Saving Shiloh (10 page)

It's such an awful thought I can feel the sweat trickle down my back. Sometimes a thought comes to you that you just can't help, but you don't go to jail for
thinking!

And then we're all back at Aunt Hettie's, and it's like a picnic supper. Everybody's bringin' more food—sliced cheese and a turkey, and little rolls to fold the meat up in. There's potato salad and cherry pie and burnt sugar cake and marshmallow Jell-O. Can't tell if this is a party or a funeral.

It's near ten o'clock when we get home that night. First thing I look for is my dog, but this time I can hear him before we even turn up the drive. He is barking his head off, and when we get out of the Jeep, he don't even come over—just stands back there by the henhouse, his nose toward the woods, his body jerking with every bark he makes.

“Shiloh!” I say, and he comes over to give me a lick, then goes right back to barking again. Even after we take him inside, he's jumpy. Goes from one window to the next.

“What in the world has got into that dog?” asks Ma.

She checks out the house. Our TV is still there—the money box, Dad's shotgun. Nobody's made off with the toaster or the radio or anything else that we can see.

“I'm going to get my lantern and have a look outside,”
Dad says. He takes a flashlight, puts his coat on again, and goes to the shed.

But a few minutes later he's back. “The lantern's gone,” he says. “Somebody took my shears and my knife, too. If it weren't for Shiloh, that thief probably would have broken into the house.”

I had goose bumps on my arms before, and now even the goose bumps have goose bumps. Was it because of Shiloh's barking that the thief didn't come in, or was it that we turned up the drive just about then? And if we
hadn't
come home when we did, would the robber have made off with Shiloh, too?

“Oh, Ray!” says Ma, and sits down hard on a kitchen chair. They stare at each other. “It's like someone knew we were gone.”

“Well, I didn't go around telling everybody—just my supervisor at the P.O.,” says Dad.

“I only told Mrs. Sweeney so she'd feed the dog,” says Ma. “And Marty called the vet and David Howard, but that's all.”

They stare at each other some more, and Dad don't even blink. “Only other person who saw us leave was Judd Travers,” he says at last. “We passed his pickup just after we pulled out of the drive.”

A
nd then the blizzard comes. We go back to school on Monday, the TV talking three inches of snow, but by the time the bus lets us off that afternoon, it's five or six, and still comin' down.

“We gonna be snowed in!” Dara Lynn crows happily, dropping her coat on the floor.

Becky looks worried, but Dara Lynn grabs her hands and dances her round and round the kitchen, tellin' her how we might not have to go to school for a whole week. Then Shiloh gets into the act, skidding around the linoleum, his toenails clickin' and scratchin'.

“Well, I sure wish I'd got extra milk,” says Ma. “I can always make bread, and I've got beans and salt pork enough for an army, but there's not much substitute for milk.”

“We can always put snow on our cereal!” says Dara Lynn, laughing.

Ma decides to get in the spirit of things, too, so she gets out her valentine cookie cutter, and she and the girls make cookies while I carry in wood for the little potbellied stove in the living room. Our house has a furnace, but it don't work if the electricity goes out, so a couple years back Dad put in the potbellied stove.

“Next best thing to a fireplace,” Ma says.

I know if I don't bring in the wood now and stack some more on the porch, I'm not going to be able to find the woodpile in another couple hours.

Shiloh goes out with me, and tries to tunnel through the snow with his nose. I stack wood on the porch first, then stamp the snow off my boots and make another couple trips from the porch to the stove inside. By this time Shiloh's had his fill of snow and comes when I call. He plops down close to that potbellied stove, giving out big contented sighs, his eyes closin'. He wore himself out.

Every time there's another report on TV about the blizzard nobody knew was comin', the weather bureau moves the number of inches up. Twelve to fifteen inches of snow, one of the weathermen says now, and, a half hour later, he's talkin' two feet.

Dad finally gets home about eight, and can hardly make it up the drive. He's got snow tires on the Jeep and four-wheel drive, but the wind's blowin' the snow in drifts across the road. I can tell by the look on Ma's face when she hears that Jeep that it's about the best music in the whole world to her.

