The Dead Don't Dance Read Online Free PDF

“Don’t fight me on this. They need a teacher, and for a lot of reasons, you need this.”
    â€œName one,” I said.
    Amos wiped the sweat off his brow with a white handkerchief. “Taxes, to begin with. Followed by your loan payment. Both of which are coming due at the end of the month, and the chances of you actually producing anything but a loss on this piece of dirt are slim to none. Teaching is your insurance policy, and right now you need one.”
    â€œAmos, I’ve got a job.” I waved my arms out in front of me. “Right here. Right out there. All of this is my job.” I pointed to the fields surrounding the house. “And how do you know when my taxes and loan payments are due?”
    Amos dropped his head and pointed to the soil. “D.S., you and I grew up right here, playing ball on this field. You busted my lip right over there, and”—he pointed to his house—“two hundred yards across that field and over that dirt road is my house and my dirt. So I know about dirt. I don’t want to see you and Maggie lose it.” He spat. “Heck, I don’t want to lose it. So don’t fight me. Put your education to work, listen to what I’m saying, and get in the shower while you can still afford to pay for hot water.”
    â€œHow’s Maggie?” I asked again.
    â€œShe’ll live. She’s stable. At least physically. Mentally . . . I don’t know. That’s His call.” Amos’s eyes shot skyward.
    â€œAmos,” I said, as the world came slowly into focus, “tell me about this whole teaching thing.”
    During graduate school in Virginia, I had taught seven classes as an adjunct at two different universities to help us pay the bills, and, I hoped, secure myself a job when I got out. But after I defended my dissertation and graduated, nobody would hire me. I got a feeling it wasn’t my credentials as much as it was my background. A farm-boy-turned-teacher, at least this one anyway, was not something they wanted on their faculties.
    Unable to get a job in the field that I had chosen, I hunkered down in the field that I owned. I was not my grandfather, Papa Styles, and nobody was knocking on my door, asking for advice, but for three years Maggie and I had been making ends meet out here in this dirt. Amos knew this. He also knew that having been snubbed once, I wasn’t too eager to go crawling back in there—especially at a community college as an adjunct. I had moved on.
    â€œDigs, room one, English 202. You’ve taught it before.”
    â€œBut Amos, why? Between what’s in the ground, what will be, the pine straw lease, and the two leased pastures, we’ll make it. My place is with Maggie, not nurse-maiding a bunch of dropouts who couldn’t get into a real school.”
    â€œD.S., don’t make me look foolish. Not after I went to bat for you. And don’t thumb your nose at those kids. They’re not the only ones who couldn’t get into a ‘real school.’” Amos had a brutal way of being honest. He also had a real gentle way of making me eat my pride. “And this isn’t my doing. It’s Maggie’s.”
    â€œMaggie’s?”
    â€œShe saw an ad in the paper that Digs was hiring adjuncts. So she called Mr. Winter a month or so ago and inquired about it. She was going to talk with you after the baby was born.”
    â€œYeah, well . . . ” I felt numb. “She didn’t get a chance.”
    â€œAnd as for your tax records and loan payment, Shireen at the station pulled your file and ran a credit check for me. Which, by the way, is real good. I’m just trying to help you keep it that way.”
    I shook my head and suppressed a wave of nausea. “Amos, if I could throw you in general quarters with all your law-abiding buddies . . . ”
    â€œD.S, how long are you going to fight me on this? You know good and well that every