The Dead Don't Dance Read online

  Pulling into the drive, I circled around back, parked on the grass, walked up the back porch, and pulled on the screen door, where the smell of Maggie’s house tugged at my loneliness. Unable to face an empty house, I grabbed the blanket off the front porch, walked out into the cornfield, lay down with Blue, and named my demons.

  chapter nine

  WHEN I WOKE UP, THE SUN WAS JUST BREAKING the tree line. It was cold, I was shivering, and Pinky was rooting at my feet. Pinky appeared on our doorstep about two years ago. I looked at her and saw three months’ worth of breakfast, but Maggs gave me the pointed finger and said, “Dylan Styles, if you shoot that pig, you’re on the couch for a month.”

  So Pinky ended up in the barn with her own stall and two permanent slots in our daily calendar. Maggs even painted Pinky in bright-red letters above the gate. I feed her bulk dog food or kernel corn, sometimes a combination, but she’ll eat anything that’s not nailed down—and even some stuff that is. When she first appeared, she weighed maybe eighty pounds and needed a bath and a vet. Now she weighs a little over three hundred and expects to be hosed down weekly.

  I’ll never understand how someone so beautiful and so tender could love something so ugly. But make no mistake, that pig loves her back. Dang thing hates me, craps on my foot every chance she gets, but she just adores my wife. You’ve never heard such grunting and squealing as when Maggie rubs Pinky’s ears and stomach. Pinky rolls and wallows and then rubs up against Maggie’s overalls. Maggie doesn’t care.

  Maggie would squat down in the middle of the stall, and Pinky, holding her curlicue tail high in the air, would nose all the piglets out of the corner and up to Maggie, where she’d rub each one until it squealed with delight. Every now and then, Pinky would stick her nose under Maggs’s hand, get a scratch between the ears, and then shove a piglet under Maggie’s leg. Thirty minutes later, Maggie would walk out of the barn and smell like a pig all day. One morning last summer it was so bad, I had to hose her down. Maggie didn’t care. She just laughed. Squealed just like Pinky.

  Maggie loved the farm. Everything about it, from the creaking floors to the noisy screen door. The chipped paint, the front porch, Papa’s swing, the smell of hay in the barn, the way the cotton bloomed in summer, the short walk through the oaks down to the river, the oak tree spreading across the barn that was bigger around than the hood of my truck, the artesian well and its sulfur water, the corn that waved in rows to the wind that sifted through it.

  Maggie probably loved the corn best. Every night when the breeze picked up off the river, she’d disappear to the front porch with hot herbal tea and stand there, watching the waves rise and fall atop the stalks. And on moonlit summer nights when she couldn’t sleep or Blue woke her up barking at a deer, she’d grab a blanket, tiptoe to the porch, and sit on the steps as the moonlight streamed through the rows like a prism and lit the sandy soil beneath.

  Daybreak would come, and I’d find her asleep against the column at the top step. I’d crack the screen door, Blue would pick his head up off her lap, and without saying a word, Maggie would lift her eyelids, smile, throw off the blanket, and then tear off the front steps with a giggle like a kid let out of church. We’d race through the cornrows all the way to the river, where she’d leap off the bluff and into the deep, black water below. Blue and I followed as if we were trapped in a Mountain Dew commercial.

  One of Maggie’s favorite foods was creamed corn. After our swim, she’d cut ten or fifteen ears, haul them into the kitchen, rub them over the creamer, and come out looking as though somebody had just shot her with corn puree.

  When I was finishing my dissertation, she’d walk in late at night, silently offering a bowl of chocolate ice cream or coffee or whatever I needed to help me continue writing. If she sensed frustration and knew I was about ready to set a match to the whole blasted thing, she’d grab me by the hand, pull me to the porch, set me on the swing, and tell me to breathe deeply and watch the corn roll in waves. Thirty minutes later, she’d put her foot in my back and tell me to get back there and keep writing.

  I miss that.

  When I raised my head, Pinky stopped rooting, perked her ears, and snorted, showering me in pig snot. With her tail sticking straight up into the air, she ran back to the barn with her Charlie Chaplin gait. I have no idea how she got out in the first place, but I bet the answer will require new lumber.

