Dad’s on his feet now. He’s removing the fingers of Becky’s right hand from the telephone, one by one, and I’m removing the fingers of her left. Becky gives a final squeal, enough to make your ears sing, and goes out on the porch bawling. Screen slams after her.
“Hello?” says Dad.
The rest of us wait.
“Ray Preston, I come home this evening to find my mailbox pushed flat over on the ground. Not a scratch on it, so I know no car backed into it by mistake. I’m saying I think your boy was over here today and knocked over my box. Maybe him and that kid from Friendly.”
I stare openmouthed at my dad.
“What makes you think Marty had anything to do with it?” asks Dad.
“Because somebody scratched up my truck a week or two back, and I’m thinking it’s Marty who done it. I want him over here tomorrow digging me a new hole, and I want that post set in cement.”
“If Marty did it, you can be sure I’ll have him put it up, but hold on while I talk to him,” says Dad. He turns to me.
“I didn’t do it, Dad! I didn’t scratch up his truck, neither!”
“Sure of that, son?”
“Yes, I’m sure!”
“You know who did?”
“No.”
Dad studies me a moment, then puts the phone back to his ear. “He says he didn’t do it, Judd.”
“You believe a kid who’d come over here hiding on my property, spying on me, then saying he don’t know nothing about my mailbox?” Judd is shouting now. “What’s he over here for, then? He and that kid from Friendly? You ask him that.”
“Look. I’ll talk to him, Judd. If he did it, we’ll both come over and put that box to rights. But I think you’ve got the wrong boy. It just might be, you know, that since you’ve knocked down a few boxes of your own lately, the way you’ve been driving, someone’s trying to settle the score. I’m just guessing.”
“Well, I’m guessing your kid, and until he puts up my box, you’ve got yourself some trouble,” says Judd. And hangs up.
Ma and Dara Lynn are staring first at Dad, then at me. Even Becky’s stopped her squalling and is standing outside the door, nose pressed flat against the screen, ’fraid she’ll miss something.
“Marty, let’s you and me go outside and have a talk,” Dad says.
Boy, I want this talk about as much as I want poison ivy on the roof of my mouth. But Ma brings Becky in, we go out, and we sit on the porch swing on this cool September night, one square of yellow from the window shining on the floorboards.
“That true what Judd says—that you and David were over there on his property, spying on him?”
“We were just playing,” I say. Even my voice sounds guilty.
“What did you do?”
“We were crawling along in the grass—making like spies. David wanted to see what Judd does at night.”
“What does he think he does at night?”
I’m looking down at my hands, rubbing my two thumbnails together. It’s so silly it’s embarrassing. I shrug. “See if he turns into a werewolf or something.”
The swing jiggles slightly as Dad half turns and stares at me.
“Judd was sitting on his steps with a shotgun, and we saw him shoot a squirrel,” I go on. “When he started to shoot another one, I yelled, ‘No, don’t!’ Couldn’t help myself. But David pushed my head down and we stayed hid that way. Judd tried to find us there in the weeds, but he was too drunk.”
This long, long sigh comes out of my dad—almost like it’s got no end to it. He sounds plain tired. Worn down.
“If you tried, you couldn’t have picked a worse time to do something like this,” he says. And then, “Marty, did you have anything to do with Judd’s mailbox, or scratching up his truck?”
“No! I already told you!”
“But how do I know you’re telling the truth? Because you say so?” He’s looking at me there in the dim light, and I’m remembering how I kept Shiloh secret from him when the dog first come to me. Thinking how I’d told Dad I hadn’t seen Judd’s dog in our yard when he asked, not mentioning I’d seen it up in our woods. Not for one moment letting on that I had him up there.
“You lied once, you know.”
“I know. I lied then, but I’m not lying now.”
“So, I’ve got to decide whether what you’re saying now is the truth,” says Dad.
Neither of us is pushing the swing. I can see Dara Lynn’s shadow just inside the door, standing close as she can get to hear what we’re saying.
