David’s eyes gleam like two small penlights. “The man’s been missing since before Judd’s accident. His family just now reported it. What do you bet Judd killed him?”
“What?”
“I think Judd was trying to wreck the evidence along with his truck.”
“Go on!” I say. “And maybe kill himself in the bargain? You’re nuts!”
“Marty, we’ve got to check it out! I’ll bet we’d find blood on the seat or something.” David gets excited about somethin’, he almost shoots off sparks.
“If there’s blood on the seat, it’s Judd’s,” I tell him.
David shakes his head. “Here’s how I figure: Judd and the man from Bens Run had another fight, and Judd kills him. Maybe he didn’t mean to, but he did. Throws the body into the cab of his pickup to hide it, then buries it and tries to rig up an accident so any blood in the truck will look like his own.”
David’s imagination has got us in trouble before, and I know what would happen if Judd catches us snooping around his truck.
“Nope,” I say. “Whelan’s Garage fixed that truck up for him after the accident. Cleaned the inside and everything. If there was any evidence, it’s long gone. Besides, he wouldn’t stuff a body in the cab. He’d put it in the back.”
David sighs. He don’t like to give up a good idea. “Judd could’ve buried that body down by the creek!” he says.
“Well, the fella from Bens Run must not have been too popular if nobody reported him missing for a month!” I say.
“His family thought he’d gone to visit a cousin in Cincinnati. That’s why they didn’t report him missing before now,” David tells me.
Must be nice, I’m thinking, to have a reporter for a dad—learn all the news before it comes out in the paper.
“There’s nothing to say we can’t take a look around the bank where Judd’s truck went down,” David goes on.
“I suppose we can do that,” I answer.
Mrs. Howard calls us to lunch then, and this time it’s turkey sandwiches with turkey soup. I think I’ve seen enough turkey to last me awhile, but the real disappointment is there’s leftover mince pie for dessert. Just about the time I’m wondering if she invited me to help eat up leftovers, though, David’s mom says, “Now if you’d rather have chocolate chunk cookies, Marty, I’ve got those, too.”
“I’d rather have the cookies,” says David.
“Me, too,” I tell her.
She smiles and takes the pie away and comes back with a plate of homemade cookies and two bowls of mint chocolate-chip ice cream.
Only thing I don’t like about being at David’s house is I got to watch how I talk. Mrs. Howard don’t—doesn’t—correct me the way Miss Talbot does at school, but she’ll repeat my words using the right ones, and then I know I made a mistake.
“Well, deer hunting season began last Monday,” she says as she removes a tea bag from her cup. “At least Judd Travers won’t be out there shooting. I suppose your dad will go hunting this weekend?”
“Maybe,” I say. “He don’t hunt as much as some folks.”
“He doesn’t?” she says, and I know I got to say it over.
“No, ma’am, he doesn’t,” I tell her. David grins.
Miss Talbot tells me I’m smart enough to be almost anything I want if I just work on my grammar, so I’m trying.
After lunch we fool around up in David’s room. He’s got this revolving light, and if you close all the shades and turn it on, it sends sparkles of light, like snowflakes, swirling over the walls and ceiling.
It’s time to go home before I’m ready—we’re having a really good time—but when Mr. Howard pulls up, David’s mom says he’s driving me home. David gets his coat and goes along.
“They find out any more about that man from Bens Run?” David asks his dad.
“I haven’t heard anything. Only that the cousin in Cincinnati says he never showed up there.”
“Is the sheriff investigating?” asks David.
“He’s asking around,” says his dad.
Just before I get out of the car, David whispers, “Remember! Next time I come over, we check out the creek bank.”
Five
Saturday mornings I work for John Collins, the veterinarian down in St. Marys. Dad drops me off early and I change the paper in the pens, scrub the floor, clean the dog run, refill the water and food bowls, and answer the phone. Sometimes, if his assistant’s busy, I’ll put on the thick gloves Doc Collins keeps around and help get a balky cat out of a cage or something.
