Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

Sholt. "Drove his truck right off the bridge and into the creek."
    "Split his head wide open," says Fred Niles.
    Sarah Peters says Judd's dogs were with him and all of 'em drowned, and by the time the bus pulls into the school yard, we got Judd Travers dead and buried already, dogs along with him. I see now the difference between truth and gossip.
    Miss Talbot tries to sort out fact from fancy, but because I'm the only one who really saw Judd lying inside his truck, she takes my version and says we'll find out later what the newspaper has to say.
    Then she says it might be nice to make a big card and send it to Judd from our sixth-grade class. The thing about folks from the outside is that as soon as they move to where we live, they want to change things-make them better. And there's nothing wrong with that, I guess, except she don't-doesn't-understand how long we've been hating Judd Travers.
    The room is so quiet you can hear Michael Sholt's
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    stomach growl. Fact is, it might be "nice" to make a card, but there's not a single person wants to sign it.
    Miss Talbot senses right away what the problem is. She says that the wonderful thing about the English language is there are enough words to say almost anything at all, and if you don't want to say something one way you can say it another.
    "What could we say that would be both helpful and honest?" she asks.
    "We hope you get well?" says Sarah, but the rest of us shake our heads. Nobody wants him driving drunk along the road anytime soon.
    "We're sorry about your accident?" says David.
    But the truth is we're not. Nothing else seemed able to stop Judd Travers from knocking over mailboxes and backing his truck into fences. He could have run over Shiloh.
    Finally I raise my hand. "What about "Get Well' ?" I say. We vote for that. It's more like a command than a wish. Miss Talbot gets out this big sheet of white drawing paper and folds it in half. On the outside, in big green letters, she writes, "Get Well!" And on the inside, in different colored pens, we take turns signing our names.
    Some of the girls draw flowers at the ends of their names. Fred Niles draws an airplane, which don't make a bit of sense. When it comes my turn, I do something I didn't plan on, but somehow it seems right: I put down two names: Marty and Shiloh.
    By the time Judd comes home from the hospital, the leaves are beginning to fall. Halloween's come and gone. (I was a pizza and David was a bottle of ketchup.) Judd's black-and-white dog didn't have rabies, and the county says they'll keep it until Judd can take care of his dogs himself.
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    The neighbors on one side of Judd took one of his other two dogs to care for, and the neighbors on the other took the third. Still another neighbor drives his tractor mower over to Judd's and mows his grass, and Whelan's Garage fixes his truck up for him and parks it in front of his house for when he's ready to drive again. All the dents are gone.
    It was Dad who drove Judd home from the hospital. Ma had shopped the day before and sent along two big sacks of groceries. Dad helped Judd get into the house with them.
    Told us later that Judd said hardly a single solitary word to him the whole time. Just sat looking straight ahead. Got his neck in a brace, of course, and a big old cast on his leg. Sits without turning left or right because his ribs are mending.
    "Did you tell him we were the ones who found him?" I ask.
    "I did," says Dad, "but it didn't seem to make much difference to him, one way or another."
    I rake leaves at Doc Murphy's that Saturday. He asks if I know how Judd is doing.
    "Ma says there's a visiting nurse comes twice a week," I tell him.
    Doc shakes his head. "Some people seem to have a string of bad luck they can't do anything about, and other folks have a string of bad luck all their own doing," Doc says. "Guess Judd's had a little of both."
    I can only think of the kind he got himself into. "What's the kind he couldn't do anything about?" I ask.