(2008) Down Where My Love Lives

by Charles Martin

  Virginia is pretty, but it can't hold a candle to South Carolina. We hadn't even walked in the front door when I realized that my love for farming had much deeper roots than the shallow shoots I'd put down in academia. As I looked out over those fields where I had passed many a happy day, I knew I'd miss the students, the lively exchange of ideas, and the sight of lightbulbs turning on, but little else. I was glad to be home.

  The well water smelled like eggs, the faucets dripped like Chinese water torture, and both toilets ran constantly, but Maggie never complained. She loved the narrow, coal-burning fireplace, the front and back porches, and the two swinging screen doors that slammed too loudly and squeaked in spite of oil. But her two favorite pleasures were the tin roof beneath a gentle rain and Nanny's breeze.

  I had never measured it, but including the porches, the house probably covered twelve hundred square feet. But it was ours, and for sixty-two years, love had lived here.

  Like riding a bicycle after the training wheels had been removed, I hopped on the tractor, sniffed the air for any hint of rain, and cried like a baby all the way to the river. Papa had taught me well, and once away from the classroom cobwebs and textbook chains, I remembered how to farm. In our first year, I sold the pine straw from beneath our fifteen hundred acres of planted pines, leased two five-hundred-acre blocks to part-time farmers who lived in Walterboro, and drilled soybean seed into the remaining five hundred acres of our thirty-fivehundred-acre tract. By the end of that year, we had made money.

  Maggie looked at Papa's picture on the mantel, stroked the skin around my eyes, and said, "You two have the same wrinkles." And that was okay with me. I liked watching things grow.

  It was shortly thereafter that Maggie tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Let's go swimming." I remember lying on the riverbank, with my wife's head resting on my chest, looking at the water droplets fall down her pale skin and thinking that God must be pleased. At least I thought He was.

  Then came the delivery.

  THE FUNERAL PARLOR HAD PREPARED MY SON'S BODY. Amos and I drove by in my truck and picked up the cold metal coffin. I walked through the double swinging doors, bent down, picked it up, and walked back to the truck, where Amos lowered the tailgate. I gently slid it into the back. While Amos thanked the mortician for preparing things and giving us a few extra days, I climbed into the back and braced the coffin between my knees so it wouldn't slide around.

  Shutting the tailgate, Amos climbed into the cab and drove us the twenty minutes back to the farm. Underneath a sprawling oak tree on the sloping riverside, next to my grandparents, I had dug a hole with the backhoe for the larger cement casket. Amos parked. I picked up the box that held my son, and we walked over to the hole.

  After we stood there for some time, Amos cleared his throat, and I set my son down next to the hole. Then Amos handed me his Bible. It had been a while. Maybe last Christmas. Maggie always liked to read about the Nativity scene.

  "What should I read?"

  "Psalm 139."

  I split the big book down the middle with my index finger. The thin pages crinkled and blew in the breeze, and I had a hard time finding the right page. When I found the psalm, I read what I could.

  O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. ... Where can Igo from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? ... If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

  About midway through, I fell silent and Amos took over from memory.

  ... For you formed my inward parts, You covered me in my mother's womb. ... My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret ... And in Your book they were all written, The days fashioned for me.

  When he finished, he stood with his head bowed and hands folded in front of him. The breeze picked up and blew against our backs. Then in a deep, low voice he began singing "Amazing Grace."

  I did not.

  While Amos sang, I knelt down next to my son and put my head on his casket. I thought about the things that were not going to happen. Baseball. The tractor. Finger painting. "Dad, can I have the keys?" Buying his first pair of boots. Girls. The first step. Fishing. A runny nose. Tag. Swimming. Building a sandbox. Vacation. Big brother. All the stuff we had talked about. I faded out somewhere into a blank and empty space.

  Amos's singing brought me back. With each of the six verses, he sang louder. When the song was over, Amos wasn't finished. "D.S., you mind if I sing one more?"

  I shook my head, and Amos, looking out over the river, started up again.

  When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll ...

