Text Leveling System

Shiloh

RDQ:	1449	Max Word/Sent	45	Total Words	3739		Diff Words	916
Lex	820	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	2941	78.7%	Hi freq	403	44%
AR	4.3	Long Sentences	14.4	Low Freq occurs	112	3%	Low freq	94	10.3%

The day Shiloh come we're having us a big Sunday dinner. Dara Lynn's dipping bread in her glass of cold tea the way she likes and Becky pushes her beans up over the edge of her plate in her rush to get 'em down.
Ma gives us her scolding look. "Just once in my life" she says "I'd like to see a bite of food go direct from the dish into somebody's mouth without a detour of any kind."
She's looking at me when she says it though. It isn't that I don't like fried rabbit. Like it fine. I just don't want to bite down on buckshot is]]
all and I'm checking each piece.
"I looked that rabbit over good Marty and you won't find any buckshot in that thigh" Dad says buttering his bread. "I shot him in the neck."
Somehow I wish he hadn't said that. I push the meat from one side of my plate to the other through the sweet potatoes' and back again.
"Did it die right off?" I ask knowing I can't eat at all unless it had.
"Soon enough."
"You shoot its head clean off?" Dara Lynn asks. She's like that.
Dad chews real slow before he answers. "Not quite" he says and goes on eating.
Which is when I leave the table.
The best thing about Sundays is we eat our big meal at noon. Once you get your belly full you can walk all over West Virginia' before you're hungry again. Any other day you start out after dinner. you've got to come back when it's dark. I take the .22 rifle Dad had given me in March on my eleventh birthday and set out up the road to see what I can shoot. Like to find me an apple hanging way out on a branch see if I can bring it down. Line up a few cans on a rail fence and shoot 'em off. Never shoot at anything moving though. Never had the slightest wish.
We live high up in the hills above Friendly but hardly anybody knows where that is. Friendly's]]
near Sistersville which is halfway between Wheeling and Parkersburg. Used to be my daddy told me Sistersville was one of the best places you could live in the whole state. You ask me the best place to live I'd say right where we are a little four-room house with hills on three sides.
Afternoon is my second-best time to go up in the hills though; morning's the best especially in summer. Early early morning. On one morning I saw three kinds of animals not counting cats dogs frogs cows and horses. Saw a groundhog saw a doe with two fawns and saw a gray fox with a reddish head. Bet his daddy was a gray fox and his ma was a red one.
My favorite place to walk is just across this rattly bridge where the road curves by the old Shiloh schoolhouse and follows the river. River to one side trees the other sometimes a house or two.
And this particular afternoon I'm about halfway up the road along the river when I see something out of the comer of my eye. Something moves. I look and about fifteen yards off there's this short-haired dog-white with brown and black spots-not making any kind of noise just slinking along with his head down watching me tail between his legs like he's hardly got the right to breathe. A beagle maybe a year or two old.
I stop and the dog stops. Looks like he's been]]
caught doing something awful when I can tell all he really wants is to follow along beside me. "Here boy" I say slapping my thigh.
Dog goes down on his stomach groveling about in the grass. I laugh and start over toward him. He's got an old worn-out collar on probably
older than he is. Bet it belonged to another dog before him. "C'mon boy" I say putting out my hand.
The dog gets up and backs off. He don't even whimper like he's lost his bark.
Something  really hurts inside you when you see a dog cringe like that. You know somebody's been kicking at him. Beating. on him maybe.
"It's okay boy" I say coming a little closer but still he backs off.
So I just take my gun and follow the river. Every so often f look over my shoulder and there he is the beagle. I stop; he stops. I can see his ribs -not real bad- but he isn't plumped out or anything.
There's a broken branch hanging from a limb out over the water and I'm wondering if I can bring it down with one shot. I raise my gun and
then I think how the sound might scare the dog off. I decide I don't want to shoot my gun much that day.
It's a slow river. You walk beside it you figure it's not even moving. If you stop though you can]]
see leaves and things going along. Now and then a fish jumps-big fish. Bass I think. Dog's still trailing me tail tucked in. Funny how he don't make a sound.
Finally I sit on a log put my gun at my feet and wait. Back down the road  the dog sits too. Sits right in the middle of it head on his paws. "Here boy!" I say again and pat my knee. He wiggles just a little but he don't come. Maybe it's a she-dog.
"Here girl!" I say. Dog still don't come.
I decide to wait the dog out but after three or four minutes on the log it gets boring and I start off again. So does the beagle.
