A Shiloh Christmas

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  On the way home I’m wrestling with why I didn’t ask Dr. Collins if he’d seen the white dog around there somewhere, and what I should do next. Make some posters about the missing dog, that’s one thing I haven’t tried. But first, I got to face Judd.

  When there’s bad news to be told, though, I think it’s better to come right out with it; the more disguises you put on it, the bigger the shock when it jumps out at you.

  So I’m waiting out on the porch when Judd gets home from Whelan’s. Ma’s left him a big piece of caramel cake, and I watch him park his truck and walk over.

  I hand him the foil-wrapped package and say, “Got some bad news, Judd. It’s about your brown dog.” And then, when I see his face is ready for the worst, that’s what I give him: “He got hit by a car down near St. Mary’s a few days ago.”

  Judd’s face freezes into a stone-eyed, twisted look, and then he sits down slow on the steps. “He die?”

  I hate telling him, but I gotta. “Yeah. Somebody picked him up and brought him into the clinic where I help out on Saturdays. Dr. Collins says he died almost as soon as they got him in. He was hurt bad—internal injuries. We’re all real sorry to hear about it.” I hand him the dog collar, too.

  Don’t know how long Judd plans to sit on the steps, ’cause they are cold. It’s almost Thanksgiving, and temperature’s in the twenties. But he’s sittin’ there, cake in one hand, collar in the other, staring at those fading letters of his last name on the fake leather.

  “What’d they do with the body?” he asks finally, voice all husky.

  “I . . . don’t know. Disposed of it, I guess . . . didn’t know who it belonged to.”

  For a minute I’m afraid he’ll get up, drive to the animal clinic, and cause some kind of trouble—something he might used to have done when he was drunk—but he just nods.

  “Anybody see the other dog? My terrier?”

  “N-not that I know of. Nothin’ said about another dog.”

  “They’d be runnin’ around together, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Could be. But I’m going to make some posters to put up, Judd. And I’ll write our phone number on them, in case anyone sees him.”

  Judd just sits there all hunched over, and I’m thinkin’ maybe I ought to go inside. Not polite to stand around watching a man grieve. But Judd goes on, “Had me five dogs once. Killed one by accident; one on purpose; let you have the third; the fourth’s been run over, and the fifth’s just run off, I guess. It’s a sorry state when a man can’t even keep his own dogs. Can’t say I deserved ’em, though.”

  He gets up finally, collar in hand, and heads for the tent. Leaves the cake behind on the steps.

  I think all of us thought the dogs would be back by now. Thought they were just having a fine time running free, and when they got really hungry, they’d be back to the only place they’d known as home. And that when they found it all burned down, they’d follow Judd’s scent over here. Never thought they’d get so far away. What will the white one do now that his buddy’s gone? Hard to put my brain in the mind of a dog.

  The next day Dad puts on his work clothes and goes across the creek to help haul away more of those burned-out walls and furniture and car engines. Once again, I can see he’s not fixing to work on our new addition, so I go to church with Ma and the girls.

  Just like last Sunday, Rachel sits there beside her ma and Ruthie, still as a post. Nobody would guess she’s a girl her daddy locked in a shed. From where I sit, I don’t see her look at her dad even once. Got her eyes down on the hymnbook or out the windows. He can make her go to church but can’t make her look at him.

  I’m thinking maybe she sits there every Sunday figuring how in six more years she’s going to leave home, nobody coming after her, neither.

  Preacher must have heard what Judd said at Wallace’s store, ’cause he’s on blasphemy this Sunday. I didn’t even know what the word meant until he’d repeated it about nine times.

  “Brothers and sisters, don’t be deceived by those who blaspheme against you and this church, those who have never even set foot in this church,” he says.

  And I’m pretty sure the women in Wallace’s store have told the preacher about me mouthing off to them too, because a little later he reads a verse from the Bible prophesying that this is the kind of behavior we can expect among the godless.

