A Shiloh Christmas by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Read Free Book Online

his dad had cared for him, but he’s learning different.
    We sit on that back stoop together watching the dogs push their bowls around with their muzzles until they’ve finished. Finally they lay down on the ground next to us, nudging our legs from time to time in case we feel like chasing ’em around the yard some more.
    â€œHow long you had this place, Judd?” I ask.
    â€œDon’t know how many years exactly. Used to belong to my pa—had a house and trailer on it. Lost ’em both in a fire, and he died the next week of a heart attack. My ma died the year before.”
    â€œWow,” I say, and scratch the terrier behind his ears. “That’s a lot to happen all so close together. How old were you then?”
    â€œFifteen . . . sixteen . . . thereabouts,” he says.
    â€œSo how’d the fire start?” I ask.
    â€œWell . . . I was supposed to be burning some trash, but I was working on an old rowboat at the same time, trying to fix it up. Not paying good enough attention to the fire, and let it get away from me. My fault, but I didn’t mean it to happen. Not that I hadn’t imagined doing my dad that way a couple of times.”
    For a few seconds Judd just sits, slowly shaking his head back and forth. “He was the meanest cuss on the face of this earth, and he probably thought the same of me,” he says.
    It’s sure different now, sitting here talking like this, from when Judd used to run me off, I ever got near his place. Couldn’t tell back then if he was acting mean like his dogs, or if the dogs were copying him. Now the both of us sit here in the shade, looking out over the piece of yard as the sun’s ready to set.
    â€œSaw your ma in the Jeep this morning. Going to church with the girls, I suppose?” Judd says.
    â€œYeah.” I’m watching the big ball of orange get swallowed up, bit by bit, by the woods around Judd’s property, and when there’s not even a sliver of sun left, the whole of the land stands out clear just before dusk sets in. “Preacher got Becky all scared about hell.”
    Judd grunts.
    â€œDo you believe in hell, Judd?” I ask.
    He don’t answer for a while. Then he leans forward and rests his arms on his knees. Spits. “If there’s a hell,” he says, “I think it’s what people make for themselves while they’re living. Don’t have to die to find that out.”
    That’s about the wisest thing I ever heard coming out of Judd’s mouth. Everything coming from Pastor Dawes, it seems, does a good job of stirring folks up. But maybe that’s what a preacher’s supposed to do, I don’t know.

    By October, it rains only once for about fifteen minutes, a warm Saturday afternoon. The second that sky clouds up, Ma has us three kids running outside with pots and buckets to catch what water we can. And when the rain begins in earnest, Ma and me and the girls all give a loud holler, and we stand right out there in the yard, faces up to the sky, just drinking it in.
    Ma’s reaching up with her arms, whirling herself slowly around and around like a dancer, her hair all wet down to her shoulders. I just plain lie down in the grass and let the rain pepper my whole body.
    Shiloh don’t like it much—runs up on the back porch—but when he sees Dara Lynn and Becky whooping it up, stomping in every little place the water’s collecting, mud squishing up between their bare toes, he comes back out and runs around too. Comes over andtries to nudge me to get up. Just what we need—a wet dog smell in the house—but we don’t care.
    But then Ma makes Dara Lynn and Becky and me strip down to our underwear and soap up. Now if that isn’t the most embarrassingly pitiful thing we ever done.
    â€œMarty, the only one to see you besides us is God,” Ma says, but I step behind the shed anyways. The girls are