The Dead Don't Dance

by Charles Martin

  chapter twelve

  I WOKE UP IN A CHAIR NEXT TO MAGGIE, WHERE THE air smelled like magnolias. The Sunday morning sun was bouncing off her face, which had regained its color.

  Amanda poked her head into the room and said, “Good morning, Professor. How about some orange juice?”

  I nodded and wiped the sleep from my eyes. “Thanks.”

  She returned, placed it on the table, checked Maggie’s IV and her blood pressure cuff, and then rubbed Blue between the ears on her way out. Around ten o’clock she returned, carrying some antiseptic and gauze pads. She motioned to my arm. “Professor, I’m cleaning that before it gets infected.”

  I looked at my arm and rolled my sleeve back down. “No thanks. It’ll be fine.”

  “Professor, if I had a problem with my paper, I’d expect you to help me out. Same goes here, only it’s reversed.” She pointed to my arm. “Whatever was here is long since gone. You can quit now.”

  She pulled a chair up beside me and rolled up my shirtsleeve. Amanda worked quietly and quickly. She doused me with hydrogen peroxide, cleaned out all the dirt, and then poured some brown stuff all over it that stung so bad I almost cussed.

  “Professor.” Amanda studied my arm, dabbing it periodically with a Betadine-soaked cotton ball. “My daddy’s having a baptism down at the river this afternoon. You’re invited. Your deputy friend will be there. Daddy asked him to help the older folks down to the river.”

  “You think I need help getting into that river?”

  “No, sir. I just thought you might want to come. It’s a good time. Always lots of food.” She smiled.

  “How’s the baby?” I said, nodding at her stomach.

  “Healthy and growing,” she said with a smile. “I’m eating everything that’s not nailed down and some that is.” She continued working on my arm.

  “Do you talk to God at your daddy’s church?” I asked bluntly.

  Amanda didn’t bat an eye. “I talk to God most everywhere and most all the time.” She thought for a minute. “And yes, one of those places is my daddy’s church.” She fiddled with her hair, a little self-consciously. “Professor, do you ever talk to God?”

  “No. Not since He quit listening.”

  She gathered her dirty pads and antiseptic and headed for the door. “At the river, down below my daddy’s church, at two. You’ll see the cars.” She disappeared around the corner.

  “Amanda?”

  She poked her face back around the door. “Yes, sir?”

  “You think I need to get in that water?”

  “No, sir. I just thought you might like to come. Lots of people. And if you haven’t had Mrs. Baxter’s chicken, you haven’t had fried chicken.”

  “You think I need to get cleaned up?”

  She walked over to the head of the bed. “Professor, it’s not just you. Everybody needs to get cleaned up sometime.”

  “What if there’s not enough water?”

  She tucked Maggie’s hair behind her left ear. “It’s not the water, Professor. And you don’t have to get cleaned up to take a bath.”

  Amanda walked out of the room, and I placed my head next to Maggie’s hand and slept.

  chapter thirteen

  I DRIVE AN OLD PICKUP BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND IT. It’s simple. I don’t understand a car that does not require a tune-up for a hundred thousand miles. What kind of car is that? Self-timing and loaded with computer chips. I understand a distributor cap, a carburetor, eight cylinders, a timing belt, and how to change the oil. When I first met Maggie, she owned a foreign car that we nursed through graduate school. Not long after graduation, it died, and we sold it to a parts supplier at a junkyard for three hundred dollars. But the first time I changed the oil, it took me the better part of a day just to find the filter. And even when I did, I had to be a contortionist to get to it. The human hand is not designed to do that. My truck is made so that regular people like me can change the oil every few thousand miles. Maggie’s car was made so I had to pay a professional twenty-eight dollars to locate and unscrew the filter with a tool that cost him ninety-eight dollars.

  My truck is a 1972 Chevy C-10, possibly the best truck Chevy ever made. It’s got a long bed, which is partly rusted, a bench seat torn in several places, and it burns oil. It looks used because it is.

