(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (39 page)

I COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN TWELVE THE DAY I came home from school with my hands stuffed in my pockets and tried to tell Papa why the underside of my eye was black and puffy. No, I had not thrown the first punch, but that didn't mean I wasn't guilty. The shiner proved that. I sat on the front porch and struggled with my story while Papa cleaned his fingernails.

He knelt down and stuck his face about two inches from mine. "`Almost true' ain't true," he said.

"Well..

He held up a finger and led me around back to his workshop in the barn, where he picked up a six-foot bricklayer's level and held it up for me to see the bubble. He leveled it, centering the bubble, then lifted one end just slightly, sending the bubble off plumb. He raised his eyebrows. "It either is, or it isn't."

EVER SINCE WE'D FINISHED UP WITH THE ADOPTION COMmittee, I'd been trying to tell Maggie more about my four and a half months alone. But every time I tried, I got tongue-tied and twisted, adding more confusion than resolution. So one cold January day-nearly a year to the day that I'd brought her home-Maggs finally just put her finger to my lips and said, "Shhh." She took me by the hand, led me to the linen closet, and opened the door.

There I found three empty shelves-the bottom of which was desk-high-a rickety chair not any wider than my butt, ten yellow pads, and a coffee cup filled with No. 2 pencils.

She sat me in the chair and said, "Just write it."

I looked at the blank page. "But I don't even know where to start."

She shrugged. "Start with us."

I scratched my head, and she shut the door behind me. I sat there for a long time trying to find an entry. Just how do you tell a story like that? I mean, seriously, where should I start? Despite her tough exterior, Maggie's insides were eggshell fragile. Should I tell her everything? Let her know the depth of my thinking? Every event? The extent of my loneliness? How far back down into that pit should I lead her? Should I tell her there were times when I looked up and saw no light at all?

Maggs was walking a narrow ridge as it was-it wouldn't take much to push her off either side. Her emotional ups and downs had been difficult to anticipate or gauge. Dr. Frank said this was "to be expected," and I should just act as if nothing were out of line. I told him it was kind of like riding Space Mountain at Disney World-a roller coaster that ran along a track at breakneck speed in pitch-black darkness. Not even the driver knew when the turns or flips were coming. Maggie couldn't quite seem to get her emotions in check, and when she did express them, she couldn't control them. She'd cry at the drop of a hat and laugh when things weren't funny, and once she started crying, it took her awhile to stop.

If I told her the whole truth about the four months she spent asleep in that hospital bed, I ran the very real risk of making her feel responsible. And with all the pregnancy and adoption stuff running through her head, no amount of explaining would change that. So I looked at the blank page in my new "office" and wondered if it wouldn't be better for selected scenes in the director's cut to end up on the editing room floor. So I closed the door behind me and began writing half the truth, excusing it by saying I loved her.

I hadn't done much writing since grad school, so it took me awhile to remember how. As a teacher, I had always told my students that when you face a blank page, the hardest part is getting started. So to help yourself out, write the word The and you're on your way.

I took my own advice, and once I did, things I'd forgotten returned. Some things are so simple. I think that's partly the reason Maggie sent me in there. Yes, she wanted the story, but she knew me well enough to hold off in the hearing of it until she was certain that I'd emptied myself of it-proving that therapy comes in many forms. Maggie still knows a lot that I don't.

Every morning I wrote for an hour. Memories surfaced and flashed before my mind's eye-the hospital, tear stained nights, never-ending days, loneliness so deep I thought I would drown-and maybe sometimes I wanted to. I flung open the doors of my mind, dug them out of their holes where I'd hidden them from Maggie, and pretty soon ten pads turned into twenty, and all the beauty and wonder-and yes, even ugliness-of my life stared back at me. The mirror told no lies.

Spring arrived, I turned in my grades, and I could tell she was getting antsy about the amount of time I'd been spending in the closet. When she saw me installing a lock on the closet door, she looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. She put her hands on her hips and said, "Dylan Styles! What are you doing?"

"Making sure you're not tempted."

"Tempted to do what?"

"Read my book."

"But you're writing it for me."

"Right, but I know you. And the thought of those pages just sitting in there waiting to be read is more than your sneaky little fingers can stand." I waved the brass key in my hand, then hung it around my neck and smiled.

She huffed and shook her head. "I can't believe you'd accuse me of trying to read something before you gave it to me."

I smiled and slipped on my John Deere baseball cap. "Believe it."

"Couldn't I just read a chapter or something?"

I pulled the cap down to shade my eyes. "Nope."

She threw a couch pillow at me. "I don't like you anymore."

I walked out, laughing, and let the screen door slam behind me.

She bounced another pillow off the doorjamb and yelled, "You're on the couch!"

"Maybe," I said over my shoulder, "but I'm taking my book with me."

Later that night, I came home and found her trying to pick the lock. "Hi there," I said, waving the key.

She jumped and dropped the screwdriver. "Dang you, Dylan Styles!"

Remember that Waltons episode about the house fire, in which John Boy had to choose between rescuing his family and rescuing his notebooks? I remember watching him stand helplessly as the flames climbed out of his attic window, and how much emotional strength it took him to rewrite his novel in the following months. The fear of his fiery loss made an imprint on me. I didn't want a house fire to wreck several months' worth of effort. So I double-checked the lockbox, making sure it was watertight, and the "safe" in my house was just that.

IT HAD BEEN ELEVEN HOURS SINCE I LEFT MAGGIE THE counterfeit. Sitting on that tractor for the better part of a day while she stowed away in the house, reading, gave me plenty of time to regret my decision. I pulled the tractor out of gear and rolled to a stop. I pulled off my hat, wiped my brow, and studied the storm clouds as they thundered in the distance.