I got to know Doc Collins when we took Shiloh in for his shots, and it was him who told me how to get a dog settled down and trusting again after Judd’s other three dogs were set loose once. Never did find out who did it, but could have been anyone. Michael Sholt’s dad said he might of thought of it himself just to get even with Judd for all he did when he was drinking. Judd sure made a lot of enemies. The talk is that it was the man down in Bens Run who’d had a fight with Judd that did it. Now, of course, the man from Bens Run is missing.
The longer I work for John Collins, the more I want to be a vet. A vet’s assistant, anyway. This morning I’m counting sacks of dog and cat food in the supply room so we’ll know how much to order.
John Collins is so busy he hardly knows what to tackle first. No sooner get a dog vaccinated or a rabbit patched up than here come a parrot or a snake. The way I see it, a vet has to know a whole lot more than a people doctor, ’cause what’s a parrot and a snake got in common? I’d like to know.
Eleven o’clock and John Collins pours himself a cup of coffee.
“Doc Collins,” I say, “a few more weeks and Judd Travers is going to get his three dogs back. I was wondering how he could keep them from turning mean again, now that somebody’s been kind to ’em.”
“Well, just like people, you can’t always predict what they’ll do,” he says. “Some folks who grow up in the worst kind of homes manage to make something of themselves, and others lash out—want to treat everybody the way they were treated. Same with a dog.”
“So what should Judd do?”
“For starters, I’d fence my yard so I wouldn’t have to chain them up again. You chain a dog, he knows he’s not free to fight if he’s attacked, so he tries to appear as ferocious as he can. And Judd should certainly stop kicking them around the way he used to, beating on them with a stick. That’s just common sense.”
Dad picks me up at noon in his Jeep and drives me home along his mail route. Takes about ten times as long to get home this way as if we just drove it straight—Sellers Road, Dancers Lane, Cow House Run Road—but I don’t complain. He hands me the mail to put in the boxes, and I turn up the little red flag on the box to let folks know there’s something in it, so they don’t have to come all the way down their driveway if there’s not. Out where we live, the houses are little, but the land is big.
You feel real bad for people who don’t get any mail at all. Some folks are tickled just to get a catalog. What I like, though, is finding something in the box for Dad—a piece of pie, maybe. This morning Mrs. Harris leaves a paper plate with five chocolate cupcakes on it. She waves to us from her window up on the hill, and we wave back. I eat my cupcake right away.
“Judd’s going to be getting his dogs back soon,” I say, wiping my hands on my jeans, and I tell Dad what John Collins says about how chaining a dog makes it mean.
Dad gives a sigh. “Marty, don’t you never quit? You’re makin’ an old man of me, I swear it. You couldn’t rest till you got Shiloh for your own, and now you’re worrying about those other three dogs.”
“But they’ve settled down some, Dad. Be a shame to chain ’em all over again.”
“Maybe so,” says Dad, “but I know better than to tell a man how he should be raising his dogs. And I got a whole lot of other things to think on besides that.”
I got other things to think about, too, and soon’s I get home, I stretch out on the floor, my head on Shiloh, and put my mi
nd to Christmas. He makes the best backrest! I got eighteen dollars saved so far from working for John Collins. Work for Doc Murphy, too, only he takes my pay off the bill I owe him. It was him who stitched up Shiloh after the German shepherd tore him up last summer. At Doc’s I’d trim the grass around his fence. He don’t mind the mowing, but hates the trimming. With winter coming on, though, he finds other jobs for me to do.
I’m trying to think what to get Dara Lynn. Got the other gifts decided on. Becky’s was easy—a tiny yellow bear, the kind you hang on a tree, fluffy as a new mitten, holdin’ a box with two Whitman’s chocolates in it. Got Ma a cassette tape of her favorite country singer, and for Dad, a giant-sized coffee mug.
Dara Lynn’s gift, though, is giving me fits because the pure truth of the matter is I don’t want to waste a nickel on her. Far back as I can remember, she’s envied every nice thing that ever happened to me and rejoiced in the bad. Like the time I found a dollar bill at the county fair, and she was mad as hornets it wasn’t her that saw it first. And then, when I lost it on the Ferris wheel—it blows right out of my hand and goes floating down over the crowd—she almost falls out of the seat laughing.
Nothing makes her smile as wide as when I got to go outside in the cold to do a job I don’t like, and she gets to stay indoors eating buttered popcorn. Don’t know why the feeling grew up between us like it did, but lately it’s been worse than ever.
