The Dead Don't Dance Page 2

  When she was seven months along, I came in after dark one evening and heard her sloshing in the bathtub, talking to herself. I poked my head in and saw her holding a pink razor, trying to shave her legs. She had already cut her ankle. So I sat on the ledge, took the razor, held her heel, and shaved my wife’s legs.

  Somewhere around seven and a half months, I sat down to dinner—a dinner Maggie insisted on cooking—and found a package wrapped in brown paper. Untying the ribbon, I peeled open the paper to find a green T-shirt with World’s Greatest Dad sewn on the front. I wore it every day for a week.

  Getting heavier and feeling less mobile every day, Maggie nevertheless sewed the bumper for the crib and tied it in. The pattern featured stripes, baseballs, footballs, bats, and little freckle-faced boys. I bought a Pop Warner football and a Little League baseball glove and placed them inside the crib. On the floor beneath I clustered Matchbox cars, a miniature train set, and building blocks. When we were finished decorating, there was little room left for our son.

  In the late afternoons of her last trimester, Maggie tired more easily, and I tried to convince her to take naps. Occasionally she’d give in. Two weeks before her due date, which was August 1, her legs, hands, and feet swelled, and her breasts became sore and tender. A week away, Braxton Hicks contractions set in, and the doctor told her to keep her feet up and get more rest.

  “Try not to get too excited,” he said. “This could take a while.” For some reason, and I’m not sure why, I had thought that as Maggie’s tummy grew larger and she got more uncomfortable, she’d have less affection for me. I mean, physically. It only made sense. I had tried to prepare myself by blocking it out—Don’t even think about it—but that time never came. Just three days before delivery, she tapped me on the shoulder. . . .

  A week past her due date, the first real contraction hit. Maggie could tell the difference immediately. She was walking across the kitchen when she grabbed the countertop, bit her bottom lip, and closed her eyes. I grabbed The Bag and Huckleberry and met her at the truck. I was driving ninety miles an hour and honking at every car that got in my way when Maggs gently put her hand on my thigh and whispered, “Dylan, we have time.”

  I pulled into the maternity drop-off, and a nurse met us at the car. When I found Maggie on the second floor, the doctor was checking her.

  “Two centimeters,” he said, taking off his latex gloves. “Go home; get some sleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow?” I said. “You can’t send us home. My wife’s having a baby.”

  The doctor smiled. “Yes, she is. But not today. Go get a nice dinner, then take her home. And”—he handed two pills to Maggie—“this will help take the edge off.”

  Helping Maggie into the truck, I said, “Your choice. Anywhere you want.”

  Maggie smiled, licked her lips, and pointed. A few minutes later we were sitting in the Burger King, where Maggie downed a Whopper with cheese, large fries, a cheeseburger, and a chocolate shake. I ate half a cheeseburger and two French fries.

  That night Maggie slept in fits, and I slept not at all. I just lay there in the dark, watching her face and brushing her Audrey Hepburn hair out of her Bette Davis eyes.

  At six o’clock Maggie bit her lip again, and I carried her to the truck.

  “Four centimeters,” the doctor said as he pulled the gown over Maggie’s legs. “It’s time to walk.”

  So we did. Every floor. Every hallway. Every sidewalk.

  Walking through the orthopedic ward six hours later, Maggie grunted and grabbed the railing, and one of her knees buckled. I grabbed a wheelchair, punched the elevator button, and tapped my foot down to the second floor.

  The doctor was on the phone at the nurses’ station, but he hung up quickly when he saw her face. We stretched her out on the bed, strapped the fetal monitor over her stomach, and I cradled her head in my hands while the doctor listened.

  “Okay, Maggie, get comfortable.” Then he pulled out this long plastic thing and asked the nurse to cover it with gel. “I’m going to break your water and start you on Pitocin.”

  While I was thinking, You’re not sticking that thing in my wife, Maggie sighed and gripped my hand so hard her knuckles turned white.

  “That means two things: it will bring on your labor more quickly, and”—he paused as the fluid gushed out—“your contractions will hurt a bit more.”

