Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Read Free Book Online Page A

latest.
    Ma starts to tell, then stops: "Dara Lynn Preston, I don't
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    want this told all over second grade," she warns. "This is family business."
    "I won't!" says Dara Lynn.
    "Well," says Ma, and then she looks straight at Dad. "Your mother," she says, "has been stealing."
    "Stealing?" says Dad.
    "The nurse opened the drawer in Grandma's bedside table and found five pairs of eyeglasses. Seems she's been going around from room to room collecting 'em."
    Dad gives a loud cough and ducks his head, but you know he's tryin' to hide a chuckle, and we all laugh then. Can't help ourselves.
    "She thinks they're hers!" Ma continues. "Says the other patients have been stealing from her!"
    "I don't never want to get old," says Dara Lynn.
    "Well, most old people don't act like that," says Dad. "Grandpa Preston lived almost as long, and he was smart as they come."
    "Same with Grandma Slater," says Ma, talkin' about her own ma. "She hadn't gone out picking beans in the rain and got pneumonia, she'd probably be alive yet."
    "If she was so smart, how come she was picking beans in the rain?" asks Dara Lynn.
    I see Dad cover his mouth, but Ma gets a little testy. "All of us do things now and then we shouldn't," she says.
    "That's the truth," says Dad.
    It's right about then the phone rings, and because Becky's just slid from her chair, ready to go out and play, she grabs it and answers.
    "Hi!" she says. She's holding the mouthpiece right under her nose. "My grandma ..." she begins.
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    "Becky!" yells Dara Lynn.
    "Get that phone away from her, Marty," says Ma.
    I'm already reaching around for it, but Becky's turned her back to me and is facing the wall, her tight little fists closed around that telephone.
    "Hi," she says again. "What's your name?" And then I hear his voice: Judd Travers.
    "You turn that phone over to your daddy!" he says. II
    I am trying to wrestle the phone away from her, and Becky is screeching at the top of her lungs. She stops long enough to ask, "What's your name?" again, then screeches some more.
    "You never mind my name!" We can hear Judd's voice over the whole kitchen. "Give that phone to your daddy, like I said!"
    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
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    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,