My class beelined for the door, shooting glances at one another and whispering as they left.
Funny. What had taken ten minutes before class now took less than thirty seconds. Maybe it was something I said.
The only student to stop at my desk was Amanda Lovett. She rested her hand on the top of her tummy. “Professor, are you the one who’s been at the hospital the last week, sitting next to the coma patient on the third floor? The pretty woman, um . . . Miss Maggie?”
When I first learned to drive, I always wondered what it would be like to throw the gear shift into reverse while driving down the highway at seventy miles an hour.
“Yes, I am.”
Amanda chose her words carefully. Her eyes never left mine. “I work the night shift at Community as a CNA. I . . . I was working the day you two—I mean three—came in.” She fumbled with the zipper on her backpack. “I’m real sorry, Professor. I help to look after your wife. Change her bed linens, bathe her, stuff like that.” Amanda paused. “I hope you don’t mind, but when you’re not there, I talk to her. I figure, I would want someone to talk to me, if . . . if I was lying there.”
I now knew how the emperor felt with no clothes.
“Professor?” Amanda asked, looking up through her glasses, her face just two feet from mine. I noticed the skin right below her eyes. It was soft, not wrinkled, and covered with small droplets of sweat. It startled me. I saw beauty there. “I’m real sorry about your son . . . and your wife.” She swung her backpack over her shoulder and left.
I stood there. Naked. The only comfort I found was that she didn’t even realize she had done it. Her eyes had told me that.
Going out the door, she stopped, turned around, and said, “Professor, if you want, I won’t talk to her any more. I should’ve asked. I just thought . . . ”
“No,” I interrupted, rummaging through my papers. “You talk to her . . . anytime. Please.”
Amanda nodded. As she walked away, I noticed that the shirt she was wearing was one Maggie had tried on in the maternity store. I sat down at my desk, stared out the window, and felt absolutely nothing.
chapter seven
FEW FOLKS KNOW THIS, BUT BRYCE MACGREGOR IS probably the richest man in Digger. His dad invented a gadget, something to do with how railroad cars hook together, that made his whole family a bunch of money. I know that doesn’t sound like a gold mine, but Bryce said that every train that’s been produced in the last fifty years uses this contraption. I guess that would add up. Bryce gets a royalty check about once a week. Sometimes more than one.
Three years ago I was in his trailer and saw a bunch of envelopes scattered about. One of them had been opened, and its contents lay on the floor. It was a check for twenty-seven thousand dollars. Bryce saw me looking at it and said,
“Take it. You can have it. Most of ’em are like that. Some are more. Some less.” A few minutes later, Bryce passed out. One beer too many.
I couldn’t find a pillow, so I wadded up a couple sweatshirts and propped up Bryce’s head. He was snoring pretty good and could have really used a bath, so I opened a few windows and didn’t bother to shut the door behind me. Nobody ever went up there anyway. The breeze would do him more good than harm.
I don’t think Bryce ever remembered that night, but I did. There was more than a quarter of a million dollars on the floor in checks made out to him. I left that check, and all the other checks, right there on the floor. I didn’t want Bryce’s money, and the secret of his trust fund was safe with me. But I didn’t want him taken advantage of, either. And there are enough money-grubbers in Digger, small town or not, to rob Bryce blind.
So a few weeks after that, I got to thinking about Bryce while harrowing a section of pasture. What was a half-naked drunk, probably the richest man in South Carolina, doing, living in a trailer next to a drive-in movie theater that had been closed since the early seventies? I said to myself, “This is just not right. This could turn out real bad if someone doesn’t start taking care of Bryce.” So I went up to the Silver Screen and gathered up all those envelopes. Bryce showered once a week, and I made sure that once a week was that day. Once Bryce was smelling sociable, we loaded up my truck and the three of us—Bryce, Blue, and I—drove to Charleston to talk to the man who Bryce said handled his trust fund.
