(2008) Down Where My Love Lives

by Charles Martin

  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."

  Pastor John shook his head and looked out through the window into the moonlight. "We can build another building, but we might need some help with the steeple."

  I nodded. "Yes, sir."

  Pastor John leaned over and kissed Maggie's forehead. Then he stood and placed his hand on her head. He whispered, but not really to us. Finally he took my hand, spread it across Maggie's tummy, and covered mine with his. He looked at us both and spoke quietly, the weight of what he was saying pressing in on his voice. "In Isaiah God says, `Fear not, for I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry and barren ground. I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring. They will spring up among the grass like willows by the watercourses."' He walked over to the door, stood for a moment, and then slipped out.

  ON TOWARD MIDNIGHT I HEARD A SOFT RAP ON THE DOOR, as though someone either was afraid to come in or was a southern gentleman of the sort who never barged in on a lady. It turned out to be the latter.

  I opened the door, and a man dressed in a bright orange bow tie, white oxford shirt, starched khakis, and gold wirerimmed glasses extended his hand. Jason Thentwhistle, hospital financial officer.

  He pointed down the hall toward the nurses' station and doctors' cubicle. "If they want to run a test, or do anything at all, you let them. We'll work out the other side of it on the other side." He turned and walked about four steps.

  I reached out and caught him by the arm. He looked at me guardedly, as one stranger would look at another.

  `Jason, thanks for coming. We appreciate it."

  He smiled, half nodded, and continued walking down the hall.

  BY MIDAFTERNOON OF THE NEXT DAY, MAGGIE'S body finished doing what it was doing and no longer needed the bed pad beneath her, so I helped her into the shower. It took awhile to get her cleaned up because she was bruised from head to toe.

  She put on some hospital scrubs, and we took a slow and gentle stroll around the halls. Maggie leaned on me and hooked her arm inside mine. When we came to the large viewing window of the nursery, she leaned against the glass and stared at the six babies sleeping inside. When she pulled away, her tears slid down the glass and came to rest on the windowsill.

  At dinnertime Amos walked in dressed in his SWAT gear, and despite the singed hair and skin, he looked as though he hadn't skipped a beat. In his hands were two chocolate shakes. He walked over to the bed, set them down, and pulled two straws from his shirt pocket. "I checked with Dr. Frank. He said it was okay."

  He knelt next to the bed and slid one huge palm under Maggie's shoulders. "How's our girl?" he asked. The assurance in his voice was worth a million dollars.

  Maggie smiled lazily, physically tired and emotionally drained. She took a sip of the shake.

  Amos put on his law enforcement face. "Maggs, I need to know who did this."

  Maggie leaned forward while I adjusted the pillows behind her back.

  "I've never seen them before. Two men. Black. Maybe late thirties, early forties. Both covered in tattoos. One guy had his shirt off, and his whole chest and back were nothing but tattoos."

  "Could you recognize them?"

  She nodded.

  Amos pulled two pictures from his shirt pocket and held them in front of her.

  Maggie looked at the pictures, sipped again, then nodded.

  "Anton, as he likes to be called, and Felix became tattoo artists in prison. Now most of both their bodies are covered in ink-making them pretty easy to spot. They both look like that dude in Moby Dick. " He snapped his fingers. "The one that was in the coffin."

  "Queequeg," I said quietly.

  Amos nodded. "Throughout their time in prison, they traded their services for information, which meant they were never too far from the pipeline. They kept pretty good tabs on John."

  "Pastor John said he had three partners."

  Amos nodded. "Third one's name is Whittaker. Nobody's seen him. His name in prison was Ghost. Due to a sick twist in fate, overcrowding brought him two cells down, and the three got reacquainted. Oddly enough, that same twist brought a former Hollywood pyrotechnics expert next door to the twins, which would explain their newfound love of bonfires. From what investigators have gathered, the former partners became rather vocal about their post prison plans."

  "But why me? Why our house?"

  Amos shook his head. "I'm working on that. Right now, I have no idea, other than you live across the street from me."

  Maggie nodded and looked at me, then back to Amos. "Where are Amanda and Li'l Dylan?"

