MAGGIE LEANED AGAINST ME, THE AIR-CONDITIONING cooling our faces as Amos drove us home slowly in his truck. He pulled into our drive and around back, where we climbed out and stood looking at the house. The smell of smoke, burned pine, melted rubber, and soured water met us under the searing heat of the sun.
Maggie couldn't hide her shock. She was too tired to be angry, but that was there, too, just beneath the surface. A blue tarp covered half the roof, the screen door had been torn off, about half the windows were broken, and black smoke scars stained the upper portions of the windows, eaves, and soffits.
She turned and studied the rolling pastures. On one side grew the corn-tall, green, and tasseled out. On the other sat the cotton. She looped her arm inside mine, and we walked toward the rows and finally between them. She chose the cotton, waist-high and gently swathing our legs. Maggie ran her fingers across the tops and then scanned the horizon where the pasture bled into the trees almost a mile away.
In a manner of speaking, cotton is the only flower that blooms twice from the same bud, or "square," as it is technically called. A cotton flower blooms, or opens, only for twentyfour hours, during which time it must be fertilized by a pollen grain to produce the cotton. When the flower opens, it is white; a day later it turns a fleshy pinkish red; and after four or five days, it turns a crispy mauve or purple. At the end of the first week, the petals litter the row in which it grows. Depending on growth conditions, it takes another month or more before the seed capsule, called a boll, develops and opens like popcorn.
Maggie turned, teary and tired. "Did you know that cotton is in the same family as hibiscus?" She pointed without looking toward some shoulder-height bushes planted against the house.
I shook my head.
"When the flower opens, it has exactly twenty-four hours to be fertilized by a single grain of pollen, or there will be no cotton."
I said nothing.
She nodded and picked a fallen flower off the soil. "It's pretty."
I looked at my wife. "Yes."
Maggie walked into the house behind me, followed closely by Amos. She went into the nursery, stood a moment, placed a hand on the crib, and shook her head. Then she walked into our bedroom and stood beneath the tarp where our bed lay. Water dripped off the tarp and splattered about her feet. She took a deep breath, walked back to the doorway, and eased her shoulder under my arm.
"Amos?" She looked around the house, then turned and poked him in the chest. Her voice grew strong and direct. "You catch the people who did this to my house. You hear me?"
Amos nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
He walked out onto the porch, and I laid a watermelon in the back of his truck. "You mind taking this to Vince? I owe him." Amos nodded and pulled out of the drive.
Maggie stood on the porch and looked at me through squinted eyes. "Why do you owe him?"
I retrieved the shotgun and showed her the barrel. She eyed the change, and I didn't need to explain. I held it out. "You remember how?" She palmed the shotgun and slid a shell in the chamber while I placed the smallest of the melons on the grass in the yard.
I eyed the target and then behind it, which was eight hundred yards of corn pasture down to the river.
Maggie shouldered the shotgun, clicked off the safety, and squeezed. The watermelon exploded into a million red and green pieces and sent Blue scurrying under the porch. She ejected the shell, smoke rising from the chamber, handed me the shotgun, and walked toward the barn.
ALTHOUGH I'D OFFERED TO MOVE HER TO A HOTEL, Maggie didn't want anything to do with that. The electricity had been restored, and we still had a phone line and plumbing. I agreed to stay with one stipulation. "You point," I said. "I'll clean."
Knowing she was far too weak to dive into a house renovation, she didn't argue. We walked into the smoke-stained kitchen, and she said, "I'll put on some coffee."
While she filtered through the kitchen, I unlocked the closet, knelt beneath my desk, and pried the board loose with the tip of my knife. I lifted the silver box, opened the lid, and breathed more easily knowing my manuscript, wrapped in a dry plastic bag, lay safely inside. Somehow, being below the house, it had survived.
It took me almost two days to haul out all the wet, burned, or otherwise ruined stuff from our house. I carried everything into a pile out back, and on the second night we lit it and roasted marshmallows.
