“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 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?
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.
There is not a sound from inside, but the door don’t close. Shiloh’s grown bigger and fatter and sleeker since he became my dog, but right now, burrowed down almost as far as he can get in my arms, he looks almost like a pup.
“We just came for a visit,” I say, to make it plain right off that no way am I giving Judd this dog.
And finally, when the quiet gets almost embarrassing, Judd opens the door a little wider. “Well, come on in for a minute,” he says. And it’s Judd who’s embarrassed. First time in my life I ever saw a look on his face that says he’s ashamed of himself.
First time I been in Judd’s trailer, too. And the thing I notice is it smells. Smells like the home of a man who don’t empty his garbage or wash his socks when he should.
I see he’s not wearin’ the neck brace anymore, but he still walks stiff, and he’s still got this big cast on his leg.
He leans over and picks up some magazines on the couch, throws ’em on the floor. “Sit down, if you want,” he says, and lowers himself into the straight-back chair beside the couch, broke leg out in front of him.
I’m trying to hold Shiloh as tight as I can to give him the message that he won’t get loose. That I don’t want him loose. But he’s still shaking. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he peed on my leg.
“It’s good to see you up and around,” Dad says, sitting on the couch beside me. “Things are healing all right, are they?”
“Doing okay,” says Judd, his voice low. He don’t take his eyes off Shiloh, though.
I wonder what he thinks about this scared, trembling dog, hunkered down on my lap, silent now and limp as a leaf. Wonder if he’s thinking about when this dog was his—the way he treated him then, the way Shiloh kept running away.
“So he’s the one that found me,” Judd says.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Just kept on making those noises till we come out and found your truck.”
All the while I’m talkin’, I’m rubbing Shiloh’s silky head, scratching gently behind his ears, running my hand along his back, then starting all over again. Judd’s watchin’.
“I suppose he remembers me,” says Judd.
I don’t answer. The way Shiloh’s shaking, there’s no doubt.
Judd leans forward a little, and I think I see his hand move. Slowly he reaches out, and I can feel Shiloh flinch. I swallow as I see him shy away, drawing back from Judd’s touch.
But Judd lets his fingers rest lightly on top of Shiloh’s head, just the way mine did. And then, he begins to stroke my dog.
At first I think Shiloh’s too numb to feel it, too scared to breathe. All he wants to do, I know, is get out of there, make sure he’s not going to be left behind.
I figure that Judd’s going to give him a couple more strokes and pull his hand away, but he don’t. Just keeps stroking Shiloh’s head, like he’s found somethin’ here he needs, and I can begin to feel Shiloh’s body easing up some, feel his legs relax.
He sits real still, looks straight ahead. Judd’s strokes get more even, not so jerky. The palm of his hand strokes lower now, down on Shiloh’s nose, then slowly moves up over the forehead, before the fingers settle behind Shiloh’s ears and do a little gentle scratching.
I glance over at Judd, a quick little look, and for just a moment, his eyes seem wet. I look down at my dog again. Don’t want to embarrass Judd.
Does Shiloh know I wouldn’t never leave him? That this is only a visit, and that he’s mine forever and ever? I think he does, because the next time Judd’s fingers come forward to stroke his head, Shiloh—for the very first time—reaches up and licks Judd’s hand.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor grew up in Indiana and Illinois with a springer spaniel named Pepper and a number of cats. She has never lived in West Virginia, but her husband grew up there, and they went back regularly to visi
t friends and relatives.
She writes for both children and adults, and is the author of over one hundred and thirty-five books, including the Alice series and the Shiloh trilogy. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and has two grown and married sons, as well as four grandchildren.
Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
Jacket illustration copyright © 2013 by Mike Wimmer
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
Meet the author, watch videos, and get extras at
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com
Books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Witch’s Sister
Witch Water
The Witch Herself
Walking through the Dark
How I Came to Be a Writer
How Lazy Can You Get?
Eddie, Incorporated
All Because I’m Older
Shadows on the Wall
Faces in the Water
Footprints at the Window
The Boy with the Helium Head
A String of Chances
The Solomon System
The Mad Gasser of Bessledorf Street
Night Cry
Old Sadie and the Christmas Bear
The Dark of the Tunnel
The Agony of Alice
The Keeper
The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel
The Year of the Gopher
Beetles, Lightly Toasted
Maudie in the Middle
One of the Third Grade Thonkers
Alice in Rapture, Sort of
Keeping a Christmas Secret
Bernie and the Bessledorf Ghost
Send No Blessings
Reluctantly Alice
King of the Playground
Shiloh
All but Alice
Josie’s Troubles
The Grand Escape
Alice in April
The Face in the Bessledorf Funeral Parlor
Alice In-Between
The Fear Place
Alice the Brave
Being Danny’s Dog
Ice
Alice in Lace
The Bomb in the Bessledorf Bus Depot
Shiloh Season
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Text copyright © 1996 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Becky Terhune
The text of this book is set in Goudy.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.
Shiloh season / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Shiloh.
Summary: When mean and angry Judd, who has never known kindness, takes to drinking and mistreats his dogs, Marty discovers how deep a hurt can go and how long it takes to heal.
ISBN 0-689-80647-7
ISBN 978-1-4424-8663-8 (eBook)
[1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Kindness—Fiction. 3. West Virginia—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.N24Sgg 1996
[Fic]—dc20
95-32558
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