Free Saving Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

place.
    I am too mad to go inside our house. Too mad to look myself in the mirror. Shiloh comes out to meet me and I don’t even say hello. Just march on by and head up the path to the far hill, Shiloh running on ahead, bouncing with pure joy.
    â€œIt’s all because of you,” I tell him, knowing all the while I’d do it again, even so. It’s true, though. If it weren’t for Shiloh, Judd Travers would be just somebody to stay away from when we could, say your howdys to when you couldn’t. But because I got Shiloh, I am smack in the middle of all Judd’s problems.
    I’m remembering it was up here I saw that gray fox last summer with the reddish head. Suppose somebody’s shot it by now, with all the meanness around. Every minute of every day there are folks like Judd Travers bein’ born; every minute of every day they are thinkin’ up ways to be worse than they were the day before.
    What do I care what happens to Judd? I ask myself. What do I care what happens to his dogs? I am turnin’ myself inside out to be nice to a man who hasn’t an ounce of kindness in his whole body, and who’s probably a killer, too.
    All afternoon I stomp and storm around our woods and meadow, pickin’ up every limb I can find and whackin’ it so hard against a stump I send splinters every which way. Every log becomes a Judd Travers I got to kick and whack, till my feet and arms are tired.
    Finally, when I been gone so long I know Ma will worry, when even Shiloh’s laid down to rest himself, I turn around and start back. I get home about the time Dad’s coming up the drive in his Jeep.
    â€œYou look like you been hiking some,” Dad says as I followhim into the house where Dara Lynn and Becky are watching TV.
    â€œWondered where you were, Marty,” Ma calls from the kitchen.
    I throw my jacket on the floor. “I don’t want to have anything more to do with Judd Travers the whole rest of my life!” I say.
    Now Dad’s lookin’ at me. “Marty, I don’t think I want you going over there alone,” he says. “Didn’t have a fight with him, did you?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t have no fight!” I say, a little too loud, and grab a box of cheese crackers from the cupboard like they was out to get me. Lean against the counter and stuff ’em in my mouth, hardly even tasting. I think again how that fence is waiting over there at Doc Murphy’s, and figure I’m not just mad, I’m crazy. Whatever Grandma Preston’s got wrong with her mind, I got it, too.
    But Dad’s been delivering the JCPenney spring catalog, and he’s too tired to take on my worries. “You’d think it was Christmas all over again, the way folks were waiting for ’em,” he says. And then, “Ooof,” as he sits down at the table and pulls off his boots. “I don’t ever want to get up again. Think I’ll spend the night right here in this chair.”
    Ma laughs and rubs his shoulders.
    â€œI am going to stretch out on that couch and not move except to eat,” he tells her.
    Telephone rings, and I answer.
    It’s Judd.
    â€œWhat kind of fence did you say it was?” he asks.
    I blink. Swallow. “Green yard fencing, the wire kind,” I tell him, and swallow again. The cheese crackers are dry in my mouth.
    â€œWell, I don’t want no gate. Don’t want anybody sneakin’ in, lettin’ my dogs loose again.”
    I stare at the clock above the sink. “What time you want us to come over tomorrow?” I ask.
    â€œNot before nine, that’s for sure.”
    â€œSee you tomorrow, then,” I say, and hang up.
    I am suddenly so quiet my hand freezes there in the box of crackers. Dad is telling Ma about the deliveries he made that day, and I slip the crackers back on the shelf. Go stare out the window. Now how in the world am I going to tell my dad I volunteered him to put