  "Amanda's down the hall. Momma's got L.D. We're staying with them in town for a while."

  "You scared?" I asked.

  He looked at me, at Maggie, then back at me, and shook his head. "No. Not scared. Worried? A bit. Angry?" He spoke softly, as if he were talking to someone who wasn't in the room. His voice dropped and his eyes narrowed, telling me that one way or another, there would be a reckoning. "Yes."

  AFTER DINNER I DIMMED THE LIGHTS AND LEFT Maggie napping in her room. Amanda had gone home for the evening, but the on-call nurse had stuck her head in the door and let me know she'd be checking on Maggie.

  I knelt down in the corner of the room and scratched Blue's tummy while he moaned and flopped his ears back. I rubbed his muzzle and picked off the specks of dried blood on the top of his head. I pointed outside. "You gotta go?" The magnolia outside the window caught my eye. "Mark some old territory?"

  Blue tucked his nose up under a fold in the blanket, let out a long sigh, and looked away.

  I turned into our drive, aimed the headlights at the house, and parked.

  Shining my flashlight, I stepped through the door and noticed, above the smell of my burnt house, the unusual and lingering scent of cheap aftershave and lots of it. I checked the rooms, found the house empty, and then opened all the doors and windows, hoping the house would breathe itself free of the stench.

  In the race to save the house, the screen door had been torn off, the back door broken off its hinges, and most of the inside sprayed with water under very high pressure. The water put out the fire, which had bubbled much of the paint, while the pressure behind the water peeled many of the blisters, making our walls look leprous.

  From what I could see, most of the inside was wet and stained black. I walked down the back hall and looked overhead. The ceiling had caved in, exposing the rafters and pieces of hanging insulation. I made it to the doors that led into the bedroom and nursery, but there was no need to go in. Whoever had started the fire had evidently done so in both rooms.

  The other half of the house-which included the kitchen and den-escaped everything but hose drag marks, overspray, and muddy footprints.

  In our room the walls had burned to the studs, the furniture was nothing but soggy, charred cinders, the mattress on our bed was little more than a crumbling mess, and the ceiling and roof were gone. The motor for the Hunter fan that once hung above our bed now sat at an angle in the middle of the mattress, its wire
s sticking up like an insect's antennae. The moonlight shone through the blue tarp and gave the room an eerie blue haze.

  I was afraid to look into the nursery, but I knew I had to. All the stuffed animals were little more than charred remains, and the rocker had all but disappeared. The crib sat at an angle, as if one leg were shorter than another. The books of nursery rhymes were crumbling and wet, and all the baby clothes in the closet lay in pieces on the floor, blackened scraps of cotton.

  Between the two rooms, my writing closet, its door marred and bubbling from the heat, remained locked. I didn't know what it looked like on the inside. As for Maggie's orchids scattered around the house, they had not fared well. They were nothing but naked stems without bloom or petal.

  I was standing in the kitchen surveying the damage when the phone rang-which surprised me, given that the guys had disconnected the electricity at the street to avoid an electrical fire.

  "Dylan, it's John."

  I knew Caglestock had become comfortable with me when he started calling me by my first name. I also knew that if he was calling me at close to ten thirty, he had something on his mind.

  I sat down. "Hey, John."

  "Listen, we've got to move one of Bryce's accounts from one trading house to another. We can get a better rate, so it makes good sense. But, as with any transaction of this type, it will produce a commission-of about $45,000." He let that sink in.

  I understood. It was the cost of doing business, and Bryce understood this.

  "No matter how or where I move them, I'll end up paying a commission to move these funds." He let that sink in too. Then he said what he'd called for. "I want to know if you will let me hire you for a day to make one transaction."

  I looked out through the kitchen window overlooking the pasture.

  "Dylan," he continued, "Bryce's estate, his LLC, or any of the partnerships we've formed would pay this commission to anyone regardless of their affiliation with him."

  He was right. And in terms of Bryce's account total, which now ran in the hundreds of millions, it wasn't even a drop in the bucket.

  "I want to hire you for a day."

  I took a deep breath. `John, I made a promise to Bryce that I would never seek to profit from him or the management of his funds."