A Shiloh Christmas by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

look.
    He grabs at her arm. “I asked if you—”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œRay, 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.
    â€œWhy not? I think we should report it,” says Ma.
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œThen maybe we should!” Ma says fiercely, and Pa takes both feet off the footstool, places them firmly on the floor.
    â€œLou, 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.”
    â€œEven 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.
    â€œMarty 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.”
    â€œWhere you going to have it?” Dad asks.
    â€œI 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 beus, 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