(2008) Down Where My Love Lives Page 12

  She finished bandaging my arm, held out her hand, and said, "Swallow this."

  Shortly thereafter, I dozed off. About two in the morning, Amos tapped me on the shoulder and said, "D.S., let's go get some coffee."

  Blue licked my ankle as I wiped my eyes and cleared the drool from my chin. I was groggy, but whatever Amanda had given me had worked. I kissed Maggs and put my hand on her forehead.

  "See you tomorrow. Thanks for letting me share your pillow. I promise, if you wake up, you'll never have to do it again."

  Amos and I walked out of the hospital and crossed the street to the all-night diner. It used to be a Waffle House that had long since gone out of business. Now the sign above the door read "Al's Diner, Open 24 Hours." I've never been there when Al wasn't working the grill. When that guy slept, I'll never know.

  Amos and I sat down and ordered coffee, and I placed three orders for scrambled eggs.

  "How is she?"

  "Same. "

  "What's this business with your arm?"

  "Huh?"

  "I said, why do you keep doing whatever you're doing to your arm?"

  "Oh. I just goofed it up working in the pasture."

  "That's not what your nurse said."

  "Yeah? What does she know? She wasn't there."

  "She says that every time she sees you it's worse, and now you're trying to cover it up. That's why she's bandaged it like that. So you can't make it any worse."

  "Amos, it's three in the morning. Can we talk about something else?"

  "How's class?" he said without a break.

  I looked up. "Shouldn't you be home sleeping or working or something?"

  "I am working."

  "My tax dollars are paying you for this time?"

  "How's class?"

  "You don't quit, do you?"

  "Not when it comes to you." Amos smiled, his white teeth shining in the dim light of the diner.

  I rubbed my eyes. "It's probably a good thing too."

  "Have you figured it out yet?"

  "Figured out what?"

  "Amanda."

  "Amos, would you quit talking in code? It's about three hours past my ability to translate."

  "Have you figured out Amanda Lovett?"

  "What's there to figure? I've got an attractive, kind, pregnant preacher's daughter sitting in the front row of my class, and she also happens to be my wife's nurse. Yes, I've got that figured pretty well."

  "Yeah, but have you figured how that attractive, kind, sweet, unmarried daughter-of-a-preacher got pregnant in the first place?"

  "No. I haven't spent much time on that."

  "You probably thought she was just another statistic."

  I rubbed my eyes and stared out the diner window. "Amos, please come to a point. Just about any point will do."

  "Six months ago, Amanda Lovett was kidnapped, driven seven miles from town, and tied to a tree deep in the Salkehatchie. She was then raped by at least two men, maybe more. Six days later, they dumped her on her daddy's lawn. You need me to draw you a picture?"

  That was picture enough. "No, I got it."

  "That girl, the same girl that bandages your arm, brushes your wife's hair, leaves a towel for Blue, and brings you orange juice in the morning, was beat up and left for dead. She was also impregnated." Amos sat back. "This is a small town, and word travels fast, but you Styleses have a tendency to keep to yourselves. Always have. Now... " Amos pointed his toothpick at me. "You want the answer to your next question?"

  "Yes."

  "Well." He tongued the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "I could tell you, but you need to hear it from her. Ask her sometime. "

  "Amos, did you bring me to this one-tooth establishment to tell me this?"

  "Yup "

  "Why?"

  "'Cause you need to hear that there are folks in this world who got lives just as bad as yours. Life ain't fair, and welcome to earth."

  "Thanks. I feel much better just knowing that."

  I paid for the coffee and eggs, and Blue and I left Amos talking with Al. When I cranked my truck, Garth was singing a duet with Martina, but I turned it off and rode home in silence, except for the rhythmic sound of a nail in my tire hitting the blacktop.

  FRIDAY NIGHT WAS THE BIGGEST GAME OF THE year, according to Marvin. This was "The Rivalry." Every school has a nemesis, and Digs's was South Carolina Junior College.

  Blue and I walked up to the fence next to the track and stood parallel with the goal line. The bleachers were filled with kids, and because dogs make some folks nervous, I put a leash on Blue. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

  "Sorry, pal. It's just for an hour or so."