  “Isaiah, chapter three, verse five,” he says. “‘And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.’” And he warns that those who stand idly by and do not defend the church when sinners revile it are just as guilty as if the words came out of their own mouths, for if you are not for the Church of the Everlasting Life, then you must be against it.

  I guess this sermon is meant for the likes not only of Judd Travers and me, but the preacher’s very own daughters.

  You can see his preaching’s made a difference, though. Looks to me like most of the families who’d been saying that maybe Judd set the fire—the Sholts and the Nileses and the Robinsons and the Peterses—are on one side of the church, and the Herndons, the Jacksons, the Murphys and the Frisks—the ones who believe the newspaper, not the gossip—are on the other, the same people who had a good word for Judd after he rescued my dog.

  Back when Pastor Evans was here, didn’t we all mostly sit together? I try to remember. When there was a potluck supper, didn’t we all dig in?

  This time when the service is over, Rachel don’t turn her head away when she sees me.

  “Hi, Marty,” she says quietly.

  “Hi,” I tell her. I may know more about Rachel Dawes than her parents suspect, but her secrets are safe with me.

  That afternoon Ma finds us some spare sheets of white paper and colored markers, and we set about making lost-dog posters.

  No use asking Judd if he’d taken any pictures of his white dog, because even if he had, they all burned up in the fire. Dara Lynn’s pretty good when it comes to drawing, and she takes a black marker and makes the outline of a white dog on some of the pages, just a dog’s head on the others.

  Becky fusses that she wants to do something, so I make the L and the D of the Lost Dog words big two-sided letters and see if she can color inside the lines. Then we get the idea to use a glue stick between the lines on some of the posters, and the girls sprinkle their leftover red sparkles from Valentine’s Day over the letters, then tip the papers so the extra sparkles fall off into the wastebasket. Nice and bright. Nobody’s going to miss these signs.

  It’s what to say about the dog that stumps us. When a dog don’t have a name and you don’t know of any special spots on him, don’t help to make things up. We hear Judd’s truck coming back from somewhere, and I go call him to come inside.

  “We’re making dog posters!” Becky tells him, and holds up one of the sparkle pictures. I can tell by the scrunch of his eyebrows that Judd’s havin’ a hard time connectin’ the red sparkles to his terrier.

  “Sit down, Judd. Won’t you take some coffee and pie?” Ma says.

  “Well . . . coffee anyway, thanks. Keep the pie till later, maybe,” he tells her. Shiloh comes over, sniffs at Judd’s boots, then goes back and lies down on the floor between the girls’ chairs.

  “Help us describe him, Judd,” I say. “Every little detail you can think of.”

  Judd unzips his jacket and stares some more at the papers scattered around the table. “Well, he was white,” he says.

  “Didn’t he have a patch of gray behind his left ear?” I ask.

  Judd tries hard to remember. “Might have. He’d always . . . uh . . . circle his supper dish when he was eating . . . or was that the coon dog?”

  I have my pencil handy, waiting to write something down, but nothing comin’ I can use. Dara Lynn lays her head down on one arm and makes little scribbles on one of the papers. “Big or little?” she asks.

  “A medium-size dog,” says Judd.r />
  Ma sets the cup of coffee in front of him, and we all wait. Becky puts a spot of glue on the back of her hand and drops a pinch of sparkles on it. Then she holds out her hand and grins. “Do you like this, Shiloh?” she says, dangling it in front of Shiloh’s nose.

  Shiloh looks up, sniffs at the glue, and lays his head back down again.

  “You might could say this,” Judd says at last. “When I’d sit on the back step with my knees bent, he liked to crawl in the space under my legs and curl up there.”

  Hmmm, I’m thinking. “Anything else?” I ask.

  “When he slept, sometimes he’d dream, and his front paws would jerk, you know . . . like he’s trackin’ something in the woods. . . .”

  Judd looks tired, and I know he’s probably not sleeping a lot.

  “Well,” I tell him, “I’ll take a poster down to Dr. Collins’s clinic, and I’ll ask Mrs. Wallace if she’d put one up in her store window too. I been tellin’ everyone I see to call us if there’s a stray white dog nosing around.”

