(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (49 page)

Amos put his hands together and rolled his head around as if he were trying to pull the words out. "Last night, after we got here. Whoever they were, they came back to your house." He shook his head. "Your buddies got there within a few minutes, but ... Some of the guys went back this morning and covered the hole in the roof with a tarp. You got insurance, right?"

I nodded.

He put his arm around me and pointed to the bag. "Thought you might want some clothes."

"Thanks."

"Your shower stuff is in there." He tried to smile, but he looked more anguished than happy.

I walked into Maggie's bathroom, pulled the curtain behind me, and tried to wash off the last twelve hours. I washed off the smoke and the sweat, and I scrubbed off Maggie's blood that had caked on my forearms, but the rest wouldn't come out.

I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and walked back out into the room to find Amos standing guard over Maggie. The picture of our smoldering house was just starting to sink in. I wanted to know more. "How bad is it?"

Amos didn't look at me.

I tugged on his arm. "Hey."

Both sweat and tears were running down his face. "Let's get through this right here first."

I looked at Maggie and prayed to God the fire hadn't touched the nursery. "Where'd it start?"

Amos looked at me. He could tell I wasn't letting up. "Back of the house."

There were two rooms in the back of the house, ours and the nursery. "Which side?"

Amos raised his chin, his eyes glistening in the blue light of Maggie's machines. "Both."

I thought a minute, the anger bubbling. "Why? Why, Amos?"

A tear fell off Amos's face and landed on the sheet near Maggie's foot. "Why does somebody like that do anything? It's just meanness. That's all."

Moments passed in silence. I held Maggie's limp, hot hand and wrestled with disbelief. "How's your place?"

Amos shook his head. "Even the toys in the front yard are melted." He studied Maggie's face. "Did she say who did this?"

I shook my head.

Amos paused, letting the automatic blood pressure cuff expand, measure, and then deflate itself once again. `John said he didn't see who hog-tied him and set the church on fire. Said he was sitting at his desk, turned to grab a book out of his credenza, and then somebody whacked him on the head and turned out the lights. Next thing he knew, we were rolling on top of him and the room was full of smoke. Said his eyes were burning so bad and the roar of the fire was making so much noise that he didn't know who we were till we landed outside in the mud."

I looked at him. "You got any ideas?"

He nodded, stared through me, and said nothing. Then he looked at Maggie. "We should know more once Maggie wakes up." He walked to the door, turned, and looked as if he were replaying last night. "How'd you get us out of there, anyway?"

I shook my head. "I didn't."

Amos's eyes grew wider, revealing his confusion.

"Bryce did. Covered in a wet blanket. He threw Pastor John over his shoulder, and I grabbed the back of the blanket and followed him out."

Amos nodded. "I've got a meeting down at the station. I also got a call from Vince at the hardware store, said he wanted to talk to me. He said that you'd been in ..."

I nodded and looked at the floor.

Amos stood in the doorway and waited while a few nurses passed in the hall. He lowered his voice. "You okay?" Even with all he had going on, all he was worried about, all the pain the burns on his legs were no doubt causing him, Amos was still checking my pulse.

"Yeah." I pointed at his leg and head. "You?"

He shrugged it off. "First degree. Nothing more. Give me a Band-Aid and I'm good. Besides," he said, smiling, "'Manda said the women from church are already dropping off casseroles and pies at her folks' house. You'd think I'd had a baby or something."

Amos pulled the door behind him and left me alone with Maggie. I pulled the chair up next to the bed, rested my head on the mattress, sank my hand beneath hers, and closed my eyes. In the dim light of the machinery glowing about her, the sick feeling of familiarity fell on me, and I did not like it.

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I FELT SOMEONE'S FINGERS running through my hair, gentle and soft. I sat up to find Maggs looking at me. Her eyes were heavy, her face flushed, and the monitor on the wall said her fever had risen to 101 degrees. Her breaths were short, and her face told me they were painful if she inhaled too deeply.

"Hey, you," she said, fighting off a shiver.

"Hey."

"I held them off as long as I could." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "I threw everything I could get my hands on, but. . ." She blinked, and a tear trickled off her cheek. "I just ran out of stuff to throw." She looked in the corner of the room where Blue lay, his tail tucked up under his back legs, his nose pointed at Maggs. "If he hadn't been there ..."

"I got held up at church."

She nodded. "Amos told me. He was here when I woke up an hour ago."

Her face was still puffy, and her eyes had turned black and swollen. I wanted to touch her, but I was afraid I'd hurt her.

"Did you tell Amos what they looked like?"

Maggs shook her head. "He said he'd come back. But they won't be hard to spot."

"How's that?"

"Tattoos. They're covered." She tried to smile, but the cuts around her mouth and the swollenness of her lips made it difficult. I stood and kissed her. Her lips felt taut and swollen.

I tried to reassure her. "Amos has got everybody in South Carolina looking for them." I slipped my hand beneath hers and tried to change the subject. "Has Dr. Frank been in?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

I stroked her hand and knew I needed to quit stalling. "Honey, you ... we lost the .. .

She placed her finger on my lips. "Shhh ..." She nodded, and her bottom lip quivered. She tried to hold it together, but soon the sobs came. It was the most painful wail I'd ever heard pour out of another human.

Her cries brought Amanda running down the hall. She peeked in the room, saw me cradling Maggie in my arms, and quietly shut the door.

Maggie looked up at me. "I'm so sorry."

"Hey, hey, it's got nothing to do with you." I looked around the room, grasping for comfort. "We'll try again." I pushed the hair out of her face and brushed a tear off her lip. "We're good at that."

She reached up and clung to me. Her thin arms were shaking.