  I leaned against the fence and looked up at the clock. It was the third quarter, and Digs was beating SCJC by a touchdown, 27-20. From what I had heard in the classroom, Digs had speed and a decent quarterback, SCJC had a running back named Thumper, and both teams had defense.

  The Digger defense was on the field, and Russell was lined up on the far side as defensive tackle. SCJC snapped the ball, and the quarterback rolled left-to Russell's side of the field. Russell ran over the offensive tackle and sacked the quarterback for what would have been a twelve-yard loss had the quarterback not fumbled the ball.

  Players scrambled everywhere trying to pick up the pigskin. The stands erupted again in a wave of arms and a roar of penny-filled milk jugs. Out of the heap, Marvin came up with the ball and began running down my side of the field. His arms and feet were a blur. When he passed me, his face was a picture of gums, teeth, and unadulterated joy. He crossed the goal line twelve yards ahead of the nearest player, spiked the ball, and did some dance I had never before seen. Then Russell picked him up and they, and the rest of the defense, paraded to the bench. Score: 33-20.

  I was saying something to myself about fast feet when I heard, "Hey there, Professor."

  I didn't need to look. The seductive voice gave her away. I turned and said, "What? No sunglasses tonight?"

  Koy reached up and pulled her sunglasses down from their perch atop her head. "How's that?" she said.

  "Much better. I almost didn't recognize you."

  Digs kicked off and tackled SCJC on about the twenty-two.

  "So, what are you doing here?" Koy asked.

  "Watching a football game," I said, pointing to the field.

  "Don't most people do that from the stands?"

  "Yeah, but I thought it might be too much for Blue. You know-all the noise."

  "Oh," she said with a skeptical expression. She knelt down and rubbed Blue's head. "What's your story, Professor?"

  "What do you mean, what's my story?" I asked.

  "I mean, what's your story? Why's a good-looking, upstanding guy like you teaching a loser class like ours?"

  "You think you guys are losers?"

  "Come on, Professor. We're all adults here."

  "Well, I used to teach some, had a break in my farming, and this class came along. I saw it, applied, and they accepted me."

  "That ain't the way I heard it."

  "It ain't?"

  "No, it is not," she said in her best imitation of me. "Way I heard it was that you was found 'bout half dead in a cornfield by your buddy, the deputy, who I saw somewhere here tonight." She tilted her head, looking out over the field, and put her finger to her lips. "You know, he carries a big gun, and he ain't too bad-looking. Anyway, your wife knew you could teach, and he knew you can't farm. So the two of them signed you up and stuck you in this class with the rest of us losers."

  I nodded. "All right, now that you know most of my story, what's yours?"

  Koy picked her glasses off her nose and tucked them back on top of her head. "Professor, I'm just playing with you. You look like a sore thumb out here. You're about the only white person in this smelly armpit." She waved her hands across the crowd. "I thought maybe you could use some friendly conversation."

  "Is that what this is?" I said, smiling.

  "Oh, you ought to
hear me when I'm unfriendly." Her right hand played with her earring.

  "I'll pass. I like the friendly."

  "Good." She moved up, rubbing shoulders with me, and rested her chin on her hands over the fence. "So what's the deal? Why are you here?"

  "I like football. I wanted to see if Russell and Marvin are really as good as Marvin keeps telling me they are."

  "Believe me, they're better. Up there, in that box"-she pointed to the press box above the stands-"are about sixteen scouts. The guys on the roof above them are the reporters who call the game. They kicked them out of the press box to make room for all the scouts."

  I scanned the rooftops and wondered about Russell and Marvin's futures. Three years from now their lives, and lifestyles, would be very different. I turned back to Koy. "My story is simple, Koy. My wife and I moved back here after graduate school. I couldn't get hired as a teacher, so I leaned on what I knew-farming. But, as you so aptly stated, I'm not much of a farmer. Not yet, anyway. So, for a lot of reasons, my wife, with a little help from my friend Amos, signed me up to teach this class. And here I am."

  "Professor, tell me something I don't know."

  "All right."

