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

even Bryce knows how directly I handle his fund. It’s an odd thing. Caglestock will call me, we’ll move two to three million dollars from one stock or fund to another, and yet personally, I’m scratching to pay the taxes on our property . Bryce makes more money off the interest in his investments in one week, or sometimes even a day, than I’ll make all year.
    A TORNADO BOUNCED OVER D IGGER LAST NIGHT. I T PICKED up a couple of houses, disassembled them piece by piece, and scattered the remains for miles. I didn’t hear it, but those who did said it sounded like a really mad freight train. After a phone call reassured me that the hospital hadn’t been in its path, I wanted to see the damage, so I loaded up and drove across town. It was an odd thing. On one side of the road, everything was exactly as it had been the night before. On the other side, it looked as though God had taken a two-mile razor to the earth’s face. One man woke up to a neighbor phoning to say his tractor was sitting upside down in his tomato patch more than a mile from where the owner had parked it the night before. Others didn’t wake up. There were three of those.
    I finished my chores around the house, cleaned the yard and then myself, and drove out to Bryce’s. By the time I crested the top of the hill by the Silver Screen, it was late in the afternoon. Bryce was standing in a kilt and wearing combat boots, holding bagpipes in one hand and a beer in the other. “Morning, Dylan,” he said with a smile. His white barrel chest glistened in the afternoon sun. Bryce had quit wearing a watch long ago, and sometimes, if his nights ran long, so did his mornings.
    â€œMorning.” Blue ran up to smell and greet Bryce. “Thought I’d come see how the storm left you. Everything still here?”
    â€œNo problem,” Bryce barked in his best Scottish brogue.
    Looking around, I noticed that one of the screens he no longer used had been torn from top to bottom. The canvas that was once tacked to plywood now flapped in the wind, exposing the splintered plywood that was separated and ripped right down the middle.
    â€œLooks like that one didn’t fare too well,” I said, pointing.
    â€œYup,” Bryce said between gulps. “No big deal. Only need one.” Bryce threw his now-empty can on the ground and walked toward his trailer. He came back carrying a blowtorch. To my amazement, he walked across the parking lot into the second lot and up to the wooden housing at the base of the torn screen. He sparked the blowtorch, adjusted the flame, and held it against the wooden housing. After a few seconds, flames appeared. After a few minutes, the wind caught it, fueling the fire, and it rose up to the screen. The screen and structure behind it caught fire and burned like film in a projector.
    Bryce walked back to his trailer and returned to me without the blowtorch but with a beer in each hand. He handed me one, and we watched the screen burn to the ground. Bryce lifted his beer above his head and said, “To the Silver Screen.”
    I T WAS WELL PAST DARK WHEN I CRANKED MY TRUCK. I passed the amphitheatre, and all was quiet. I pulled off the shoulder, and Blue let out a big breath and lay down in the back. I cut the engine and sat in the quiet.
    One night after a show, Maggie and I had lain in bed, ears ringing and too wired to sleep. Bathed in darkness and the sweat of a South Carolina summer night, she asked me why I was so quiet. And taking a chance, I told her what was on my mind.
    â€œWhen I see those people on stage, sometimes I think about the little drummer boy. Standing there, offering his gift. All he had. Right there at the foot of the King. I wonder what that moment was like. Was it quiet all except for the sound of a drum? Were the animals shuffling about? Chewing hay? Where was Joseph? Was Jesus sleeping, up ’til He smiled? And the smile. What did He feel? I . . . I wish I