(2008) Down Where My Love Lives by Charles Martin Read Free Book Online

laid the bear on top of the casket.

    The cement made a grinding sound as we slid the casket into place. I let the first shovelful spill slowly. Gently. Quietly.
    The riverbank sloped to the water. The river was quiet and dark. Minutes passed. Amos wiped his face, put on his glasses, and walked to the truck. Sweat and cold trickled down my back in the ninety-eight-degree heat.
    I looked at my hands. My eyes followed the intersections of wrinkle and callus and the veins that traveled out of my palm, over my wrist and up my forearm where, for the first time, I saw flecks of blood caked around the hair follicles. It was dark, had dried hard, and had blended with the sun freckles. Maggie's blood. I picked up a handful of dirt and gripped it tight, squeezing the edges out of my palm like an hourglass. It was damp, coarse, and smelled of earth.
    I needed to tell Maggie about the funeral.
    The tops of the cornstalks gently brushed my arms and legs, almost like mourners, as I walked back to the house. On the way, I rubbed the dirt from my son's grave into my arm, grinding it like a cleanser, until my forearm was raw and clean. The old blood gone and new blood come.

    THE DIGGER AMPHITHEATRE, BUILT ABOUT SIX YEARS ago, is one of South Carolina's best-kept secrets. It's ten miles from my house and a long way from nowhere. It rises up like a bugle out of pine trees and hardwoods, covering about three acres, most of which is parking lot. Whoever built it was far more interested in quality acoustics than quantity seating. During the construction, throughout the public hoopla surrounding the opening, and ever since, the donor has remained anonymous.
    The amphitheatre is used about three times a year; the rest of the time it just sits there. It's hosted Garth Brooks, George Strait, Randy Travis. Vince Gill, James Taylor. Mostly country and bluegrass folks. The unplugged types. But we've had other names. Even George Winston. Bruce Springsteen came through once. Brought only his guitar. Maggie and I got to that one.

    There are all kinds of myths about who built it. Some bigwig in Charleston with more money than sense. A divorcee from New York who was angry at her husband. An eccentric from California whose family homesteaded this area. Who built it depends on whom you talk to. One night a few years back, I learned the truth.
    I was driving home at about two in the morning, and I swore I heard bagpipes. I stopped my truck and crept through the woods to the top of the hill. Sure enough. A broadshouldered man stood center stage in the amphitheatre, wearing a kilt and playing the pipes. I sat and listened for about half an hour. Curiosity eventually got the best of me, and I found myself standing on the stage with a half-naked man. Once his eyes focused on me, he adjusted his skirt and shook my hand. We struck up a conversation, and somewhere in there the guy decided that he liked me. His full name, I learned, was Bryce Kai MacGregor, and when he plays the bagpipes, he wears a kilt. But after six or eight beers, the plaid skirt is optional. He has fiery red hair and freckles, and looks like a cross between a coal miner and a troll-just one big flexed muscle. Bryce is not ugly, although he could take better care of himself, and he has penetrating green eyes.
    North of town, where things are more hilly, sits his homea 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 twelvegauge. 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