  I lifted myself off the sand and brushed off my face and clothes. They were cold and damp.

  In the barn, Pinky huddled her little ones around her, although they weren’t all that little anymore, and she made sure to keep me at a good distance. I threw some corn and tried to step closer, but she got her body in between me and them and then crapped on my foot. So I dumped the corn in a pile, hung up my bucket, locked the barn door, and headed for the porch. “Pigs!”

  Back in the house, I made myself a pot of coffee and spent thirty minutes studying my classroom seating chart, trying to memorize appearance and characteristics with name. It would only work if the kids sat in the same place each class, but most kids do because people are creatures of habit. Take church, for example. Ever visited a new church and sat in somebody else’s pew? Try it sometime. Whoever owns that pew will let you know.

  I HAD BEEN IN MY CLASSROOM ONLY A FEW MINUTES WHEN Amanda walked in and smiled. Then she took one look at my forearm and raised an eyebrow. “Professor, what happened to your arm?”

  I quickly pulled my pushed-up sleeve back down over the scabs and pus on my left forearm, cursing myself for letting it show. “Little run-in with a big pig,” I lied.

  She could tell I was covering up more than my arm. “You make sure you let me clean that for you at the hospital. You don’t want it infected. I’ve seen that. And you don’t want it.”

  Amanda sat down, and I stuffed my hand into my pocket. The midmorning sun was streaming through the magnolia and heating the classroom up pretty good. I had the fans set on “breeze,” but the sun convinced me to crank them over to “hurricane” and really get the air flowing.

  Marvin walked in, and I greeted him.

  “Morning,” he replied. Apparently not a good one. Under his breath, I heard him mutter, “It’s hotter than a snake’s butt in a wagon rut in here.”

  Russell followed, said “Mornin’, Professuh,” sat down, rubbed his eyes, wiped his forehead with a towel, and looked out the window.

  Koy slipped in and sat silently in her chair near the back. So far, everyone was true to form.

  I walked down the far-right aisle and stood next to an empty desk, just smiling. “Good morning, Sunglasses.”

  Koy half smiled, looked over the rim of her glasses, showed me the whites of her eyes, and said with a whisper, “Morning.” Then she ducked her eyes, placed her hand on her forehead, and continued reading.

  I counted heads, checked my chart, faced the class, and sat on the top of my desk with my legs dangling off the end. Noticing this as an address posture, everyone quieted and looked at me with suspicion. “Would you please take out a piece of paper and—”

  The class groaned.

  “What are you moaning for? I told you there would be a quiz.”

  Russell turned to Amanda, who already had paper and pencil on her desk, and said, “Could I have a piece of papuh?” Marvin did likewise. Eugene and Alan had their own.

  All my quizzes were ten questions. All of them together, which after a semester could total more than twenty, only counted for 10 percent of the grade, so fretting over one or two scores wasn’t worth it. In addition, if a student was present for every quiz, I’d tack on 10 percent to the final grade anyway. None of my students ever knew this, but it worked. The process of knowing they were going to get a quiz, and not wanting to fail another one, had a way of causing people like Marvin to read and at least familiarize themselves with something they might not otherwise bother with.

  “Question number one,” I said, as my students leaned over their desks and placed pen to the paper. “What is
your name?”

  Everybody laughed, and Marvin said, “I always knew I liked you, Professuh.”

  “Question number two. Where are you from?”

  Marvin smiled and licked his lips. Amanda quickly wrote her answer and looked back at me. Koy wrote without looking up or expression. Russell propped his feet up on the desk next to him.

  “Question number three. What is your favorite color?”

  Marvin, starting to take me seriously because he was looking at the possibility of acing my quiz, said, “You go, Professuh.”

  “Question number four. Why?”

  “What?” Marvin’s face was suddenly real tense. “Wha’ you mean ‘why?’”

  Half the class wrote without comment. Marvin waited for my explanation, so I repeated the question. “Why is your favorite color, your favorite color?”

  Marvin shook his head. “But there ain’t no right answer. How you gonna grade it?”

  Russell, Eugene, Alan, B.B., M & M, and Jimbo all waited for my answer. Everybody else wrote furiously.

  “Take as long as you need,” I said.