Dad's real pleased to see all the wood I brung in.

“Good for you, Marty,” he says. “Last I heard, we're goin' to need every stick of it. They're talking thirty inches now.”

Dara Lynn squeals some more.

I wake up next morning and look out the window in
sheer wonder. Dad's stomping back in the house to say that he can't move the Jeep one inch—he'd have to shovel all the way down to the road, and then couldn't go anywhere. Plow hadn't been down there, either.

“Well, Dara Lynn, looks like you got your wish,” Ma says, turning the French toast over in the skillet.

It's only the second time in all the years Dad's worked for the post office, though, that he hasn't been able to get his Jeep through, and he worries about people who are waiting for their pension checks.

“Even if the checks got through, nobody could get to a bank to cash them,” says Ma.

David calls, of course, and tells me they haven't been plowed out yet down in Friendly, either, and his dad is still trying to get to the newspaper office. Then Ma calls Aunt Hettie in Clarksburg to make sure she's okay, and finally there's nothin' else to do but give in to being snowbound.

Snow finally stops about noon, and Dad goes out with a yardstick to measure where it's flat in the yard. Thirty-one and a half inches, not counting six or seven feet along the side of the house and shed where it's drifted. We shovel a path to the henhouse to get some feed to the chickens.

Us kids have to go out in it, of course. I take a shovel and dig a path from our porch to a tree, just so Shiloh can do his business. Dara Lynn and Becky, fat as clowns in their snowsuits, scarfs wrapped around their faces, only their eyes peeking out, set to work diggin' a cave at one side of my path, but Becky no sooner sits down inside it than the roof falls in on her. She's squallin', looks like she got hit in the face with a cream pie, and I got to carry her into the house. I sure wish David Howard was here. We'd dig a tunnel all the way down to the road.

We have a fine time—go out and come in so many times that Ma just puts our caps and mittens beneath the potbellied stove to dry out, so they'll be ready again when we are. House smells like wet wool and Ma's home-baked bread. Dara Lynn's cheeks are red as apples, her nose, too. She wouldn't be half bad-lookin' if she'd just keep her mouth shut.

By middle of the afternoon, though, Dad's gettin' calls sayin' that trees are down, and power lines as well. The snow's wet and heavy, like pudding, and plows can't get through till the trees are cleared off the roads. They got a substitute mail carrier deliverin' what mail he can down in Friendly, and I know Dad wants in the worst way to be doin' his own route. A matter of pride.

Ma's cheerful, though. Says we can toast marshmallows in the woodstove after supper, and then we watch a
National Geographic
special on alligators. But fifteen minutes from the end, the TV goes out along with the lights.

“Hey!” yells Dara Lynn. “What happened?”

“What do you suppose?” I say. “The electricity went off.”

“Ray . . . ?” says Ma.

Dad makes his way into the kitchen to get the flashlight. “Well,” he says, “I imagine a transformer went out somewhere. Guess we're lucky it waited till we had our supper.”

We hang round the stove till the fire dies down. Dad don't want to put in any more wood, in case the power's off a long time, and we need every bit of wood we can find.

“Why don't we go to bed early to stay warm, and maybe the electricity will come back on in the night,” says Ma, and she gets out some candles to make an adventure of it. The girls go to bed without their baths, because we all got wells out this way, and the electric pump won't bring up the water
if the power's off. The only water we got for drinking and cooking is what's left in the water heater right now.

Shiloh and me are lucky. Because the woodstove's in the living room, and we're sleepin' on the couch, we got the warmest place of all. But when we get up the next morning, the house is cold as an ice chest. Dad's got his coat on over his pajamas, and he's bringing in wood from the porch to feed the stove.

Ma tells me to dress without washing up, and nobody's to flush a toilet. Dara Lynn immediately sets up a howl.

“It's gonna stink in there!” she cries. “I ain't going to use no toilet that stinks!”

Ma turns on her suddenly. “Dara Lynn, I can think of a hundred worse things that could happen to you, and I don't want to hear another word. You don't want to use the bathroom, you can potty in the snow.”