In my mind's eye, I imagined giving both copies to my grandfather. Palms up, he walked into the kitchen where the light was brighter and hefted each like Lady Justice-balancing the scales. Feeling the difference, he squinted an eye and asked me why I had not centered the bubble.

THE AFTERNOON SUN BORED INTO MY BACK, REMINDing me that not even Hades was hotter than South Carolina between May and the better part of September. It was as if God held a magnifying glass as big as the state in between us and the sun, cooking us from the inside out.

The mixture of sun and heat can do crazy things to a man, especially when he's sitting atop a tractor. Gives a man a lot of time to reflect. Rambling along the rows, dust and diesel fumes rising up all around me, I often thought about the slaves and how they managed. I don't think you can farm in South Carolina and not wrestle with that; it is what it is. Most of the irrigation ditches that drain the low country were hand-dug by black men and their sons.

I have never been able to settle that in my mind. Where in history did one man convince himself that he could buy another? I understand the spoils of war and taking a man's house after you've fairly whipped him on the field of battle, but men aren't made to own one another. I don't care if I owned all the tea in China; I could no more "own" Amos than I could walk to the moon. I'd die for him, but if you tried to sell him to me or anyone else, I'd probably shoot you.

One day when I was a boy-maybe in first or second grade-I got home from school and ran out to the field to climb up on the tractor with my grandfather. He was drilling seed into the ground, his hat tilted back, straw stuck between his teeth, and pretty soon he began showing me the ditches that the slaves had dug. They're hard to miss; you could drive a Buick down them.

Whenever Papa spoke of slavery, his top lip grew tense and he shook his head, as if something disgusted him. I asked him why somebody didn't just buy up all the slaves and set them free. He stopped the tractor, cut the engine, sat me up on the wheel well, and pushed back my ball cap. He said, "D.S., a long time ago, a man did just that. He gave all He had, bought up all the slaves, and set them all free."

That didn't make sense, so I asked, "Then how come there were still slaves?"

He leaned over the side of the tractor, spat through his teeth, and switched the straw to the other side. He looked a long way across the pasture-well beyond where it ended. "That is a question I have given much thought to. And"-he smiled-"when I get to heaven, that's one of the first questions I intend to ask Him."

Whenever I think about the slaves, or the Holocaust, or Columbine, or Amanda being tied to a tree, or my son behind me buried beneath a stone slab, I know that Satan is alive and well on planet Earth. And whenever I hear my wife's voice, feel her touch, listen to her breathe, or feel her skin on mine, I know that God is too.

While the wound on my forearm had healed long ago, the reminder it left was mounded like a Band-Aid stuck between my skin and muscle. Sometimes at night I would wake to Maggie's fingers unconsciously tracing the outline while she slept.

A lot of people have asked Maggie if she could hear uscould hear me-those many months that she was in her coma. I've never needed to ask that. Of course she could. Love has its own communication-one you can't prove in a courtroom, in a lab experiment, or on a doctor's chart. It's the language of the heart, and while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.

A tickling breeze ushered itself upriver, bringing with it some early wood ducks and a few welcome clouds, turning the unbearable afternoon sun into the bearable evening sun. The breeze swirled about me and cooled my neck, which had once again turned red, etched with the charcoal lines of dust and dirt packed into the crevices of my sun-spotted skin. The clouds rolled in, stalled overhead, graciously protecting me from the magnifying glass, and slowly squeezed out several large drops. Big as acorns, they splattered on the dusty soil, sizzled on the muffler, trickled between my shoulder blades, and ran down the lush green leaves of the cornstalks spiraling above my head. Those few drops were usually the early warning system that God was about to spray hell with ice water. Within moments, I couldn't see twenty feet in front of my face.

I pulled off my cap, faced up, let the cool and delicious downpour drench me, and drank what I could. I had not seen or heard from Maggie all day. Normally, she'd have found me by now. But given the little gift I'd left on her bedside table, I didn't expect to see her till along toward dark.

It was hard to hear over the thunderous clap of drops on leaves, but toward home, I heard a screen door slam, followed by the hollow pounding of bare feet on the back porch and then screaming. Not scared screaming, but "Where are you?" screaming. I stood up on the tractor seat, looked out over the corn, and saw Maggie, wearing a T-shirt and cotton underwear, standing on the back porch, shielding her face from the rain with what looked like a stack of papers. She jumped off the back porch and started crashing through my neatly laid and quickly growing stalks.

When she appeared in the clearing, her hair was stuck to her face and her T-shirt and underwear were soaked clean through. The sides of her arms and long, thin legs were red where the cornstalks had slapped her, and the shirt stuck to her stomach. Her face was puffy, eyes red. And by the looks of her, she'd not been out of the house-or bed-all day. In her right arm, she clutched what remained of my manuscript. The rest of it had scattered like bread crumbs between us and the front door.

I stepped off the tractor and held my hat in my hand. Judging by her half-naked run across the pasture, my story had spurred something inside Maggie. I just couldn't tell how deep, or whether it was joy or anger. Both emotions are fueled by the same fire, and Maggie's face told me hers was raging. Then there was the deeper question: Could she spot the counterfeit without ever having seen the real thing?

She stood there, rain dripping off the ends of her hair, the lobes of her ears, the tips of her fingers, and cascading through the goose bumps on her thighs and calves. Her bare feet were caked with sand and mud, and so help me, with God as my witness and probably the cause, a Maggie-sized hole broke in the clouds and let through one ray of sun that, like a heaven-sized flashlight, lit the rain droplets on her skin like ten million diamonds.