Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

sack in his hands. “Folks are taking to leavin’ me food in their mailboxes, Lou.Used to be it was just Mrs. Ellison and her banana bread, but found me a ham sandwich today in Nora Klingle’s box and half a baked pie in the Saunders’. I look thin to you or something?”
    Ma laughs. “Maybe it’s just you’re the best mail carrier they ever had on the route.”
    â€œWell, we got half a pie for dessert tonight, anyways,” Dad says.
    Oh, brother! I say to myself. Maybe Mr. Wallace is doing more talking than I figured. He wouldn’t come right out and tell folks I was in his store buying cheap food, but he might just pass it along that the Preston family’s in hard times, and suddenly food starts appearing. That’s the way it is here.
    The next day, Ma rides into town with Dad, taking the girls along, and goes shopping for new sneakers for Dara Lynn and socks and underpants for Becky. First time I have the whole place to myself, and I let Shiloh run pure free. Bring him down the hill to the house, feed him the heels off a loaf of new bread, all the leftover sausage from breakfast, and a bowl of milk. Then I let him lick the oatmeal pan.
    Show him every one of our four rooms, hold him in my lap on the porch swing, and laugh when he tries to stand up on the seat himself while the swing’s moving. I let him smell the couch where I sleep and crawl under the frontsteps to sniff out the mole lives under there, follow him all over creation when he takes out after a rabbit. Then he gives up when he sees I’m not going to shoot that rabbit no way.
    But I figure my luck’s going to run out if I don’t get him back to his pen soon, so about noon I take him back, and he goes right to the gunnysacks in the lean-to, he’s so tuckered out.
    It’s just in time, ’cause when I get back and get the dishes done for Ma, the house picked up some, I look out and here she comes up the lane with Dara Lynn and Becky and their packages. Somebody gave ’em a lift; you can always count on that around Friendly.
    Ma’s pleased I got the dishes done, I can tell.
    â€œNice to come back to a clean house, Marty,” she tells me. “Had good luck with my shopping, too. Wasn’t a thing I bought that wasn’t on sale.”
    Dara Lynn’s wore her new sneakers home and got a blister already, but she don’t care, she’s so glad to have something new.
    When I walk in the kitchen next, Ma’s looking at her face in the mirror over the sink. Got her eyebrows raised high, then she pushes them low, then raises them again. When she sees me studying her, she says, “Marty, I got frown lines on my face? Tell me the truth now.”
    I look at her good. “Sure don’t see any,” I say.I don’t neither. Ma’s got a pretty face. Plain, but smooth.
    â€œWell, I don’t, either, but two people this morning asked me how I was feeling, and one of ’em wants to tell me what to take for headaches. I figure that if folks think I have headaches, I must be doing a lot of frowning.”
    Whomp, whomp, whomp . That’s my heart. “Folks think they got a remedy for something, they’ll tell it to you whether you need it or not,” I say. Sound so grown-up I hardly recognize myself. So scared inside, though, my stomach’s shaking.
    Ma’s taking out all the things she’s bought and putting ’em on the table, taking the price tags off Becky’s underpants and socks. “I saw David’s mother at the dollar store,” she says, “and they’ve got relatives coming in tonight. She wanted to know if she could bring David up here tomorrow when the rest of them go to Parkersburg. I told her yes.”
    â€œOkay,” I say, but all the while I’m thinking what I’m going to do with David to keep him off that hill. Take him up toward the old Shiloh schoolhouse, maybe, and walk along the river.