Don't know where you'd end up if you followed the river all the way. Heard somebody say it curves about comes back on itself but if it didn't and I got home after dark I'd get a good . whopping. So I always go as far as the ford where the river spills across the path and then I head back.
When I turn around and the dog sees me coming he goes off into the woods. I figure that's the last I'll see of the beagle; and I get halfway down the road again before I look. back. There he is. I stop. He stops. I go. He goes.
And then hardly thinking on it I whistle. It's like pressing a magic button. The beagle comes barreling toward me legs going lickety]]
split long ears flopping tail sticking up like a flagpole. This time when I put out my hand he licks all my fingers and jumps up against my leg making little yelps in his throat. He can't get enough of me like I'd been saying no all along and now I'd said yes he could come. It's a he-dog like I'd thought.
"Hey boy! You're really somethin' now ain't you?" I'm laughing as the beagle makes circles around me. I squat down and the dog licks my face my  neck. Where'd he learn to come if you whistled to hang back if you didn't?
I'm so busy watching the dog I don't even notice it's started to rain. Don't bother me. Don't bother the dog neither. I'm looking for the place
I first saw him. Does he live here? I wonder. Or the house on up the road ?  Each place we pass I figure he'll stop -somebody come out and whistle maybe. But nobody comes out and the dog don't stop. Keeps coming even after we get to the old Shiloh schoolhouse. Even starts across the bridge tail going like a propeller. He licks my hand every so often to make sure I'm still there - mouth open like he's smiling. He is smiling.
Once he follows me across the bridge though and on past the gristmill I start to worry. Looks like he's fixing to follow me all the way to our house. I'm in trouble enough coming home with my clothes wet. My ma's mama died of]]
pneumonia and we don't ever get the chance to forget it. And now I got a dog with me and we were never allowed to have pets.
If you ;can't afford to feed 'em and take 'em to the vet when they're sick you've no right taking 'em in Ma says which is true enough.
I don't say a word to the beagle the rest of the way home hoping he'll turn at some point and go back. The dog keeps coming.
I get to the front stoop and say "Go home boy." And then I feel my heart squeeze up the way he stops smiling sticks his tail between his legs again and slinks off. He goes as far as the sycamore tree lies down in the wet grass head on his paws.
"Whose dog is that?" Ma asks when I come in. I shrug. "Just followed me is all."
"Where'd it pick up with you?" Dad asks. "Up in Shiloh across the bridge" I say.
"On the road by the river? Bet that's Judd Travers's beagle" says Dad. "He got himself another hunting dog a few weeks back."
"Judd got him a hunting dog how come he don't treat him right?" I ask.
"How you know he don't?"
"Way the dog acts. Scared to pee almost" I say.
Ma gives me a look.
"Don't seem to me he's got any marks on him"]]
Dad says studying him from our window.
Don't have to mark a dog to hurt him I'm thinking.
"Just don't pay him any attention and' he'll go away" Dad says.
"And get out of those wet clothes" Ma tells me. "You want to follow your grandma Slater to the grave?"
I change clothes then sit down and turn on the TV which only has two channels. On Sunday afternoons it's preaching and baseball. I watch baseball for an hour. Then I get up and sneak to the window. Ma knows what I'm about.
"That Shiloh dog still out there?" she asks.
I. nod. He's looking at me. He sees me there at the window and his tail starts to thump. I name him Shiloh.]]
Sunday-night supper is whatever's left from noon. If nothing's left over Ma takes cold cornmeal mush fries up big slabs and we eat it with Karo syrup. But this night there's still rabbit. I don't want any but I know Shiloh does.
I wonder how long I can keep pushing that piece of rabbit around my plate. Not very long I discover.
"You going to eat that meat or you just playing with it?" Dad asks. "If you don't want it I'll take it for lunch tomorrow."
"I'll eat it" I say.
"Don't you be giving it to that dog" says Ma.]]
I take a tiny bite.
"What's the doggy going to eat, then?" asks Becky. She's three, which is four years younger than Dara Lynn.
"Nothing here, that's what," says Ma.
Becky and Dara Lynn look at Dad. Now I had them feeling sorry for the beagle, too. Sometimes girl-children get what they want easier than I do. But not this time.
"Dog's going right back across the river when we get through eating," says Dad. "If that's Judd's new dog, he probably don't have sense enough yet to find his way home again. We'll put him in the Jeep and drive him over."
