We reached the river, and I climbed the gently sloping bluff and Peter Panned off into the moonlight while the Milky Way showered down about me. The black water covered me, and the gentle current pulled against me. Few things in life were sweeter. I surfaced, swam toward the bank, and dug my toes into the sandy river bottom.
Maggie stood on the bank, pulling her tank top over her shoulders. She slipped off her jeans, waded in, and wrapped herself around me, her short hair sticking up and out. Chill bumps ran up and down her arms, but she pressed her warm chest to mine. The river moved around us, carrying away old memories and filling the empty places left behind.
Because that's what rivers do: they do life.
From downriver, the sound approached slowly. It filtered up through the trees, then across and around us like fireflies dancing on the daylight. Moments later, Bryce appeared. Buttnaked but for the boots, he stood, his face beet-red, blowing through the pipes. He stood, his soul spilling out through his fingers and the tips of the pipes. He played for several minutes. If I'd ever worried about Bryce, and I had, my fears disappeared with those fading notes. Moments later, having said what he came to say, he stepped into the water and faded away downriver, carrying his song with him.
When he had disappeared, Maggie nodded toward the bank and tugged on my arm. Fingers locked, we waded through the current and climbed up the bank. While the moon lit the water droplets cascading down her back, I handed her a towel and spread the blanket across the sand. She toweled off, knelt beside me, and ran her fingers through my hair.
She was just about to kiss me when something out of the corner of her eye grabbed her attention. She tilted her head and stared. Leaning closer, she squinted and held the towel up to the moonlight, and that's when the wrinkle reappeared between her eyes.
Seeing the change, my voice cracked. "Are you okay?" Maybe I had pressured her too soon. Maybe something reminded her of something she wanted to forget.
Without a word, she jumped up, grabbed her clothes, and started a fast jog back to the house. By the time I got into my jeans, she was out of sight. I slipped on my shirt, picked up Tick, and walked back to the house, kicking the dirt and wondering where I had just messed up.
I reached the barn and climbed the steps into the loft, where the light in the bathroom was shining through the crack at the floor. I laid Tick on the bed and tapped lightly. "Maggs? "
"Yes."
"You okay?"
She didn't answer, so I took a cold shower, climbed into bed, and counted to a million. Maggie finally stepped out of the bathroom, wearing sweats, and quickly got in bed. Her feet were cold, and she pulled the covers up around her shoulders. She scooted over next to me and placed her arm around my stomach.
I didn't know much, but I did know that if I opened my mouth, I'd only get in trouble, so I started doing my times tables, and when I got tired of that, I started trying to think of the largest prime number I could find.
Finally Maggie whispered, "I don't really want to go see Dr. Frank tomorrow."
He had told me she'd be moody without the hormones and would probably protest right up to our appointment.
"Okay." I figured we could talk about it tomorrow when she had gotten over whatever was bugging her.
A few minutes passed, then she tapped me on the shoulder.
I was getting a bit exasperated. "Honey. What?"
Tick heard my change in tone and dug his muzzle under a fold in the sheet.
She laid her head on my chest and placed her palm flat across my heart as Tick climbed up our legs and plopped himself in a cavity created by the sheets and shapes of our bodies. "I don't want to go because I don't need to."
Dr. Frank had predicted that too. She'd argue that she didn't need any hormones, and it would take me to convince her that she did.
"Well, okay, but Dr. Frank said it might help."
She patted my chest. "No, you don't understand."
I was getting a bit angry, so I sat up straight in bed. "You're right. I don't. Why don't you-"
Maggie shoved me backward onto the pillow. She hooked her right leg over both of mine, wrapped her right arm around and under me, and then tent-pegged it into the bed. She raised her head, the moonlight shining in her eyes and revealing the tears and the smile painted there. "I don't need them because my body is making its own."
I squinted one eye while trying to translate what she was saying.
She pulled up the covers, closed her eyes, and said, "Don't worry. I'll take you swimming again in about a week."
