(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (53 page)

She pointed at the house. "Is this your home?"

"What's left of it."

She made a note on her clipboard.

Maggie appeared in the barn door, barefooted and wrapped in a blanket and squinting. Pinky was squealing in her stall.

The lady's eyes grew a bit wider. "I'm with the adoption agency."

I cussed under my breath.

"I've come to assess the, for lack of a better word, living conditions of your home."

I spat and wished I had a toothpick.

I tried to reassure her. "That fellow driving off there is our insurance adjuster, and he's just cleared us to start work now that the police have finished their investigation."

"Police?"

"Yes, ma'am. See, we had a series of fires the other night, started apparently by some guys who like to play with matches."

She was not amused. Understanding that we were living in the barn, she pointed her pencil. "How long do you think this arrangement will last?"

`Just a couple of weeks while I rebuild."

She perked up a little. "So you've hired a contractor?"

I looked at Maggie, then back at the lady, who had yet to tell me her name. "Well, yes."

She waited, then said, "Who?"

"Me."

She looked at me over the top of her glasses, then through them, and made another note. "I see."

About then Blue walked out of the barn. She looked, then looked again. "What's that?"

"That's our dog."

"Good Lord, he looks like a demon."

"He got too friendly with a skunk. That red is the tomato juice; it neutralizes the smell."

She scribbled some more, and when Blue started trotting toward her, she stepped quickly back into her car without shaking my hand. She lowered her window about two inches. "Dr. Styles, you must know that I have to submit an accurate account to the committee, and that this"-she pointed from the house to the barn to Blue-"is likely not going to help you."

I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. But certainly the committee understands we had a fire that was not our fault, and given some time, we can rebuild." I waved my hands in a large arc. "Maybe run the porch around the whole house."

"Yes, but the committee will also want to look at the company you keep and whether or not those associations provide a suitable environment for children."

I nodded and decided it might be best if I just shut up. She flipped down her visor against the sun and drove off. I rubbed Blue between the ears and decided that this whole adoption thing was just about to hack me off.

Maggie walked out, nuzzled against me, and said, "Who was that?"

I watched the taillights at the end of our driveway. "That was the assessor from the adoption agency who came out unannounced to determine if our home is a suitable environment for children."

"You've got to be kidding."

"I wish I was."

"What'd she say?"

"It wasn't so much what she said as how she said it."

TWO DAYS LATER I WALKED INTO THE BARN AND found Maggie staring into my shaving mirror. She turned, curled her hair around her index finger, and said, "I think I need a haircut." I wasn't about to argue, so I drove her to town and sat in the waiting area while they cut her hair. The smell of shampoo and the sound of eight blow-dryers was too much sensory overload, so I walked out onto the street and let the heat off the asphalt cook the skin on my face.

An hour later Maggie reappeared, again looking like Audrey Hepburn. I wanted to ask, What happened to your hair? but I knew better than to open my mouth. A woman and her hair are a peculiar thing.

We stopped at Home Depot and bought, among other things, some two-by-eight trusses and aluminum sheeting for the roof. An hour later I sat on the porch, missing my own truck and waiting for the lumber delivery. When it arrived, the driver had the audacity to look around and say, "Can't believe you own a farm but don't own a truck."

You ever poured lemon juice on an open wound?

My plan for the house was to repair the roof and ceilings first, pay a painter to spray the entire inside of the house with KILZ and then a color of Maggie's choosing, and then move us out of the barn and back into the house while I concentrated on the finish work.

I walked outside, stepped off the back porch, and meandered through my cotton field, where the midmorning sun was growing high and the bolls were swollen taut with white gold inside. Behind me, Maggie threw open the screen door, tossed Blue out on the porch, and slammed the door, rattling the windowpane. Blue looked at the door, licked the sides of his muzzle, and followed me out into the pasture.

I rubbed his ears and said, "Hey, pal, don't blame her. She's just having a rough time right now. We've just got to give her some space."

Blue looked back at the house and then at me. He wasn't buying it.

I looked across the pasture and road into the blackened piles that remained of Amos and Amanda's house. Amos had hired a bulldozer to push everything into a pile and a dump truck to haul it off. He and Amanda had been staying at Pastor John's house since the fire, and I wasn't the only one who sensed their absence. Blue stuck his nose in the air and, smelling nothing, whined and walked a figure eight between my legs.

A few minutes later Maggie walked out of the house. The sight of her hair was still strange to me. It wasn't that I didn't like it; it was just a surprise, that's all. She stood on the porch, holding her pruning shears and studying the landscape. Then she walked off the porch and began weaving through the flowers.

Everything had bloomed weeks ago. That meant a lot of dead and shriveled flowers now hung limp on drying twigs. Maggie began pruning the garden that surrounded our house. The process looked painful. I grabbed an old plastic trash can and followed her, quietly picking up the pieces. When she got to the roses, she paused, second-guessed herself, and then quietly returned to work. Between her energy level and the number of flowers, the process took her the better part of the day.

Dr. Frank said Maggie had had a heterotopic pregnancy. A 1 in 50,000 oddity. He explained that while we were going to have twins, only one fertilized egg had made its way out of the fallopian tube and into the uterus, where it attached. The second fertilized egg, for reasons we'll never know, became lodged in the tube. As it grew, it burst the tube, destroying itself and beginning a process of rotting inside Maggie, poisoning her blood, killing the other embryo attached to her uterus, and sending her fever to 105.5 degrees. Frank removed the tube, the ovary-which had been destroyed-and our baby. He said another couple of hours and the septic shock would have killed her.

BLUE FETCHED THE MORNING PAPER. I SPREAD IT ACROSS the table, and only then did I realize that we'd missed the Fourth of July. It never even crossed my mind. Which was probably good, because we didn't feel much like fireworks.

