A Shiloh Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

but Mrs. Howard wears her hair down to her shoulders, and Ma keeps hers tied back with a rubber band. “Does your mother have a garden? I tried cherry tomatoes this year, but they’re not doing very well. Everything needs more rain.”
    â€œOur garden dried up fast,” I tell her. “Preacher told everyone to pray for rain, but I don’t see no sign of it yet.”
    â€œI don’t see any sign of it either,” she says, looking toward the window, and the way David grins, I know I should have said any instead of no.
    I’m trying to get a chance to eat my baked ziti, I think that’s what they call it—good, too—but then Mr. Howard says, “What’s Judd Travers up to these days?”and I see David grin some more, ’cause he knows I’m trying to eat.
    â€œSeems to be doing all right. Works part-time at Whelan’s Garage,” I tell him, studying the hot macaroni at the end of my fork. And when David’s dad begins again, I hurry it to my mouth and swallow it down.
    â€œA woman called the newspaper a couple days ago to say that a man who looked like Judd Travers ran off the road and left tire tracks through her flower garden before he sped off again,” Mr. Howard tells us. “Said it was almost dark, so she didn’t get the license number, but it was a blue pickup with only one brake light working.”
    I’d managed to get two bites chewed and swallowed in time to say, “Judd’s pickup is green.”
    â€œThe sheriff evidently told her the same thing, but she says it was too dark for her to tell exactly.”
    â€œIf it was that dark, how did she know it was Judd Travers?” asks David.
    â€œShe just said she was pretty sure, that’s all. Wanted me to do a news story about it.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” says David’s mom. “What did you tell her, Steve?”
    Mr. Howard sprinkles more cheese on top of his ziti and says, “I told her there was such a thing as a slownews day, but we weren’t that slow, and she hung up on me.”
    We all laugh.

    The Howards live in this two-story house with four bedrooms, one of them for Mr. Howard’s computer and nobody in another. The bed just sits in it waiting for someone to visit.
    David’s room is full of maps and books and puzzles. There’s a map on the wall he got from the Tyler County Highway Department, showing every road and river in the whole county—Sellers Road, Cow House Run, Dancers Lane. We take a blue pencil and trace every single back road and creek we’ve explored so far.
    We play this game—take this plastic robot apart and see how fast we can get it back together—and then we watch TV for a while and listen to a band David likes called Dust and Falling Objects.
    When David stays overnight at my house, we spend most of our time outside, playing on the tire swing, or exploring down around the old gristmill by the bridge. But we have to spread our sleeping bags out on the living room floor, and we don’t have a minute’s peace till the girls have gone to bed. Even then, Ma and Dad are still up in the kitchen—hear everything we say.
    At David’s, though, we sleep on bunk beds, and he always lets me have the top, even though that’s where he sleeps when I’m not there. More than anything, I want a room of my own. I think it was when I had to give up my bedroom when I was nine that I began to fight with Dara Lynn. Who wouldn’t, being kicked out of his own bed?
    We’ve already taken our showers—they have city water, so they don’t have to worry about a well running dry—but David jokes that he can smell my feet, so I hang one leg over the edge of the bunk so he can get a really good whiff. Then he tattoos a word with his finger on my bare sole, see if I can guess what word it is, and when we tire of that, we wait to see who falls asleep first.
    David says,