“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.
I get off at David’s house after school. David has his own key. His ma gets home a half hour after he does, and she’s got a pile of papers to grade.
“Hi, Marty,” she says. “There’s chocolate pudding in the refrigerator if you boys want a snack.”
“We already found it,” David tells her.
I guess maybe everybody feels more comfortable at his own table in his own house. I know I feel a little awkward at David’s. First off, there’s always a tablecloth. I can’t imagine a cloth on our table at home. Becky would drop spinach on it first off, and Dara Lynn would spill her milk. The Howards have napkins, too. Cloth napkins. And everything’s in bowls that you pass around. Ma just sets a pan right from the stove on our table; it keeps the food hot, you want some more.
David’s folks are nice, though. David and I tell his dad how we’re studying Alaska, and he tells us about this dogsled race they hold up there every year called the Iditarod, and how you have to travel a thousand miles and sleep out in the snow and be careful your dogs don’t drop off the ice and I don’t know what all.
“You see much of Judd Travers these days?” Mr. Howard asks me finally when David’s ma brings out the dessert.
“Some,” I tell him.
“Wonder how he takes to all this talk of the murder.”
“Don’t take to it at all, same as you or me,” I tell him.
Mr. Howard grows quiet after that.
Later we’re lyin’ on our backs on the top bunk in David’s room, trying to make out the constellations on his ceiling. David and his dad got a package of those stick-on stars and planets, and they put them in just the right places so that the ceiling looks something like the sky would look if you stepped outside at night a certain time of the year.
“That’s Orion, the Hunter,” says David, pointing. “See those two bright stars there in the middle, and then the three bright stars below? Well, the two stars are supposed to be his shoulders, and the three stars are his belt.”
Now who figured that out, do you suppose? How do they get a whole man out of five little stars? Why couldn’t those two stars on top be the eyes of a wolf or something, and the three below be his mouth? Makes as much sense to me as a hunter.
And then, because we’re talking about hunters, maybe, David says, “I’ll bet it was Judd Travers who stole those jackets and that shotgun from Fred’s house.”
I roll over on my side, trying to see his face in the dark.
“How come whatever happens has to be Judd’s fault?” I ask. “How come it all goes back to him?”
David thinks about that a minute. “I guess it’s because anything that happened around here before was usually Judd’s fault. The way he’d cheat Mr. Wallace over at the store. We’ve both seen him do that. Give him a ten-dollar bill, then get to talking, and when he got his change back, say he gave Wallace a twenty. Driving drunk and knocking over people’s mailboxes. Kicking his dogs. Other people have done one of those things maybe once in their lives, but Judd can do all those things in a single month!”
“Yeah, but what if he’s changed?” I say.
David thinks about that, too. “Maybe,” he says. “But once you get a reputation, it follows you around like your shadow. That’s what Mom says, anyway.” He’s quiet a moment. Then he tells me, “Mom said I can’t come to your house anymore unless we promise not to go anywhere near Judd’s.”
Right then I see how I got connected in people’s minds with Judd Travers.
“You haven’t gone with me to his house since last fall,” I tell David. “We can keep on not going there together. I don’t care.”
“I just wanted you to know,” says David.
Next thing they’ll suspect me of murder!
“You know, Marty, if he did have anything to do with killing that man, he could go to jail for a long time and you probably wouldn’t have to worry about him ever again,” David says.
I think about that awhile. Why don’t I wish Judd would be found guilty? Why don’t I wish he’d get sent to jail? David’s right. It sure would solve a lot of problems, just like that. I wonder why I been trying so hard to take his side?
Because I think I know how Judd got to be the way he is, that’s why. Once you know what happened to someone as a little kid, it’s hard to think of him as one hundred percent evil. If Judd’s the way he is because of what his dad done to him, though, maybe his dad was that way on account of what his dad done, and maybe the grandpa was that way because his father. . . . When’s it going to end?