While Maggie napped away the morning, Blue and I walked to the river and then north along the edge. Blue kept looking over his shoulder and following close at my heels. Stepping lightly, we walked beneath the oaks and around small bunches of wild iris that had grown up from bulbs Maggie planted three years ago and that had now spread a few hundred yards downriver. The temperature was in the midnineties, and the humidity was just shy of raining.

We came to a small bend in the river that made somewhat of a natural port, if you want to call it that, where Amos and I kept our raft. I hadn't been down here in months, and it looked pretty bad. The raft was covered in leaves and fallen limbs, and had I not known where it was, I'd have missed it. I uncovered it, brushed it off as best I could, and then lay down in the middle. Blue curled up alongside me, and we watched the sun rise above the cypress trees.

I watched the river moving slowly and silently alongside us. Despite the turmoil topside, its rhythm was never-changing. I dipped my feet in, letting the movement and coolness sift through my toes. Blue took a drink and then jumped in, swimming around long enough to cool off. He paddled back over to the raft, and I lifted him up. He showered me in dog-shake, which felt good, and we lay back down. Around noon, I heard footsteps.

Amos stepped onto the raft and sat down. He was dressed in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, telling me that he'd taken a much-deserved day off. He pulled a soft-sided cooler off his shoulder and unzipped the top. "I've got PB&J, root beer, and Oreos."

I nodded, and he slapped a sandwich in my hand. I pulled back the plastic wrap, took a bite, and chewed without tasting it.

Amos looked at me curiously. "You look like you ain't eaten much lately."

He was right; it was the first thing I'd eaten in two days. I nodded again and stared at the water as if it were a nighttime campfire.

Amos popped the top on a root beer and handed it to me.

"Thanks."

We sat on the raft, chewing, soaking in the sunlight and silence while I fed my crusts to Blue.

Amos pulled off his T-shirt and finally spoke. "Need to work on my tan. Been pushing too many pencils lately." He pulled his Kimber and holster out from behind his belt and laid them on the raft. After he finished his sandwich, he lay back and pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes.

We spent an hour in quiet.

AS THE CICADAS AND TREE FROGS TUNED UP THE PSYCHEdelic afternoon, Amos spoke. "We're taking 'Manda to and from work. She doesn't leave the house without one of us going with her. We've rented the house across the street, and some of my guys stare out the windows toward us at night."

I stared at him.

"No, she doesn't know that, but short of leaving town, it's the best we can do." He shook his head. "I've never staked out myself before."

Amos was pretty good at giving me only what I needed when I needed it. He was both friend and brother, but I needed more. I looked across the raft. "Amos, tell me about these guys. I want the whole story."

"As Pastor John told you, he got mixed up in some pretty bad stuff. Started out as petty theft in and around Charleston, but given time, and their appetites, it went up and out from there. They had warehouses all over the state stuffed with everything from diamond rings to classic cars. They were smart." He shrugged. "At least they started out that way. Like most criminals who can't keep a secret and love showing off how cool they are, they got greedy and sloppy. Really sloppy.

"They were hitting a jewelry store. Pastor John was the inside man. The other three were parked outside in a car, doping it up and waiting on the signal from John, when an offduty police officer stumbled onto them. He smelled the dope, knocked on the window, and the driver, a fellow named James Whittaker III, self-proclaimed leader, rolled down the window, stuck a 9mm in the cop's chest, and pulled the trigger. John ran to the window, saw the car leaving pretty fast and a man lying in the street surrounded in streetlight-red. Our guys, having just pulled over a DUI about two blocks up, got there within a few seconds. When they arrived, they found a dead friend, the wiped-down Glock that the bullet had come from, and John Lovett crawling out the jewelry store window carrying a bag worth about a quarter of a million dollars."

I gulped.

"It gets better from there. While John Lovett was trying to explain to investigators how the dead police officer ended up in the street, the other three were feeling their oats. They crossed the state line into Georgia and went out boozing. James, along with two brothers named Antonio and Felix, started buying drinks all around and soon caught the ear of an FBI agent who happened to be in the bar trying to cheat on his wife. An hour or so later, another shooting occurred. This one is a little fuzzy, but according to witnesses, James wrestled the Bureau guy's .40 out of his hand, shot him, then shot the bartender 'cause he wasn't bringing the drinks fast enough. One of the brothers grabbed a bat from behind the bar and started swinging it at people. When the shouting stopped, three more people were dead, and the Three Musketeers drove off into the night.

"They ran out of gas an hour or so later on some forgotten two-lane. Too drunk to walk, they evidently got into a wrestling match, and all three passed out in or near the car. When daylight came, a soccer mom reported the car, along with the three guys sprawled around it, and an hour later they were booked in Georgia.

"It didn't take too long for investigators to put it all together. And while John was very much guilty of grand theft, he was not guilty of murder, nor was he an accessory. During the trial, the prosecution cut a deal, giving him a lesser sentence if he would simply state what happened that night. He did." Amos paused. "He also told them about the warehouses."

Therein lay the problem. Amos had told me several times that criminals don't forget, and they certainly don't forgive.

"When John identified his buddies as the three in the car, along with the locations of their warehouses, he received seven years, serving only four for, oddly enough, good behavior."

Amos dipped his hands in the river, washed his face, and then stood, letting the droplets cascade down his neck and shoulders. "Antonio and Felix got eighteen years, serving eighteen. James got life and served up until last month when his case was brought up for review by an ethics board. They were investigating the activities of the officers, who they thought were too bent on revenge and not justice for the death of their fellow officer, which they say colored the trial proceedings.