  It was fourth and seven. SCJC had the ball on Digs's forty-yard line. They handed the ball to Thumper, who lowered his head and shoulder and rambled for eleven yards. First-andten on the twenty-nine. At the snap, Marvin rushed in from his corner position to support, but like a lot of corners with good feet and little desire to butt heads, he tried to armtackle and strip the ball. He probably learned that from Dion, who could actually do it. After Thumper ran through Marvin and gained seven more yards, Marvin got up, buckled his chinstrap, and headed for the sideline. Guess he needed a breather. Russell, not needing a breather, stood in the huddle, waiting on the next call.

  "Koy." I looked down. "You're goofing off, and your work shows it. What's in your journal is far better than what you produce in class. Why the difference?"

  She blinked and batted her eyelashes. "Because schoolwork don't mean nothing."

  I nodded. "You're right, but you've got a gift. And you're wasting it.

  "Yeah, but. . . "

  "But what?" I asked.

  She put her head on the top rail of the fence and gazed out across the field. "Professor, I swear, sometimes you don't seem too bright when it comes to people. Can't you see? Look around you. This is Digger, South Carolina. I'm never getting out of here. I'm stuck in this cesspool, and you know it. Why you think they call this place Digger?"

  "They call it Digger because you can dig yourself into or out of a hole." I paused. "And getting out of here is your choice. But it's not going to happen if you keep giving me half-completed work and a half-committed attitude. You don't do that in your journal."

  Koy looked away and put her sunglasses back down over her eyes. "Yeah, well ... I'm digging, all right." She stepped away from the fence. "I'll see you, Professor." She walked off the way she came: alone and at a distance from the stands.

  Two minutes remained in the game. Thumper had rushed for over two hundred yards, but I don't think many of those yards were gained against Russell's side of the field. Digs was still up by ten points and looking pretty good. But a lot can happen in two minutes.

  SCJC snapped the ball. The quarterback took a seven-step drop and threw deep down the far sideline. Marvin was in man-coverage and timed his jump well. He intercepted the ball on the ten, took a few lateral steps, and headed back up the sideline, where the free safety made a couple of good blocks and freed things up. Thumper took an angle and was just about to blindside Marvin when Russell decapitated him. Marvin took three more steps and was gone. Ninety yards.

  He started dancing at about the ten. Danced all the way into the end zone and threw the ball through the goalposts. The referee threw the flag for excessive celebration, but Marvin didn't care. He danced all the way to the sideline, where every player and coach high-fived his hand or slapped his helmet. He went over to the bench, jumped up, raised his arms to the crowd, and started the wave. People were jumping and pennies were spilling all over the place. Come Monday, I knew he'd be a handful.

  MY SCREEN DOOR SLAMMED, AND AMOS BOUNDED into the living room, where I sat in the dark listening for an echo of Maggie's voice. It was mid-November, Canadian winds had blown in an arctic front, and the temperature had slipped to twenty-three degrees. I don't understand weather patterns all that well, but arctic front or not, it was butt-cold. The weatherman said it would drop another three or four degrees before the night was out.

  Next to me were a pair of old Carhart overalls, hip waders, and my headlamp. Amos didn't say a word. Just popped his head around the corner, saw me, nodded, and turned back toward the door. I grabbed my stuff and threw it into the back of his truck. While I waved my hands across the heater vent inside the truck, one thought occurred to me. Winter had come, and Maggie would like that.

  I turned to Blue and held up my hand like a stop sign. He laid down on the couch, let out a deep breath, and wouldn't look at me. The silent treatment. "Not tonight," I said. "Don't want you getting hurt." He whined and dug his wet nose beneath the sofa cushion.

  Willard's parking lot was full by the time we arrived, crammed tight with trucks, dog boxes, blaze-orange vests, baseball caps advertising farm equipment, hip waders, chewing tobacco, Carhart overalls, and coffee cups now used as spit cups. Mr. Willard's thermometer, hanging on the gas pump, read twenty-two degrees, but that probably accounted for a little bit of wind chill.

  A few weeks ago, Amos said he bought his dad some new insulated hip waders for this year's season. Amos parked his Expedition next to his dad's old Ford. His father walked over to him, running his fingers up the elastic suspenders. "Moose, I love 'em. Best I've ever owned."

  "Glad you like them."

  Mr. Carter put his hand on Amos's shoulder, and the two walked ahead of me toward Mr. Willard's store. Mr. Willard saw us coming and opened the door with a smile. Then he hung the "Closed" sign over the suction hook in the middle of the window.