  “That’s okay,” Maggie said, while the nurse swabbed her right arm with alcohol and inserted the IV needle.

  Fifteen minutes later, the pain really started. I sat next to the bed, holding a wet towel on her forehead, and fought the growing knot in my stomach. By midnight Maggie was drenched in sweat and growing pale. I called the nurse and asked, “Can we do anything? Please!”

  Within a few minutes the anesthesiologist came in and asked Maggie, “You about ready for some drugs?”

  Without batting an eye, I said, “Yes, sir.”

  Maggie sat up and leaned as far forward as her stomach would let her. The doctor walked around behind her and inserted the epidural in the middle of her spine just as another contraction hit. Maggie moaned but didn’t move an inch.

  God, please take care of my wife.

  Breathing heavily, Maggie lay back down and propped her knees up. After one more contraction, the epidural kicked in. Her shoulders relaxed, and she lost the feeling in her legs. At that moment, if I had had a million dollars, I would have given every penny to that man. I almost kissed him on the mouth.

  The next two hours were better than the last two days together. We watched the monitor, the rise and fall of every contraction—“Oh, that was a good one,” listened to the heartbeat, laughed, talked about names, and tried not to think about what was next. It was surreal to think our son would be there, in our arms, in a matter of moments. We held hands, I sang to her tummy, and we sat there in quiet most of the time.

  About one-thirty, the lady next door had trouble with her delivery, and they had to wheel her off for an emergency C-section. I’ve never heard anybody scream like that in all my life. I didn’t know what to think. I do know that it got to Maggie. She tried not to show it, but it did.

  At two o’clock, the doctor checked her for the last time. “Ten centimeters, and 100 percent effaced. Okay, Maggie, you can start pushing. We’ll have a birthday today.”

  Maggie was a champ. I was real proud of her. She pushed and I coached, “One-two-three . . . ” I’d count and she’d crunch her chin to her stomach, eyes closed and with a death grip on my hand, and push.

  That was two days and ten lifetimes ago.

  chapter two

  THE SMALL, PRIVATE ROOM THEY PUT US IN WAS dark, overlooked the parking lot, and sat at one end of a long, quiet hallway. The only lights in the room shone from the machines connected to Maggie, and the only noise was her heart-rate monitor and occasionally the janitor shuffling down the hall, rolling a bucket that smelled of Pine Sol over urine. Somebody had shoved Maggie’s bed against the far wall, so I rolled her over next to the window, where she could feel the moonlight. By rolling the bed, I unplugged all the monitors, setting off several alarms at the nurses’ station.

  A pale-faced nurse slid through the doorway and into the room. She stopped short when she saw me sitting next to the bed, quietly holding Maggs’s hand. She almost said something but changed her mind and went to work instead, repairing what I’d torn apart. Before she left, she grabbed a blanket from the closet, put it over my shoulders, and asked, “You want some coffee, honey?” I shook my head and she patted me on the shoulder.

  Maggie has lain there “sleeping,” unconscious, ever since the delivery. I wiped her arms and cheeks with a warm, damp rag and then felt her toes. They were cold, so I looked through our bag, found a pair of socks that I gently slid over her heels, and put another blanket over her feet. After pulling the sheets up around her shoulders, I sat down next to the bed and tucked her hair behind her ears, where I still felt some dried blood. For the third time
, I ran a towel under some warm water and wiped her face, arms, and neck.

  I don’t remember my arms being sore afterwards, but I do remember it took the nurse three tries before she found my vein. Maggie needed a lot of blood pretty quick, so I gave one more pint than they normally would allow. The nurse knew Maggie needed it, so when I grabbed the needle and told her to keep going, she looked at me over the top of her glasses, opened another Coca-Cola for me, and kept drawing. I walked back to the delivery room with both pits of my elbows taped up, sat next to the bed, and watched my blood drip into my wife.

  While I was sitting in the quiet beneath the moon, a wrinkle appeared on Maggie’s forehead between her eyebrows—her trademark expression. A sure sign that she was determined to figure something out. I placed my palm on her forehead and held it there for a few seconds while the wrinkle melted away and her breathing slowed.