The man’s name was John Caglestock. A skinny little man with rosy cheeks and round glasses that hung on the end of his bulbous nose. Legally, the man had no actual control over the fund, but he was careful to make it his daily priority. His firm made some good commissions from handling Bryce’s affairs. But Bryce could be intimidating when he wanted to. Whatever Bryce said, Mr. Caglestock did.
After our meeting, due in large part to the way Bryce talked about me, Mr. Caglestock did whatever I said. Bryce called me his brother, and the man brought out some paperwork and had me sign it. I told him I wasn’t anybody’s brother and I wouldn’t sign anything, but Bryce told me to do it. That way I wouldn’t have to “drag his butt” down here again.
So I read it, got the gist of it, and signed it. From then on, the firm had to run every transaction by me before it did anything. Bryce’s orders. In essence, I couldn’t spend any of Bryce’s money on personal matters, but I could look over the firm’s shoulder and see where it wanted to invest it. And Bryce thought that was good.
About once a month Mr. Caglestock would call me, and we’d have a real polite conversation in which I approved or denied every transaction he wanted to make. The more time I spent with Bryce, the more I realized that behind the drunk façade, Bryce had moments of lucidity in which he really knew what he was doing. I guess he knew the day I took him to Charleston.
In the three years since I’ve been talking with Mr. Caglestock, Bryce has made a pile of money. He’s more than
doubled his fund. Looking back, I realize that has more to do with the market and Mr. Caglestock’s research and advice than my input. Caglestock knows his stuff, and he taught me a lot.
One day Maggie asked me if Bryce had a will, and I said I didn’t know. I started doing some digging and found out that he did not. And he had no one to leave anything to. That worried us, so I went up to his trailer one afternoon and asked him, “Bryce, if you were to die tomorrow, who would you want at your funeral?” Without batting an eye, he said, “The bugler.”
That didn’t give Maggie and me much to go on. Just whom do you leave forty or fifty million dollars to when the guy who owns it isn’t saying? We decided that while we had no right to play God, we could do a better job than the state. So we had Mr. Caglestock draw up a will that left the whole kit and caboodle to the children of the men who had served with Bryce in his unit in Vietnam. Most of them never knew their fathers, but Bryce did. He kept their dog tags in his ammunition box. About fifteen in all.
So why did I do all this if I didn’t want the money? I guess because Bryce couldn’t, or at least didn’t, and I didn’t want him getting taken advantage of by a bunch of Charleston lawyers who found him incompetent to handle his own affairs. And since Bryce’s fund has doubled, they can’t accuse me of that. Besides, between Caglestock and me, they’ve made good money. I’m not sure even Bryce knows how directly I handle his fund. It’s an odd thing. Caglestock will call me, we’ll move two to three million dollars from one stock or fund to another, and yet personally, I’m scratching to pay the taxes on our property. Bryce makes more money off the interest in his investments in one week, or sometimes even a day, than I’ll make all year.
A TORNADO BOUNCED OVER DIGGER LAST NIGHT. IT PICKED up a couple of houses, disassembled them piece by piece, and scattered the remains for miles. I didn’t hear it, but those who did said it sounded like a really mad freight train. After a phone call reassured me that the hospital hadn’t been in its path, I wanted to see the damage, so I loaded up and drove across town. It was an odd thing. On one side of the road, everything was exactly as it had been the night before. On the other side, it looked as though God had taken a two-mil
e razor to the earth’s face. One man woke up to a neighbor phoning to say his tractor was sitting upside down in his tomato patch more than a mile from where the owner had parked it the night before. Others didn’t wake up. There were three of those.
I finished my chores around the house, cleaned the yard and then myself, and drove out to Bryce’s. By the time I crested the top of the hill by the Silver Screen, it was late in the afternoon. Bryce was standing in a kilt and wearing combat boots, holding bagpipes in one hand and a beer in the other. “Morning, Dylan,” he said with a smile. His white barrel chest glistened in the afternoon sun. Bryce had quit wearing a watch long ago, and sometimes, if his nights ran long, so did his mornings.
“Morning.” Blue ran up to smell and greet Bryce. “Thought I’d come see how the storm left you. Everything still here?”
“No problem,” Bryce barked in his best Scottish brogue.