  If it’s knocking, I pull over, adjust the timing to fit the grade of gas, and keep going. Sometimes in the mornings, it needs a few minutes. I do too. What’s wrong with that? I hit the starter, give it some gas; it coughs, spits, churns, and hacks itself to life, for one more morning, anyway.

  When I get more than two hundred thousand miles on me, I’m quitting. There won’t be any coughing, spitting, and churning. I’m just going to bump myself into neutral and coast.

  I’ve thought about restoring it. Maybe new interior, new paint, an engine overhaul. Then I think, No, I’m not going to do that. It’s got more character the way it is.

  If Maggie had a choice, she would prefer not to ride in my truck. And that’s putting it nicely. She laughs at me everytime I climb in. “I can’t believe you actually own that thing, Dylan Styles. It’s pitiful. You look like Sanford and Son. All you need is some furniture sticking out of the back, and you could have your own sitcom.”

  I tried to tell her that Red Foxx drove a Ford, but she wouldn’t hear it. She just shook her head and said, “I married a man in love with a truck that’s the same age as me. I guess I should be happy. At least it’s not another woman.”

  A pickup truck just fits the way my brain works. I can throw stuff in the back and forget about it until I need it. I like the way the starter sounds when you crank it. I like the way the door sounds when you close it. I like the way the tailgate sounds when you lower it. I like the way the muffler sounds at idle. I like the play in the steering wheel. I like manual door locks. I like the horn because it’s loud. I like the rattles my truck makes when I drive it. I like the way it trusts me to read the gauges and the way the gas cap screws completely off—no strings attached. And I like the way it drives.

  Some folks like that “new car smell.” I like that old truck smell. Sweat. Dirt. Oil. Preemissions-controlled exhaust. Hay. Pig feed. And whatever’s blooming. Leave your windows down. Let it breathe. Wipe the dew off the seats in the morning. Automobiles take on the smell of their environment.

  In May, when Maggie’s gardenias bloom, I park it so close that the branches hang in the window and the blooms spill over the seats and dash. The next morning I get in, and it smells like Maggie. Who would want new car smell when you can have Maggie’s gardenias?

  AROUND TWO ON SUNDAY, I CLIMBED INTO THE TRUCK, feeling dangerously hungry. Blue and I cranked her up and idled out of the hospital parking lot. I rolled down the window, stuck my arm out into the hot breeze, and surfed my hand through the waves of air coming off the front fender. The new bandage was thick, bulky, and my arm throbbed inside it.

  The cars stretched down the road about a mile before the church came into view. I rounded the corner before the final straightaway that intersected the dirt road that runs in front of my house and saw the river. I slowly passed the church and saw a line of people headed for the water. White robes for the women and shorts for the men. Probably two hundred people. I didn’t see Amos, but I figured he was already down in the water. I could see Pastor John holding Amanda’s hand as they stepped over the roots of an oak tree. Her other hand was cupped under the swelling her baby had made in her belly.

  Pulling up under the oaks, I cut the engine and listened to the late-summer crickets; it’s a lazy, psychedelic, summer sound that can send any man to the crazy house or into a deep summer nap. Blue whined and stuck his head from around the back of the cab and looked at me. I hesitated and sat sweating inside, still buckled in.

  “All right, but just to look.”

  We slipped through the oaks and sat down on some moss on the south side of the folks in the river. Up on the bank, just downriver of the church, there were ten or fiftee
n picnic tables covered with checkered tablecloths and plates of fried chicken, potatoes, coleslaw, and what smelled like peach pie. I was hungry.

  Up the river a bit, a father squatted next to his son, who stood with his pants at his ankles, spelling his name in the river. Probably thirty folks stood in a circle, waist deep in the river, around Pastor John. In his arms he held a screaming lady who had her hands raised. He dunked her three times, and each time she came out of the water screaming a garbled “Hallelujah!” After the third dunk, Pastor John led her over to Amos, who helped her up out of the water and gave her a towel.

