Free Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

calls after me.
    â€œShiloh,” I tell her.
    I’m only halfway up the hill when I hear a car and turn around. It’s Mrs. Howard’s car, and David’s in it. Soon as he sees me he jumps out—itstill moving a little—and comes running toward me.
    â€œI get to stay here today!” he yells, waving a kite he’s brought with him. “Everyone else is going to Parkersburg and I didn’t want to go.”
    I look over to where Ma and Mrs. Howard are talking, see Ma nodding her head. I get lonely sometimes up at our house, but today I want to be with that loneliness. Don’t want to talk to Dara Lynn, to Becky, to Dad, or even to Ma. If we had a telephone, I’d be calling Doc Murphy every hour. As it is, I have to wait till Dad comes home from work before I can find out about Shiloh. Can’t go down there pesterin’ Doc, him with patients to see.
    â€œWhat do you want to do?” I ask David, trying to dig up the least little bit of enthusiasm. David and I are in the same grade, even though he’s taller and heavier and looks like junior high already.
    â€œTry out this kite over in your meadow,” he says.
    I lead him around the long way, away from Shiloh’s pen, and he doesn’t even notice because he’s unwrapping his kite, made of silk or something, which one of his relatives brought him.
    We stand out in the meadow flying the kite, and I watch the blue-and-yellow-and-green tail whipping around in the breeze, and I’m thinkingabout Shiloh’s tail, the way it wags. You get a dog on your mind, it seems to fill up the whole space. Everything you do reminds you of that dog.
    When we bring the kite down later, though, David sees a groundhog, and next thing you know he’s after it—the groundhog zigzagging this way and that, David yelling like crazy.
    â€œI’m taking your kite back down to the house, David,” I yell when I see him getting near Shiloh’s pen.
    He goes on running and yelling.
    â€œI’m going to get me a handful of soda crackers. You want to make some peanut-butter-cracker sandwiches?” I call out, trying to get him to follow.
    And then his yelling stops. “Hey!” he says.
    I know he’s found the pen, and I walk over.
    â€œWhat’s this?” David asks. He looks at the blood on the ground. “Hey! What happened here?”
    I go over and yank his arm and make him sit down. He’s looking at me bug-eyed.
    â€œYou listen to me, David Howard,” I say. Whenever I say “David Howard,” he knows it’s serious. Only did it twice in my life—once when he sat on the paper flowerpot I’d made for Ma at school, and once when he saw me with my pants down in the bathroom. That really made me mad.
    But today I’m not mad, I’m serious: “Somethingawful and terrible happened in there, David, and if you ever tell anyone, even your ma and dad, may Jesus make you blind.”
    That’s the kind of talk my folks can’t stand, but I got it from Grandma Preston herself. Ma says Jesus don’t go around making anyone blind, but Grandma Preston always used it as a warning and she went to church Sunday morning and evening both.
    David’s eyes about to pop out of his head. “ What ?” he asks again.
    â€œYou know Judd Travers?”
    â€œHe was murdered ?”
    â€œNo. But you know the way he’s mean to his dogs?”
    â€œHe killed one of his dogs in there?”
    â€œ No. Let me tell it, David. You know how he’s missing a dog?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œWell, it come up here on its own and I let him stay. I built him a pen and kept him secret and named him Shiloh.”
    David stares at me, then at the blood in the pen, then back at me again.
    â€œLast night,” I tell him, “Bakers’ German shepherd jumped the fence and tore him up. We took Shiloh to Doc Murphy, and Judd don’t know.”
    David’s