The Dead Don't Dance Page 5

  North of town, where things are more hilly, sits his home—a 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 twelve-gauge. 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 cups. 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.

  The owner responded, “Sir, we can build most anything if you can give us an idea of what you want.” The next day they rece
ived an express package containing a videocassette.

  Want to guess which one? Handwritten instructions scribbled on a yellow sticky note told them to “take notes and furnish the nursery, minus the crib.” The buyer paid them double to speed manufacturing and delivery, so the guys in the shop spent their lunch breaks watching the movie clip and then arguing over the drawings for Maggs’s chair and cradle.

  Maggie wanted to thank Bryce without embarrassing him, so she cooked him a roast, smothered it in gravy, carrots, and potatoes, and bought him a key lime pie to satisfy his sweet tooth. She wrote a note, left the dinner at his front door, and spent the next two days swaying in that chair and nudging the cradle with her big toe.

  On the third night I waited until she fell asleep, then picked her up and laid her down beside me. When I woke the next morning, she was still there, but somewhere during the night she had carried that chair and cradle in from the nursery and slid them over next to the bed.

  chapter six

  DESPITE THE HEAT, I ROLLED DOWN MY SLEEVES, walked into my second-story classroom, opened the windows, straightened the desks into rows, and cleaned the chalkboard. Soon kids shuffled in, eyed the available seats, and chose ones that suited them. The room was hot, and proximity to airflow was prime real estate.

  The second bell rang, and I cleared my throat. “Good morning.”

  Faces looked back at me blankly. The silence was heavy, but the nonverbals were raucous. The silence said, “Look, man, we ain’t no happier about being here than you are, so let’s get this over with.”

  I let a few more minutes pass, thinking eager stragglers might rush in, but they didn’t. Clearing my voice again, I picked up my roll book and eyed the first name. “Alan Scruggs?”

  “Here.”

  In my first year of teaching, I established the habit of identifying students by their places in the classroom until I got to know their work and personalities. When Alan said “Here,” my mental note sounded something like, Second row from the window. Center of room. Reading a book.

  “Wait, you skipped me.”

  I looked up. “Who are you?”

  “Marvin Johnson!” The speaker leaned back in his chair. “See, J come befo’ S.”

  It doesn’t take the class clown long to identify himself.

  “I don’t usually start with the A’s.”

  “Oh, tha’s cool.” He looked around at the other students. “I’s jus’ lettin’ you know. Thought you mighta forgot.” My new friend smiled, showing a mouthful of white teeth.

  I returned to the roll. “Russell Dixon Jr.?”

  “Yeah.”

  A deep voice came from my left. Against the window, front row. Big, broad shoulders. Sitting sideways. Looking out the window. Never looked at me.

  “Eugene Banks?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Left side next to the window. Two back from Deep Voice. Looking out the window. Also never looked at me.

  “That was enthusiastic. Marvin Johnson?”

  “Yo.” It was my alphabetically conscientious friend. Front-and- center and liking it. Smiling. Big ears. Sweatpants. Tall and athletic. Shoes in a tangle.

  The contrast between my non-air-conditioned room and his sweatpants room struck me. “You look like you just rolled out of bed. Aren’t you hot?”

  “Who, me? Naw.” He waved his hand. “See, dis’ what I wear.” The kid was a walking attitude, an uncrackable nut—or so he hoped.

  “Amanda Lovett?”

  “Yes, sir. Both of us.” A sweet, gentle voice rose from next to the window. Front left, against the window, in between Uh-Huh and Deep Voice, and . . .

  “Both?”

  She patted her stomach gently. “Joshua David.”

  I admit it, I’m not proud of my second reaction—the one that questioned her morals. I thought it before I had time to wish I hadn’t thought it, but it didn’t last very long.

  “Joshua David?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said again, holding her hand on top of her stomach.

  “Well,” I said, recovering, “you make sure that young man makes it to class on time.”

  She broke into an even larger smile that poked two dimples into the sides of her cheeks. “Yes, sir.”

  Laughter rippled through the room. Somebody against the window said, “Yes, sir” in that mocking tone that kids are so good at. I looked up and waited for him to finish.

  “Kaitlin Jones?”

  “Koy,” a voice from the right rear of the class said quietly.

  I looked up at a young woman whose face was nearly covered by a combination of sunglasses and long hair.

  “Koy?”

  “K-o-y.”

  “I could see you better without those sunglasses.”

  She half smiled. “Probably.” She didn’t move a finger.