  Since college, Amos had spent two days a week singing in the church choir. He was a church history buff and especially liked the stories surrounding the writing of hymns. Years ago, floating on our raft down the river, he'd told me the story behind "It Is Well with My Soul," and I'd never forgotten it. I sat there, resting my head on the cold metal coffin of my baby son, a child I never knew, a child I never held, and thought about Horatio G. Spafford.

  Spafford was a Chicago lawyer, traveling to Europe with his family for the summer. There he is, boarding a steamer with his family for an Atlantic cruise, but he gets called away for business. He sends his family ahead and plans to meet them in England. A storm comes up, sinks the ship, and all four of Spafford's children drown while holding hands on the bow. A strong swimmer, his wife reaches land and sends him a telegram, saying simply, "Survived alone."

  Broken, Spafford catches the next steamer. When the ship gets to the place where his children drowned, the captain brings him up to the bow.

  "Here. This is where." He leaves Spafford to stand alone on the bow.

  I want to know if he broke down. Fell to his knees. How strong was the urge to Peter Pan off the bow? Had it not been for his wife waiting on the other shore, would he have jumped? I think I would have. That dark water would have reached up and swallowed me whole-frozen man. But not Spafford. He stands up, wipes the tears, scans the water, and returns to his cabin, where he writes a poem.

  What kind of a guy writes a poem at the place where his four kids went down? What kind of a guy writes anything when his children die? Well, the poem got off the boat in Spafford's pocket in Europe, somebody tied some notes to it, and there it was, coming out Amos's mouth.

  The doctors say Maggie "probably" won't be alive long. Tell me yes or no, but don't tell me probably. Yet had it not been for probably, and the picture in my mind of Maggs lying there, limp and bleeding, I'd have lowered my son down on top of me and let Amos sing for both of us.

  He finished his song, his face a mixture of sweat and tears, and I laid my son in the hole. Amos grabbed a shovel.

  "Hold it," I said.

  I walked back to the truck, picked Huckleberry off the front seat, and tucked him under my arm. I brushed him off, straightened the red bow tie around his neck, and then knelt next to the hole and laid the bear on top of the casket.

  The cement made a grinding sound as we slid the casket into place. I let the first shovelful spill slowly. Gently. Quietly.

  The riverbank sloped to the water. The river was quiet and dark. Minutes passed. Amos wiped his face, put on his glasses, and walked to the truck. Sweat and cold trickled down my back in the ninety-eight-degree heat.

  I looked at my hands. My eyes followed the intersections of wrinkle and callus and the veins that traveled out of my palm, over my wrist and up my forearm where, for the first time, I saw flecks of blood caked around the hair follicles. It was dark, had dried hard, and had blended with the sun freckles. Maggie's blood. I picked up a handful of dirt and gripped it tight, squeezing the edges out of my palm like an hourglass. It was damp, coarse, and smelled of earth.

  I needed to tell Maggie about the funeral.

  The tops of the cornstalks gently brushed my arms and legs, almost like mourners, as I walked back to the house. On the way, I rubbed the dirt from my son's grave into my arm,
grinding it like a cleanser, until my forearm was raw and clean. The old blood gone and new blood come.

  THE DIGGER AMPHITHEATRE, BUILT ABOUT SIX YEARS ago, is one of South Carolina's best-kept secrets. It's ten miles from my house and a long way from nowhere. It rises up like a bugle out of pine trees and hardwoods, covering about three acres, most of which is parking lot. Whoever built it was far more interested in quality acoustics than quantity seating. During the construction, throughout the public hoopla surrounding the opening, and ever since, the donor has remained anonymous.

  The amphitheatre is used about three times a year; the rest of the time it just sits there. It's hosted Garth Brooks, George Strait, Randy Travis. Vince Gill, James Taylor. Mostly country and bluegrass folks. The unplugged types. But we've had other names. Even George Winston. Bruce Springsteen came through once. Brought only his guitar. Maggie and I got to that one.

  There are all kinds of myths about who built it. Some bigwig in Charleston with more money than sense. A divorcee from New York who was angry at her husband. An eccentric from California whose family homesteaded this area. Who built it depends on whom you talk to. One night a few years back, I learned the truth.