Tick had rolled over on his back, paws in the air. He was out cold.
LYING ON AN OLD LUMPY MATTRESS IN THE LOFT OF OUR barn, beneath all the star-filled wonder of the Milky Way, God spread his blanket over us, and when I studied it, the frayed edges and seams had been hemmed. Faint stitching meandered across the quilt like country roads on a state map. I shook my head. What makes the broken whole? How does deepdown pain, interwoven like sinew, come untangled?
I looked at my wife, her breathing easy, her spiky hair growing out, her fingernails scratching my chest. Then I looked at us-two chipped and cracked cups, and yet despite the fact that we were leaking like a spaghetti colander, we could still pour water. Still laugh. Still hope. Still cry. Still dream. Still take a swan dive into the moonlight where the mystery of the river would meet us, bathe us, and make us whole.
I wrapped my arm around my wife, pulled her toward me, and felt her heart pounding powerfully inside her. My drumbeat. Our rhythm. It resonated, filtered back down within me, and came to rest somewhere alongside my soul where I'm most alive, where I am me and we are us, where I know pleasure and pain, heartbreak and rage, where I hope, dream, and begin again-down where my love lives.
Brimming with relief, maybe some fear but all excitement, I pulled the blanket up around our shoulders and slid my fingers inside hers. She hooked her leg around mine like a wisteria vine spiraling up a fence post, and we slept.
SUMMER 2000.
I was sitting in my office, paying bills, shaking my head at the numbers looking back at me. It was over. My pipedream had come to an end.
I had shut my door because I didn't want Christy to see me hanging my head in my hands. Maybe I should've taken that job. In my file cabinet next to me, hung the folder where I kept all the rejection letters. Currently, there were 85.
For eight months the letters had been returning. Slowly at first, then almost one a day, now maybe one a week. I had quit going to the mailbox months ago. Broken man.
I looked at the yellow note stuck to my computer screen that read, "126"-my reminder of the number of times that F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise had been rejected. It was little consolation.
Early in 1997, Christy and I had returned to Jacksonville. Thinking I'd continue working as a teacher, I applied everywhere from college to high school. When the phone didn't ring, my brother-in-law took mercy on me and gave me a job working at his insurance agency. Fast forward to 1999. After two years of hard work, we had taken his agency from a rather small one to a very successful one. That had everything to do with Tommy's ability to sell and, to a much lesser extent, my ability to help him put legs on his promises.
Because of this, I had caught the eye of the corporate officer of the insurance company we represented. Friday afternoon came and, with Tommy's blessing, I found myself sitting in the President's office. He was offering me a job-asking me, in short, to do on a much larger scale what I'd been doing the last few years for Tommy.
Did you ever see that scene in the movie, The Firm, when Tom Cruise was brought in to meet the Memphis attorneys? Remember the feeling in that room? How they laid the envelope on the table? My experience reminds me of that scene. The red carpet, the leather couch, the view out the windows stretched for miles. So did the opportunity-six-figure money, benefits, signing bonus, yearly bonus. Life on a silver platter.
There were just three problems. The first was travel and lots of it. I'd be living on planes a
nd in hotels. The second was the job itself. I just didn't enjoy the insurance business. I needed it, still do-I'd just rather someone else sell it. The third was that little voice inside my head-and he was screaming at the top of his lungs.
Before I left the President's office, he paused and looked me in the eye. Dick Morehead had risen to the top because he worked harder than anyone else, was pretty close to brilliant, and because he was good at reading people. In that instant, he was reading my emotional pulse. He said, "Charles, life's too d-n short to not do what you love."
I nodded, "Yes sir."
He paused again, this time longer, "Charles ... life's too d-n short to not do what you love."
I knew my decision before I left his office.
He asked for an answer by Monday, so I shook his hand, stepped into the elevator, and asked myself not what new car I was about to buy or what new white-picket-fence-neighborhood we were moving into, but how was I going to explain this to my wife.
