(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (64 page)

I tried to hold her, to hug away the pain, but some pains must be shared before they can be carried. A hot breeze rattled through the corn and brushed across my face. She pressed her chest to mine; her face was wet, and her tears slid along my cheek. Her sobs shook her entire body.

Finally I just lay down on the porch, holding her. When I did, the dam burst, and I felt her soul crying.

She looked up at me. "How can you love a woman like me?"

There was no answer to the question she had just asked. Love is not a noun; it's a verb. I walked into the house and into my writing closet. Hands trembling, I pried open the floorboard where the truth lay wrapped in a plastic grocery bag.

I walked back out onto the porch. "Maggs, I lied to you. This is the story I could not tell you."

The look of confusion on her face grew when I placed the manuscript in her lap.

"I wrote two stories: one for you, one I thought you could handle. The other-this one, I wrote for me-the one I needed to write."

She registered the pain in my voice.

"This is the story of a man who loves his wife. Of a man who died for a time and then lived again. Of a man who felt pain unknown for what seemed like a thousand lifetimes and then joy untold. Maggs, it's the story of us. It's everything I've wanted to tell you but didn't know how for fear of letting you know how far down I fell."

She held the pages, then sat up and handed them back. Her voice cracked, her fear apparent, as she said, "Read to me."

"Honey, I-"

"Shhh ... Read."

We took the phone off the hook and spent the day on the front porch. Maggie lay on the swing, swaying, while I sat on the steps or walked back and forth.

My story started with the pink line that announced that she was pregnant and went through my ride in the back of the truck when I held my son's casket between my legs. I took her through the painful weeks that followed, and when I read about my walk through the cornfield where I tried to peel the skin off my arm, Maggie slid off the bench, knelt, and ran her fingers along the scar.

"Why, Dylan?"

"Because I couldn't get clean."

She patted the page, and I continued. I took her to church, communion, the baptism. I brought her back to the bed she slept in, my longing, my tears, the wrinkle on her forehead, the doctors' dire predictions, and the first time she squeezed my hand. Somewhere in there, she realized that walking into her room every day was killing me. She also realized that no matter how many times I died, I'd keep walking in. Forever.

Around dusk my story brought us into Pinky's stall, to her snorting and slamming me into the fence rail. I told Maggie how I jumped into the truck and pegged the accelerator till it leveled out somewhere over a hundred, and then tripped up the stairs where a mass of people were standing outside her hospital room. We reached the part where I walked into her room, covered in pig smear, and I set the book down. I didn't need to read anymore. I knew that story by heart.

"When I walked into your room and saw those beautiful brown eyes looking at me, I didn't know who to be; I didn't know who we were. I needed you to tell me."

Maggie slid off the swing and lay down beside me on the porch. We lay on the wooden boards, both out of tears, while the manuscript surrounded us like a blanket. Her chest rose and fell, and her breathing told me that the healing had started. She placed a hand across my chest, hooked one leg around mine, and dug her head into my shoulder.

BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, WE WERE BOTH DREADING Monday morning. We had slept through church, eaten a late lunch, and spoken hardly a word throughout the day. We had a pretty good idea what they were going to tell us. Talking about it wouldn't make it any better.

A vehicle turned into the drive, crunching gravel, so we stepped off the porch and craned our necks around the corner. In front of me was what might have been one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen-next to my wife's open eyes. A 1972 Chevrolet C-10 pickup, the spitting image of my first truck, except this one had been restored to its original condition.

Bryce sat behind the wheel. The truck's paint matched his hair-classic orange-and it shone like the sun. The engine sounded like a dream, and if you listened closely, you could hear the lope of the cam in the big block. That's engine-talk for "It sounded wonderful."

Bryce stepped out, pulled a rag out of his pocket, and started shining the hood. He was wearing shorts-or cutoff BDUs-a T-shirt, boots, and his shoulder holster. Absent the pistol, he looked rather normal.

The truck bed had been sprayed with a padded black liner, all the metal trim had been dipped and re-chromed, the windows looked like new glass, the tires were oversized Michelins. Bryce popped the hood. Somebody had put his tender loving touch under the hood as well as everywhere else. Most of the engine had been chromed, the tubes were made of a shiny metal material, the spark plug wires matched the truck, and there wasn't a speck of dirt or grease anywhere to be found.

Bryce was really beaming. Because he's not one to start conversations, I walked up alongside him and was about to open my mouth when he walked back to the driver's side, pulled the keys from the ignition, and placed them in my hand. I heard Maggie suck in a breath of air as if it would be her last on earth.

He held the keys there for a minute while his mouth and mind searched to find each other, then connect. He nodded and said, "I always did like this truck."

I looked at the truck again, and my eyes grew as round as half-dollars. "That's my old truck?"

Bryce nodded and wiped his hands with the rag. "What time is it?"

I pulled Papa's watch and said, "Almost seven."

He eyed the sky, tilted his head, and said, "Movie starts in about thirty minutes. We'd better get going."

Maggie looked at me. "What movie?"

Bryce looked at us as if we should know. "The movie." His eyes twinkled, and he tried to conceal his smile. He had really pulled out all the stops, and even though I had no idea what movie he was talking about, if it meant I got to drive my truck to his place, I'd have watched just about anything.

Maggie ran inside to grab her bag and a couple of blankets, then threw everything into the back of the truck and slid across the seat. Bryce sat in the passenger seat and clicked the door shut, and both waited on me. I slid onto the driver's seat, pulled the door shut, and turned the key.