  “Thanks, Marty,” Judd says. “And thanks for the coffee and pie,” he tells Ma, reaching for the little package. He zips his jacket up again. Then he takes one last look at the red sparkle posters, gives Becky a weary smile, and goes on out to the tent.

  It’s a potluck Thanksgiving. Ma and the preacher’s wife and some of the other women have done their best to make that basement room at the church look like home. Got curtains along one wall, not even any windows on it, and some pictures here and there.

  A couple of donated couches sit at one end with orange and black and red pillows on them to brighten things up. Three long folding tables with as many chairs as we can squeeze around them fill up the rest of the floor space, and at the other end is the fourth table filled with homemade food brought in that morning.

  Only got room for the families of those burned-out houses who been staying at the Mountain View Motel till their insurance money comes. Them and the families of the women and men who organized this dinner. Want to make the motel families feel like guests in somebody’s home. Ma said she invited Judd Travers, but after that sermon the Sunday before, probably a good thing he don’t show up.

  Dara Lynn and Ruthie manage to sit together, and I’m between Doc Murphy and Mr. Beringer. Doc’s wife died a few years back, and he takes every opportunity to eat home-cooked food. As he lifts a fork to his mouth, I see the back of his hand all covered with brown spots, the way I remember Grandma Preston’s hands.

  “You know, Marty,” he says, “I was going over my account book the other day, and you’re about paid up with what you owe me. I figure another hour should do it.”

  That’s the best thing that’s happened to me in months! Been over a year now, and every couple weeks I’ve gone to Doc Murphy’s to see what he had for me to do. Hearing that I’m almost paid up is what Ma calls a hallelujah day. I smile and reach for a piece of pecan pie to celebrate.

  Someone across the table asks Sam Beringer what he’s planning to do now that his house burned down.

  “I got to get me a car before I can do much of anything,” he says. “I was so low on gas I’d asked Judd to get me a gallon before he come home from work the day the fire broke out. He brought it, all right, but by then I didn’t have a car to put it in or a house neither. The only way to go now, I guess, is up.”

  That night the girls are watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Ma and Dad are still at the table. I’ve pulled my chair over to the doorway, waiting for the program to be over so I can have the TV next, and Ma and Dad go on talking in low voices.

  “I haven’t learned very much from Judith about how they discipline their girls. Couldn’t seem to find the right time to bring it up,” Ma’s saying. “She did say that Jacob can’t accept that they don’t always obey when he tells them to do something, and he can be harsh sometimes, is the way she put it. I managed to say that one of the most important things I’ve learned as a parent is that your children obey better if they want to please you, not if they’re afraid of you.”

  And Dad asks, “What’d she say to that?”

  Ma answers, “I don’t know that she said anything. She’s a quiet kind of woman, Ray. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not afraid of him too.”

  One of the most important things I’ve learned about as a kid is that if you pretend to be concentrating really hard on something—your homework or a puzzle or the TV or something—grown-ups will talk about all kinds of things they wouldn’t say if they knew you were listening. . . .

  twelve

  SCHOOL’S CLOSED THE FRIDAY AFTER Thanksgiving, and everybody’s gone to the nearest Walmart or Sears to start their Christmas shopping. Roads up around where we live more empty than ever. We get only one call about a white dog hanging around, but just as I’m fixing to go looking for it, the woman phones back and says she found out it was a neighbor’s dog down the way, sorry to have bothered us.

  Laura calls, though, to say that a couple trash cans got knocked over where she lives, somewhere between Little and Friendly. Could have been a hungry dog looking for dinner. There’s a fair-size patch of woods in there, so after I have breakfast, I take Shiloh, get on my bike, and head out. Get to the woods and walk my bike down into the gully behind some gooseberry bushes, and then we set off.

  A new woods to a dog must be like a Sunday buffet. Can’t hardly decide what smell to try next, tail awagging like a windshield wiper.