Word spread quickly, and before I got home the phone started ringing with congratulations. "Vice President? Wow!" I found it difficult to talk with my stomach in my throat.
After a few hours at home, I'd made little progress with Christy. She was already painting our new house.
I didn't sleep much. Somewhere around three in the morning, Christy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "That's a lot of money." I watched the ceiling fan spin and knew it was going to be a long weekend.
My argument was simple. I could survive the travel, could work at the job and maybe even excel, but no matter what I did or how I tried to appease him, I could not quiet that little voice inside my head.
Christy's argument was also simple-take the money. Write in the morning. Late at night. Do both. Do whatever you've got to do, but take the money.
We argued most of the weekend. Not finger-pointing, shouting, or ugly stuff, but gut-wrenching, who-are-you-and-what-doyou-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up stuff. Our son, Charlie, was almost two, John T. would be here in a few months, and we had outgrown our house. The only thing I had working for me was that Christy knew my heart-she had read my novel (what is now The Dead Don't Dance), and she believed it was good. Maybe even good enough.
Saturday afternoon, I went for an aimless drive trying to find the words to explain to my wife and family that I really didn't want the job. That I was sorry if I'd failed them. That I was grateful for the opportunity, but I wanted to follow my heart. I knew they'd think I'd lost my mind. Especially the older generation who had lived through the 1930's. To them, this was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. My ship had just come in. All aboard.
Sunday morning came, and I found myself facedown, clinging to the railing after communion. It was the first time all weekend I could hear above the racket in my head. I don't remember what all I said, but I think it sounded something like, Please help. When I opened my eyes, Christy was there too.
By Sunday afternoon, we were both cooked. I sat on the couch, dreading Monday morning, nauseous from the knot in my stomach. I couldn't throw up because I hadn't eaten in three days.
I don't know what happened or how, probably never will, but Christy walked in, her big brown eyes puddling with tears. She stood at a distance, took a deep breath, and said, "We're going to do this one time. Nothing held back. If we fail ..." She shrugged and took another deep breath. She waved her finger like a windshield wiper across the air in front of me, "But, I don't want you to turn forty, look back, and wonder what if. .." She blinked and the tears fell, "I don't want to take that from you."
Those words still echo in my heart.
For the next year I worked briefly for a non-profit, then started my own Mr. Fix-it business-if you can call it that-and begun pressure washing, building docks, decks, cabinets, you name it. Whatever would put money on the table. Hitched to my truck was a trailer full of hoses and machinery-my cell phone number prominently printed across the back in billboardsized letters. My family was not impressed. We had lasted almost a year.
Christy cracked the door of my office and walked in with a single piece of mail. I couldn't even look at it. Please, not one more. She laid it on the desk, kissed me, and shook her head, "You're not a reject to me." I dropped the letter in with the others and cried like a baby.
That was six years ago.
Today, I've published more than a half a million words, and this morning I received a fax showing where Southern Living has picked When Crickets Cry as their `Read of the Month.' If you could see me as I sit now, I'm scratching my head.
When people hear this story, they often respond, "That's incredible." Or "Wow, you really stuck with it." While that does wonders for my ego, I know the truth.
Neither my talent nor perseverance got this book in your hands. I'm neither that good nor that strong. The miracle of our story is not me. It's a girl who, with a single kiss and six words, reached down beyond my fear and doubt, down where my love lives, and gave me a gift-she stood beside me and believed.
Maggie: THE SEQUEL TO THE DEAD DON'T DANCE
1. In The Dead Don't Dance, Maggie Styles spent four months in a coma after she and her husband Dylan lost their first son. In Maggie, she's awake, and her desire to have a child is as strong as ever. How does motherhood define Maggie in this novel? Do you think she is obsessed with having children, or does the novel simply show the honest feelings of many women? Have you or someone you know ever struggled with fertility? If so, how does that experience relate to Maggie's?