  His coffeepot was almost empty after Amos and I filled our mugs and a beat-up green thermos that looked as if it had rolled one too many times around the back of somebody's pickup. Back outside, Mr. Carter banged on the side of an empty Maxwell House coffee can for attention, then climbed atop the dog box wedged in the bed of his truck. He zipped up his coveralls, pulled up his collar, shoved his hands in his pockets, and began.

  "Howdy. Now y'all come in close. That's better." His voice was blowing smoke, it was so cold. "It's too cold to yell. And Jim, don't stand too close to my exhaust. I don't want you passing out again. I don't want to hear any excuses from you when we get in the Salk."

  Mr. Carter smiled, Jim shuffled his feet, and everybody laughed.

  Jim Biggins, who is just what his name implies, owns a junkyard, but come winter, he supplies most of Digger and even some of Charleston with firewood. In seven years he's never run out of wood, and neither have the folks in Digger. He sells it cheap, and Jim has kept a lot of people warm long after their gas has been cut off.

  A few years back, he had just come off working a double because the Weather Channel said South Carolina would experience a hard freeze. Once he got home, he pulled on his coveralls and came coon hunting. We got inside the swamp, and Jim just couldn't hold off the sleep any longer. No amount of coffee would change that. Just about the time the dogs treed a coon, Jim slumped over and fell asleep at the base of an old cypress, curled up like a baby.

  Jim is about six foot six, dresses out at three hundred pounds, and is the strongest human being I have ever known. There was no way we could tote him out of the swamp. So Mr. Carter and the rest of the boys continued hunting while Amos and I hung out in the swamp for a few hours, letting Jim nap. We made a fire and sipped coffee, and when Jim woke, he stood up, shook his head, and apologized. We walked out of the Salk about an hour before daylight. Since then, he's never let me pay for firewood, and I've never run out. Somehow every ye
ar it just shows up.

  Towering over everyone from his perch in the back of the pickup, Mr. Carter addressed the crowd like the chairman of the board at the annual stockholders meeting. "I'd like to welcome everybody to the first coon hunt of this year." He eyed the full moon and cloudless sky. "Looks like we got its a good night."

  Coon hunting in Digger is a religion, something passed down from father to son. Amos's dad has had the best coon dogs in the state for years. He's been winner or runner-up of the Greater Salkehatchie Coon Gathering for twelve of the last fifteen years, and he breathes coon hunting. It could be blowing forty miles an hour outside, treetops blowing right off the trees, but come first freeze of the year, Mr. Carter would load five or six of his best hounds and head to Mr. Willard's store.

  Participation here is by invitation only, and Mr. Carter is selective. If you get invited, you better be able to keep up, and you better not have a problem walking ten or fifteen miles.

  Mr. Carter prides himself on dogs that can hunt all night and on into the next day. His dog kennel is a real operation. Twelve kennels raised four feet off the ground. Every dog has its own box, automatic waterer, and food bowl. Once a month Mr. Carter drives to the Wal-Mart distribution center and loads up his pickup with about eight or ten seventy-five-pound bags of Alpo. Twelve dogs can eat a lot of food, and they can get rid of it too. Every morning Mr. Carter cranks up his pressure washer and hoses down the concrete into a holding area, where he shovels the muck into a five-gallon bucket and dumps it into a hole that he dug with his front-end loader. In fifteen years, he's pretty well dug up his whole pasture, but he's got the greenest grass of any farm in Digger.

  In almost twenty years, he's lost only one dog to snakebite, because he trains them to stay away from snakes. In springtime he waits for the weather to warm up and catches a rattler or moccasin crossing a road or slithering along some bank somewhere. He tapes its mouth shut and then puts both the snake and the dog into a closed space and buckles a shock collar on the dog. I'm not talking about a pet-supermarket bark collar that sort of tickles the dog into thinking that it ought not to sniff the snake. His collars do what they advertise. They shock. They aren't inhumane, but they're strong enough to straighten all four legs and bring a dog off its feet. He calls it electroshock therapy. Mr. Carter used to threaten to put one on Amos and me when we were kids, if he thought it was needed. As a result, we didn't let him know about all the trouble we got into.