(2008) Down Where My Love Lives

by Charles Martin

  Maggie set down the bucket, touched my arm, and kissed me. She looked three days past tired. Somewhere out of the left side of my bed, Amos came into view. Farther down, I recognized Pastor John. Somebody else I couldn't place, dressed in white, stood at the foot of my bed. I leaned back, braced my hand on the bed, and tried to stop the world from spinning. Somebody spoke, but the words just ricocheted around my head, eventually singing off into nowhere. Maggie said something about not going anywhere, but I felt as if I were breathing the air atop Everest and couldn't respond.

  Sometime later I cracked my eyes slightly, looking through the psychedelic crisscross of my eyelashes. Daylight was coming in over my shoulder, my feet were cold, and I smelled Maggie's perfume, Eternity, wafting through the air, mixed with the scent of Pine Sol. My head felt thick, but my left eye was letting in some light, which meant progress.

  I felt a hand on my left arm, tracing the lines of my scar. I turned slowly and saw Maggie looking back at me. She waited. All I could muster was a whisper. "I'm hungry."

  She smiled, and her face flooded with tears. "What do you feel like?"

  "Eggs. Toast. Grits. Some bacon. Biscuits. Maybe a few pancakes. Some-"

  She kissed me above my eye, her tears wetting my face, then walked out the door. I heard someone speaking over the inter com outside the door and felt the blood pressure cuff inflate on my right arm.

  A few minutes later Maggie returned, her running shoes squeaking on the waxed floor. She slid the rolling table over my lap and set down a tray. The eggs were steaming, had been scrambled with some sort of cheese, and tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten in my life. I tried to sit up, but the pain in my rib cage changed my mind. Maggie held a straw to my mouth, and I sipped orange juice, thick with pulp, which tasted almost as good as the eggs. I ate slowly-eggs, then a piece of bacon, a biscuit with butter and honey, two helpings of grits, more bacon, all the orange juice.

  My stomach full, I sat back, breathed, and closed my eyes. "I could get used to this."

  Maggie leaned in close, her breath brushing my face. She was smiling and crying at the same time. "Not me. I don't know how you did it. I'm about to lose my mind in this place."

  I pulled back the covers, exposing my flowered gown, patted the bed, and lifted my arm. Maggie lay down beside me, gently laying her head on my shoulder.

  I was dozing off again when the thought hit me. "How's Amanda?"

  Maggie was almost asleep. "She went home two days ago."

  The phrase ricocheted around my head and finally took root somewhere in my understanding. "Two days? How long have I been here?"

  "Five days."

  I thought about her sitting here at my bedside for five days. That meant that between Amanda's being taken and my time here, Maggie couldn't have really slept in almost a week. I replayed the events, those I could remember, in my head.

  "Blue?" I asked.

  Maggie took a deep breath, one of those that told me she'd not been looking forward to answering that question. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  THEY RELEASED ME FROM THE HOSPITAL A WEEK after Whittaker tried to beat my head in with the fire poker. He'd been moved to a hospital that specialized in spinal injuries, but even if he ever made it out of prison, which we doubted, he'd never walk again.

  The doctor said my concussion was about as bad as it gets while still being considered a concussion. Given the fact that they couldn't wake me up, they were worried about the swelling causing permanent damage. Maggie said that when Amos heard that, he shook his head and kept telling them I was tough and I'd pull through. But that was little comfort, because every time I woke up, I promptly vomited and my eyes rolled back in my head. They didn't know about my ribs until day four in the hospital, when Maggie noticed the bruise while bathing me.

  In the late afternoon, we left the hospital and drove by the vet to pick up Blue's body. I cradled the cardboard box that held my buddy and knew that Blue deserved better. As we drove out of town, I turned to Maggie. "I want to stop at the nursery."

  When I told Merle what I was looking for, he nodded and helped me pick three young good ones. We loaded them into the van and headed home.

  Near our son's grave I dug another hole, laid Blue's box in the ground, and tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. Maggie stepped up alongside me and hooked her arm inside mine, and I felt a part of my heart crack off and float away downriver.

  She wiped her tears and whispered over the hole in the ground, "Blue, thank you for taking care of Dylan when I couldn't."

  I knelt, rubbed his cold muzzle one last time, and clenched my teeth so tightly I thought they'd crack. I closed the top of the box, shoveled the dirt down on top of him, and then stood there leaning on the handle. But something felt wrong. Really wrong.

  I dropped to my knees, pawed away the dirt, and opened the lid of the box. "Hey, pal-since you'll get there before me, take care of my kids. All three of them. They'll need a buddy to run with." My tears fell into the hole, landed on his shoulder, and trickled down the side to his heart. I touched his muzzle one final time. "You're the best."

  I closed the box again and covered the hole. The pain hurt. It hurt deep down where my soul lives. I walked to the van, pulled out the three weeping willow saplings, and began digging the holes down by the river. They were young, maybe three feet tall, but if I planted them closely enough, they'd sink their roots into the riverbank and in years to come shade both my son and my dog.

  Maggie helped me pull back the sandy earth, set the root bolls in, and then cover them back up. We used the plastic pots to pour water over the roots. When I stood back, the sight satisfied me. The three young trees stood some ten feet apart and, when mature, would lean over the river, allowing their long limbs to dip in and drag along the tops like floating fishing lines or maybe a woman's hair when she washed it in the sink.

  I think the sight comforted Maggie, too, because she stood alongside me, sweat rolling off her temples, the veins in her biceps throbbing beneath the skin. Her shoulders fell, relaxed, and her face showed signs of having come to terms with what is our life.

  We climbed into the loft, turned the AC on "snow," and pulled the curtains across the single window. If there was any type of normalcy to our lives, I lay half-awake thinking we were pretty close to it.

  THE NEXT DAY, MAGGIE SLEPT PAST LUNCH. SOMETIME after two o'clock, she appeared out of the barn and started across the lawn to me on the porch, where I'd been sitting and thinking. She shaded her eyes against the sun, walked barefooted across the grass in the 99-degree heat, and sat on the porch while I scrambled some eggs. When I handed her the plate, she set it beside her and rested her head on her arms across her knees. Even under the porch, the heat was oppressive and the humidity stuck like spray paint to my skin.

  Maggie tried to whisper, but the emotions that had built over the last six weeks choked off her voice. She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with the calendar from off the wall. When she sat back down on the porch, she crossed off the last few days and whispered, "I'm sorry. It's not ... It's not coming."

  The marks showed that she was somewhere between twelve and seventeen days overdue.

  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."

&nbs
p; "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."