That shuts Dara Lynn up in a hurry. I smile; can't help myself—just thinking of Dara Lynn with her backside in a snowdrift. But I can see right off that today's not goin' to be near as much fun as yesterday. The woodstove's got a round top on it, not made for cookin', so Ma puts a pot over it upside down, and grills our toast on its flat bottom. Everything takes twice as long to make, though, and finally, cold as we are, we settle for Cheerios and the last of the milk. It's right about then we hear the sound of an engine grinding out on the road somewhere.

“Snowplow!” sings out Dara Lynn, looking toward the window.

No sight of anything, though. Don't look like there's any plow comin' along the country road. And then we see Judd's pickup, a plow blade in front, tumin' right up our driveway.

Slowly, his wheels spinning, Judd pushes his way
through the snowdrifts till he can't go no more, then backs up and makes another run at it. We all go to the window to watch, and Dad steps out on the porch and waves.

The pickup keeps comin', huge mounds of snow moving ahead of it. Every so often, Judd turns the wheel, ramming into the snowbanks with the plow to get rid of his load. The snow sure isn't doin' his truck any good, but Judd keeps at it, pushin' a little bit farther each time before he backs off and makes another run. Finally he gets up as far as our porch.

“Judd, I sure do appreciate this,” Dad calls.

Judd rolls down his window. “Thought you might need to get out.”

“Won't you come in and warm up?” Ma calls.

“Couple more folks I got to help out,” Judd yells. “Thanks, anyway.” And he makes a wide sweep to turn himself around, then heads off down the driveway, pushing more snow in front of him.

If people would just give him a chance! I'm thinking. See how much he's changed! But at the same time, I'm wondering is that a new jacket he's wearin'? And is that shotgun I see resting above the back window in the truck really his?

B
y next day, the electricity's still off, and we all sleep on the floor in the living room around the stove. Dad brings in a pail of snow and sets it by the toilet to flush it, but the bathroom's so cold the snow don't thaw. Now we got buckets of snow settin' all around the stove, coaxin' it to melt. Only good thing we've had to eat is hot dogs, 'cause you can put 'em on a stick and shove 'em right in the fire.

Dad gets out his Jeep to see how far he can go, but this time he's stopped by a tree that's down. Trees and wires all the way between here and Little, and when he tries to go the other way, across the bridge and on past Judd's, he come to the place where even Judd quit plowin'. Big wall of snow blocking the whole road. Drifts clear up over Dad's head.

“Sure am glad I'm not expectin' a baby in a blizzard like this,” says Ma. I see her hand go up to her jaw and figure she's thinking a toothache would be even worse.

The bad part is we can't get no news on the TV or radio, neither, and with the sky that sick color again, like it's going to throw up more snow, we don't much feel like rompin' around outside. Takes too long to warm up afterwards. Even Shiloh hangs back when we open the door.

And then things slide from bad to worse. Our phone line goes out.

I know Ma's thinkin' that if one of us had an accident or something, there'd be no way to call for help. No way for anyone to get in with an ambulance, either. Last year down in Mingo County, a man got hurt during a snowstorm and they had to send a helicopter to pick him up. Almost worth knockin' Dara Lynn off the roof just to see a helicopter set down in our field. I smile to myself, but you sure can't say a joke like that out loud.

Everybody's tired of snow. We're tired of eatin' cold food, tired of settin' on a cold toilet seat, and of everybody crowded together at night on the living room floor just to stay warm, gettin' on each others' nerves. Dad's the only one half cheery. He says just pretend we're campin' out, but I can tell he's itchin' to get to work, and Ma just plain wants out of the house. And as if that ain't enough, it starts snowin' once more.

But then, fast as things got worse, they get better. The power comes on during the night. We're all sound asleep when suddenly the TV starts blarin' and the lights come on. We sit up and cheer. Hear the furnace click. By morning the phone's workin', too, and about nine, we hear chain saws goin' out on the road, crews workin' to remove trees that are down, and then the low grinding sound of the snowplow.

Dad gets to work about noon. Weatherman on TV says
the four more inches of snow we got is all it will be for a while, and suddenly the world looks good again.