A Shiloh Christmas (12 page)

“Rachel?” I call.

The crying stops right off. Silence.

“Hey, Rachel?” I say again.

And then a soft voice says, “Who's out there?”

“Me. Marty Preston. David Howard's here too. And my dog. I wanted to interview you for our assignment. Why are you in there?”

No answer.

“You want out?” says David, and without waiting any longer, he slides the bolt and opens the door.

Rachel's standing there, nose all red and runny, and all she says is, “Wait. I have to use the bathroom.” And she makes a run for the house.

We stare at each other.

“What the heck . . . ?” says David.

“You suppose she and Ruthie were playing a game and Ruthie forgot she was in there?” I say, trying to figure it out.

We look around the shed. Everything in order. Garden tools on hooks, hose all coiled up, baskets of hand tools—trowels and hammers and screwdrivers . . . Rachel could probably have pounded one of those aluminum walls down if she had to. But where is everybody?

A couple minutes later, Rachel comes out the back door, and she goes straight into the shed.

“Lock the door again,” she says. “Hurry!”

“W
HAT?”
I
SAY
.

But there's panic in her voice. “Hurry!” she says again. “Before my dad gets back.”

“He put you in here?” David asks, holding the door fast as she tries to close it.

“Please!” Rachel begs. “I'll really get in trouble if you don't.”

“I just wanted to do that assignment,” I tell her again.

“We'll do it at school. At lunchtime, maybe, okay? Please, just close the door and lock it.”

We close the door.

“Where's your ma and Ruthie?” I call out.

“At the doctor. I'm being punished. You really need to leave,” she tells us. “Lock the door.”

And her voice is so panicky that we slide the bolt. But
we don't ride off. No way are we going to leave her here like this. What if there was another fire in the neighborhood and she couldn't get out? The preacher would do this to his kid?

There's no house close on either side, but we get on our bikes and take them back to the stand of trees where we can't be seen. And we sit there on a fallen tree trunk, our eyes on that shed. I got a finger around Shiloh's collar and tell him to sit.

It's ten minutes before the preacher's car shows up. We hear the car door slam. Then the front door of the house. But nobody comes out.

The anger inside me is churning around like a lunch gone bad.

“If I was in that shed, I'd be tearing the place down,” I tell David, my jaws tight.

“I'd call the police when I got out,” David whispers back.

“She don't even have a jacket, and it's really cold in there. Could have got one when she went in the house, but then, I guess, he'd know she'd been out.”

After a few more minutes, David says, “Think
we
should tell the police?”

But just then the back door opens and the preacher comes down the steps. He walks out to the shed, his
back straight, arms down at his sides. You'd think he was in the army.

“Are you ready to be obedient?” we hear him call to Rachel.

I guess she don't answer, because he says, “I'm waiting to unlock the door, Rachel.”

And when she still don't answer, either his heart or his curiosity makes him open the door. Rachel pushes past him like a soldier herself— won't give him so much as a look.

He grabs at her arm. “I asked if you—”

“I hate you! I hate you!” she screams, and jerks her arm free. Then she breaks into a run, crosses the yard, and thunders up the back steps. Door slams.

Preacher stands there a long moment looking up at the house, his face a puzzlement. Then he puts one hand to his forehead and stays that way a good six, seven seconds. Looks like a man who's lost his way and can't make out the map. Then his shoulders lift in a slow kind of sigh, and he walks back to the house.

David and I spend the next couple hours riding around, asking folks if anyone's seen two stray dogs, a brown and a white one, but no one has, and finally David goes on home.

That night, after the girls are in bed, I tell Ma and Dad about Rachel in the shed. Don't want Dara Lynn hearing any of that and spreading it around school.

Ma listens with one hand over her mouth, then turns to Dad. Both of them been sitting together on the couch, feet sharing the footstool, watching the news.

“Ray, I think it's time to do something,” Ma says.

Dad mutes the TV and thinks for a minute. “I don't see that we're called to do anything,” he says.

“Why not? I think we should report it,” says Ma.

“We report that a girl's been locked in a shed for a while as punishment, we got to report every family we know who still gives their child a spanking, or takes a switch to his legs.”

“Then maybe we should!” Ma says fiercely, and Pa takes both feet off the footstool, places them firmly on the floor.

“Lou, a parent's got a right to discipline his kid,” he says. “Maybe not the way we'd do it, but one will sit his child in the corner, the other puts his child in the shed. I can't go sayin' one's okay, the other's not.”

“Even if he puts a child in the shed, out in the cold, and locks the door? And drives away?” Ma says. She realizes her voice is too loud and sinks back against the couch cushion.