  “Wait, Shiloh,” I say if he looks to be getting too far ahead. He’ll lope back again, but I don’t think he understands the meaning of words; I think it’s the tone of voice. So I test him on it. Next time he gets too far ahead, I say, “Wait, poop-breath,” and back he comes.

  One of us has got to keep our directions straight, though, or we’ll both get lost. Knew the woods on Judd’s side of the creek better than I know these. And Shiloh don’t even know what we’re looking for. Comes to a scattering of deer poop and starts to roll over in it. I yell at him so fast he’s on his feet again, nose to the ground. See whatever nasty he can come upon next. Here’s another why: Why does a dog who can be so loving like to smell so bad?

  Been tramping through the woods an hour or more, and suddenly I realize the sun’s been clouded over a good long while. Feel the first drop of rain on my cheek and then, after a bit, another. I know it’s time—past time—to go home.

  Shiloh’s gone on ahead, and I give a call. Can hear the rustle of underbrush as he noses about, and I turn around. Give a whistle. More raindrops. Big ones, and I am going to be soaked by the time I get home.

  “C’mon, Shiloh!” I yell, and I start to run, making my way back through the trees. I whistle again when I reach the road and haul my bike up out of the bushes.

  But Shiloh hasn’t come, and this time I yell at the top of my voice, “Shiloh! Get yourself out here!”

  If I can’t make him come, the rain will, cause Shiloh hates rain, so I ride on home, my head down as far as I can tip it and still see the pavement in front of me. It’s a cold rain too, not like the warm summer rain we waited on for so long. And when I pedal up our lane and drag my bike up on the porch, I am soaked through.

  “Looks like somebody got caught in a cloudburst,” Ma says. “Better leave your clothes right there on the porch and I’ll bring you some clean ones.”

  While I change, I tell her about checking out the woods.

  “Shiloh’s still out there,” I say.

  “Well, you know he hates rain, so he’s probably under a bush or someone’s porch and will be along when it quits,” Ma tells me.

  There’s turkey noodle soup for supper, and pumpkin pie with Cool Whip on top. Dad tells us about how much holiday traffic there was down on Route 2, how he couldn’t wait to make the turn at the Friendly post office and head up into the hills where we live.

  “I get to the Jennings place, though, and her mailbox is all torn down and chewed up,” Dad says. “Linda comes out to the box to tell me she put a piece of mince pie in
there the night before. Had it all wrapped up in foil and figured it would be safe in a metal mailbox till I got there the next day. In the night, the raccoons knocked the post over, she thinks, and clawed open that box, all for a piece of mince pie.”

  We laugh, and Dad says, “Told her my stomach was already full from Thanksgiving dinner, but she had another piece all wrapped up to give me. Told me if I saw any raccoons on the road, she wouldn’t mind if I ran ’em over, ’cause they’ve been particularly mean this year.”

  “Did you run over any, Daddy?” asks Becky.

  “No, sugar. I don’t run over anything ’less it’s an accident.”

  I get this bad feeling about Shiloh and raccoons. “Where do the Jennings live?” I ask.

  “Oh, ’bout halfway between Little and Friendly. Just before that patch of woods on the right,” says Dad.

  Same patch of woods I was in that afternoon. And suddenly I don’t want the rest of my pumpkin pie. Shiloh’s not new to raccoons, of course. Must have seen plenty around our place. But . . . what do you really know about what your dog does when you’re not with him? You can say he don’t mess with raccoons and he don’t chase geese, but how you going to prove that? I’ve seen animals brought into Dr. Collins’s clinic that have been in fights with raccoons, so how do I know what Shiloh was sniffing out when he had his nose there on the ground in that woods?

  Tonight the girls are watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, but I don’t much feel like watching. Seen that about a dozen times in my life already, and after they’ve gone to bed, I’d rather keep the TV off so I can hear if Shiloh’s scratching at the door. I leave the porch light on so I can look out from time to time, but the porch stays as empty as I feel inside.

  “You still worrying about Shiloh?” Ma asks. “He’ll be along. You know that.”

  She’s probably right. Tomorrow he’ll come trotting up to the house like, what was all the fuss about?