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

could wring out my soul, like the drummer boy, and then stop midwring, and know, in that minute, that that—whatever that was—was the perfect expression of a gift.”
    I pointed out the window toward the amphitheatre. “Those people, when they stand before the world, just before the sound fades, they know that they’re doing the very thing they were created to do. Their faces show it. Gift affirmed. They know life. That’s it. That moment, when the fans come alive and the King smiles, is living. Sometimes, I just wonder what it’d be like to play my drum for the King. Did the drummer boy stand like Pavarotti, hang the notes off the balcony, stop midbeat, and listen to himself? Did he notice the moment, or did it pass by unmarked?”
    I thought she’d laugh, maybe lecture me. Not Maggie. When I had finished, she ran her fingers through my hair, wrapped her arm and leg around me, and pressed her chest to mine. “Have you ever had that feeling? Ever?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œWhere?”
    I looked up at the ceiling fan, hypnotized by the backward-spinning mirage caused by the forward spin of the blades. “Maybe a time or two in class. It’s hard to say.”
    A few nights later, Maggie packed a brown-bag dinner, blindfolded me, put me in the truck, and started driving.
    â€œWhere’re we going?” I asked.
    She just kept driving, and after fifteen minutes of U-turns and “shortcuts,” we got where we were going. She pulled over, grabbed my hands, and led me to a gate, where she fumbled with some keys and unlocked what sounded like a padlock. Loosing the chain, she pushed open a creaky fence and then led me a hundred or so yards to a series of steps. At the top of them, my feet told me that the surface had changed from concrete to something hollow, maybe wood. She led me a few feet farther, then placed her finger across my lips. It was quiet. Pin-drop quiet.
    I heard her shuffle away from me and down the steps. Then, while I stood there wondering what in the world was going on, she started screaming at the top of her lungs.
    â€œWhooooo! More! More! More! Whooooo!”
    It scared me so bad I ripped off the bandanna, only to find myself on the stage of the amphitheatre and Maggie running up and down the rows of seats, holding a candle, waving her arms in the air and screaming like a wild woman. Throughout the rows she had placed cardboard people, maybe fifteen in all, and each held a burning candle. She whooped and hollered for ten minutes, dancing around as if she’d struck gold or come to hear the man at the mike. It took me ten minutes to get her to stop.
    When I finally got her calmed down, we sat in the second row, propped our feet up on the first, ate turkey sandwiches, and watched a show that existed only in our minds. When I finished my sandwich and leaned over to kiss her, she had mustard dabbed in the corner of her mouth. I can still taste it.
    Maggie could have made me feel foolish, even stupid for wondering outside myself. But she didn’t. She took me down there, set me on the stage, and then acted like my own private audience no matter how foolish it made her feel.
    Now I sat there in the moonlight and looked down at the amphitheatre through blurred vision. I opened the truck door, slid down the hill, and hopped the fence. I walked down the center aisle and climbed up on the stage. The moon reflected off the tops of the chairs like ten thousand candles, but I never opened my mouth. I knew no sound would come. Only tears. I lay down on the stage and hid from the demons that fed my doubts.

chapter eight
    T HE D IGS E NGLISH D EPARTMENT HAD TITLED MY class “Research and Writing,” hoping that the students would do just that. This meant that from day one, they would need to be thinking about and working toward a term paper. It also meant that anyone waiting until the last minute would land him- or herself right back in the