Dad picks me up early the next day before he starts his mail route and takes me down to the vet’s in St. Marys. I’m stacking twenty-pound bags of cat box litter when John Collins comes in to scrub his hands, getting ready to operate on a collie that was hit by a car. The vet scrubs with a brush, even under his fingernails.
“What’s happening up in Shiloh these days, Marty?” he asks me. “I’ve had two customers come in this week telling me that their homes have been broken into. Walk-ins, more like it. Somebody coming in when they weren’t home, and helping themselves to whatever they want.”
“You must be talking about Fred Niles’s family,” I say. “They got a shotgun and some jackets missing.”
“No, hadn’t heard about them. But one family’s missing two twenty-dollar bills they kept on a shelf in their kitchen, and a woman tells me she came home to find half the food in her refrigerator gone. Drove her husband to work, she says, and came back to find a whole roast chicken, half a cake, and a pan of scalloped potatoes missing.”
“Who do they figure took it?” I ask.
“Nobody knows. There’s talk about Judd Travers doing it. Of course, as I said to Mrs. Bates, it could be more than one person. Could be a whole ring of housebreakers. I sure don’t like to hear about that shotgun, though. Walking in a house when no one’s there and helping yourself to a chicken is one thing; walking in with a gun, if they start using that shotgun, is something else.”
Doc Collins puts on his surgical gown and then his gloves, and goes into the operating room. I go on with my stacking. Maybe it’s me who’s got his head in the sand, I’m thinking. Maybe I just don’t want to face the fact it could be Judd. How long’s he had that cast off now? Three days? And when did the robberies begin? Three days ago, exactly.
Twelve
David’s got an idea about the light I saw over near the bridge. If Judd didn’t murder the man from Bens Run, he says, maybe someone’s trying to murder Judd.
He slips this note to me during history:
1. Let’s say Judd didn’t murder anyone, but suppose he knows who did?
2. What if the light you saw was the real killer’s flashlight? I’ll bet you he knows Judd could squeal on him, and he’s setting a trap for Judd down by the creek.
I turn over my spelling paper and send a note back to David:
1. I think you’re nuts.
2. I think that whoever the killer is, Judd or anyone else, he threw his murder weapon down the creek bank, and now he’s trying to find it before the police do.
I remember how David says he wants to be either a forest ranger or a biologist. I write a P.S.:
P.S. I don’t think you’re going to be a biologist or forest ranger either one. I think you are going to write detective stories. Bad ones.
David reads my note and laughs.
“David,” says Miss Talbot. “May I see t
hat note, please?”
I don’t move. I can feel the color rise to my face. David don’t move, neither. He sure don’t want Michael Sholt and the whole sixth-grade class knowing about that light I saw and snooping around the creek themselves.
“I . . . I can’t,” he says. “It’s . . . it’s not my note to give.”
“Who wrote it?” asks the teacher.
Now the whole class is watching.
“I did,” I say.
“Then may I see the note, please, Marty?”
I swallow and shake my head. Everyone’s staring.
“It’s . . . private,” I tell her. This is a real good secret David and I have going, and Miss Talbot just might pin it up on the bulletin board, the way she did Jenny Boggs’s note last week.
“I see,” says Miss Talbot. “And is this class a private place?”
“No, ma’am,” I say.
“Then, because you were taking school time for private business, I suggest you stay in after lunch and use some of your personal recess time for your studies,” she says.
That’s fair enough, I guess. I see David stick the note in his pocket. So while the other kids are playing kick-ball out on the playground, I’ve got to make a list of Alaska’s natural resources and David’s got to list the mountain ranges. Why do we have to study Alaska in January? I wonder. Why couldn’t it be Hawaii? The only thing we’ve got to look forward to is the next weekend, first of February, when David gets to stay overnight at my place.