Looking around, I noticed that one of the screens he no longer used had been torn from top to bottom. The canvas that was once tacked to plywood now flapped in the wind, exposing the splintered plywood that was separated and ripped right down the middle.
“Looks like that one didn’t fare too well,” I said, pointing.
“Yup,” Bryce said between gulps. “No big deal. Only need one.” Bryce threw his now-empty can on the ground and walked toward his trailer. He came back carrying a blowtorch. To my amazement, he walked across the parking lot into the second lot and up to the wooden housing at the base of the torn screen. He sparked the blowtorch, adjusted the flame, and held it against the wooden housing. After a few seconds, flames appeared. After a few minutes, the wind caught it, fueling the fire, and it rose up to the screen. The screen and structure behind it caught fire and burned like film in a projector.
Bryce walked back to his trailer and returned to me without the blowtorch but with a beer in each hand. He handed me one, and we watched the screen burn to the ground. Bryce lifted his beer above his head and said, “To the Silver Screen.”
IT WAS WELL PAST DARK WHEN I CRANKED MY TRUCK. I passed the amphitheatre, and all was quiet. I pulled off the shoulder, and Blue let out a big breath and lay down in the back. I cut the engine and sat in the quiet.
One night after a show, Maggie and I had lain in bed, ears ringing and too wired to sleep. Bathed in darkness and the sweat of a South Carolina summer night, she asked me why I was so quiet. And taking a chance, I told her what was on my mind.
“When I see those people on stage, sometimes I think about the little drummer boy. Standing there, offering his gift. All he had. Right there at the foot of the King. I wonder what that moment was like. Was it quiet all except for the sound of a drum? Were the animals shuffling about? Chewing hay? Where was Joseph? Was Jesus sleeping, up ’til He smiled? And the smile. What did He feel? I . . . I wish I could wring out my soul, like the drummer boy, and then stop midwring, and know, in that minute, that that—whatever that was—was the perfect expression of a gift.”
I pointed out the window toward the amphitheatre. “Those people, when they stand before the world, just before the sound fades, they know that they’re doing the very thing they were created to do. Their faces show it. Gift affirmed. They know life. That’s it. That moment, when the fans come alive and the King smiles, is living. Sometimes, I just wonder what it’d be like to play my drum for the King. Did the drummer boy stand like Pavarotti, hang the notes off the balcony, stop midbeat, and listen to himself? Did he notice the moment, or did it pass by unmarked?”
I thought she’d laugh, maybe lecture me. Not Maggie. When I had finished, she ran her fingers through my hair, wrapped her arm and leg around me, and pressed her chest to mine. “Have you ever had that feeling? Ever?”
“I think so.”
“Where?”
I looked up at the ceiling fan, hypnotized by the backward-spinning mirage caused by the forward spin of the blades. “Maybe a time or two in class. It’s hard to say.”
A few nights later, Maggie packed a brown-bag dinner, blindfolded me, put me in the truck, and started driving.
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
She just kept driving, and after fifteen minutes of U-turns and “shortcuts,” we got where we were going. She pulled over, grabbed my hands, and led me to a gate, where she fumbled with some keys and unlocked what sounded like a padlock. Loosing the chain, she pushed open a creaky fence and then led me a hundred or so yards to a series of steps. At the top of them, my feet told me that the surface had changed from concrete to something hollow, maybe wood. She led me a few feet farther, then placed her finger across my lips. It was quiet. Pin-drop quiet.
I heard her shuffle away from me and down the steps. Then, while I stood there wondering what in the world was going on, she started screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Whooooo! More! More! More! Whooooo!”
It scared me so bad I ripped off the bandanna, only to find myself on the stage of the amphitheatre and Maggie running up and down the rows of seats, holding a candle, waving her arms in the air and screaming like a wild woman. Throughout the rows she had placed cardboard people, maybe fifteen in all, and each held a burning candle. She whooped and hollered for ten minutes, dancing around as if she’d struck gold or come to hear the man at the mike. It took me ten minutes to get her to stop.
