Shiloh Season (11 page)

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from your heart, which one is he going to pay attention to? That's the question.

We get to the bottom and Dad grabs the flashlight out of my hand and shines it on the truck. A man's leg is sticking out from underneath the cab of the pickup. The leg don't move.

I'm down on my hands and knees, trying to see into the cab. Dad gets down beside me and shines the light through the windshield.

Looks to me like Judd's upside down, pinned between the steering wheel and the side. Smells like a brewery in there. Dad gets the door on top open and leans way in, feeling for Judd's wrist.

"I got a pulse!" he says.

Then he's making his way around to the other side, and pushes on the truck to see if he can rock it. "See that big old limb over there ?" he says. "Drag it here, Marty, and wedge it under, right next to Judd's leg. He's going to lose that leg if we don't prop the truck up a little."

He rocks the truck again, and I get the thick part of the limb wedged under. Figure the door on Judd's side must have come open as the truck rolled.

"You run home and call emergency," he tells me. "Do it quick, Marty. And then you call Doc Murphy in case the rescue squad takes too long getting here. Tell Doc that Judd's still alive, but he's unconscious."

I run like the wind, Shiloh beside me. He's been waiting up on the road, won't come down. But now he thinks it's a game almost. Looks happy again.

All the while I'm running, though, I'm wondering: Did Judd see Shiloh trotting along the road and try to run him over? Put on the gas, maybe, and that's when he hit the pothole?

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That's my guess. All I really know is that if Shiloh hadn't carried on like he did, I wouldn't never have got up. Would've laid there a while, maybe, wondering if that bang I heard was thunder, but I would have gone right back to sleep. If Judd lives, it's because of Shiloh.

Ma is standing at the screen, and Dara Lynn's beside her, rubbing her eyes' and looking cross.

"Marty?" calls Ma.

"It's Judd!" I yell, more out of breath than I realize. "His truck went down the bank by the bridge. Call emergency, and then call Doc Murphy."

Ma finds another flashlight for me, and I go out to the road, wait until I see Doc's car coming real slow, looking for where it is he should stop.

Doc gets out at the bridge. He's got his pajamas on, too, and a robe on top. Got his black bag with him. I help him down the bank and through the weeds and brush to Judd's pickup. Dad's got the door open, and Doc leans way in with his stethoscope as best he can. Takes the flashlight and checks out Judd's eyes.

"Internal injuries, that's my guess," Doc says. "No way I can examine him without crawling in there, and doing more harm than good...."

It's about then we hear the far-off sound of a siren, and I climb back up the bank to wait for them, show them where we are. I see that Shiloh didn't come back with me; stayed home with Ma and Dara Lynn.

Then there's lights and yelling and a truck motor running. Men are coming down the bank with a stretcher, the radio's blaring. Floodlights are turned on me and Dad and Doc, all in our pajamas. Nobody cares.

The pickup is gently set upright again. Splints are being

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put on Judd's neck and back before they place him on the stretcher. Then the men are carrying him up the bank, and at some point Judd opens his mouth and groans. Says something, but all I can make out is a cuss word.

"Sure sounds like Judd Travers," one of the men says, and three minutes later the rescue truck is heading for the hospital in Sistersville.

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Fifteen she dead?"

First words out of Dara Lynn's mouth when we get back to the house.

"No, but he's unconscious," Dad says, and tells them what happened.

"What about his truck?" Ma asks.

"Whelan's will send up a tow truck tomorrow." "Do you think he's badly hurt, Ray?"

"Likely so. Got a broken leg, I can tell you that."

"Was the bone all sticking out?" asks Dara Lynn. I tell you, I got the strangest sister.

"All I know is that the truck came down on it when it turned over," Dad says.

Dara Lynn sticks around long enough to see if there're any more gory details, then ambles off to bed. Becky, of course, sleeps through the whole thing.

Ma and Dad talk a little more out in the kitchen, then

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turn off the light and go back to bed. I lay on the couch, staring up into the dark. I'm having this conversation with Jesus again, only I'm doing all the talking. One minute I hope He's listening, and the next minute I hope He's not.

"Help him get well," I'm saying, because I think I should. Because you're supposed to pray for somebody who's been hurt.

Then I find myself thinking, just don't let his leg get well enough to ever go hunting again.

Can you ask God to heal things, but only so much? Next morning a tow truck comes up from Whelan's, and people stand around to watch. It's Sunday morning, so word hasn't spread too far yet. Dad and me and Dara Lynn all go over to watch-Dad wants to be sure there's nothing left in the weeds belonging to Judd. Finally the truck's up on the road again, being towed to the garage where Judd works. Truck don't look as bad as Judd did. Bet he didn't even have his seat belt on.

After Sunday dinner, Dad drives me down to David Howard's, and soon as I see him out on the porch, I run up. "You hear what happened?" I say. Can tell by David's face he hasn't.

"What?" he says.

"You know that big pothole this side of the bridge?" "It caved in?" whoops David.

"No, but you know Judd's truck?" "It fell through?"

"No, David, let me tell it! Judd was driving drunk again last night, and his truck must of hit the pothole and gone out of control."

Then I tell him how the sheriff figures it hit the bridge first, then rolled on down the bank, Judd with it.

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"Wooooow!" says David Howard, and the way he says it, dragging it out, sounds like air coming slow out of a bag.

We go in and tell his folks, and Mr. Howard calls his newspaper to be sure they've got the story.

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?"

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"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

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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

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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.

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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