen him,” Dad says to Ma, helpin' himself to the black-eyed peas and ham.

“Maybe so, but I'm still uneasy about him,” she answers.

I'm thinking that the sheriff's guess is right. Judd may
have had a fight once with the man from Bens Run, but he probably wasn't the one who killed him. 'Course, they could have had a second fight, and Judd killed him not meaning to. That's another way it could have happened.

That don't keep me from going over to Judd's on Wednesday after school to see the neighbor on one side of Judd bring the two dogs he's been keepin', and the folks on the other side bring over the one. Those dogs don't know which to smell first, the new fence or each other. They get to yippin' and runnin' around in wider and wider circles like they can't believe their freedom. We laugh at their craziness. I reach out every time a dog comes by, like I'm tryin' to grab him, and he just runs all the harder—knows I'm playin'.

“Look at the exercise their legs are getting, Judd,” I say. “That'll make 'em all the stronger; they'll go up hills like nobody's business.”

He points to his own leg, out of the cast now, but still weak. “Maybe I should get in there with 'em,” he jokes.

Not no accident that each of his neighbors has a little something to say to Judd, things like: “Well, we're returning your black and white better-tempered than it was before,” and, “Think we put a little meat on their bones; they look better fattened up some, don't you think?” and, “You treat these dogs right, Judd, you'll get many years of good hunting from them.”

I wish they'd just leave; Judd don't need no sermon right now. But I know he figures he owes 'em something, so he just nods, and after a time they go home. Then Judd and me sit on his back steps watching those dogs enjoyin' themselves, and I sure do feel good. Still, can't help glancin' at
Judd's hands now and then and wondering, Those the hands of a killer? He the one who done it?

When I get home and tell Dad about Judd getting his dogs back, I can see he's feeling good, too. Glad to be on neighborly terms with Judd Travers again, no hard feelings between them.

Ma's not feeling too good, though.

“Tooth is actin' up again,” she says.

“You ought to go have it looked at,” Dad tells her.

“Well, the pain comes and goes. I got some oil of clove on it now,” she says.

One thing about Ma, she sure hates to go to the dentist. Dad says he don't know how a woman who can stand giving birth to three children is so afraid of the dentist, but Ma says there's no comparison. Children you ask for; toothaches you don't.

What I'm thinkin' is that Ma's been hurting since yesterday—I could see it in her eyes, but didn't say nothing. I give more time to Judd Travers, who, if he's not ninety-nine percent evil is sixty percent at least, and paid no mind to her at all.

“I'll read to Becky tonight,” I tell her, when Becky's beggin' for a story. Ma nods and hands me the book. So Becky, still scratchin' her pox, crawls up on my lap, Shiloh beside us. When Becky leans her head back against me and sits real quiet, one hand resting on mine as I turn the page, I can understand why Ma would go through pain to have children and still not like the dentist. Of course, she give birth to Dara Lynn, too, but that's somethin' else entirely.

Becky and Dara Lynn go off to take a bath together, and Ma gets out the quilt she's makin' and settles down in front
of the TV with Dad. I finish my homework at the table. We give up on Pilgrims, and we're studying about Alaska now; I'm reading how it gets as cold as seventy-six degrees below in winter.

I try to figure how cold seventy-six degrees below is. Wonder if you spit, would it freeze before it hit the ground? After the lights are out and I crawl under my blanket on the couch, all that coldness gets to me. When I hear Shiloh's toenails clickin' about on the porch, I feel my way to the door in the dark to let him in; he makes one fine back-warmer.

As I close the door again, I see this little beam of light movin' way off in the direction of Middle Island Creek. Can't place where it is exactly, but it's there sure as I got eyes in my head. It's sort of bobbing around, like somebody's holding a flashlight. I watch for fifteen, twenty seconds, maybe, and then the light goes out.

I
t's the next day on the school bus I tell David about the light. And even though it probably don't mean spit, David Howard can work up one heck of a story with it, I know.

“Like a signal or something?” he asks, eager.

“Well, it could have been,” I say.

He's cautious, though. “How do you know it wasn't just somebody with a flashlight out jogging after dark?”

“It was movin' too slow for that. And didn't stay on more'n fifteen seconds.”

“Like somebody looking for something?” asks David.

“Maybe.”

“The other boot!” whispers David. “We found one, and now Judd wants to find the other.”