THE SUMMER BETWEEN MY JUNIOR AND SENIOR YEARS IN high school, Papa let me turn the hayloft into my bedroommy first real foray into independence. We cut in a window, added a wall, stuffed insulation between the studs, put up drywall, carpeted the floor, and inserted an air-conditioning unit that blew both hot and cold air. We found some used furniture at garage sales and a four-poster queen-sized bed that looked as though it had come out of some Russian palace. It didn't fit Digger, but at twenty bucks, it fit my budget. When finished, the room looked a lot like an upscale garage apartment and would probably fetch a goodly sum in some place like New York.
Since Maggie and I had married, I'd used the loft to store stuff, but with the house uninhabitable, I got to work. We moved out the stored stuff-old furniture and boxes-and hung a ceiling fan. We bought a new-used mattress and even bought Blue a new bed and laid it alongside ours. I caulked some of the cracks in the floor and walls, rolled on a fresh coat of paint, laid new carpet, and replaced the ladder with steps.
The bathroom was little more than a thin-walled closet in the corner with just enough room for a toilet, a sink, and one person. I repiped the fittings to the water supply, installed a new wax ring at the base, changed out the flushing mechanism so it'd quit running, and put a 40-watt bulb in the fixture above the sink. Within a couple of days, our one-room flat was livable again.
Granted, it was not our house, but because of the height above the ground, the angle at which it faced the rising sun, and the unobstructed view to the river almost a mile away, it had one feature possessed by few homes anywhere. Each morning, when the sun came up over the river, it would light the pasture in that blueberry haze that occurred as the fog was lifting. It then crawled like a wave across the landscape to the barn, where it climbed up the sides, pierced through the window, and took your breath away.
I had swept the floor and adjusted the bed so Maggie wouldn't miss the sunrise. Below the loft, on ground level, I laid a pallet that allowed for better drainage and dragged Maggie's green garden hose through the window and fitted it with a soaking watering head. I hung a piece of cracked glass on the wall, to show half my face when I shaved. While our morning showers were cool to cold, by late afternoon the sun had heated the hose and provided about five minutes of lukewarm water-which I seldom had a chance to experience, thanks to Maggie.
I didn't really care. If Maggie needed hot water, I'd shower in ice cubes.
During all this, Blue chased something he shouldn't have, stuck his nose too close to its back end, and got sprayed. He then went and rolled in the dirt for about an hour trying to rub out the smell. When he finally made it to the house later that night, he was in a bad way. He came walking slowly up to the barn, dirty as he'd ever been and smelling worse. Even Pinky turned away.
Maggie got one whiff of him and gagged. "Oh my," she said. "Your dog needs you."
I grabbed some dish soap from under the sink and every can of tomato soup I could find out of what used to be the pantry. We cleaned him, then scrubbed the soup into his pores, turning our hands and his skin red. When we finished, he smelled like spaghetti sauce-which was better than the alternative. Midway through the scrubbing, I clipped a clothespin on my nose. Blue spent the next day licking himself and lying across the porch. He was red from head to toe and looked as though someone had played a bad trick on him.
OUR THIRD MORNING HOME, I STOOD IN THE SHOWER, leaning against the post while the water soaked my back. I reached up, cut off the water, and looked at myself in the triangular shape of glass I'd tacked to the wall for a shaving mirror. Pinky was looking at me through the slats in her stall like
I'd lost my mind. She was probably right. I eyed a few nicks from a dull razor and settled on the wrinkle that had developed between my eyes.
A car engine startled me. I dried, dressed, walked out into the sun, and was met by a man wearing a suit and tie. He explained that he was with my insurance company. After showing him around the house, he expressed his condolences and wrote me a check for $5,000.
"This will get you started. We can get the other half to you just as soon as I file my report."
"What do you mean, the other half?"
"Well, your particular policy allows for $10,000 in replacement due to theft or fire."
"It does?"
He nodded and continued his explanation. "The police say their investigation is over, that arson is to blame, and that clears us up to get started here."