“What we’ve got here,” Dad goes on, “is a man who’s drinking heavy, doing things when he’s drunk he don’t even remember, and getting ready for hunting season, if he hasn’t started shooting already. Until I give the word, I don’t want you so much as crossing that bridge. I want you as far away from Judd Travers as you can get. I’ve got enough problems on my hands without you making more. You got that understood?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
Dad gets up from the swing and starts inside.
“Dad?” I say.
He stops.
“I didn’t mess around with his truck or mailbox. If there’s some way to make you believe that, just tell me.”
“Keep out of trouble,” Dad says. “That’s all I ask.”
Eight
Sunday we’re restless. Shiloh’s tried four times to lure me up to the far meadow where he runs himself in circles, and each time I say, “No, Shiloh!” He’s confused. We all hear a gun go off somewhere that afternoon. Don’t think it’s in our woods, but we can’t be sure.
Even Dara Lynn’s got an ache to go up there, ’fraid as she is of snakes. Last summer you couldn’t lure her there with ten ice-cream sundaes. But today there’s something in the air tells us fall is coming. The wind’ll get cold, and the path to the meadow will be ice all the way up. If we don’t go soon, we’ll lose our chance. But we can’t, and that’s why we’ve got the jumps.
It’s just after Sunday supper, still light in the sky. Becky’s getting cranky, and Dara Lynn’s pestering me to play hide-and-seek with her. I’m hanging on the bag swing, listless like, twirling myself around and around and letting one toe of my sneaker drag the dirt. Ma and Dad are inside listening to some man on TV who wants to be the next governor of West Virginia.
“Who we going to play hide-and-seek with?” I ask her. “You hide and then I hide and then you hide . . . where’s the fun in that?”
“Becky can play,” Dara Lynn says.
“Yeah!” yells Becky. “Let me play, Marty! And Shiloh can play!”
Shiloh hears his name and pads over, ready for something, he don’t know what. Why wasn’t I born into a family of nine boys? I’m thinking. A baseball team! I think of my ma being one of nine children, and how they must never have lacked for something to do, someone to do it with.
The swing keeps turning around and when I face forward again, there’s Dara Lynn and Becky and Shiloh, all lined up looking at me with begging eyes.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m ‘it.’ You two go hide.”
I lean my forehead against the rope as the swing goes on its lazy circle around and around. “Five . . . ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty. . . . ” I say.
“Hide, Becky!” I hear Dara Lynn screech.
I get to a hundred and still hear Becky running around up on the porch. Count to two hundred.
“Here I come, ready or not!” I yell, and open my eyes.
Becky’s on a chair on the porch, got a pillow over her, feet sticking out. I smile and play like I don’t see her. Go after Dara Lynn instead.
I’m looking around in back of the chicken coop, the shed, but all this time she’s behind one of the tires on Dad’s Jeep. I get just far enough away from that bag swing, and in she comes, her skinny legs flying. That girl can run!
“Free!” she yells, pounding one hand on the bag swing. Becky slides down off the porch chair and I make like I’m trying to beat her to the swing. I let her pound her little hand on i
t.
“Fwee!” she sings out.
“Okay, I got to be ‘it’ again,” I say, and drape one leg over the swing, circling around, my eyes closed. “Five . . . ten . . . fifteen. . . . ”
Out of the corner of my eye I can see Becky starting up the path to the far meadow. “Don’t you go up there, Becky!” I call.
She stops and turns around. I bury my head again and go on counting.
Then Dara Lynn stubs her toe—Ma tells her not to go barefoot—and she’s howling like she broke a leg.
I get up off the swing again—Becky’s sitting down now on the path—and go see whether Dara Lynn’s going to live or die.
Ma comes to the door with her scolding look.
“We’re trying to hear what this man has to say!” she says, and I tell her I can handle it, so she goes back to the TV.
I get Dara Lynn to sit down on a stump and take a good look at her toe. She’s dislocated it, is what she’s done, ’cause the end part sort of hangs loose, bent to one side. Happened to me once—twice, I think—so I know. Dara Lynn looks down at it, too, and then she’s howling again.
