The Dead Don't Dance
P
RAISE FOR
The Dead Don't Dance
“An absorbing read for fans of faith-based fiction . . . [with] delightfully quirky characters . . . [who] are ingeniously imaginative creations.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“A strong and insightful first novel, written by a great new Christian voice in fiction. Brilliant.”
âD
AVIS
B
UNN, AUTHOR OF
The Great Divide
AND
Elixir
“
The Dead Don't Dance
combines writing that is full of emotion with a storyline that charts a haunting story of love and lossâand finding one's way back. Charles Martin quickly plunges readers into the story and takes them to a dark place. Then he draws them, like his protagonist Dylan, back to the surface, infusing them with renewed strength. Martin's writing is strong, honest, and memorable. He's an author to discover nowâand then keep your eye on.”
âC
AROL
F
ITZGERALD, CO-FOUNDER /PRESIDENT,
B
OOKREPORTER.COM
“
The Dead Don't Dance
affirms that even when the world drags us into its gloomy den, we can emerge battered but ever the victor holding life ecstatically by the tail. Charles Martin's wise and tender audacity lifts us out of our ordinary lives to help us see that the extraordinary is all around us, grander than our earliest visions, and filling our cups with the sweet nectar of life. You will fall in love with Martin's writing and believe in the goodness of humanity again.
The Dead Don't Dance
is the best book you will read this year! Bravo, Mr. Martin!”
âP
ATRICIA
H
ICKMAN, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
OF
Fallen Angels
and
Nazareth's Song
“
The Dead Don't Dance
is a poignant page-turner filled with loss, hope and redemption. With passages that shine as bright as the South Carolina moon, Charles Martin captures the heart of the land and its people. This novel is bound to linger with many readers and leave them wanting more.”
âM
ICHAEL
M
ORRIS, AUTHOR OF
A Place Called Wiregrass
“This is the story of real person's
real
struggle with the uncertainties of faith, unadorned with miracles of the
deus ex machina
sort but full of the sort of miracles that attend every day life if you bother to notice. Charles Martin notices, and for that I commend him. He's unafraid of tackling the crucial questionsâlife, death, love, sacrifice.”
âD
UNCAN
M
URRELL, EDITOR AND WRITER
“Charles Martin writes with the passion and delicacy of a Louisiana sunriseâshades of shepherd's warning and a promise of thunderbolts before noon. Evoking a vivid picture of a young man's dance with dark and desperate moments of ordinary life, his story swirls like the river with drama, humour, and sense of hope. To many of us in England, the reality of America's deep south is as unknowable as the celestial kingdom of the orient in the days of sail, yet Charles has made it splendid and unforgettable. This is a lovely book that brims with heart and sensitivity, and most of all with a profound insight into what matters in our lives. I enjoyed it hugely.”
âJ
OHN
D
YSON, WRITER
,
Reader's Digest
“
The Dead Don't Dance
is a gentle novel that reminds me of Robert Frost's famous poem, “For Once, Then, Something,” in which “Water came to rebuke the too clear water”: for Dylan Styles water means life, loss, and recovery. After a horrifying tragedy, he is adrift, searching for clarity, for an understanding of order that Frost's speaker never found. Charles Martin's debut novel is a moving, believable study of redemption pulled from the pieces of an all too-disordered world.”
âB
RIAN
R
AILSBACK, AUTHOR OF
The Darkest Clearing: A Novel
and
Parallel Expeditions: Charles Darwin
AND
the Art of John Steinbeck
For Christy
Thank you for throwing your blanket over me.
Without it, I would have grown cold.
Copyright © 2004 by Charles Martin
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherâexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
WestBow Press books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected]
Scripture references are from the New King James Version (NKJV
®
), copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.
Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, plot, and events are the product of the author's imagination. All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Charles, 1969â
   The dead don't dance: a novel of awakening / Charles Martin.
       p. cm.
   ISBN 0-7852-6181-8 (trade paper)
   ISBN 1-5955-4161-6 (ve)
   I. Title.
PS3613.A7778D43 2004
813'.6âdc22Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 2004000633
Printed in the United States of America
04 05 06 07 08 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contenes
L
AST
O
CTOBER, AFTER THE SOYBEANS HAD PEAKED
at four feet, the corn had spiraled to almost twice that, and the wisteria had shed its purple, a November breeze picked up, pushed out the summer heat, and woke Maggie. She rolled over, tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered, “Let's go swimming.” It was two in the morning under a full moon, and I said, “Okay.” The tap on the shoulder usually meant she knew something I didn't, and from the moment I'd met her, Maggie had known a lot that I didn't.