  I was driving home at about two in the morning, and I swore I heard bagpipes. I stopped my truck and crept through the woods to the top of the hill. Sure enough. A broadshouldered man stood center stage in the amphitheatre, wearing a kilt and playing the pipes. I sat and listened for about half an hour. Curiosity eventually got the best of me, and I found myself standing on the stage with a half-naked man. Once his eyes focused on me, he adjusted his skirt and shook my hand. We struck up a conversation, and somewhere in there the guy decided that he liked me. His full name, I learned, was Bryce Kai MacGregor, and when he plays the bagpipes, he wears a kilt. But after six or eight beers, the plaid skirt is optional. He has fiery red hair and freckles, and looks like a cross between a coal miner and a troll-just one big flexed muscle. Bryce is not ugly, although he could take better care of himself, and he has penetrating green eyes.

  North of town, where things are more hilly, sits his homea drive-in movie theater. Though the drive-in has been closed for more than fifteen years, Bryce is a Friday night regular who watches whatever strikes his fancy. The Silver Screen is actually more white than silver, and the largest of the three screens has a big hole in the left corner where a buzzard flew into it. Unfortunately for the buzzard, it got itself stuck and just hung there, flapping its wings in a panic. Bryce climbed up the back of the screen and shot the bird out with a twelvegauge. A Greener, no less. He just stuck its head in the left barrel and pulled the trigger. "Buzzard removal," he called it, and opened another beer.

  His usual sundown activity is to sit in the bed of his truck, drink beer, and watch the same old movies by himself. He owns hundreds of reel movies, of which his favorites are John Wayne Westerns. Normally at a drive-in, a moviegoer sits in the front seat of the car and hangs the speaker on the window. But Bryce's truck window is broken, and he can't fit his cooler in the front seat, so he backs his truck up front and center and spreads out on a lawn chair in the bed.

  Most of the speakers in the parking lot are broken and dangling from frayed wires, so he starts the movie and then drives around until he finds one that works. When he finds a live one, he duct-tapes it onto the tailgate or the handle of the cooler. That often takes a while, because Bryce is usually so drunk that he can't remember where he last found one that worked. In his speaker search he has run into or over most of the speaker poles, which presents a bit of a problem to the exterior of his truck.

  But that's not a concern to him, because he hardly ever goes into town, not even to buy groceries. He does most of that on-line now, which is odd if you think about it. As drunk as he stays, he can still find the computer when he needs it, and he can usually make it work. In about two days, a white delivery truck drops a half dozen boxes at his gate. An exception to the no-town rule is if he runs out of beer before the truck arrives.

  Some folks think he's a rebel or some sort of burnt-out Vietnam kook. Bryce is no rebel. Different, yes, and in a world of his own, but he quit rebelling a long time ago. He has no one. No family. No wife. No kids. Look up "alone" in the dictionary and you see a picture of Bryce. As best I can gather, he dropped out of high school, lied about his age, and got shipped off to Vietnam for his senior trip.

  They put him in a Special Forces unit, and from what I eventually gathered, they kept him busy. In the bottom of his closet is a fifty-caliber ammunition can where he keeps all his medals. All seventeen. He brought them out and showed them to me one night while we were watching The Green Berets. He was quick to tell me that five of them weren't his. They belonged to a buddy who didn't come back. That meant Bryce had been awarded twelve. Twelve medals. They were all colors, purple, bronze, silver. Mostly purple.

  Like most boys, Bryce came home different, and he's been the same ever since-living alone with his beer and his bagpipes and his movies-and his trust fund.

  So occasionally, ever since that first night in the amphitheatre, I check up on him. I'll sneak up the path to the parking area of the drive-in, and there stands Bryce. Front and center. Butt naked, except for his boots. Blowing 'til his face looks like a glow plug. Drunk as a skunk. Rattling off "Amazing Grace," "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," or "Taps."