Don't know what else I figured Dad to say. Do I really think he's going to tell me to wait till morning, and if the beagle's still here, we can keep him? I try all kinds of ways to figure how I could get that rabbit meat off my plate and into my pocket, but Ma's watching every move I make.
So I excuse myself and go outside and over to the chicken coop. It's off toward the back where Ma can't see. We keep three hens, and I take one of the two eggs that was in a nest and carry it out behind the bushes.
I whistle softly. Shiloh comes loping toward me. I crack the egg and empty it out in my hands. Hold my hands down low and Shiloh eats the egg, licking my hands clean afterward, then curling his tongue down between my fingers to get every little bit. "Good boy, Shiloh," I whisper, and stroke him all over.
I hear the back screen slam, and Dad comes out on the stoop. "Marty?"
"Yeah?" I go around, Shiloh at my heels. "Let's take that dog home now." Dad goes over
and opens the door of the Jeep. Shiloh puts his tail between his legs and just stands there, so I go around to the other side, get in, and whistle. Shiloh leaps up onto my lap, but he don't look too happy about it.
For the first time I have my arms around him. He feels warm, and when I stroke him, I can feel places on his body where he has ticks.
"Dog has ticks," I tell my dad. "Judd'll take 'em off," Dad says. "What if he don't?"
"It's his concern, Marty, not yours. It's not your dog. You keep to your own business."
I press myself against the back of the seat as we start down our bumpy dirt driveway toward the road. "I want to be a vet someday," I tell my dad. "Hmm," he says.
"I want to be a traveling vet. The kind that has his office in a van and goes around to people's homes, don't make folks come to him. Read about it in a magazine at school."
"You know what you have to do to be a vet?" Dad asks.
"Got to go to school, I know that."
"You've got to have college training. Like a doctor, almost. Takes a lot of money to go to veterinary school."
My dream sort of leaks out like water in a paper
bag. "I could be a veterinarian's helper," I suggest, my second choice.
"You maybe could," says Dad, and points the Jeep up the road into the hills.
Dusk is settling in now. Still warm, though. A warm July night. Trees look dark against the red sky; lights coming on in a house here, another one there. I'm thinking how in any one of these houses there's probably somebody who would take better care of Shiloh than Judd Travers would. How come this dog had to be his?
The reason I don't like Judd Travers is a whole lot of reasons, not the least is that I was in the corner store once down in Friendly and saw Judd cheat Mr. Wallace at the cash register. Judd gives the man a ten and gets him to talking, then-when Mr. Wallace gives him change-says he give him a twenty.
I blink, like I can't believe Judd done that, and old Mr. Wallace is all confused. So I say, "No, I think he give you a ten."
Judd glares at me, whips out his wallet, and waves a twenty-dollar bill in front of my eye. "Whose picture's on this bill, boy?" he says.
"I don't know."
He gives me a look says, I thought so. "That's Andrew Jackson," he says. "I had two of 'em in my wallet when I walked in here, and now I only got one.
This here man's got the other, and I want my change."
Mr. Wallace, he's so flustered he just digs in his money drawer and gives Judd change for a twenty, and afterward I thought what did Andrew Jackson have to do with it? Judd's so fast-talking he can get away with anything. Don't know anybody who likes him much, but around here folks keep to their own business, like Dad says. In Tyler County that's important. Way it's always been, anyhow.
Another reason I don't like Judd Travers is he spits tobacco out the corner of his mouth, and if he don't like you-and he sure don't like me-he sees just how close he can spit to where you're standing. Third reason I don't like him is because he was at the fairgrounds last year same day we were, and seemed like everyplace I was, he was in front of me, blocking my view. Standin' in front of me at the mud bog, sittin' in front of me at the tractor pull, and risin' right up out of his seat at the Jorden Globe of Death Motorcycle Act so's I missed the best part.
Fourth reason I don't like him is because he kills deer out of season. He says he don't, but I seen him once just about dusk with a young buck strapped over the hood of his truck. He tells me the buck run in front of him on the road and he accidentally run over it, but I saw the bullet hole myself. If he got
caught, he'd have to pay two hundred dollars, more than he's got in the bank, I'll bet.
We're in Shiloh now. Dad's crossing the bridge by the old abandoned gristmill, turning at the boarded-up school, and for the first time I can feel Shiloh's body begin to shake. He's trembling all over. I swallow. Try to say something to my dad and have to swallow again.
"How do you go about reporting someone who don't take care of his dog right?" I ask finally. "Who you fixing to report, Marty?"
"Judd."