  “Maggs?”

  I slid my hand under hers and thought how her callused fingers seemed so out of place on someone so beautiful. Under the rhythm and short blips of the heart-rate monitor, I watched her heart beat, listened to her short, quick breaths, and waited for her big brown eyes to open and look at me.

  They did not.

  I stared out the window over the parking lot, but there wasn’t much to look at. South Carolina is one of the more beautiful places on God’s earth—especially where the wisteria crawls out of the weeds that can’t choke it—but the parking lot of Digger Community Hospital is not. I turned back to Maggie and remembered the river, the way the light followed Maggie’s eyes, her smile, her back, and how the water had dripped off her skin and puddled on her stomach. “Maggs,” I said, “let’s go swimming.”

  chapter three

  THE DAYS TURNED INTO NIGHTS AND BACK INTO days, and I became afraid to blink, thinking I’d miss the opening of her eyes. During that time, I’m pretty sure other people came in and out of the room, but I never saw them. I think I remember Amos putting his hand on my shoulder and telling me, “Don’tworry, I’ll take care of the farm.” And somewhere during one of the nights, I think I remember smelling the lingering aroma of Bryce’s beer breath, but for seven days my entire world consisted of Maggie and me. Anything outside that picture never came into focus. The periphery of my life had blurred.

  On the afternoon of the seventh day, the doctor took me out into the hall and gave me his prognosis. Consternation was painted across his face, and it was clear this wasn’t easy for him, no matter how much practice he must have had at delivering bad news. “Dylan, I’ll give it to you straight,” he said.

  The seconds melted into days.

  “Maggie’s out of what we call the hopeful window. The longer she stays in this vegetative state, the more involuntary muscle responses she’ll begin to have. Unfortunately, these muscle responses are from spinal activity, not brain activity. Within the next few weeks, she’s got a 50 percent chance of waking up. The following month, it drops in half. Following that . . . ” He shook his head. “Of course, this is all just statistics; miracles can happen. But they don’t happen often.”

  Later that afternoon, the hospital executive responsible for accounts receivable stopped in for a visit. “Mr. Styles, I’m Mr. Thentwhistle. Jason Thentwhistle.” He stepped into the room and extended his hand.

  I immediately didn’t like him.

  “Yes, well, I think we should talk about your financial arrangements.”

  I turned my head slightly and narrowed my eyes.

  “Coma patients often require long-term hospital care. . . .”

  That was all I needed to hear. I hit him as hard as I could—maybe as hard as I’ve ever hit anybody. When I looked down, he was crumpled on the floor, his glasses were broken in three pieces, his nose was twisted sideways and smashed into his face, and blood was pouring out of his nostrils. I picked up his heels and dragged him out into the hallway because I didn’t want him bleeding on Maggie’s floor.

  “D.S., YOU BEEN HERE SINCE YOU LEFT THE HOSPITAL?”

  I opened my eyes, remembered Thentwhistle, and looked around. The head hovering over me was familiar.

  “Dylan?” A big, meaty black hand gently slapped me twice in the face.

  That was definitely familiar. “Amos?”

  Slapping my cheek again, he said, “Hey, pal? You in there?”

  I must have moaned, because Amos grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, swatting at his hands, “I’m in here.” My head was killing me, and the world was spinning way too fast. Amos’s hands stopped the spinning but not the pain.

  “D.S.?” Amos brought his face closer to mine. “Have you been here since you left the hospital?” He was still out of focus.

  “I don’t know. When did I leave the hospital?”

  “Tuesday,” he said, shading my face with his hat.

  I swatted at it because it looked like a buzzard. “What day is today?” I asked, still swatting.

  “Thursday.” Amos crinkled his nose and waved his hand. “And it’s a good thing it rained, too.” Waving the air with his hat, Amos said, “D.S., you stink bad. Whatchoo been doing out here?”

  I reached for the tractor, pulled at the tire rod, which my grandfather had bent twenty-one years ago pulling stumps, and tried to pull myself up. I could not. I thought for a minute, but I couldn’t remember. “Thursday?”