When I get to heaven, I hope God lets me drive a truck like that.

I dropped the gearshift into drive, and we idled around the back of the house, down the drive, and out onto the hard road. At sixty miles an hour, I almost started crying.

We pulled into the drive-in, where Bryce hopped out and ran into the projector house. I heard him shuffling pans in what used to be the concession stand, and pretty soon I smelled popcorn. I parked the truck in the middle of the lot in front of the biggest screen, next to one of the hundreds of iron poles topped with microphones. I let down the tailgate and spread Maggie's blanket across the back.

Bryce soon appeared carrying three large bowls of popcorn and a six-pack of Old Milwaukee. Then he returned to the projector house and started flipping switches.

I looked at Maggie and said, "Do you have any idea what movie we're about to watch?"

Maggie put her hands on her hips and looked at me over one shoulder. "Why, Rhett Butler-"

"You've got to be kidding. Please don't tell me." I looked at the screen as the first of the credits began rolling.

Maggie flipped a piece of popcorn at me and said, "Yap."

I scanned the property and saw that Bryce had made a few more changes. To our right, beyond the film house, he had laid out a long-range target with eight rifle targets some eight hundred yards away. Like a golf range, every hundred yards was marked with a large white sign. I pointed and asked, "You doing some shooting?"

Bryce nodded. "When your buddy saw my trophy, he asked me to teach his team some of what I know." He looked at me, and his eyes grew quizzical. "You think that's okay?"

It was the first time Bryce had ever asked me a question that required us to swim below the surface.

I studied the target, then Bryce's face. "Yes, I do."

I thought about what he said. In the years that I'd known him, Bryce had never shown me a trophy of any sort whatsoever. "What trophy was that?"

He pointed to a glass case just above the old concession stand. Inside was a four-foot silver trophy polished to a reflective shine. Evidently it'd been there for years, and I'd walked by it a dozen times, but I'd never seen it. "What's it for?"

"The Wimbledon Cup. 1970."

"You played tennis?"

Bryce shook his head. "It's given to the winner of the Marine sniper competition."

"How many other marines did you beat out?"

Bryce considered that. "All of them, I guess."

"How far away was the target?"

Bryce looked downrange, his eyes coming to rest beyond the farthest target. "Thousand yards."

I started putting the pieces together. I thought about Antonio, Felix, Whittaker. "Bryce?"

"Yes."

"Were you trying to hit Antonio in the hand?"

He nodded.

"And were you trying to hit Whittaker in the spine?"

Bryce looked at Maggie, then at me. He nodded.

"Why?"

Bryce pulled a pack of gum from his pants, popped all twelve pieces into his mouth, and walked toward the film house.

FOUR HOURS LATER, THE END OF THE TAPE STARTED FLIPping in the projector house and woke me. I looked up and saw Bryce crashed out alongside me, sleeping as quietly as a church mouse. On my other side was Maggie, who'd eaten almost all of our popcorn and was now sniffling and drying her eyes.

I stretched and yawned. "Wow, I just love that movie."

She elbowed me and dumped the rest of her popcorn in my lap.

"Come on," I said, hopping out and then helping her down out of the truck. "Big day tomorrow."

Bryce lifted an eyebrow. "What about tomorrow?"

I brushed him off. "We've just got a meeting with the, um, the folks down at the adoption agency."

Bryce's eyes narrowed. He pulled a fresh pack of gum from his leg cargo pocket and started popping all twelve pieces into his mouth. "'Bout what?"

"Well, it's the appeal board."

The smell of wintergreen was overwhelming. Bryce moved the mass to the other side of his mouth. "What're you appealing?"

"Their decision." I looked at Maggie. I didn't want to make it any harder on her.

She looked at Bryce. "They rejected our application."

Bryce looked all of a sudden angry. He chewed harder, and it looked as if his lips and cheeks were pulling his face in two different directions.

I shrugged, thinking more about Maggie than Bryce. "It doesn't mean we can't go to other agencies, but we'll have to disclose that they refused us."

Bryce scratched his head and looked confused. "Oh." Without so much as a good night, he stood up, disappeared into his trailer, and started banging around inside.

We cleaned up, cut the lights in the projector house, and hollered good night across the parking lot. If he heard us, he made no response.

WANTING TO PUT OUR BEST FOOT FORWARD, MAGGIE asked me to wear a coat and tie. I did, but I couldn't hold a candle to my wife. I descended the stairs out of the loft and found her standing in the middle of the barn, where the sunlight had broken through the slits in the walls and lit her from calf to halo. She stood heel to arch, hands in white gloves. I'd missed a belt loop and cut my face shaving, and my tie was crooked and too short. She was the canvas on which God had painted all the wonder and beauty of summer. I stood openmouthed. She touched my chin, closing my mouth, and smirked. "Well, say something."

I gulped. "Will you marry me?"

She straightened my tie and peeled the toilet paper off my cheek. "That'll do."

It'd been nearly a month and a half since the white flower of the cotton plant had bloomed, turned pink, faded into red, then grew deep purple and fell to the earth below. By rough calculation, time was drawing near, but how near was anybody's guess. While some farmers have attempted to make farming a predictable science, it is not. Never will be. You can beg, cuss, dance, even manipulate conditions, but she will grow, blossom, and produce only when she's ready. Nothing short of the hand of God can change that.