“Dara Lynn, shut up,” I tell her. “If you stop yelling for one minute, I’ll fix it.”
She stops, but she’s got her mouth open, ready to let loose with the next.
“This is going to hurt for two seconds and then it’ll be okay,” I say.
She’s crying now, shaking her head and holding her foot.
“You got a choice,” I say. “Either you let me put your toe back in place—it’ll hurt for two seconds—or you go to Doc Murphy. Which you want it to be?”
Dara Lynn scrunches up her face something fierce, closes her eyes, and tips her head back so she can’t peek. “Fix it,” she says.
I hold her foot in my hand, then gently take hold of the end of her bent toe and give it a little tug.
Dara Lynn yelps and jerks her foot, but when she looks down again, the toe’s back in place. Maybe I should think of becoming a vet, not just a helper.
“Okay,” she sniffles. “You got to count to three hundred this time, though, ’cause I have to run slower, and I got the perfect hiding place.”
I sit down on the swing again and count to three hundred. “Five . . . ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty. . . . ”
When I go out hunting for the girls again, Dara Lynn’s got a good hiding place all right—inside Dad’s Jeep—but it’s too hard to get out of in a hurry, and I beat her back to the swing.
Then I go looking for Becky. Look behind the bushes, under the steps, on the porch.
“Allee, allee in come free!” I yell after a while. “You’re home free, Becky. Come on in.”
But nothing happens.
“Becky?” I call.
Dara Lynn joins the search. But Becky’s gone.
Nine
It’s when I remember I last saw Becky sitting on the path to the far meadow that my legs like to give out.
“Becky!” I yell again.
Dad comes to the screen. “What’s the matter, Marty?”
“We can’t find Becky,” I say. “We were playing hide-and-seek and I can’t find her.”
He comes out on the porch. Then Ma.
“What?” says Ma. Her face looks all pulled around the edges.
I tell it again.
“Where did you see her last?” asks Ma, hurrying down the steps.
“Up on the path.” I point to the steep dirt trail that leads to the woods and the far meadow. “I told her not to go up there, and she sat down. Then Dara Lynn hurt her toe, and I don’t remember if I saw Becky after that.”
Ma’s running now, heading for the path. The sky’s got that in-between look. Isn’t day, isn’t evening. Everything looks in sharp focus, but you know it’s not for long.
“Where’s Shiloh?” Ma calls over her shoulder. “If Becky wandered off, how come he didn’t go with her?”
Shiloh is stretched out on the ground between the house and the shed, just enjoying himself.
“Why isn’t he with her?” Ma cries again, and she looks with such anger at my dog it scares me. “What good is he if he can’t protect Becky?”
“Ma . . . !” I say.
Then she turns on me. “You should’ve watched her!”
“Get the flashlight, son,” says Dad. “Dara Lynn, you go in the house in case she shows up there. Don’t let her wander off again.”
I tear into the house and grab the flashlight from off the top of the refrigerator, then run back out. Shiloh sees all the excitement now, and he’s up on his feet, ready to join in.
I feel empty and rattly, like all my ribs are knocking together. How much should you expect from a dog, after all? How does he know where Becky’s supposed to go and where she isn’t? He’s only been with us a month or so.
“Becky?” Ma’s yelling into the bushes on either side of her, and I follow her up the hill.
“Becky!” yells Dad. “Where are you? Yell so we can hear you.”
Somewhere far off I hear a gun again. At least I think it’s a gun. Could have been a firecracker, I suppose. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I look at Dad, though, and he heard it, too. It’s a gun. I can tell by his face.
We get to the fork in the path. Go left, you end up in woods, up near where I hid Shiloh—where I built his pen. Go right, you’ll come to the meadow where I’d run him sometimes, nobody could see us from below.
“Marty,” says Dad, “you just sit right here and keep your eye on the yard. What I don’t want to happen is for Becky to wander back home, think we’re all gone, and go off again.”
“O-Okay,” I say, and hand over the flashlight to him. He heads for the woods, Ma takes the meadow, and I sit down on the big flat rock at the fork where David and I used to play spaceship sometimes.