  Marvin dropped his head and said beneath his breath, “How do I know why my color is my favorite color? It just is.”

  “Question number five.”

  Marvin’s hand shot up. “Wait, I ain’t finished.”

  “You can come back to it.” Looking back at the class, I said. “What is your major?”

  “Question number six. Why?”

  Marvin dropped his pencil and looked at me with disgust. “Come on, Professuh.”

  “Question number seven. How many brothers and/or sisters do you have?” The room was really starting to heat up. The morning sun was turning into midday sun, and the fans were now blowing hot air. “Eight. How old are you?”

  Marvin said, “You ain’t allowed to ask that.”

  “Marvin,” I said, smiling, “this is not a job interview. Just answer the question.”

  A few kids laughed. Marvin huffed.

  “Nine and ten. Tell me your story. You have the rest of the period to do so.”

  Marvin raised his hand.

  “Yes, Marvin?”

  “What you mean, ‘Tell you my story’? That could take a long time.”

  “Write what you can. Tell me what you would like me to know about you.”

  He raised his hand again.

  “Marvin, get to writing.”

  “But Professuh,” Marvin objected.

  I looked at him. Tall. Trim. Fit looking. Probably pretty fast. I had heard he was a cornerback on the football team. “Marvin, how fast are you?”

  “Wha’ you mean?”

  “I mean how fast do you run the forty?”

  He tilted his head and rolled his eyes around as if he were trying to figure out whether or not this was a trick question. Then he said, “Fo-fo.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then how about getting your mind and hand to work as fast as your feet?”

  Marvin relaxed, smiled, and began to write.

  chapter ten

  I WAS STANDING IN THE SHOWER, BREATHING THE steam, when Amos climbed the porch steps. I had just finished cleaning in the barn and stank something fierce. I heard the creak of the springs, the slam of the screen door, and then, “D.S., you ready?”

  “Ready?” I asked, poking my head around the corner.

  “Ivory. Man, put a filter on that thing.” Amos saw me walk past the door wearing my towel and put his sunglasses back on. “The UV is killing me. You need to get out more. A little tan here and there wouldn’t hurt you.”

  My ancestors were Scottish. They came in through South Carolina, then through Tennessee, and ended up in Texas. You’d think that hot Texas sun would have brought out some tan, but it didn’t. Too many years in the highlands, I suppose. I’ve never had a tan, but I’ve been burnt a thousand times.

  Amos covered his eyes, then made himself at home with my refrigerator, which was empty. “Don’t you ever buy anything to eat? You’re gonna wither away.”

  “There’s PB & J and tuna in the pantry,” I said from behind the door.

  Amos poked around in the kitchen, rattled some plates and silverware, then yelled, “Boy, I’m tired of waiting on you. Would you get it in gear?”

  I pulled a T-shirt over my head and said, “Amos, I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ve got a notion I’m not going to like it. And the last time you had that look, I ended up standing in front of a class of college kids, which I’m still trying to figure my way out of. Shouldn’t you be working or something?”

  “Ivory, Ivory, Ivory,” Amos said, not looking up from the four pieces of bread on which he was spreading peanut butter. To Amos, a PB & J was not a snack, it was an experience. Too much peanut butter, and it was hard to swallow. Too much jelly, and it was too sweet. Too much of both, and it drowned out the bread. And Amos did not like wheat bread. White only. The kind you ordinarily feed to ducks or put on a hook.

  Judging from his flair with the knife and the way he was putting the peanut butter on the bread, I could tell that he was in a good mood. I just wasn’t sure why. Amos was a real prankster when we were younger, but when he got hired by the sheriff’s department, he shelved a lot of that. Occupational hazard, I suppose. Show criminals you’re a real human being with emotions and feelings, and they’ll take you for a loop or leave you in a ditch somewhere, putting pressure on a real bad gunshot wound.

  Nope, this was unusual. But it was the Amos I knew. It was also the Amos I needed to see. In the past, when he let his hair down this far, we usually got in trouble, but that was before the badge.

  “Amos,” I started, “when was the last time we got into trouble?”