Dara Lynn’s my sister, though, and I got to get her something, so I settle on a cocoa sampler I seen in Sistersville, three different flavors in a little wooden box.
I don’t offer up one word about inviting Judd Travers to our house for Christmas, and at dinner that night, I’m glad to hear Ma say that Doc Murphy told her Judd was going off to visit friends at Christmas. Only Doc don’t believe him, because as far as anyone knows, Judd don’t have hardly any friends. Not the kind to invite you for Christmas, anyway.
“What I think,” says Ma, “is that Judd made the story up so nobody would feel sorry for him. One thing he can’t stand is people feeling sorry.”
I got one hand under the table giving Shiloh a bite of my chicken, feelin’ how glad I am he belongs to me and not to Judd. Do you know how lucky you are, dog? I’m thinkin’. You know how hard I had to work to make you mine? But just when I’m most grateful that Judd won’t ruin this holiday, I find out it’s going to be ruined anyway.
“We’re going to have a different kind of Christmas this year,” Dad tells us. “Going to drive to Clarksburg on Christmas Day and have dinner with your Aunt Hettie, then go see Grandma Preston in the nursing home.”
There is nothing I can say, because I know it’s kind and good to go, but there is not one small inch of me that wants to visit a nursing home on Christmas. I don’t say a word because I know Dara Lynn will do it for me. She sets up such a howling you’d think she caught her finger in the door.
“Not the whole daaaay!” she wails. “I don’t wanna sit in a nursing home with an old woman who goes around stealing false teeth!”
Grandma Preston’s got quite a reputation in that nursing home for takin’ things from other people’s rooms.
“Dara Lynn, your grandma wouldn’t do half of what she does if she had her mind back,” says Dad. “She might not even know who we are, but it’s not fair that Hettie has to spend all her holidays alone with Mother. We’re going to do what we can.”
“Good-bye, Christmas!” Dara Lynn sings out, and it’s a miracle to me she don’t get a slap on the mouth.
It snows on Sunday—first big snow of the season. Not some little half-inch job where you can still see sticks and stones underneath, but four or five inches of stuff so white you got to squint your eyes when the sun’s on it. Wind blows it high against the shed.
Ma hates to see snow ruined by footprints, but she knows we got to go try it out. She helps Becky on with her boots and jacket, and when we find our caps and mittens, she turns us loose.
We spend the first five minutes just laughing at Shiloh—the way he leaps up over the snow, disappearing down into a snowbank, then makin’ another leap and another. He looks like a porpoise. Ma and Dad come out on the porch to watch.
A big clump of snow falls off a tree and lands on Shiloh’s head. We throw snowballs at him then, and he tries to catch them in his mouth. He’s running and barking and chasing and skidding, and by the time Dad gets out our sled, there are dog-crazy tracks all over the place.
Dara Lynn drags the sled to the top of our hill and I haul up Becky. I settle myself on the sled, Becky between my knees, heels dug deep in the snow. The plan is that Dara Lynn’ll give us a push, then jump on behind me, but when I lift my feet and Dara Lynn pushes, she goes down on her knees and the sled takes off without her, Dara Lynn screechin’ bloody murder.
I take Becky and the sled back up and this time Dara Lynn gets in the middle and I crawl on behind. We are flying down that hill, coming to a stop between the henhouse and the shed. We’ve just started back up for a third time when the crack of a rifle sings out, then another. Way up at the top of our hill, we see a buck go leaping across the field.
“Marty!” Dad yells from the doorway. “You kids get in here! Now!”
We leave the sled where it is, and run for the house. We know it’s not Judd Travers up there, but even though we got the woods posted, there are always other hunters, other rifles.
“I wish this season was over,” says Ma, closing the door behind us.
Six
It stays cold and windy, so David Howard don’t come to check out the creek bank like he’d said. We decide we’ll wait till after Christmas.
Usually our family cuts our own pine tree to bring inside, but this year—with us driving to Clarksburg and all—Dad says why don’t we just string lights on the cedar outside the window? No need to do all that decorating when we won’t be here on Christmas Day.
Becky hasn’t had enough Decembers yet to care, but Dara Lynn sets up a bellow could’ve attracted a moose.
