Saving Shiloh Read Online Free

this after it’s cooked,” I say finally.
    â€œNobody’s going to make you eat it,” says Dad.
    â€œBet I could be a vegetarian,” I say. “I could live just fine on corn and beans and potatoes.”
    â€œFor about a week, maybe,” Dad tells me. “You’d be first to complain.”
    â€œWould not!” I say. “I just can’t see going hunting. I can’t see how you can shoot a deer or a rabbit or anything.” I sure am getting smart in the mouth, I know that.
    Dad’s voice has an edge to it. “You like fried chicken, don’t you? Like a good piece of pot roast now and then?”
    I think about all I’d have to give up if I gave up meat. Forgot about fried chicken.
    â€œJudd was right about one thing,” Dad goes on. “Just because we didn’t kill the meat we get from the store don’t mean it died a natural death. The hamburger you eat was once a steer, don’t forget. Somebody had to raise that steer, send it to market, and someone else had to slaughter it—just so’s you could have a hamburger.”
    I’d have to give up hamburgers, too? I’m quiet a long time trying to figure things out. “Well, if I wanted to be a vegetarian, could I?”
    Dad thinks on this awhile as he drops the meat in a pot of water he’s got boiling on the back of the stove. “Suppose you could. But of course you’d have to get rid of that cowboy hat I bought you at the rodeo. Your belt, too.”
    â€œWhy?” I say.
    â€œThey’re leather; it’s only fair. You don’t want animals killed for their meat, then I figure you don’t want ’em killed for their hide, either. And you know those boots you had your eye on over in Middlebourne? You can forget those, too. Same as that vest you got last year at Christmas, the suede one with the fringe around the bottom.”
    Man oh man, life is more complicated than I thought. One decision after another, and no matter which way you lean, there’s an argument against it. What it comes down to is that I like to eat meat if I don’t have to know how the animal died. And I sure don’t want to give up my rodeo hat.
    â€œWell, one thing I know,” I tell my dad as we set to work cutting up the potatoes and carrots, “I don’t want Shiloh turned into a hunting dog.”
    Dad don’t answer right off, but I can tell by the way he’s chopping that I struck a nerve. “He was already a hunting dog before you got him,” he says. “I was hoping I could take him coon hunting with me some night.”
    â€œHe’s not going to be no hunting dog!” I say louder.
    â€œWell, he belongs to you, Marty. You got the right to say no, I guess.” And then, after we put the vegetables in the fridge, waiting to go in the pot when the meat’s tender, Dad says, “Tomorrow, I want you to take some of this stew over to Judd, and thank him for the squirrels.”
    I figure this is my punishment, and maybe I had it coming.

Four
    W hen I get up next morning, Ma’s got this big waffle sittin’ on my plate, a sausage alongside it, little pools of yellow margarine melting in the squares. Syrup’s hot, too.
    Still, a waffle can’t make up for the fact that on a day off school, wind blowin’ like crazy, I got to hike over to Judd’s place and give him the remains of what I wish he hadn’t shot in the first place.
    To make things worse, Dara Lynn’s sittin’ across from me in her Minnie Mouse pajamas and, knowin’ I got to go to Judd’s, crows, “I’m not gonna go outside alllll day! I’m just gonna sit in this warm house and play with my paper dolls.” And when that don’t get a rise out of me, she adds, “Alllll day! I don’t have to go nowhere.”
    I asked Ma once if Dara Lynn had been born into our family by accident or on purpose, and she said that