  She was shorter but bigger than Amos. She hugged him and kissed his cheek, tears pouring off her face, then went on to hug about thirty other people who must have been family and friends. These people really liked each other. Pastor John kept dunking people, and Amos stood by with a huge grin, ready to help. Some people Pastor John dunked once. Others twice. Some three times. And one man he dunked four times. I guess he really needed it. The fourth time, Pastor John held him underwater for close to thirty seconds, at which time the guy really started waving his arms. Pastor John brought him up, hugged him, and passed him to Amos, who gave him a towel and set him next to a woman who offered him a comforting shoulder.

  Dunking those thirty people took a little over an hour, because Pastor John was good at this. I think he enjoyed it too. And he made it fun for everyone. Any time he took someone’s hand, he’d relate chapters from his or her sordid past to the others in the group. He always ended it with an encouragement about how that person had climbed up from sordid to surrendered. When he finished talking, the congregation members would clap and throw their arms up, and he’d go to dunking.

  This was no sprinkling. Pastor John splashed water everywhere, and everybody got wet. The last person to go was a child, maybe nine or ten. Pastor John took the little boy in his arms, held him close, and nuzzled his nose. When the boy said he was scared to go in the water by himself, Pastor John went under with him. He went under three times, and when he came out the last time he held the boy high in the air. The dad waded over and gently took his son from Pastor John as he let him back down in the water.

  With the baptism over, Pastor John prayed. The group in the water held hands, and the group out of the water held hands or stretched their arms out over the ones in the river. Pastor John prayed for those he had baptized and for those who needed baptizing and then asked the blessing on the food.

  Pastor John could pray. And it wasn’t a posturing thing, as if he were trying to one-up those around him. Something about it was different. It was personal, powerful, and real, as though he were talking to somebody right there in the group.

  When he finished, everyone climbed out of the river and made a mad dash for the tables. All at once, as if someone shot a gun, the women fell into place, pouring sweet tea, passing plates, and piling them high with chicken, rolls, and slaw. They had done this before.

  Within five minutes, all two hundred people had food and drink and places to sit. Behind me I heard a stick crack.

  “Professor, I brought you a plate.” I was leaning against an oak tree, peering through the small stems of one of Maggie’s favorite plants, resurrection fern. It’s a funny little fern that grows out of the cracks of the bark, spends most of its days brown and crinkly only to soften up and turn green at the first sight of rain. I pulled my nose out of the fern, and Amanda offered the plate a second time.

  “Hi, Amanda.” I looked for Blue, who was licking Amanda’s ankle. Thanks, Blue.

  “You look like you could use some food.”

  “No, really, I’m not hungry.”

  From the other side of the picnic tables I heard, “Don’t let him lie to you, Amanda. Give him the plate. He’ll eat it. He’s so hungry now, he don’t know if he’s got a stomachache or a backache.” Amos waved a chicken leg at me and smiled a greasy “I’m-eating-a-chicken-leg-and-liking-it” smile.

  Amanda offered me the plate, piled high with a sample from every bowl, and then handed me a Styrofoam cup overflowing with tea. “We’ve only got one flavor, and I hope you like it sweet.”

  The plate probably weighed five pounds, but I took it. Blue sidled up next to me and started sniffing the underside of the plate.

  “I saw you when you pulled up,” she said. “I thought you’d come.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. My first reaction was to drop the plate and disappear, but I was stuck. Amanda led me to a table near her father, and I started nibbling at some chicken, trying not to inhale it.

  Pastor John wasted no time. “I understand you are my daughter’s professor.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Good to see you, son.”

  “I don’t think I ever told you, but you did a nice job at my grandfather’s funeral. Thank you.”

  “Your grandfather was as fine a man as I’ve known. Did more talking with his hands than his mouth. That’s always made an impact on me.” Pastor John looked back toward the steeple and waited for my reaction.

  “Yes, he did on me too,” I said, taking another bite of chicken.

  “Now, about you being her professor.” Pastor John’s tone caught me all of a sudden. “Amanda seems to have a lot of homework here lately.”

  There was something behind his smile. The last thing I wanted was a temperamental and public conversation with the parent of a student. Not today.

  “I hope so,” I said, chewing.

  Pastor John raised his eyebrows. “What, to give my child busywork?” He clasped his hands and rubbed them together. “To tell her what to think?”