I thanked him, although I didn't feel very thankful, and told him I'd be in touch, and he drove off. I was headed back into the loft when a second car turned into the drive. This time a lady, maybe midforties, stepped out, wearing a pantsuit and carrying a clipboard.
She reluctantly shook my hand. "Are you Dr. Dylan Styles?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She pointed at the house. "Is this your home?"
"What's left of it."
She made a note on her clipboard.
Maggie appeared in the barn door, barefooted and wrapped in a blanket and squinting. Pinky was squealing in her stall.
The lady's eyes grew a bit wider. "I'm with the adoption agency."
I cussed under my breath.
"I've come to assess the, for lack of a better word, living conditions of your home."
I spat and wished I had a toothpick.
I tried to reassure her. "That fellow driving off there is our insurance adjuster, and he's just cleared us to start work now that the police have finished their investigation."
"Police?"
"Yes, ma'am. See, we had a series of fires the other night, started apparently by some guys who like to play with matches."
She was not amused. Understanding that we were living in the barn, she pointed her pencil. "How long do you think this arrangement will last?"
`Just a couple of weeks while I rebuild."
She perked up a little. "So you've hired a contractor?"
I looked at Maggie, then back at the lady, who had yet to tell me her name. "Well, yes."
She waited, then said, "Who?"
"Me."
She looked at me over the top of her glasses, then through them, and made another note. "I see."
About then Blue walked out of the barn. She looked, then looked again. "What's that?"
"That's our dog."
"Good Lord, he looks like a demon."
"He got too friendly with a skunk. That red is the tomato juice; it neutralizes the smell."
She scribbled some more, and when Blue started trotting toward her, she stepped quickly back into her car without shaking my hand. She lowered her window about two inches. "Dr. Styles, you must know that I have to submit an accurate account to the committee, and that this"-she pointed from the house to the barn to Blue-"is likely not going to help you."
I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. But certainly the committee understands we had a fire that was not our fault, and given some time, we can rebuild." I waved my hands in a large arc. "Maybe run the porch around the whole house."
"Yes, but the committee will also want to look at the company you keep and whether or not those associations provide a suitable environment for children."
I nodded and decided it might be best if I just shut up. She flipped down her visor against the sun and drove off. I rubbed Blue between the ears and decided that this whole adoption thing was just about to hack me off.
Maggie walked out, nuzzled against me, and said, "Who was that?"
I watched the taillights at the end of our driveway. "That was the assessor from the adoption agency who came out unannounced to determine if our home is a suitable environment for children."
"You've got to be kidding."
"I wish I was."
"What'd she say?"
"It wasn't so much what she said as how she said it."
TWO DAYS LATER I WALKED INTO THE BARN AND found Maggie staring into my shaving mirror. She turned, curled her hair around her index finger, and said, "I think I need a haircut." I wasn't about to argue, so I drove her to town and sat in the waiting area while they cut her hair. The smell of shampoo and the sound of eight blow-dryers was too much sensory overload, so I walked out onto the street and let the heat off the asphalt cook the skin on my face.
An hour later Maggie reappeared, again looking like Audrey Hepburn. I wanted to ask, What happened to your hair? but I knew better than to open my mouth. A woman and her hair are a peculiar thing.
We stopped at Home Depot and bought, among other things, some two-by-eight trusses and aluminum sheeting for the roof. An hour later I sat on the porch, missing my own truck and waiting for the lumber delivery. When it arrived, the driver had the audacity to look around and say, "Can't believe you own a farm but don't own a truck."
You ever poured lemon juice on an open wound?
My plan for the house was to repair the roof and ceilings first, pay a painter to spray the entire inside of the house with KILZ and then a color of Maggie's choosing, and then move us out of the barn and back into the house while I concentrated on the finish work.
I walked outside, stepped off the back porch, and meandered through my cotton field, where the midmorning sun was growing high and the bolls were swollen taut with white gold inside. Behind me, Maggie threw open the screen door, tossed Blue out on the porch, and slammed the door, rattling the windowpane. Blue looked at the door, licked the sides of his muzzle, and followed me out into the pasture.
