(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (12 page)

We tried that just once. Floated downriver about twelve miles, spent the night, then thought we'd paddle back up it. Not a chance. You'd think, as critical as we'd been of Crusoe, we'd have thought of that. Funny how you can think of some things and not others.

Then about fifteen years ago, I found an old forty-horse Evinrude that belonged to Papa. All the times I worked and played in that barn, and I never knew it was there. We took it to Bobby's small engine-repair shop in town, and Bobby spent a week tinkering with it, replacing this hose and that seal. Pretty soon he had it puttering like a champ.

Bobby helped us rig up a platform out of steel. We sank the bolts all the way through the timber and hooked the Evinrude to the back of the raft. That was the day that heaven came to Digger. A couple of five-gallon gas cans, and we could putter all the way back from a three-day float. It really changed the way we traveled. Sometimes we puttered upriver ten or so miles and then just floated back. The motor was a nice addition, but the floating was why we built the raft.

Floating the river is a delicate dance. Tenuous at best. If you've ever floated, you know what I mean. It's slow and silent progress, but you're not in control. Nobody controls the river. To float the river you've got to trust something bigger than yourself, and you better not mind living halfway between Nowhere and No Place Else, because the river's not interested in the destination, only the process. Otherwise all rivers would be straight.

The river's got its own rhythm, and you either dance to it or you don't. Whether you're man or woman matters not because the river leads, and if you're stepping out of time, then it's your fault because the river changes its beat for no one. You want to go swimming? Go swimming. You want to sleep? Sleep. You want to fish? Fish. You want to go faster? Too bad. You want to slow down? Good luck. The river's got one speed, and it's not going to stop and wait on you. And unless it rains, it's not going to hurry you along either.

Amos and I made our pact with the river long ago. We built a raft, shoved off, and never complained. Rain, no rain, sun, no sun, wind, no wind, hot, cold, fast, slow, wet, dry. It really didn't matter to us. We were just boys, happy to go wherever the river carried us. And all the river cared about was that we were going in the same direction it was and that we could swim, because it didn't like us dying.

Rivers don't do death, that's why they flow. You may drown, sink to the bottom, and lie there a few days, swelling, getting all puffy. You might even get caught on a downed tree with bream and bass nibbling on your nose, but eventually the river's going to lift you up and beach you. Spit you out like Jonah. You're not going to make the trip. You can't go where the river goes. Rivers do life, and the dead don't dance.

On our maiden voyage, a three-day float, we read Huckleberry Finn, switching turns every chapter. Our favorite scene was Huck sitting on the raft, deciding whether or not to rescue Jim. "All right then, I'll go to hell" became our motto.

For us, the raft was a safe and easy place. While I read, Amos would lie flat, listen, and try to smoke a pipe. He coughed and sputtered a good bit, about like the Evinrude, but eventually he got it and seemed to enjoy it. I, on the other hand, tried Red Man. A mistake. Every time I put that stuff in my mouth, I'd end up chumming. Why in the world I continued to try still amazes me. Glutton for punishment, I suppose. I figured if Josey Wales and John Wayne could chew, then so could I. The only difference was that my life was not a movie. Mine was real life and showed all the unedited stuff, like me hanging my head overboard.

My dancing with the river was never poetic, but Amos got pretty close.

I JUMPED INTO SOME SHORTS AND GRABBED MY POCKETknife, Papa's yellow-handled, two-bladed Case Trapper.

Amos started in again. "Come on, boy. I'm always waiting on you."

Amos and I lit out the front door and headed for the barn, where Pinky met us at the gate and tried to flip me with a stiff shoulder. She's got about 130 pounds on me.

Amos laughed, and I shooed her away. "Get out of here, you of biddy."

"That is one mean pig," Amos said as Pinky grunted and ran in circles around her offspring.

"You ain't seen nothing. That pig is the Antichrist," I said.

The Evinrude hung on a little rack I'd made years back. Even though we hadn't used it in a few years, I started it up every now and again just to hear the sound. We loaded it into the wheelbarrow-actually it was more of a manure cart, but we called it a wheelbarrow-and grabbed a couple of gas cans. Two cans were plenty for a one-night float.

It was getting dark, but the trail alongside the cornfield was light enough. The moon shimmered off the sand, and shadows followed us through the long, tall grass and even taller corn. Blue bounced along beside us.

"What happened to your arm?" Amos asked while pushing the wheelbarrow and nodding at my forearm. "That's a pretty good one."

"Oh, that's just, uh ... I was moving some stuff in the barn, and Pinky tripped me up. Just came down on it wrong."

"You ought to send that thing to Smithfield. I'd tell you to make sausage out of her, but she's probably too dang tough."

"You got a point there," I agreed. A half mile later we rolled up to the riverbank and into the hollow where we hid the raft. The river was high, due to the moon, so floating it out would be easy. We pulled off all the branches that had either fallen on it or we had put on it, but there didn't seem to be as many as the last time we had done this.

"I think somebody's been on our boat," I said, pointing. "Less cover."

Amos nodded and looked at the raft. "Sometimes a man likes to be alone."

"When?" I asked.

"'Bout four weeks ago. I got tired of sitting there feeling useless and watching you hold Maggs's hand."

"Oh."

Amos mounted the motor and loaded the gas inside the lean-to. We had sealed it when we built it, so it was pretty good and dry. Matches even lit. Which would be nice once we got going. A fire helped keep the mosquitoes at bay, and this end of the Salkehatchie Swamp produced some big mosquitoes.

I grabbed the push pole, jumped on top of the poling platform, and backed out the raft.

We bumped into some old cedars, and Amos said, "D.S., you're getting rusty."

I gave a hard push and Amos, who was standing, lost his balance and almost went in the water.

"D.S., you get my Kimber wet and I'm gonna beat you like a drum right here on this raft in the middle of the river."

I laughed. "I ain't that rusty. And you might could whup me, but you're gonna have to catch me first, Mr. Donut."

Amos was actually pretty fit. He had gained a few pounds since high school-I'd say about ten-but it was mostly muscle. After high school his hair started thinning up top, so he just shaved it off. He said it was cooler and less hassle. Although I'd never tell him, Amos is a pretty handsome man, and he takes good care of himself. Spends about four days a week in the weight room. So between his head, his muscles, and the moon, he looked like a shorter, thicker, blacker version of Mr. Clean. I was glad we were on the same side.

"Listen here, half-pint, I'm within ten pounds of my playing weight. What are you? 'Bout a buck-seventy?" He eyed me up and down.

"One sixty-eight," I said.

"That's what I thought. You're almost thirty pounds under your playing weight."

"Yeah, but I can still outrun you," I said, laughing and looking downriver.

"But when I catch you," Amos said, flexing his right arm, "I'm gonna put you in the Carolina cruncher."

"Ebony," I said, smirking, "I think you're losing a bit. Your arms ain't what they used to be."

He took two steps, grabbed my legs, and tossed. The whole thing didn't take a second and a half. I went about fifteen feet in the air, then dived deep into the water. I swam back over to the raft and climbed up, something I'd done a hundred times. I wrung out my shirt and watched Amos stand atop the polling platform, smiling. It was good to be back on the raft.

We floated a few hours, not saying much. About three o'clock in the morning, Amos looked up from his pipe and broke the silence. "Have you been thinking what I think you're thinking?"

I knew what he was asking. This was why he had brought me to the river. Amos was checking my pulse, but it hurt too much just to come outright and say it. We needed the river and a few hours beneath the shadow of the moon to get him to the place where he could ask and me to the place where I could answer.

I looked up from my seat on the front of the raft. "If Maggs is already sitting in heaven, rocking our son, laughing with Nanny and Papa and our folks, and looking down on me, then she's never coming back, and I might live another sixty years." I shook my head. "I just don't know that I can make it through those years without her."

We floated along in the quiet, listening to the ripple and flap of water against the cedar timbers. An owl hooted, and on the air I smelled a charcoal fire thick with lighter fluid. Amos stood atop the poling platform on the back of the raft, his sweat glistening in the moonlight. Minutes passed, during which neither of us said a word.

My pulse must have been pretty weak, because Amos pressed me one more time. "What keeps you?"

I splashed water on my face and rubbed my eyes. "The thought of Maggie waking up. Her hand without mine. Her without me, staring at the same future that's bearing down on me."

Blue slept next to me, his ears pricking up every once in a while. We probably floated four or five miles while Amos wordlessly and methodically worked the pole. It was a warm night, so I dunked my head in the water and let it drip down and soak my neck and chest. Amos lit his pipe, and in the flash of the match I saw tears streaking his cheeks. At daybreak, we napped and fished. We caught a few bream, one or two bass, and ate lunch around noon. About dusk, we cranked the Evinrude and puttered back home, arriving around midnight.

I stepped onto the porch and pointed to the stringer. "Keep the fish. I'm not too hungry."

Amos nodded, looked as if he wanted to say something, and then stuck his right index finger in the air. He opened the trunk of his squad car, pulled out a cardboard box about two feet square, and set it on the porch. "Maggie found this at an antique shop in Walterboro. She was real excited. Stored it at my house so you wouldn't find it. I think she meant to give it to you on your first day of class. After the, uh ... well, I didn't know what to do with it. So here it is." Amos looked out over the field toward the river. "I don't think she ever got around to writing a card."

Amos turned while tears slid off his square chin. He nodded and spoke quietly, as if his voice would amplify across the cornfield. "When you boil it down," he said, holding out his hand and counting with his fingers, "all we got left, all anybody's got, is faith ... and hope ... and love." He looked at his three fingers. "And we all gonna make it. All three of us."

I watched him cross the dirt road and head into his own driveway. I turned on all the lights, showered, wrapped myself in a towel, and stood in the den, staring at that box. An hour later, I sat on the floor and slit the brown wrapping tape. Inside, wrapped in dirty burlap, were a leather-strung drum and two hand-cut drumsticks.

I cried like a baby all the way to the hospital.

I CONSIDER MYSELF A FAIR TEACHER. I DON'T ASK anything of my students that I wouldn't ask of myself. And one thing I would not ask of myself is to jump into a cold pool without sticking my toes in it first. Now, Amos, he's a different breed. It can be thirty degrees outside with a film of ice covering the surface of the water, and it's "Aw, just jump in. Get it over with. You'll warm up." Not me. Especially not when it comes to being cold.

I like to get comfortable with an idea before I take it on. Give me time to ruminate, and I can face most anything, but don't allow me an experience, and then with the sweat still rolling off my face, ask me to interpret it for you. I don't know what I think until I've had time to look in my rearview mirror.

The English department had structured my class around three papers, but it only cared about the third, the research paper. A passing paper was my student's ticket out of here. While the third paper had to meet certain length and style requirements, the first two were left up to the teacher's discretion, meaning I could tailor the assignment to need. Theirs and mine.

They needed to get their feet wet, get their engines running, get comfortable, and I needed to get to know them. I needed to place a face with a writing voice and so have a starting line against which I could compare their other two works. I needed to know who could and who could not. Who did and who did not. The first paper was the plumb line against which I compared the other two. It would also keep them honest.

The first assignment was an autobiographical essay. Easy enough. Everyone is an instant expert on the subject. No research needed. The only requirement is honesty, and sometimes a good sense of humor.

I spent most of Saturday reading essays to Maggie at the hospital. From prom night to car crashes to summer nights with bronzed, big-breasted women, they gave me real and honest stuff.