  Pastor John’s eyes were penetrating. I should’ve run for the truck when I had the chance. I was in over my head, and I knew it. Mrs. Baxter’s chicken wasn’t tasting so good anymore.

  “No, sir. That is not my intent.”

  His eyes, switching between his bifocals, his normal lenses, and the space above his glasses, wandered over my face. Then he leaned his face into mine and said, “Well then, son, what is your intent?”

  Maybe it was hunger. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe I just didn’t care. Whatever it was, my answer was a silver bullet. I shot it into my target with the expectation that it would do damage. I put my plate down, wiped off my mouth, and fired.

  “My intent, sir, is to help her learn how to think better. To help her question what she thinks by how she arrived there. To equip her with the tools to consider and process. If I can do that, her writing will take shape soon after.” I sipped my tea, swallowed a mouthful of chicken, and said, “That is my intent.”

  I picked up my plate again and dug around for a chicken leg. Maybe it was because I needed to remind myself, but before he could ever open his mouth, I pointed at him with the chicken leg. “Sir.” I paused. “Pastor John, to be honest, I’m not looking for an amount of work. I hate to grade papers, and I don’t slap little silver stickers on passing quizzes. I’m looking for a process. I’m interested in how Amanda gets from here to there. And to be brutally honest, I don’t really care where she starts or where she finishes. That’s your job.”

  With my voice echoing off the river, I began to notice how quiet it had gotten, how everyone was listening to me, and how much I had said. Being tired and hungry does strange things to a person.

  Pastor John sat back, took off his glasses, wiped them with his white handkerchief, and looked at me through his now-naked eyes. He smiled, nodded his head, and muttered, “Huh-huh,” as if he was talking to somebody I couldn’t see. Then he slapped me on the knee and said, “Son, welcome back. You let me know if you need anything.” He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “And Professor, I miss your grandfather. Seeing you reminds me of him. And it’s a good remembrance too. I think he’d like it very much.”

  Everybody had long since quit talking and was listening to the two of us. I guess our voices carried a good bit under those oaks.

  “Son, you give my child all the work you want to. If sh
e doesn’t give you what you want when you want it, you let me know.” He patted me on the shoulder and started making the rounds to check on his flock.

  Amos got up quickly, brought his plate, and sat down next to me. “Listen here, you little squirt. I didn’t bring you out here to put that doctoring mumbo jumbo on my pastor.” He smiled and pointed his own chicken leg in my face. “You got to learn to tone it down.”

  “What? I say something wrong?” My face was covered with chicken grease.

  “It wasn’t necessarily what you said as much as how you said it. And the fact that you said it at all. All that bit about ‘process’ and ‘your job.’ You should have heard yourself.”

  “Amos, you’re half the reason I got this job. Now, are you going to let me do it, or do you want to do it for me?”

  “Naw.” Amos slipped into his southern drawl. “I think you got it covered there, Professuh.”

  “Good. You arrest people, and I’ll teach them how to think so that you don’t have to arrest them.”

  Amos got up and said, “I’m going back for more. You eat all you want. Talking all uppity like that probably worked you up a pretty good appetite.” Amos wiped the smear off his lips and then turned and hollered, “Amanda, make sure that boy eats ’til he can’t move.”

  Before thirty minutes passed, Amanda had handed me two more topped-over plates. I felt like a tick and had to unbutton my jeans. I knew I gained eight pounds right there in that folding chair. Blue too.

  The crowd thinned, and I helped Amos clean and clear tables. We carried them inside the church and stacked them against the wall in the narthex. As I was heading to my truck, Pastor John thanked me for my help, and Amanda gave me two more plates wrapped in cellophane and spilling over with food. I guess those folks were trying to tell me something.

  On the top of the first plate she had written Professor and on the second Blue. Along with the plates, she handed me a milk jug of sweet tea. At this point, I had drunk so much tea and had to pee so badly that I nearly gave it back. Thinking better of it, I tucked it under my arm, and Blue and I headed for the truck. I drove until I was out of sight, then pulled over next to where the river bumps up next to the road. I got out, ran to the bank, yanked open my shorts, and peed for a minute and fifty-five seconds. A new personal record.