  “Tonight,” he said, kind of dancing around the kitchen with a sandwich in one hand and another in his mouth. He was dressed in cut-off shorts, a worn and ragged John Deere cap, his beeper, a torn-up T-shirt that said “Protected by Kimber,” and no shoes. This could only mean one thing.

  The river.

  WHEN AMOS AND I WERE TWELVE AND ELEVEN RESPECTIVELY, we built a raft. We had spent the previous month reading Robinson Crusoe and were in the middle of Huckleberry Finn, so we had a hankering. The raft took us most of a month, but we were a lot smarter about it than Crusoe. We cut cedars growing out of the water, so that when they fell, they fell into the water. We couldn’t understand why old Rob didn’t think about that before he cut that big tree so far from the ocean. We saw it coming the moment he cut it. I said, “He’ll never get that thing in the water,” and Amos said, “Yeah, how’s he gonna drag it? It’s not like he can move it.” We were right. Rob never got it to the water.

  We trimmed the top branches and bound together twelve cedar trees, about a foot in diameter each, and then floated the whole thing downstream to the main river, where we floated it into shallow water and tied it up. We did most of the work in the water, covering the base with about thirty smaller trees. We cut them in half and sanded the tops so that we actually had a flat floor that fit rather tightly into the subfloor beneath it. Made for a pretty good raft. At least Papa thought so.

  On top of the flooring, which was twelve by twelve, we built a lean-to that could sleep both of us. We even put a wood-burning stove in it. We had planned to float to the Gulf, but then found out that our river didn’t dump into the Gulf. Whoops.

  The whole thing weighed a ton, and once it got good and waterlogged, probably more. Cedar trees are pretty heavy. It needed about eight inches of water to float. We’d travel down-river, however far we could get in a night, and then hook the raft to a barge going north to pick up soy, corn, or whatever the farmers were trying to get to the railroad in Brunswick.

  In the span of a summer, we got to know most of the usual captains. We’d float a day or two, fish, eat whatever we caught, smoke a pipe like Rob and Huck, get dizzy, sleep, and then about Sunday afternoon, we’d throw a rope, hook a barge, and it’d pull us north. We could reverse in five hours what had taken us nearly two or three days.

/>   That’s not entirely fair. On our float down, we’d tie up and fish for a few hours, sometimes a day. It depended on if and where the fish were biting. Then we’d float until we felt like fishing again. On several occasions we thought about ditching the raft, but after all that work, we just couldn’t do it. Too much invested. Besides, the barge captains were lonely and liked having somebody to talk to, and we liked not having to row that thing back up that river.

  We tried that just once. Floated downriver about twelve miles, spent the night, then thought we’d paddle back up it. Not a chance. You’d think, as critical as we’d been of Crusoe, we’d have thought of that. Funny how you can think of some things and not others.

  Then about fifteen years ago, I found an old forty-horse Evinrude that belonged to Papa. All the times I worked and played in that barn, and I never knew it was there. We took it to Bobby’s small engine-repair shop in town, and Bobby spent a week tinkering with it, replacing this hose and that seal. Pretty soon he had it puttering like a champ.

  Bobby helped us rig up a platform out of steel. We sank the bolts all the way through the timber and hooked the Evinrude to the back of the raft. That was the day that heaven came to Digger. A couple of five-gallon gas cans, and we could putter all the way back from a three-day float. It really changed the way we traveled. Sometimes we puttered upriver ten or so miles and then just floated back. The motor was a nice addition, but the floating was why we built the raft.

  Floating the river is a delicate dance. Tenuous at best. If you’ve ever floated, you know what I mean. It’s slow and silent progress, but you’re not in control. Nobody controls the river. To float the river you’ve got to trust something bigger than yourself, and you better not mind living halfway between Nowhere and No Place Else, because the river’s not interested in the destination, only the process. Otherwise all rivers would be straight.

  The river’s got its own rhythm, and you either dance to it or you don’t. Whether you’re man or woman matters not because the river leads, and if you’re stepping out of time, then it’s your fault because the river changes its beat for no one. You want to go swimming? Go swimming. You want to sleep? Sleep. You want to fish? Fish. You want to go faster? Too bad. You want to slow down? Good luck. The river’s got one speed, and it’s not going to stop and wait on you. And unless it rains, it’s not going to hurry you along either.