I rubbed his ears and said, "Hey, pal, don't blame her. She's just having a rough time right now. We've just got to give her some space."
Blue looked back at the house and then at me. He wasn't buying it.
I looked across the pasture and road into the blackened piles that remained of Amos and Amanda's house. Amos had hired a bulldozer to push everything into a pile and a dump truck to haul it off. He and Amanda had been staying at Pastor John's house since the fire, and I wasn't the only one who sensed their absence. Blue stuck his nose in the air and, smelling nothing, whined and walked a figure eight between my legs.
A few minutes later Maggie walked out of the house. The sight of her hair was still strange to me. It wasn't that I didn't like it; it was just a surprise, that's all. She stood on the porch, holding her pruning shears and studying the landscape. Then she walked off the porch and began weaving through the flowers.
Everything had bloomed weeks ago. That meant a lot of dead and shriveled flowers now hung limp on drying twigs. Maggie began pruning the garden that surrounded our house. The process looked painful. I grabbed an old plastic trash can and followed her, quietly picking up the pieces. When she got to the roses, she paused, second-guessed herself, and then quietly returned to work. Between her energy level and the number of flowers, the process took her the better part of the day.
Dr. Frank said Maggie had had a heterotopic pregnancy. A 1 in 50,000 oddity. He explained that while we were going to have twins, only one fertilized egg had made its way out of the fallopian tube and into the uterus, where it attached. The second fertilized egg, for reasons we'll never know, became lodged in the tube. As it grew, it burst the tube, destroying itself and beginning a process of rotting inside Maggie, poisoning her blood, killing the other embryo attached to her uterus, and sending her fever to 105.5 degrees. Frank removed the tube, the ovary-which had been destroyed-and our baby. He said another couple of hours and the septic shock would have killed her.
BLUE FETCHED THE MORNING PAPER. I SPREAD IT ACROSS the table, and only then did I realize that we'd missed the Fourth of July. It never even crossed my mind. Which was probably good, because we didn't feel much like fireworks.
While Maggie napped away th
e morning, Blue and I walked to the river and then north along the edge. Blue kept looking over his shoulder and following close at my heels. Stepping lightly, we walked beneath the oaks and around small bunches of wild iris that had grown up from bulbs Maggie planted three years ago and that had now spread a few hundred yards downriver. The temperature was in the midnineties, and the humidity was just shy of raining.
We came to a small bend in the river that made somewhat of a natural port, if you want to call it that, where Amos and I kept our raft. I hadn't been down here in months, and it looked pretty bad. The raft was covered in leaves and fallen limbs, and had I not known where it was, I'd have missed it. I uncovered it, brushed it off as best I could, and then lay down in the middle. Blue curled up alongside me, and we watched the sun rise above the cypress trees.
I watched the river moving slowly and silently alongside us. Despite the turmoil topside, its rhythm was never-changing. I dipped my feet in, letting the movement and coolness sift through my toes. Blue took a drink and then jumped in, swimming around long enough to cool off. He paddled back over to the raft, and I lifted him up. He showered me in dog-shake, which felt good, and we lay back down. Around noon, I heard footsteps.
Amos stepped onto the raft and sat down. He was dressed in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, telling me that he'd taken a much-deserved day off. He pulled a soft-sided cooler off his shoulder and unzipped the top. "I've got PB&J, root beer, and Oreos."
I nodded, and he slapped a sandwich in my hand. I pulled back the plastic wrap, took a bite, and chewed without tasting it.
Amos looked at me curiously. "You look like you ain't eaten much lately."
He was right; it was the first thing I'd eaten in two days. I nodded again and stared at the water as if it were a nighttime campfire.
Amos popped the top on a root beer and handed it to me.
"Thanks."
We sat on the raft, chewing, soaking in the sunlight and silence while I fed my crusts to Blue.
Amos pulled off his T-shirt and finally spoke. "Need to work on my tan. Been pushing too many pencils lately." He pulled his Kimber and holster out from behind his belt and laid them on the raft. After he finished his sandwich, he lay back and pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes.