(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (32 page)

"All right, you can swagger all you want, but you are not get ting one kernel of this corn until you come over here and apologize for being so dang mean and ugly to me." I twisted a kernel of corn back and forth between my thumb and index finger. "And don't think grunting and blowing your nose in my face is going to get it, 'cause it ain't, as my students say. I ain't meeting you halfway. You got to come all the way, and I got all day. So, when you get hungry, I'll be squatting right here. It's your call."

Pinky banged her shoulders against the side of the stall, and her nose got wide and showed wet.

"Come on." I held the corn in the palm of my hand.

That pig then lowered her head and charged at me full speed, detaching six piglets from their faucets and flinging dirt everywhere as she charged. A half second later, all threehundred-plus pounds of Pinky, led by her snout, hit me in the abdomen and rocketed me against the side of the stall. My head hit the top beam of the gate, the room blurred, and I found myself lying flat on my back, looking up at the rafters.

When my eyes opened, I was shoulder deep in pig crap. It was in my hair, and I think, in the cracks of my ears. Sitting up, I heard somebody outside the stall. I lifted my head, looked through the boards, and saw Amos rolling on the barn floor, holding his stomach.

"Oh, stop! Don't make me laugh!" Amos's black face looked almost red, and tears were streaming out the corners of his eyes.

I sat up in the middle of Pinky's stall and flung my fingers to get the clumps of manure and hay off them, and then cleaned out my ears. Inside the stall, Pinky finished her triumphant, tail-up victory parade, then walked over and began sniffing and licking my face. Looking at me eye-level, she nudged my leg with her nose, dug a little hole with her hoof next to my leg, and lay down in the hole. With a loud sigh, she laid her head on top of my thigh and released a deep, snotblowing breath. Twelve little pigs then surrounded her, and consequently me, and began fighting for a teat.

Amos pulled himself off the ground and lifted himself up by the rungs of Pinky's stall. Wiping his eyes and catching his breath, he said, "D.S., you know ... " He began laughing again. "You know you're covered in pig crap?"

I looked down, patted Pinky on the head, picked up one of her little ones, and held it like a kitten. "Yeah, well ... clean don't always look it."

Amos rubbed his eyes again, still chuckling, and said, "Well, Mr. Greenjeans, when you get cleaned up, and I think that's probably a good idea, maybe even a priority, there's somebody at the hospital who wants to see you."

Accountants, doctors, and other constipated pains-in-thebutt came to mind. "Who?" I said, wrinkling my brow. "If they want to talk about the bill, I just got a letter from Jason Thentwhistle ... "

Amos held his chin in his hands. His eyes looked down on me, and his teeth showed pearly white. Then his bottom lip quivered, and he broke into a smile.

MY SPEEDOMETER WAS PEGGED AT JUST OVER ONE HUNDRED miles an hour as I jumped the railroad tracks on my way to the hospital. The engine was whining as all four tires came off the ground on the other side of the tracks.

Amos followed in his Crown Vic, flashing blue lights, tooting his horn, and shouting over his PA system, "Slow down, you fool!"

Blue lay sprawled and whining on the floorboard, covering one eye with his paw. When I turned the corner and crested the hill that led up to Bryce's trailer, Bryce stood piping at his gate in full regalia, decked out with all his ribbons. He stood, feet together, red-faced, and blowing for all he was worth, but I was going too fast to hear what he was playing.

The hospital was a zoo when I arrived. I bounded up the stairs, tripped on the top step, and slid three rooms down on the janitor's nicely waxed floor. Blue jumped over me, disappearing down the hall and into Maggie's room, where a crowd stood looking in. I began to raise myself off the floor, but the sound stopped me-a sound that I had heard only once in almost five months.

The last time I had heard Maggs's voice, she was crying and screaming, "No, God! Please, no," as the doctor pulled the sheet over my son. Now I sprawled paralyzed on the floor, listening. The voice that had said "I love you" ten thousand times, the voice that said "Dylan Styles!" the voice that whispered "Let's go swimming" had cracked back into the world and filled my empty soul.

Moments before, I lived in a world where wisteria snaked across my son's grave as he rotted beneath a cement slab; where Vietnam Vets inhaled beer to help them forget the day they wiped Vicks salve in their noses so they wouldn't have to smell the bodies as they zipped up the bags; where a no-good farmer bathed in a cornfield but couldn't wash the blood clean; where snow fell on iced-over railroad tracks; where used-car salesmen robbed old women with inflated prices and double-digit interest rates; where little boys peed in the baptistry and pastors strutted like roosters; where evil men tied innocent girls to trees, stripped them, raped them, and left to them die; where students cheated and burnt-out professors scribbled useless information on sweat-stained chalkboards and couldn't care less; where not-so-innocent girls paid $265 for scar tissue; where the most precious thing I had ever known lay listless, scarred, childless, and dying in a nondescript hospital room in the armpit of South Carolina.

But then came Maggie's voice.

I looked around and found myself in a world where wisteria blooms in December; where a Scottish piper sings through his pipes; where used-car salesmen open car doors for little old ladies; where pastors dunk themselves with scared children who emerge clean and hungry; where students say, "He'd call it cheating"; where not-so-innocent girls carry receipts in their pockets and write books that will be read by Oprah; where a no-good professor bathes in the river, burns dead cornfields, and basks in moonlight and flames; and where my wife speaks.

I now lived in a world where the dead danced.

I walked into my wife's room, and there, under the window and glowing like the sun, lay Maggie-her big brown eyes meeting mine for the first time in so many months.