2. Gardening could act as a metaphor for Maggie in the novel. What does her love of plants represent at the beginning of the book? Does this change by the end of the novel?
3. Maggie and Dylan deal with grief and loss in different ways. Describe these differences. In the midst of her emotional struggles and hormonal changes, does Maggie's behavior ever cross the line, or would any woman who has experienced such loss act similarly? How does Maggie's character change over the course of the novel?
4. The deep relationship between Dylan and Maggie is the central force of the novel. When asked if Maggie could hear him while she was in the coma, Dylan says, "Of course she could. Love has its own communication. . . . It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God." How is this godly love displayed in the novel? Are you, or have you ever been, in a relationship of this kind?
5. Adoption seems like a good solution for Maggie and Dylan, but the adoption agency sees things differently. Why did the agency turn them down at first? Why did they change their minds during the appeal? After reading about the couple's experience, what impression do you have about adoption? How does that impression illuminate Maggie and Dylan's situation in particular?
6. Pastor John Lovett's former life of crime involved three other men. Two of then-Anton and Felix-are covered in tattoos, which reminds Pastor John of Queequeg in Moby Dick. The last names of these twin brothers are never given. The third convict, James Whittaker III, is a former Hollywood pyrotechnics expert who earned the nickname Ghost in prison. What do these descriptions tell you about the men?
7. John Wayne is mentioned more than once in the novel. As kids, Amos and Dylan play cowboys and act "like John Wayne in True Grit." In the present time of the story, Dylan watches The Shootist as The Duke, who has terminal cancer in real life, plays a famed gunfighter with terminal cancer. Why is The Shootist particularly relevant? How does The Duke's death reflect Dylan's emotions at this point? What values does John Wayne represent, and how do those relate to the story?
8. At one point, Dylan says about Maggie: `Just because something is broken doesn't mean it's no good. Doesn't mean you throw it away.... I can love broken." In what ways is Maggie "broken"? When Pastor John reads from the Bible "Behold, I make all things new," why does Maggie leave the church? In what ways does the couple try to make a whole from the broken pieces? Are they successful?
9. Dylan writes two stories about what happened during Maggie's hospitalization and coma. Describe the differences between the two. Why does Dylan decide t
o give Maggie the "watered-down, G-rated version"? Do you agree with his decision? Why or why not?
10. When Maggie loses the twins, she isolates herself more and more. At one point, she tells Dylan that he can't know how she feels and throws a bedside table across the room. Do you think Dylan is unsupportive of Maggie? Does he grow more or less supportive over the course of the novel? Is there any way he could have shared the stress of her experiences more fully, or can he, as a man, never really understand?
11. Maggie is a distinctly southern novel. In what ways does the southern setting propel this story? How does the small town of Digger and the mythical Salkehatchie act as characters in and of themselves? How do food, church, dogs, guns, clothing, and automobiles signify the south in this novel?
12. The river plays an important role in this story, as it did in The Dead Don't Dance. Before Maggie's coma, she and Dylan floated down the river on the raft and discovered a rare iris that can only grow in a particular spot-where the tannic swamp water meets fresh spring water. What was their journey into the heart of the swamp like? What does this location represent in the story? Why did the author choose an iris rather than some other flower?
13. What impact does the past have in this novel? Dylan's grandfather said that farmers "cut the soil and get rid of what remains of the old.... The past fertilizes the future." How does this relate to Maggie and Dylan's present situation? To what extent do characters in this story seem able-or unable-to break free of their past?
14. Through Bryce, the novel takes a hard look at the role of human sacrifice and the loss of life in war. As part of the Marine's elite Delta Force in the Vietnam War, he was a "oneman killing machine" who became "a highly-decorated veteran." Bryce tells Dylan about the loss of his Vietnamese wife and son during the war. What are your thoughts about Bryce's military experience? Ultimately, how do you view Bryce-as a killer, a hero, or something else?