  Uh-Huh, Deep Voice, and Front-and-Center laughed, but I didn’t push it. The first day was not the time to draw lines. I finished the roll, noted the changes and preferred nicknames, and leaned back against the desk. There I was again, in the front of a classroom. Roped in by Maggs and Amos.

  “My name is Dylan Styles.”

  Marvin interrupted. “Professuh, is you a doctuh?”

  “I am.”

  “So, we should call you Doctuh?”

  I checked my seating chart, although I already knew his name. “Marvin, my students have called me Mr. Styles, Professor Styles, Professor, or Dr. Styles. Do you have a preference?”

  My question surprised him. When he saw that I was serious, he said matter-of-factly, “Professuh.”

  “Fair enough.” I paused. “My wife . . .” Bad way to start. “. . . calls . . . me Dylan, but school administrators don’t usually like students and teachers operating on a first-name basis. So the rest of you can pick from the list. This is English 202: Research and Writing. If you’re not supposed to be here, you may leave now, or if you don’t want to embarrass yourself, just don’t come back after class is over. I suppose if you don’t want to be here, you can leave too.”

  A voice from the back, next to the window, interrupted me. Its owner wore dreadlocks down to his shoulders, and when he had passed my desk on the way in, I was hit by a strong smell of cigarettes and something else. Maybe cloves. Whatever it was, he had been in a lot of it. His eyes were glassy and looked like roadmaps. “Professuh, ain’t none us want to be here. Why don’t we all leave?”

  A wave of laughter spread across the room. Yo high-fived Uh-Huh and then slapped Deep Voice on the knee. I checked my seating chart and started again.

  “B.B., I understand. But the fact is that ‘not wanting to be here’ is what landed each of you in this particular class a second time. Do you really want to make that mistake again?” Scanning the room, I said, “Anyone?”

  Quiet replaced the laughter. Watching their faces straighten, I thought, Maybe that was too much, too soon. From the far right middle I heard somebody say, “Uh-umm. That’s right too.” I checked my seating chart. Charlene Grey.

  From the middle of the room someone asked, “Professuh, was yo’ granddaddy that farmer that everybody used to talk to in the hardware store? The one that raised all the steeples? I think they called him Papa Styles.”

  “Well, a lot of farmers fit that description, but yes, I called my grandfather Papa, he made a lot of friends in the feed and seed section, and he had a thing for steeples.”

  Marvin sat back in his chair, tossed his head up, and pointed

  in the air. “Yo, Dylan, answer me something. Why they send the grandson of a steeple-raising farmer to teach us how to write? I mean”—he looked over each shoulder, garnering support, and then pointed at me—“you don’t look like much of a professor. What makes you think you can teach us anything?”

  The class got real quiet, as though someone had pressed an invisible pause button. Three minutes in, and we had reached a silent impasse.

  What struck me was not that he asked the question. Except for the gold-rim glasses I wear when I’m read
ing, I look more as though I should be riding or selling a tractor than teaching an English class—cropped blond hair, oxford shirt, Wranglers, and cowboy boots. No, it was a fair question. He could have phrased it differently, but it was fair. Actually, I had already asked it of myself. What surprised me was that Marvin had the guts to express it.

  “I don’t know. Availability, I suppose. Mr. Winter’s probably got an answer.” I was losing ground. “Okay, English 20—”

  Marvin interrupted again. “But I don’t want Mr. Winter’s answer. I asked you, Professuh.”

  Sneers and quiet laughter spread through the room. Marvin sat low in his chair, in control, on stage and loving it.

  I walked to the front of his desk and put my toes next to his. To be honest, I was too scattered to have said it the way I should. My body may have been in that classroom, but my heart was lying next to Maggie.

  I took a deep breath. “Marvin, if you want the title of Class Clown, I really don’t care.” I waved my hand across the class.

  “I don’t think you’ll get much of a challenge. What I do care about is whether or not you can pass my class. Your ability to make everybody laugh is secondary to your ability to think well and learn to write even better. Do we understand each other?” I leaned over, laid my hands on his desk, and put my eyes about two feet from his.

  Marvin half nodded and looked away. I had called his bluff, and everybody knew it. I had also embarrassed him, which I wouldn’t recommend. For the first time that hour, no papers were ruffling, nobody was trying to outtalk me, and nobody was looking out the window.

  I let it go.

  I backed up, walked to my desk, and leaned against it because I needed to. I then made a few procedural announcements and mentioned the syllabus. Everyone followed along. Point made. That’s probably enough for one day.

  My introduction had taken, at most, four minutes. Once finished, I said, “It’s too hot to think in here.” I gathered my papers and began packing up. “See you Tuesday. Check your syllabus, and read whatever is printed there. I have no idea because I didn’t write it.”