"If this dog's mistreated, he's only about one out of fifty thousand animals that is," Dad says. "Folks even bring 'em up here in the hills and let 'em out, figure they can live on rats and rabbits. Wouldn't be the first dog that wasn't treated right."
"But this one come to me to help him!" I insist. "Knew that's why he was following me. I got hooked on him, Dad, and I want to know he's treated right."
For the first time I can tell Dad's getting impatient with me. "Now you get that out of your head right now. If it's Travers's dog, it's no mind of ours how he treats it."
"What if it was a child?" I ask him, getting too smart for my own good. "If some kid was shaking like this dog is shaking, you wouldn't feel no pull for keeping an eye on him?"
"Marty,,, Dad says, and now his voice is just plumb tired. "This here's a dog, not a child, and it's not our dog. I want you to quit going on about it. Hear?"
I shut up then. Let my hands run over Shiloh's body like maybe everywhere I touch I can protect him somehow. We're getting closer to the trailer where Judd lives with his other dogs, and already they're barking up a storm, hearing Dad's Jeep come up the road.
Dad pulls over. "You want to let him out?" he says.
I shake my head hard. "I'm not lettin' him out here till I know for sure he belongs to Judd." I'm asking for a slap in the face, but Dad don't say anything, just gets out and goes up the boards Judd has laid out in place of a sidewalk.
Judd's at the door of his trailer already, in his undershirt, peering out.
"Looks like Ray Preston," he says, through the screen.
"How you doin', Judd?"
Judd comes out on the little porch he's built at the side of his trailer, and they stand there and talk awhile. Up here in the hills you hardly ever get down to business right off. First you say your howdys and then you talk about anything else but what you come for, and finally, when the mosquitoes start to bite,
you say what's on your mind. But you always edge into it, not to offend.
I can hear little bits and pieces floating out over the yard. The rain ... the truck ... the tomatoes ... the price of gasoline ... and all the while Shiloh lays low in my lap, tail between his legs, shaking like a window blind in a breeze.
And then, the awful words: "Say, Judd, my boy was up here along the river this afternoon, and a beagle followed him home. Don't have any tags on his collar, but I'm remembering you got yourself another hunting dog, and wondered if he might be yours." I'm thinking this is a bad mistake. Maybe it isn't Judd's at all, and he's such a liar he'd say it was, just to get himself still another animal to be mean to. Judd hardly lets him finish; starts off across the muddy yard in his boots. "Sure as hell bet it is," he says. "Can't keep that coon dog home to save my soul. Every time I take him hunting, he runs off before I'm through. I been out all day with the dogs, and they all come back but him."
I can hear Judd's heavy footsteps coming around the side of the Jeep, and I can smell his chewing tobacco, strong as coffee.
"Yep," he says, thrusting his face in the open window. "That's him, all right." He opens the door. "Git on down here!" he says, and before I can even
give the dog one last pat, Shiloh leaps off my lap onto the ground and connects with Judd's right foot. He yelps and runs off behind the trailer, tail tucked down, belly to the ground. All Judd's dogs chained out back bark like crazy.
I jump out of the Jeep, too. "Please don't kick him like that," I say. "Some dogs just like to run." "He runs all over creation," Judd says. I can tell he's studying me in the dark, trying to figure what's it to me.
"I'll keep an eye out for him," I say. "Anytime I see him away from home, I'll bring him back. I promise. Just don't kick him."
Judd only growls. "He could be a fine huntin' dog, but he tries my patience. I'll leave him be tonight, but he wanders off again, I'll whup the daylights out of him. Guarantee you that."
I swallow and swallow, and all the way home I can't speak a word, trying to hold the tears back.

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Complex Problem/Solution

Simple Plot

Present Tense

Dialect/Accents

Topic

Dogs

Protection

Love

*Animals

*Family & Friends

*Feelings, Behaviors

Pets

Low Frequency Words

abandoned	accidentally	bass	beagle	beagle's
boarded	c'mon	chained	college	comer
concern	coop	cringe	curling	curves
daylights	detour	doin	drawer	everyplace
fairgrounds	fawns	flopping	flustered	gasoline
git	glares	gristmill	groveling	guarantee
haired	hell	hoping	howdys	huntin
impatient	judd'll	karo	knowing	lettin
liar	lickety	limb	loping	mistreated
mosquitoes	offend	parkersburg	particular	patience
peering	plumped	pneumonia	preaching	propeller
rattly	reasons	reddish	register	risin
schoolhouse	season	settling	shrug	sistersville
sittin	slinking	slinks	soul	squat
standin	stoop	suggest	swallow	sycamore
syrup	thrusting	tobacco	travers	travers's
undershirt	veterinarian's	veterinary	wallet	wanders
whatever's	wheeling	where'd	whimper	whisper
whistled	whopping	whup	younger