When I finally got her calmed down, we sat in the second row, propped our feet up on the first, ate turkey sandwiches, and watched a show that existed only in our minds. When I finished my sandwich and leaned over to kiss her, she had mustard dabbed in the corner of her mouth. I can still taste it.
Maggie could have made me feel foolish, even stupid for wondering outside myself. But she didn’t. She took me down there, set me on the stage, and then acted like my own private audience no matter how foolish it made her feel.
Now I sat there in the moonlight and looked down at the amphitheatre through blurred vision. I opened the truck door, slid down the hill, and hopped the fence. I walked down the center aisle and climbed up on the stage. The moon reflected off the tops of the chairs like ten thousand candles, but I never opened my mouth. I knew no sound would come. Only tears. I lay down on the stage and hid from the demons that fed my doubts.
chapter eight
THE DIGS ENGLISH DEPARTMENT HAD TITLED MY class “Research and Writing,” hoping that the students would do just that. This meant that from day one, they would need to be thinking about and working toward a term paper. It also meant that anyone waiting until the last minute would land him- or herself right back in the class a third time. I suppose most of my students knew this. The syllabus allowed for weekly, sometimes daily, quizzes, but the bulk of each student’s grade would be determined by one single term paper.
With this in mind, I set aside the third day of class as optional. On the second day I told them, “The most important aspect of your paper is not your topic—there are thousands
of interesting topics. The most important aspect is your question. You ask a vague question, you get a vague answer. Ask a specific question, and you tend to get a specific answer. I want specific questions and specific answers. If you have any doubt as to the effectiveness of your question, such as, ‘Is it tight?’ you’d better come see me on Thursday.”
I was willing to answer questions, no kidding, but more than that, I just wanted to see who would show up if I gave them the option.
No one came.
That meant one of two things. Either they all had good questions, or they could not care less. The proof would be in the paper, and we’d find out toward Christmas.
BLUE AND I ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL AROUND FOUR IN the afternoon. We walked into Maggie’s room, where her brushed hair told me that Amanda had been working. Around Maggie, the sun hung a peaceful light. The lack of tension in her facial muscles told me that she liked it. Aware but unaware, peaceful but not at peace, rested but tired, sleeping but not asleep.
I wanted to wake her up. To nudge her shoulder, watch her stretch an
d yawn, reach for a hug, sip coffee, and then head for the barn or slip along the river and watch the bass and bream break water or the wood ducks whistle overhead. I sat down next to Maggie, kissed her cheek, and she moved not at all.
The doctors say her brain registers “normal activity for a person in this condition,” whatever that means. They say, “All we can do is wait. Sometimes shock does the unexplainable to a person.”
I’m having a hard time with this. If we can put a man on the moon, split an atom, move a heart from one man to another, cure polio, or build a hundred-story building, we ought to be able to wake up my wife. One minute she was awake and crying, reaching for our son. The next minute she was vomiting and then not awake. I can’t explain that.
I sat with Maggie while the sun went down. Blue settled in on the blanket someone had folded in the corner. The same someone had filled a bowl of water next to it.
Just a couple days after the delivery, my friend Mr. Thent-whistle had sent a nurse to tell me that he was calling animal control to remove my “filthy canine.”
“Ma’am,” I said politely and pointing at Blue, “I’ve tried to tell him, but he won’t listen to me. The dog goes with the girl.”
She had left, reported to Mr. Administrator, and he called animal control. Animal control is a voluntary position in this county, and it happens to be held by Amos’s dad, Mr. Carter. When Mr. Carter found out what kind of dog it was, he put two and two together and said, “No sir, that girl might need that dog. You best leave it alone.”
I sipped coffee and held Maggie’s hand in silence.
Maggie wasn’t a real touchy-feely person, but she loved for me to rub her feet. In her bedside table she kept some moisturizing cream that she got at one of those sensory-overload stores in the mall. You know, the kind full of creams, candles, and all the fluffy crap that sits unused in your medicine cabinet. I didn’t really like the smell, but she did. She said it smelled like honeysuckle. The label said “Body Butter.”