I don’t sit down so much as I sink. I just got a thought so terrible that it makes my knees give out in earnest.
What if Judd Travers is up here hunting deer with a light? Some hunters do that way, which is about the lowest way you can hunt a deer—stun it with a powerful light and when it stops dead still in front of you, shoot it with a rifle.
But that’s not the terrible thought, that’s just for starters. What if, because I didn’t report Judd to the game warden when he killed that doe out of season, he feels he can get away with it again? If I’d reported him, maybe they would have taken away his license or something. But because I wanted Shiloh so bad, I didn’t say nothing. And maybe saying nothing is why Becky’s missing now. Maybe one of those stray bullets found her, and I traded Becky for Shiloh.
I bend over, hugging my stomach, like I got belly cramps. So scared my arms are shaking. How can you think you’re doing the right thing, and it’s maybe not right at all?
Down below in the yard, I can see Shiloh standing up, looking around. I’d thought he’d follow us up here, been wanting so bad to come. Guess when you scold a dog four times in one day, he learns a little something. But why couldn’t he have learned to stick with Becky? Why wouldn’t he just naturally know that Becky, being the smallest, needed him most?
“Becky! Becky!” I can hear my ma yell.
There’s no answer.
It’s going to get dark right soon, now. It’s already black back in the trees. I can see the spot of yellow from Dad’s flashlight from time to time, then it disappears again.
Ten minutes go by. Which is worse, I’m thinking—sitting here waiting for Becky, or lying in the weeds beside David Howard when Judd was yelling, “Who’s there?” and was starting over with his gun to find us?
I think I’d choose to be back there and take my chances at Judd’s. At least what was happening, or going to happen, would take place before my eyes. Here I don’t know. All I can do is sit.
Dad’s coming back through the trees now, then I hear Ma’s footsteps not far behind.
“I’m calling the sheriff, ask for a search party,” Dad says, and I hear a tremble in his voice. Ma’s starting to cry.
We ma
ke our way down the steep path, and Dad’s talking out loud. Praying, I guess he is, closest he comes to prayer: “I wish to God I hadn’t riled Judd; wish to God I’d handled that better.”
I can see right off I’m not the only one feeling responsible. Guess I’d thought that when you get to be thirty-eight, like Dad, you don’t have these questions. You just know. Now I’m seeing the other side of things.
“Ray,” Ma sobs, her nose all clogged up. “You don’t think Judd would come through those woods and just take Becky, do you?”
“No, not even drunk. I don’t think so.” Dad puts an arm around Ma to steady her, but his voice gives him away. Needs a little steadying himself.
Shiloh’s standing down at the bottom of the path waiting for us, tail wagging, tongue hanging out, glad to see us coming back.
But Dad’s not glad to see him. In fact, seems to me that Dad’s right foot sort of reaches out and gives that dog a push. Not blaming Shiloh, exactly, but not feeling so kindly toward him, neither.
Dara Lynn’s standing at the screen door bawling ’cause she don’t like being left in the house by herself at night, and nobody’s paying her much mind. Dad steps up on the porch and goes straight for the telephone. Ma’s telling Dara Lynn to hush.
I go up on the porch and wait for Shiloh to follow us in, the way he does when we’re all on the porch in the evening. But he just trots back down the steps, goes over to the shed, and stands there wagging his tail.
And suddenly my heart begins to beat faster. I leap off that porch, not even bothering with the steps, and open the door of the toolshed a little wider.
There’s Becky, sprawled out on the dirt floor, head on a bag of chicken feed, her lips letting out little fluttery sounds while she sleeps.
I’m so happy I shout. Then I hug Shiloh and get the wettest kiss this side the Mississippi. I shout once more. The shout don’t even wake Becky up. Her body jolts for a second, then drops right back into sleep.
But now Ma is coming out of the house, then Dara Lynn and Dad.
“I found her!” I yell. “Shiloh was looking out for her all the time. Led me right over to the shed.”