  We usually end up watching movies together. We'll drink beer and sit in the silence, or if we can find a speaker that works, listen to the static spewing from the box between us. The poor audio doesn't seem to bother Bryce. He knows most every word of every film by heart.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE DAY MAGGIE TACKLED ME OFF THE front porch and shoved the pink line under my nose, we climbed the hill and knocked on Bryce's trailer door, because we figured he'd want to know. Ever since I first introduced him to her, he'd shown a special affection for Maggie. I guess after so much killing, Bryce is attracted to things that are tender and full of life.

  Hand in hand, we knocked and listened while Bryce cussed and tripped over the empty beer cans on his way to answer the door. He greeted us wearing nothing but his boots and a straw hat. When he saw Maggie, he slowly reached behind the door and grabbed a framed poster of John Wayne to cover himself from belly button to kneecap.

  I nudged Maggs, and she leaned in on her tiptoes and whispered in Bryce's ear, "Dylan's gonna be a daddy."

  It took a second to register, but when it did, Bryce's already dilated pupils grew as large as the end of a beer bottle. His eyes darted from side to side, he held up a finger and slowly shut the door. To call Bryce a friend, you have to be willing to live with a few eccentricities.

  The noises behind the door told us that Bryce was tearing apart the inside of his trailer, looking for a pair of pants. A few minutes later he opened the door, wearing a yellowed and stretched-out T-shirt-as a pair of shorts. He had shoved his boots through the armholes, hiked it up around his waist, and buckled a belt over it to hold it around his hips. The neck hole hung down around his knees and flapped when he walked.

  Bryce crept up to Maggie, knelt, and slowly placed his ear to her stomach like a safecracker. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his ear farther into her stomach. Maggie is more ticklish than any human being alive, so the pressure of his forearms on her ribs and his ear pressed against her tummy started her to giggling. With Maggie laughing, Bryce could no longer hear whatever he was listening for, so he squeezed tighter. The crescendo grew, and thirty seconds later, Maggie was laughing so hard and wiggling around so much that Bryce just picked her up off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder like a duffel bag, and continued listening while Maggie flung her feet and laughed hysterically.

  "Bryce Kai MacGregor!" she said, pounding him on the back.

  Bryce set Maggs on her feet, nodded as if satisfied that there actually was a baby in her tummy, and held up his index finger again. He disappeared into the trailer, only to return half a minute later holding a beer and two dirty Styrofoam c
ups. After popping the tab, he poured half a sip in Maggs's cup, a full sip in mine, and kept the remainder for himself.

  Beneath the shadow of the silver screen, Bryce raised his can, we clinked Styrofoam to aluminum, and the three of us drank to our son. We set down our cups and started walking toward the fence when Bryce shouted after us. "Maggie, what's your favorite movie?"

  All true Southern girls have only one favorite movie, and they've all seen it ten thousand times. It's stitched into their persons like sinew and veins, and if you listen close enough, they'll whisper dialogue from entire scenes in their sleep. When it comes to their education, Scarlett O'Hara may have as much practical authority as the Bible. Maybe more.

  Maggs curtsied beneath an imaginary dress and batted her eyelids. Dragging out her sweetest Southern drawl, she said, "Why, Rhett Butler!"

  Bryce looked at me for interpretation, but I just shrugged. "You're on your own, pal."

  Bryce scratched his head, and pretty soon the Ohhh look spread across his face as the lightbulb clicked on.

  A couple weeks later, the UPS man delivered two oversized boxes to our front porch, saying they had been drop-shipped direct from the manufacturer-one that specialized in Southern plantation period furniture.

  I looked at the box and wondered if Maggs had taken her nursery shopping on-line, but she read my face and said, "Don't look at me. I had nothing to do with it."

  We cut away the cardboard and there, mummified by eight layers of bubble-wrap, sat a handmade and hand-oiled rocking chair with matching foot cradle. Finding no card, and wanting to make sure it was ours, we called the manufacturer and spoke with the owner. He told us that a man who was definitely not from south Georgia called and asked if his company could build nursery furniture for a Southern lady who already owned a crib but little else.