That night when I go to the door to let Shiloh in, I see the light again. Feel so cold inside my body it’s like I had ice cubes for supper. Now I know this mystery’s real, not just something David Howard and me put together to have some fun. Somebody’s out there in the night doing something he don’t want nobody to see. Looking for something he don’t want nobody else to find, I’ll bet. Maybe even studying our house like I’m studying the light from our window, standing in the dark. Is it the killer? Is it Judd?
I stay at the window watching till the light disappears, trying to figure just where it’s coming from, but when there’s nothing but blackness outside your window, you got nothing to pin it to. The old gristmill seems the most likely place.
Turns out David can’t come for a sleep-over that weekend, though, on account of we’re not home. We got to go to Clarksburg for Grandma Preston’s funeral on Saturday.
“It was pneumonia,” Aunt Hettie cries over the phone. Can hear her voice all over the kitchen. “It happened so fast! One day she had a cold, and the next thing we know it’s pneumonia, and then she’s gone—just like that. I should have been with her. I could have taken off work, and gone to that nursing home and stayed right by her bed. . . . ” She cries some more.
“Now Hettie, don’t you go blaming yourself for something you couldn’t help in a million years,” says Dad. “You did the best you could for Mother, and no one’s faulting you now. We’ll be there Friday evening, soon as I can get away.”
“What about Shiloh?” I ask when my dad hangs up. Grandma Preston’s dead, see, and first words out of my mouth are about my dog.
“I’ll ask Mrs. Sweeney to come by and feed him,” says Ma.
“But the whole family’s never been gone overnight before,” I say. “Shiloh might figure we’re not coming back.” All I can think of is that a lot can happen to a dog in twenty-four hours.
“Marty, that dog of yours is rompin’ all over creation with that Labrador, and he won’t even miss you,” says Dad.
“Couldn’t we just put him in the house?” I beg.
“And ask Mrs. Sweeney to let him out every few hours for a run?” says Ma. “What if he doesn’t come back when she calls him, and her with that bad knee? It’s enough she’s asked to feed him.”
There’s not much to say after that.
• • •
Ma spends the rest of the week cooking food for the funeral dinner. “Here’s one thing I can do for Hettie,” she says, wrapping up a ham and a dish of sweet potatoes.
Dad tells the post office why he won’t be in on Saturday, and I call Doc Collins. By five o’clock Friday evening, we’re on our way to Clarksburg, and Ma’s in the front seat, trying to answer our questions.
Dara Lynn’s just told Becky we aren’t going to see Grandma Preston ever again. “Not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,” she says.
“Why?” asks Becky.
“ ’Cause she’s dead,” says Dara Lynn.
“What’s dead?”
“It’s when your body gets as cold and stiff as an icicle and somebody could put a red-hot iron on your leg and you wouldn’t feel nothing,” Dara Lynn says.
“Dara Lynn, shut up,” I tell her.
Becky asks if she’s ever going to die, and Dara Lynn says yes, and Becky starts cryin’, says she don’t want nobody putting a red-hot iron on her leg.
“Becky,” Ma says from the front seat, “your grandma’s gone to be with the angels, and there won’t be anymore sickness or pain for her ever again. We can rejoice in God’s love.”
“She won’t be stealin’ nobody’s false teeth anymore, neither,” says Dara Lynn, and we can’t help ourselves. Have to laugh. We all feel better after that.
We sit up late that night talking to all the people who drop by Aunt Hettie’s to remember Grandma Preston, and we sit real quiet through the service at the church next day. Dara Lynn keeps her hands to herself and Becky hardly makes a peep. I’m beginning to think Dara Lynn’s not gonna be too bad a sister after all, but when we get to the cemetery, I wish she’d never been born.
She’s standin’ there beside me at the grave while the preacher reads from the Bible, the coffin resting on one side of the hole, waiting to go in. But when the preacher asks us to bow our heads and begins his prayer, Dara Lynn inches right over to that hole and peers down inside. I can’t believe it!