Maybe thirty minutes passed while she lay with her head next to mine. She closed her eyes, holding my left hand with both of hers. Eventually the tears dried, only to surface again like a rising tide.

I picked an eyelash off her cheek. "Honey, there's something else."

She looked up.

"Have you been running a fever?"

She tilted her head to one side.

"How long?" I asked.

"Four or five days. Just low, around a hundred."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought it was just a virus, thought it would pass. I didn't want you to worry."

I laid my chin on the bed and looked up at her. "You've got to tell me these things." I tucked her hair behind her ear. "No more secrets."

She smiled and nodded slightly. "No more secrets."

As the words slid off her tongue, my hypocrisy slapped me in the face.

She looked up at the ceiling and pressed her knees tight together, and her eyes welled.

I slid my hand behind her head. "Maggs."

She faked another smile. "Someday you're gonna make a great dad." The words slipped off her tongue, and the sobs came again. Her ribs made it impossible to mask her pain, so she cried harder and louder. The crying started in her toes, and her entire body shook beneath the sheets.

The sound brought Amanda running again. She checked the machine behind the bed, stepped under the single light, and slid her hand into Maggie's. She cradled the pale white hand in her brown, tender palm and checked the IV.

"Daddy wants to know if he can come see you."

Maggie nodded, and the tears continued to fall. Soon Amanda, too, was crying. Her tears fell onto the rounding top of her belly, and she brushed at them in embarrassment.

Maggie reached out, placed her palm flat against Amanda's tummy, and said, "How's everybody doing?"

Amanda smiled and nodded. "We're good. I just can't eat enough." She blew her nose. "I've never been so hungry."

A few minutes later, Dr. Frank walked in. He sat opposite us and laid his clipboard on the bed near Maggie's feet. "I heard you guys were having a good cry, so I thought I'd come join you."

Maggie held out the box of tissues and then nodded toward the call button. She sniffled. "If you run out, push that button."

"Yeah, I've been wanting to get one of those buttons at home, but I think my wife would kick me out of the house."

We tried to laugh, but we all knew we were just trying to delay the inevitable.

He looked at me, then at Maggie. "You should have passed everything by now." He pointed to the pad. "We'll keep this here today, but when you feel up to it, I think it'd be best if you got up and walked around some."

Amanda nodded and slipped out the door.

"When can I go home?" Maggie asked.

Dr. Frank checked the monitors on the wall behind her. "Tell me about this fever first."

"Four or five days, low grade. I just thought it was a virus."

"I want to run some more tests, try to get the fever down and get control of the infection. That means I might keep you a few days. You can't go home yet anyway-not until your husband cleans up the mess."

We were quiet for several seconds.

"Your lab results tell me there's something going on with your blood that I can't get a handle on. I don't know what kind of infection or where it is, but it's a bugger, to say the least." He eyed the IV bag above her. "We're attacking it now with a broad-spectrum antibiotic, but I want to keep you where I can monitor you."

"What's a girl got to do to get something to eat around here?"

Dr. Frank scribbled on a notepad. "I'll have them send something up, but you only eat what I send up here. You got it?"

Maggie nodded and crossed her fingers across her chest.

He shook his head. "No kidding." He eyed the digital readout that listed her body temperature. It had risen to 102 degrees. "I need to monitor everything going into you until I get my hands around this infection. Deal?"

Maggie nodded and uncrossed her fingers.

He stood, patted her gently on the hand, and said, "I'll let you eat, then start the tests."

He stepped out, and Maggie put her head on my hand.

"Why don't you sleep some?" I said.

She closed her eyes and fidgeted around the tenderness of her ribs. Within a few minutes, she was asleep.

AFTER DINNER PASTOR JOHN CRACKED THE DOOR. HE pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the bed and patted Maggie's leg. We sat there in the darkness, waiting on Maggie to wake up. Thirty minutes later, she did.

Her eyes were glassed over, telling me the same thing as the machines on the wall. Despite Motrin, her body temperature hadn't changed. The fever was taking its toll.

She rolled her head toward Pastor John and smiled. He stood up, kissed her forehead, and sat back down.

Pastor John was in pain, but it wasn't physical. He patted her leg again and said, "Maggie, I need to tell you a story." He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his nose and the corner of one eye, and began.

"I wasn't always a pastor. When I was younger, more than twenty years ago, I fell in with three guys looking for trouble. Problem was, we were good at both getting into it and getting out of it. And because we liked what the money bought us, which was mostly an identity as something other than what we were, we stole anything we could get our hands on. Especially me." He let that sink in.

"I was smart, and gifted at being a thief." He shook his head, fighting the memories. "A couple of years later, our luck ran out." He smiled. "Maybe the Lord had had enough of our foolishness."

Tears rolled off Pastor John's face, and Maggie slid her hand out from underneath the sheets and grabbed his, pulling it close to her chest.

"We were put in jail, and somewhere in that cold cell, I got tired of lying. So I started telling the truth. Because of the way that works in the legal system, I got out early and they stayed in longer." He tried to smile. "The other guys weren't very happy with this. Evidently, they're still not."

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a stack of postcards held together with a rubber band. "Over the last several years, they've written me about once a month to tell me how ungrateful they are." He placed the cards back in his pocket, and his huge shoulders rolled forward. He unfolded his handkerchief, wiped his face, and then looked Maggie in the eyes. "I ... Maggie, honey ... I'm sorry."

Maggie reached out and hugged Pastor John. He cradled her and rocked her as she wept in his arms. He bit his lip and managed, "Some sins I'm still paying for."

We sat there a long time. Finally Maggie tried to sit up and said, "I'm sorry about your church."