We rolled out, grabbed a couple of towels, and held hands down to the river, where Maggie took a swan dive into the South Carolina moonlight. I dropped the towels on the bank and waded in, letting the sandy bottom sift through my toes and the bream shoot between my knees. Leaning backward, I dunked my head, closed my eyes, then let the water roll down my neck as I stood in the waist-deep black river. Summer had run too long, as summers in Digger often do, and the breeze was a welcome comfort. We swam around in the dark water long enough to cool off, and Maggie spread a towel over the bleached white sand. Then she lay down and rested her head on my shoulder, and the moon fell behind the cypress canopy.
A while later, as we walked back to the house, her shoulder tucked under mine, Maggie knew that we had just made our son. I didn't know until four weeks later, when she came bouncing off the front porch and tackled me in the cornfield. Grinning, she shoved a little white stick in my face and pointed at the pink line.
Soon after, I started noticing the changes. They began in our second bedroom. Previously an office, it quickly became “the nursery.” Maggie returned from the hardware store with two gallons of blue paint for the walls and one gallon of white for the trim and molding.
“What if she's a girl?” I asked.
“He's not,” she said and handed me a paintbrush. So we spread some old sheets across the hardwood floors and started goofing off like Tom and Huck. By the end of the night, we were covered in blue paint and the walls were not, but at least we'd made a start.
The smell of paint drove us out of the house, so Maggie and I shopped the Saturday morning garage sales. We found a used crib for sixty dollars, the top railing dented with teeth marks. Maggie ran her fingers along the dents like Helen Keller reading Braille. “It's perfect,” she said.
We set up the crib in the corner of the nursery and made a Sunday afternoon drive to Charleston to the so-called “wholesale” baby outlet. I have never seen more baby stuff in one place in my entire life. And to be honest, before going there, I didn't know half of it existed. When we walked through the sliding glass doors, a recorded voice said, “Welcome to Baby World! If we don't have it, your baby doesn't need it!” The tone of voice gave me my first hint that I was in trouble.
Maggie grabbed two pushcarts, shoved one into my stomach, put on her game face, and said, “Come on!” Midway down the first aisle I was in way over my head. We bought diapers, wipes, pacifiers, a tether for the pacifiers, bottles, nipples for the bottles, liners for the bottles, bottles to hold the bottles and keep the bottles warm, cream for diaper rash, ointment for diaper rash, powder for diaper rash, a car seat, blankets, rattles, a changing table, little buckets to organize all the stuff we had just bought, a baby bag, extra ointment, cream, and powder just for the baby bag, booties, a little hat to keep his head warm, and little books. About halfway through the store I quit counting and just said, “Yes, ma'am.”
To Maggie, every detail, no matter how small, had meaning. She must have said, “Oh, look at this,” or “Isn't this cute?” a hundred times. When we reached the checkout counter, we were leaning on two ridiculously overflowing carts.
Some marketing genius had stacked the most expensive teddy bears right up in front. Only a blind man was without excuse. Maggie, wearing a baggy pair of denim overalls, batted her big brown eyes and tilted her head. In a deep, whispery, and all-too-seductive voice, she said, “Dylan, this bear's name is Huckleberry.”
I just laughed. What else could I do?
I loaded up the truck and started to breathe easy, thinking the damage was over, but we didn't even make it out of the parking lot. Just next door to Baby World stood a maternity clothing store. Maggie, the possessed power shopper, stalked the racks and piled me high for over an hour. When I could no longer see above the heap of clothes in my arms, she led me to the changing room, where, for the first time in my life, a woman actually told me to come inside with her. Maggie shut the door, slid the latch, and pulled her hair up into a bouncy ponytail.
Over the next hour, my wife modeled each item of clothing while I marveled. The only light was a recessed forty-watt bulb above her head, but when she turned, lifted the ponytail off her neck, and whispered, “Unzip me,” the light showered her five-eight frame like Tinkerbell's pixie dust. It fluttered off the blond, fuzzy hair on the back of her neck and the sweat on her top lip, over her square tan shoulders and down into the small of her back, along her thin hips and long runner's legs, and then finally swirled around the muscular shape of her calves.