  I pulled my knees up and scratched my neck and the four itchy bumps on my ankles under my jeans.

  Amos looked doubtful.

  I guessed again, “Tuesday?” The rush of blood to my head caused my head to bob, rock, and crash into the cornstalk that was growing up out of an anthill.

  Amos caught my head. “Here, you better sit still. I think you been sitting in the sun a little too long. How long you been out here?”

  Ordinarily Amos’s English is pretty good. He only drops into the South Carolina farm-boy dialect when talking with me. After twenty-five years of friendship, we had developed our own language. People say marriage works the same way. “I need to get to the hospital,” I muttered.

  “Hold on a minute, Mr. Cornfield. She’s not going anywhere.” Amos tapped the plastic cover on the tractor’s fuel gauge. “And neither is this old tractor. We got to get you cleaned up. If it weren’t for Blue, I’d still be driving around looking for you.”

  Blue is a blue heeler and the most intelligent dog I’ve ever known. He’s seven years old and is better known as the “outdoor dog” that sleeps at the foot of our bed.

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. No improvement. Amos was about to brush my shirt off with his hand, but he took a second look and thought better of it.

  “My truck’s low on gas. Where’s your car?” I said. “Can you take me there?”

  Seeing me return to life, Blue hopped off the tractor, licked my face, and then sat between my legs and rested his head on my thigh.

  “Yes, I can,” Amos said, articulating every letter. “But no, I will not. I’m taking you to work.”

  Amos wasn’t making a lot of sense.

  “Work?” I looked around. “Amos, I was working until . . . well, until you showed up.” I shoved Blue out of the way. When he gets excited, he drools a good bit. “Go on, Blue. Quit it.”

  Blue ignored me. Instead he rolled over like a dead bug, turned his head to one side, hung out his tongue, and propped his paws in the air.

  “D.S.” Amos ran his fingers around inside his deputy’s belt. “Don’t start with me. I ain’t in the mood.” He put his hat back on, hefted his holster a bit. Then he raised his voice. “I’ve been looking for you all morning in every corner of every pasture. All thirty-five hundred acres.” Amos waved his hands as if he were on stage or telling a fish story. He could get animated when he wanted to. “Then a few minutes ago, I’m driving past this field, and I see this rusty old thing your grandfather called a tractor sitting driverless and parked out here at the intersection of Nowhere and No Place Else. Except one thing sticks out and grabs my a
ttention.”

  Amos reached over and began scratching Blue between the ears. “Ol’ Blue here is sitting at attention on top of your tractor like he’s trying to be seen. So I turn the car around and think to myself, That’d be just like that old fool to go through one week of hell and then walk out of the hospital, only to end up out here and act like he’s farming.

  He reached over, picked up a handful of sand, and slung it into the corn. “Dylan Styles”—he looked down a long row of corn that was planted in more of an arc than a straight line—“you’re an idiot. Even with all your education. You can just about strap an alphabet behind your name, but I’m your friend and I’ll tell it to you straight: You’re a sorry farmer and a danged idiot.”

  Amos is smart. Don’t let the deputy’s badge fool you. He took this job because he wanted it, not because he couldn’t find anything else. Amos takes nothing from nobody—except me. He’s big, articulate, black as black comes, and my oldest friend. He’s a year older than I am and was a year ahead in school. In my junior year of high school, we were the two starting running backs. They called us Ebony and Ivory, for obvious reasons.

  Amos was always faster, always stronger, and he never once let anybody pile on me. I’ve seen him take two linebackers and shove them back into the free safety on more than one occasion. The only reason I scored my first touchdown was because he carried me. I got the ball, grabbed his jersey, shut my eyes, and he dragged me eight yards to glory, where I saw the goal line pass under my feet. When I looked up and saw the crowd screaming, Amos was standing off to the side alone, letting me take the credit and soak it all in.

  Later that year, the Gamecocks gave him a scholarship. He lettered four years and was an all-American three. From day one he studied criminal justice and learned everything about it that he could. Right after graduation, Amos applied with Colleton County and came home. He’s worn that badge ever since. Last year they sewed sergeant’s stripes to his shirtsleeves.