“We have to sit outside and open our presents in the snow?” she wails.
But there’s new snow come Christmas Eve, and the lights of the tree shine on the ice and make a prettier tree than we ever had inside.
So we just sit at the living room window Christmas morning, eating our pancakes and opening our gifts. Ma loves the cassette I give her, Dad uses my mug for his coffee, Becky eats her Whitman’s chocolates, and Dara Lynn even likes the cocoa. I bought a box of doggie treats for Shiloh, and we hide them under all the wrapping paper. He goes nuts trying to trace the smell. Paper and ribbon all over the place. He finds the box and I toss the treats up in the air, one at a time—make him snap at them. Whew! That dog’s breath is somethin’!
Ma and Dad give me a new pair of jeans, a Western shirt, and a Pittsburgh Steelers watch.
We change our clothes to go to Aunt Hettie’s and, leavin’ Shiloh behind, climb in the Jeep. He don’t like it one bit when we go off without him; follows the Jeep right down to the road, like any minute we’re going to realize we left the most important thing and whistle for him to climb in. When we don’t, he trots back up to the house, tail between his legs. I sure do wish dogs could understand English, you could explain things to ’em.
I don’t like Shiloh bein’ left outside during hunting season, but Ma says it’s good to have a dog guarding your house when you’re away. Anybody come up our drive with the wrong idea in mind, he might think twice if a barking dog comes out to meet him.
We’re only a couple miles down the road when Dara Lynn’s got to go to the toilet.
“For heaven’s sake,” Ma scolds. “If it was Becky, I could understand, but you’re almost eight now, Dara Lynn!”
“It’s not like I planned it,” she shoots back, and we got to stop at Sweeneys’ house, ask if we can use their bathroom. Ma takes Becky in, too, for good measure, and I stay in the car with Dad, my faced turned toward Middle Island Creek, embarrassed.
We start off again, Becky’s car seat in the
middle of the back so’s to separate me and Dara Lynn. But she’ll stretch her body from one side of the Jeep to the other just to rile me. I’m sitting here minding my own business, and I can feel Dara Lynn’s shoe kickin’ my leg. She’s wriggled down so far that her seat belt’s up under her armpits.
“Get on over there where you belong,” I say, giving her leg a punch.
Dara Lynn sits up, but this time she spreads her arm across the back of the seat behind Becky so that she’s rapping me on the side of my head.
“Stop it, Dara Lynn!” I say, punching her arm, but my elbow bonks Becky, who gives a squeal.
“Marty, keep it down back there. I can’t drive and be referee, too,” yells Dad. Ma turns and gives us a look.
It’s always me gets the blame ’cause I’m the oldest. I wish Dara Lynn could be the oldest for one whole day. I’d get her in so much trouble she’d beg to be let off.
In Clarksburg, Aunt Hettie’s waiting at the door, and she don’t look anything like Dad, which makes me feel better, ’cause I sure don’t want to look like Dara Lynn when I’m grown. Don’t want anyone to know we’re related. Hettie’s wide about the hips, and her arms are round, but she’s got Dad’s smile, all right. When she hugs you, you know you been hugged.
“You just get on over here and see what’s under the tree,” she says.
Mostly it’s candy, the homemade kind—lollipops for Becky, fudge for me, and peanut brittle for Dara Lynn. Dara Lynn hates peanut brittle, and her mouth turns down so at the corners Ma has to give her a nudge. But Aunt Hettie has dinner waiting with roast beef so juicy I wish Shiloh was there so I could share mine with him.
“Now you’ve got to be prepared for that nursing home,” says Aunt Hettie as we finish her caramel spice cake. “It’s not the finest in the world, but the nurses do the best they can.”
We go see Grandma right after we eat, before Becky turns cranky, needing her nap. I guess what hits you when you walk in a nursing home—this one, anyway—is that it don’t—doesn’t—smell so good. Like the bathroom needs cleaning and the food’s overcooked. There’s eight or ten people in a room with a television in it, all of ’em watching a boys’ choir singing “O Holy Night.” Two of the women are asleep, and one old lady, tied to her wheelchair with a bed-sheet, is tapping on her tray with a spoon.