“Dara Lynn, get back here!” I hiss.
Just then the dirt gives way, her being so close to the edge. Dara Lynn’s arms start goin’ around like a windmill, and somehow, though one leg went over the side, she lands on her knees and keeps from goin’ in. She just don’t have any sense at all when it comes to danger.
Ma reaches out and grabs that girl and yanks her back beside us—Dara Lynn’s white socks all dirty now and mud on both hands. I’m thinkin’ what I said about how I wish she’d dig herself a hole and fall in, but my mind don’t stop there. I’m thinking how what if nobody saw her, and what if she really did fall in, a whole pile of dirt on top of her, and then the coffin goes in and Dara Lynn’s buried alive.
It’s such an awful thought I can feel the sweat trickle down my back. Sometimes a thought comes to you that you just can’t help, but you don’t go to jail for thinking!
And then we’re all back at Aunt Hettie’s, and it’s like a picnic supper. Everybody’s bringin’ more food—sliced cheese and a turkey, and little rolls to fold the meat up in. There’s potato salad and cherry pie and burnt sugar cake and marshmallow Jell-O. Can’t tell if this is a party or a funeral.
It’s near ten o’clock when we get home that night. First thing I look for is my dog, but this time I can hear him before we even turn up the drive. He is barking his head off, and when we get out of the Jeep, he don’t even come over—just stands back there by the henhouse, his nose toward the woods, his body jerking with every bark he makes.
“Shiloh!” I say, and he comes over to give me a lick, then goes right back to barking again. Even after we take him inside, he’s jumpy. Goes from one window to the next.
“What in the world has got into that dog?” asks Ma.
She checks out the house. Our TV is still there—the money box, Dad’s shotgun. Nobody’s made off with the toaster or the radio or anything else that we can see.
“I’m going to get my lantern and have a look outside,” Dad says. He takes a flashlight, puts his coat on again, and goes to the shed.
But a few minutes later he’s back. “The lantern’s gone,” he says. “Somebody
took my shears and my knife, too. If it weren’t for Shiloh, that thief probably would have broken into the house.”
I had goose bumps on my arms before, and now even the goose bumps have goose bumps. Was it because of Shiloh’s barking that the thief didn’t come in, or was it that we turned up the drive just about then? And if we hadn’t come home when we did, would the robber have made off with Shiloh, too?
“Oh, Ray!” says Ma, and sits down hard on a kitchen chair. They stare at each other. “It’s like someone knew we were gone.”
“Well, I didn’t go around telling everybody—just my supervisor at the P.O.,” says Dad.
“I only told Mrs. Sweeney so she’d feed the dog,” says Ma. “And Marty called the vet and David Howard, but that’s all.”
They stare at each other some more, and Dad don’t even blink. “Only other person who saw us leave was Judd Travers,” he says at last. “We passed his pickup just after we pulled out of the drive.”
Thirteen
And then the blizzard comes. We go back to school on Monday, the TV talking three inches of snow, but by the time the bus lets us off that afternoon, it’s five or six, and still comin’ down.
“We gonna be snowed in!” Dara Lynn crows happily, dropping her coat on the floor.
Becky looks worried, but Dara Lynn grabs her hands and dances her round and round the kitchen, tellin’ her how we might not have to go to school for a whole week. Then Shiloh gets into the act, skidding around the linoleum, his toenails clickin’ and scratchin’.
“Well, I sure wish I’d got extra milk,” says Ma. “I can always make bread, and I’ve got beans and salt pork enough for an army, but there’s not much substitute for milk.”
“We can always put snow on our cereal!” says Dara Lynn, laughing.
Ma decides to get in the spirit of things, too, so she gets out her valentine cookie cutter, and she and the girls make cookies while I carry in wood for the little potbellied stove in the living room. Our house has a furnace, but it don’t work if the electricity goes out, so a couple years back Dad put in the potbellied stove.