Breathing heavily and fumbling with my hands, I didn't know what to say. Where do I start? Am I the same Dylan that she fell in love with, and is she the same Maggie? How deep are the scars? Are we the same us? Standing there in my new boots and covered in pig smear, I didn't know who to be until I knew where she was. I needed Maggs to tell me who to be-because that would tell me where she was, and most importantly, who we were.

I closed the door, knelt down next to Maggs's bed, and watched her cracked lips quiver. I slid my hand beneath hers and searched her eyes, aching to know and be known. She blinked a lazy blink, tilted her head, and smiled.

IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN WE HEARD THE PIPES. WE crawled out of bed, slipped on some jeans, and walked hand in hand along the tree line. Standing under the overhang of oaks, next to my son's grave, was Bryce, decked out in full military regalia, ruddy-cheeked and blowing so hard the veins on his neck stood out like rose vines. He was somewhere in the middle of "It Is Well with My Soul" when we walked up. A gentle breeze skirted along the bank and fanned over us as we stood facing the river. Our long shadows ran down to the river and disappeared into the water.

Without a pause, Bryce slipped into "Amazing Grace." The music went through us like the morning sun, warm and glowing. As the last hollow note of his pipes echoed off the river and faded into the distance, Maggs walked over and kissed him on the cheek. Bryce stood rigid, heels together, at attention, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He was wearing a green beret, his military dress shirt, and a chest spangled and twinkling with medals. Everything, from his hat to shirt to kilt to socks, was clean, pressed, and worn for the first time in a long time. Without saying a word he turned, began blowing, and disappeared like an angel into the darkness. As we stood underneath the canopy of oaks, the pipes faded away downriver.

Maggie slid her hand under mine and tugged on my arm. The air was cool, but nothing compared to the previous year. I stood on the bank while she ran in front of me and climbed the sandy bluff. In the moonlight, she stripped off her jeans and stood silhouetted against the moon, which formed a halo around her body and threaded her hair with silver. I watched, waist deep in the water, mesmerized. Enchanted. The slender calves, the small curve of her lower back, the graceful shoulders. She skipped to the edge and took a swan dive off the bluff, splashing into the water a few feet away from me. The ripples lapped against my stomach and brought chill bumps to my skin. When she broke the surface, and that black water dripped off her nose and ears, a sweet and sneaky smile creased her face.

Half a dozen wood ducks soared overhead, brushing the tops of the cypress trees with their wing tips. An owl hooted low and hauntingly; farther north along the river, a lone bluetick hound sounded a single lonely ping somewhere in the Salk. A mile south of us, the sound of singing, pungent with joy and ripe with smiles, rose like a flume of steam from Pastor John's church steeple. Maggie and I swam close together, swaying with the slow rhythm of the river while the echoes of voices showered down on us like a warm summer rain. Beneath it all I had only one thought, one need.

Lord, I'm begging You. Please give me sixty-two more years with this woman.

SOMEWHERE IN DECEMBER OF 1995, 1 BEGAN THINKing about this story. I was driving through one of the bridge tunnels in Hampton Roads on my way to UPS, where I worked in the early morning preload. It being the Christmas season, I think we had to clock in before 3 AM. It may have been earlier, but I've tried to block that out. I had been in graduate school at Regent University, and in order to remain focused on school, I had suppressed my stories for so long that they had begun to rebel and bubble their way to the surface. Cream does that.

Let me interject one thing-my graduate school experience was phenomenal. One lightbulb after another clicked on and lit my path. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Three men in particular contributed to this, and I am greatly indebted to each-Doug Tarpley, Michael Graves, and Bob Schihl. Guys, thanks for a seat at the table. My hat's off to you.

At any rate, I remember driving through the tunnel and could hold it back no longer. Remember the grammar school project where the kid pours the vinegar over the baking soda in the papier-mache volcano? As I was nearing the bottom of the tunnel, one scene erupted and flashed across the screen on the back of my eyelids: a man standing in a ditch, screaming at God. I knew he was cold, alone, and at the end of himself. Much like Crusoe, he was shipwrecked, a castaway in need of Friday to rescue him off the island. The Dead Don't Dance grew from that early-morning flash, or hallucination, as the case may have been. In later drives, mostly through the back roads of South Carolina, I saw a beautiful girl and somehow knew her name was Maggie, a handsome black man who looked like Mr. Clean with a badge, and a farmhouse with a rusted tin roof-one I knew well.

The path from idea to trade paper has been, as with other first novels, a graveled road marred with washouts, blind corners, stop-and-go traffic, and U-turns. Yes, I've worked hard, early mornings, late nights, stoplights, but that is the least of it. Many writers work hard. I, and this book, are in large part a product of other people's unselfishness. People who gave me a chance. Who believed in me. Without them, I'd not be here, and you'd not be reading this book.

I won't backtrack to my youth, but I need to start by thanking one of the finest writers I've ever met: John Dyson. John worked for Reader's Digest, writing some 160-plus articles and more than twenty-three books over a three-decade career. He's a writer's writer, a true craftsman and wordsmith. Not to mention a pretty good sailor. I won't bore you with the story, but John was instrumental in my first work as a writer. You know that process of smelting, where the silversmith heats the silver and removes the dross? John did that to me. Painful too. Somewhere in that furnace, he taught me what good writing looks like, and maybe more importantly, sounds like. Somewhere early in our work together, he told me "Charles, an editor is one who walks back through the battlefield and shoots the wounded." He was right, and true to form, came with both barrels blazing-though, in my case, that's not always bad. As a dwarf running among giants, I stand with one foot squarely atop John's broad shoulder. John, thanks for allowing me the view, for letting me whisper in your ear and ask the same irritating questions over and over, and for not brushing me off your lapel.