The Dead Don't Dance by Charles Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

with my wife’s head resting on my chest, looking at the water droplets fall down her pale skin and thinking that God must be pleased. At least I thought He was.
    Then came the delivery.
    T HE FUNERAL PARLOR HAD PREPARED MY SON’S BODY. Amos and I drove by in my truck and picked up the cold metal coffin. I walked through the double swinging doors, bent down, picked it up, and walked back to the truck, where Amos lowered the tailgate. I gently slid it into the back. While Amos thanked the mortician for preparing things and giving us a few extra days, I climbed into the back and braced the coffin between my knees so it wouldn’t slide around.
    Shutting the tailgate, Amos climbed into the cab and drove us the twenty minutes back to the farm. Underneath a sprawling oak tree on the sloping riverside, next to my grandparents, I had dug a hole with the backhoe for the larger cement casket. Amos parked. I picked up the box that held my son, and we walked over to the hole.
    After we stood there for some time, Amos cleared his throat, and I set my son down next to the hole. Then Amos handed me his Bible. It had been a while. Maybe last Christmas. Maggie always liked to read about the Nativity scene.
    â€œWhat should I read?”
    â€œPsalm 139.”
    I split the big book down the middle with my index finger. The thin pages crinkled and blew in the breeze, and I had a hard time finding the right page. When I found the psalm, I read what I could.
    O L ORD , You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
. . . Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence? . . .
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
    About midway through, I fell silent and Amos took over from memory.
    . . . For you formed my inward parts,
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
. . . My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret . . .
And in Your book they were all written,
The days fashioned for me.
    When he finished, he stood with his head bowed and hands folded in front of him. The breeze picked up and blew against our backs. Then in a deep, low voice he began singing “Amazing Grace.”
    I did not.
    While Amos sang, I knelt down next to my son and put my head on his casket. I thought about the things that were not going to happen. Baseball. The tractor. Finger painting. “Dad, can I have the keys?” Buying his first pair of boots. Girls. The first step. Fishing. A runny nose. Tag. Swimming. Building a sandbox. Vacation. Big brother. All the stuff we had talked about. I faded out somewhere into a blank and empty space.
    Amos’s singing brought me back. With each of the six verses, he sang louder. When the song was over, Amos wasn’t finished. “D.S., you mind if I sing one more?”
    I shook my head, and Amos, looking out over the river, started up again.
    When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll . . .
    Since college, Amos had spent two days a week singing in the church choir. He was a church history buff and especially liked the stories surrounding the writing of hymns. Years ago, floating on our raft down the river, he’d told me the story behind “It Is Well with My Soul,” and I’d never forgotten it. I sat there, resting my head on the cold metal coffin of my baby son, a child I never knew, a child I never held, and thought about Horatio G. Spafford.
    Spafford was a Chicago lawyer, traveling to Europe with his family for the summer. There he is, boarding a steamer with his family for an Atlantic cruise, but he gets called away for business. He sends his family ahead and plans to meet them in England. A storm comes up, sinks the ship, and all four of Spafford’s children drown while holding hands on the bow. A strong swimmer, his wife reaches land and sends him a telegram, saying simply, “Survived alone.”
    Broken, Spafford catches the