(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (63 page)

I nodded, and Bryce fired three times; his shots were answered immediately by two shots downriver. Bryce fired three more, and I watched as the brass shell casings arced out across the river and disappeared into the water.

Ten minutes later I heard Amos screaming in the distance, "Amanda! Amanda!"

Amanda looked up, her hands shaking. "Take me to my husband, please."

I picked her up, and we walked along the bank through the shallow water. A hundred yards down the river, Badger and Gus emerged from the trees, followed quickly by Amos. He ran into the water, reached me, and looped his arms under mine.

Amanda let go of my neck, wrapped her arms around his, and said, "I want to go home now."

He heard her speak, and the cries of a man in anguish exited his chest. I knew what they sounded like because I'd heard them before. Amos fell to his knees, the water lapping up around his waist, and held Amanda. Finally he placed his hands on her tummy and whispered, "The baby?"

Amanda tried to smile. "Playing soccer right now."

Amos lifted her off the sandy bank and sloshed toward the trees, the sound of feet, and the sight of lights. When I turned around, Bryce was gone.

AT 3:00 AM MAGGIE AND I DROVE HOME. SHE HAD BABYSAT L.D. for the better part of three days. As we drove, a smell that I couldn't place filled the car. I wrinkled my nose and was sniffing the air like Bryce when Maggie noticed. She held her hand to my nose. "It's Desitin."

I nodded. A few minutes passed while I tried to figure out what that was. The look on my face betrayed me.

Maggie placed her heels on the dashboard and leaned back. "It's a cream for diaper rash."

"Oh." The adoption committee can say what they want, but my wife will make a great mom one day.

Emotionally we were about as strung out as two people could get. Physically we weren't much better. The events of the night, and of the last six weeks, had taken their toll. I knew that I was breathing and that sleep was only moments away. All I wanted to do, all we wanted to do, was lay our heads on a pillow, close our eyes, and wake up next week. We'd worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

I parked, cut the ignition, and opened the door. Blue hopped out and began sniffing around the house. Maggie and I were inside the barn when a light in the kitchen caught my eye. I tried to ignore it, but I heard Papa whispering over my shoulder, `Money, doesn't grow on trees. "I turned to Maggie. "I'll be up in a minute."

I whistled for Blue, but he had disappeared. Probably down by the river or running down a corn row. I climbed up the porch steps, pushed open the door, and walked through the kitchen to the hall to flick off the light. That's when I saw the blood. Three spots of fresh blood led from the kitchen into the den.

"Blue?" I waited, followed the trail, and saw several more spots. Darker red. I called again, "Blue?"

The only noise was the sound of Maggie tossing corn out of a pail and into Pinky's stall. I turned the corner into the den, and there lay Blue. His eyes were half-open, and I couldn't tell if he was breathing. I knelt and reached out, but a huge hand flashed out of the darkness, grabbed me by the throat, and choked off any thought of screaming or breathing. The hand lifted me off my toes, pulled me toward a tormented face, and threw me into the fireplace, where my head hit soundly on the brick hearth.

The room spun. I heard a laugh and the muffled thud of someone kicking Blue's body. The sound told my ears what my heart already knew.

I pulled myself onto my hands and knees, felt a boot in my rib cage, then something hard came down over my head and everything went black. Somewhere between awake and not, I heard heavy footsteps fading down the hall and heard the screen door squeak. I stumbled to my feet, fell, and pulled myself up on the sofa as the blood blurred my vision. A few seconds later I heard the gunshot.

I pulled myself down the hallway, trying to get up but unable to steady my knees. The pressure in my head was growing, my eyes were blurry, and the sides of my vision were narrowing, like a tunnel. The floor felt as if it were moving, like the first step onto an escalator. I reached the kitchen, then the screen door, and finally I rolled down the porch steps, spilling blood all around me. I got to one knee, where the ground felt like a spinning merry-go-round, tried to yell for Maggie but muttered something inaudible instead. I fell again, then elbowed my way past the van.

Maggie stood in the barn doorway, holding Papa's Model 12 and pointing it in the face of Whittaker, who lay unmoving on the ground. She wasn't trembling, but her forehead was wrinkled, her finger was wrapped around the trigger, and her knuckles were white. It struck me that the barrel wasn't smoking. I steadied myself on one knee and saw a flash of gunmetal out of the corner of my left eye. I jerked, the blood spraying off my face, just in time to see Bryce stride out of the cornfield. He was carrying his rifle, and a thin line of smoke was trailing out of the barrel.

Pinky started kicking her stall, snorting and squealing.

Barefooted, Bryce approached slowly, his toes digging into the mud like fingers. He reached across Whittaker's body and gently placed his hand on the Model 12's barrel. He lifted it, and Maggie's eyes followed. When they made eye contact, Bryce hesitated, then shook his head. Maggie looked down, then at me, and finally let go. When she did, the darkness returned.

THE HEADACHE WOKE ME. I OPENED MY EYES, A WAVE OF nausea hit, and I arched over the side of the bed where two hands sat holding a bucket. I must have been doing this awhile, because I opened my mouth and nothing came. The sheets were white, the bed was hard, the air was smoke-blowing cold, and my left eye was completely swollen shut. I studied the room and knew that while it felt familiar, it wasn't mine.

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.