“David, that don't make any sense at all!” I tell him. “Why would the killer leave a body out in plain sight, but go hide the shoes somewhere else?”

“The murder weapon, then,” says David. “Maybe Judd buried it somewhere along Middle Island Creek, and now that the police are looking for it, he wants to be sure it stays buried.”

I lean back against the seat and stare out the window, wondering if David could be right. The sheriff hasn't found enough evidence to arrest Judd, but everybody from here to Wheeling is ready to string him up, it seems. Maybe they got good reason.

“Besides,” says David, lookin' over at me, “if somebody's looking for something, why would they go out at
night?”

“That's what I'm
tellin'
you! We got a mystery on our hands. But it don't mean it's anything to do with Judd,” I say. Deep inside, though, I'm thinkin' maybe it does.

What's fun is sitting in Miss Talbot's class, me and David, and having this secret. During math, we pass these notes back and forth.

How high off the ground was the light?
writes David.

How in the world would I know that? I wonder. It was dark—couldn't even tell where the ground was. But I write back,
Three feet, maybe four.

Then it was a man holding the flashlight,
answers David.
If it had been a kid, it'd be more like two or three feet from the ground.
I tell you, he can find clues in almost anything.

“Marty?” says Miss Talbot.

“Three,” I say, staring at the blackboard where she's pointing. I don't even know what the question is.

Somebody snickers.

“What I'm asking,” says the teacher, “is whether you would multiply or divide.”

“Multiply,” I tell her, making a guess.

“Correct,” she says, and I let out my breath real slow.

On the bus going home, David says he'll ask his ma if he can stay at my house this weekend. That way we can take turns watching for the light. So when I get home with Dara Lynn, and Shiloh comes dancin' and wigglin' down the drive to meet us, I'm not surprised to hear the phone ringing soon as I step inside.

“Mom says it's your turn to come to our house,” David tells me. “I can't sleep over there till you come here.”

I ask Ma can I spend the night at David's.

“I think it's his turn to come here,” she says.

“He was just here!” I say.

“Not to spend the night,” she says. Nothin' is ever simple with mothers.

“Well, I can't go down there till you sleep here,” I tell David.

Finally Ma says I can go to David's house for an overnight if David will sleep over the weekend after that. And on Friday morning, I put my toothbrush and pajamas and some clean underpants in my book bag before I leave for school.

“You be polite at the Howards' now,” Ma says as she hands me a plate of fried cornmeal mush, cut in slices, crisp around the edges. I slather on the margarine and then the hot syrup.

“Why don't anybody ever invite
me
to sleep over?” gripes Dara Lynn, glaring down at her fried mush.

“ 'Cause you're a sourpuss, that's why,” I tell her.

On the way to the bus stop, Dara Lynn says to me, “I wish you'd get run over and your eyes pecked out by crows.”

“I wish you'd fall down a hole and pull the dirt in after you,” I say.

If Shiloh hears the meanness in our voices he sure don't
show it. Happy as can be trottin' along beside us till he sees that school bus comin' to take us away.

“See you tomorrow, boy,” I tell him, give him a hug.

Somebody on the school bus is passing out Gummi Bears, though, and Dara Lynn revives in a hurry. Sitting there beside a girl in third grade, eating Gummi Bears and swinging her legs, Dara Lynn don't look like such a poor neglected child to me.

Fred Niles gets on, and he's got a story to tell. Seems that somebody walked right into their house the day before and stole two jackets and a shotgun.

“Just walked right in while you were home?” asks Sarah.

“Ma was only gone two minutes,” says Fred. “She walked down to the road to check the mailbox, and later we discovered what all was missing. We're locking our doors and windows from now on. Never had to do it before.”

“Wouldn't surprise me if Judd Travers had something to do with it,” says Michael Sholt. “Heard he got his cast off this week. Bet he's making up for lost time.”

I got this feeling Michael may be right. But I say, “Could have been anyone at all.”

“You know anybody else around here who would walk in a neighbor's house and steal from him?” Michael asks.

At school, we are so deep in Alaska I don't see we can ever get out. We're buying and feeding imaginary sled dogs for math, figuring how many pounds of food per day they're going to eat, and how many pounds they can pull. We're studying Eskimo paintings in art, and listening to Eskimo folktales, and for spelling I got to memorize words like “tundra,” “Aleutian,” “glacier,” “petroleum,” and “permafrost.” Now I
know
I never want to feel what seventy-six degrees below zero is like.