(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (14 page)

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 Inc. 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 fifteen 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 nownaked 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 she 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.

I drove in the drive and heard Pinky grunting, squealing and kicking the inside of her stall. When I had filled her trough, she grunted at me as if to say, "Took you long enough. Where you been?"

Nighttime and crickets found me rocking on the front porch, thinking about Maggie, my class, and how uncomfortable I had become in my own house. Home was quiet, and I didn't feel like walking inside. I was unable to put my finger on it, and my skin began crawling as if it were covered with poison ivy. Then it hit me. A stranger, silent and invisible, had moved into my home, taken Maggs's place, and begun to rearrange everything that was sacred to the both of us. Everywhere I turned, Memory had already been there.

I raced inside and searched the house but never got closer than the tail-end of her shadow. When I finally cornered her in the bathroom, I slammed the door and screamed from the hallway, "Pack your bags and get out! I don't want you here. Not today. Not ever!"

I had never lived with, much less slept with, any other woman, and I wasn't about to start now. "Maggie's coming home! You hear me? I said she's coming home."

I slammed the screen door, and Blue and I walked through the cornfield to the river.