“Marty don't know how long he was gone for sure. Don't even know if the preacher maybe parked somewhere nearby where he could keep an eye on things. You said yourself we've never seen either of those girls with cuts or bruises on them.” He turns to me, still standing in the doorway. “You ever see Rachel come to school with a black eye?”

I shake my head. “But I never looked at Rachel and saw happy, either.”

Dad leans forward and puts his head in his hands. “You're right about that,” he says. “Never saw a member of that
family
look happy, to tell the truth. But you don't go reporting a family for not being happy.”

Ma's got her arms folded across her chest, and she's tapping one elbow with her finger. “I'm going to see what I can find out from Mrs. Dawes,” she says. “Judith and I are working together on the Thanksgiving dinner we're serving the families that were burned out. I'll find a chance to talk with her then.”

“Where you going to have it?” Dad asks.

“I think we can squeeze everybody in that basement room at the church. A few of our other families are going to eat with them, so they won't feel so much like charity.”

I know right away that one of those families will be
us, having our Thanksgiving dinner there this year to keep the Old Creek Road families company. But what I'm feeling is that everything's hanging, nothing settled: we don't know what'll happen to Rachel; the burned-out families don't know what's going to happen to them; Judd don't know if his dogs will ever come back; and I don't know when I'll get a room of my own. Don't even know how long it'll be before my folks feel good about me again. Wish I'd be punished, just so I could have it over and done with.

Sometimes I think I can handle bad news better than I can handle being unsettled, everybody just waiting. . . .

Monday, Rachel won't look my way, and I try not to look at her, either. I know she's embarrassed by what we saw at her place, and I don't know what to say to her about it. Just before we get on the bus to go home, though, she says, “If you want to interview me tomorrow, we could do it over the lunch period.”

“Sure,” I say. “I'll look for you.” That's
something
to be happy about.

But when Dad comes home from work, he don't look all that happy and don't have much to say. Stands at the kitchen window drinking a glass of cold tea Ma left for him in the refrigerator, looking out over the yard.

“Hard day?” Ma asks, reaching into the cupboard.

Dad sighs. “Yeah . . .” He takes another drink of tea. Finally, “And I said something I shouldn't.”

Don't know who he's talking to, but I look up from my homework there on the table. Ma takes down the cinnamon can and opens the lid. “What was that?” she says.

“Ed Sholt was raking leaves when I stopped at his box this afternoon, and you know how he's always felt about Judd. Well, he can't go on claiming that Judd set that fire when it's been proved how it started, so he says, ‘Ray, somebody says you got folks living in a tent on your land. That true?' I can tell he's spoiling for a quarrel, so I just say, ‘I got a guest camping there for a while.'”

Dad turns away from the window. “Ed says, ‘Isn't there a regulation against that?' And . . . well, my back was hurting and I wasn't in any mood for that nonsense, so I say, ‘If there is and your house ever burns down, Ed, I'll make sure you don't move in.'”

Ma gives him an exasperated look. “Oh, Ray . . . ,” she says.

Dad goes on: “I just closed his box and drove off, but he yelled something after me, about keeping Shiloh away from his geese, or he'd come home full of buckshot.”

Now I jump in the conversation: “Shiloh don't chase geese! He's a fraidy-cat when it comes to geese.”

Ma leans back against the counter. “Ray, you know how quick-tempered Ed Sholt is. You didn't have to say what you did.”

“Okay, I already said I shouldn't!” Now Dad turns on her. “What's done is done. I'm not afraid of Ed. I was just . . . thinking of Shiloh.”

What if Shiloh really did chase his geese? I'm thinking. What kind of life is it for a dog if you have to keep him inside all the time?

I don't know how good an interview it'll be in a noisy cafeteria, all the hollering and laughing and chairs sliding in and out. David agrees it'll be a better interview if he's not there. Embarrassing enough for her to face the one of us.

There's a certain table in the cafeteria that nobody likes to sit at, right next to a table reserved for teachers. Only a couple kids there, so Rachel and I place our trays down at the other end. I decide right off I'm not going to mention the shed.

Get my notebook and pen ready. “Guess maybe I should find out where you lived before you moved out here,” I tell her. “Can start with where you were born, if
you want.” Then I take a bite of my ham and cheese and pick up my pen. Rachel just sits looking down at her chicken salad.

“It was because I was watching a program he didn't like,” she says. And I know she's not going to let it pass.

“It's okay,” I tell her. “I wasn't going to ask—”

But it's the shed she wants to talk about. “I don't see anything wrong with the program. The other girls are allowed to watch. When he found out I'd turned it on again, he pulled me out to the shed and locked me in it.” She's speaking softly so nobody else can hear.

I take a big breath. “Rachel,” I say. “It's none of my business, but has your dad ever hit you? Things like that?”