Charming Grace (13 page)

JAMES

Grace, are you all right?

CANDACE

Grace, look at your skinned arms! You have an audition for a commercial tomorrow!

HELEN

Harp, Grace, what happened?

Harp glowers; silent as usual. Grace’s father thrusts out a hand for the pocket knife but Harp puts it away.

GRACE

The neighbor’s chow dog went after Mr. Peacock again! Harp saved us!

JAMES

                        (scowling at Harp)

You know my rules. What were you and my daughter doing out here alone?

HARP

I watch after the peacocks and the ducks and G. Helen’s pet guinea hens. Grace was just watching me watch the birds.

JAMES

What the hell are you talking about—watching after the birds?

HELEN

Son, calm down. I asked Harp to keep an eye on the estate’s pet fowl. He took me a little more seriously than I realized. He’s a dedicated soul when it comes to protecting the helpless, the innocent, and Grace. (Sardonic smile.) I’m not sure where Grace fits in, there.

GRACE

Harp won’t let a single living thing get hurt around here. It’s his payback job.

DADDY

His what?

HELEN

Harp earns his keep. If I assign him a job or a chore, he does it fervently.

DADDY

That doesn’t change the fact that we agreed to rules, rules, Mother, about Harp and Grace being allowed to roam around here alone.

HARP

                        (angrily)

I’d as soon cut off my own hand than hurt Grace! You got no reason to think I’d ever do anything bad to Grace! I don’t take charity and I work for my keep! If G. Helen says look after the birds, dammit I’m gonna make sure the birds stay safe!

DADDY

Don’t you curse at me, young man. You have a long way to go before you’ve earned anything around here except my grudging tolerance.

Daddy walks back into mansion.

CANDACE

Grace, come down from there and let’s see if we can cover those scratches with make up before your father, Helen and I leave for the gala down in Atlanta.

She hurries after James.

Grace, Helen, and Harp look at each other. Grace grimly releases the peacock and he flaps to the ground then strides away, clucking.

GRACE

Daddy’s not being fair, G. Helen.

HELEN

I know, darling. (She fluffs her elaborate tulle skirt then squats in front of the flushed, angry Harp.) Harp, you did a fine thing. Thank you. But I want you to relax a little. When I said it was your job to keep an eye on the birds around here, I meant feeding them, watering them, protecting their nests. Not risking your life to fight off that crazy, mean chow when he shows up here.

HARP

I know how it feels to be chased. I know how it feels to be scared. I’m not gonna let those birds get hurt. I’m not gonna let Grace get hurt. The world’s full of mean chows that want to hurt other critters. It’s my job to stop them.

Grace drops down from the tree limb and looks at him tenderly.

GRACE

Sir Harp. Knight of Bagshaw Downs.

Harp is obviously in love with her, but tries to hide it with a shrug.

HARP

I’ve decided to save the world for you, Princess.

Chapter 7

“I’ve decided to save the world for you, Princess.” The kid playing Harp Vance had just finished saying that line in a Southern accent so fake it made my ears curl, when a spring storm roared in off the Gulf of Mexico. The rain dropped on Senterra Productions like a bucket of celestial cow piss.

“Cut!” Stone yelled. “Everybody run! It’s a monsoon! Noleene, get me an umbrella!”

He got the news out about two seconds too late. Gushers of rainwater poured off the eaves of the big antebellum mansion Stone had rented on the mossy Alabama coast for the Bagshaw Downs exteriors. But the Alabama scenes had originally been scheduled for July, not May. That was before the ‘gravel-pile incident’ and the ‘unfortunate manure-trailer confrontation,’ as Stone’s business manager called them.

Which was a pretty way of saying that, thanks to Grace, the whole sort-of-civilized world had been treated to yet another Senterra cover story in the
National Enquirer
. This time, it was a tourist snapshot of Diamond going head-first into a trailer full of horseshit.

Round Two, As Grace Vance Battles The Amazing Flying Senterras
. That’s what the Enquirer headline said.

Stone tried to calm Diamond down before her head exploded and she went after Grace with all claws out and a loaded gun in her bra. “Stay away from Grace Vance,” he told his baby sister. “She’ll come around, but she’s not with the program, yet.”

“Let’s shoot her with a tranquilizer dart,” Diamond hissed. “That’ll put her with the program.”

Stone pretended to be stoic but he was worried about the bad publicity. And a nervous Stone was a chubby Stone.

“He’s not eating that fudge again, is he?” Kanda demanded when she called me from California. We had secret conversations about Stone’s eating habits. Some movie stars have an eye for wine, women, and song when they’re on location away from the missus. Stone only had an eye for fudge. He’d discovered a shop in Dahlonega called the Fudge Factory. It was a candy-a-holic’s best dream. Blocks of gourmet fudge filled polished glass cases like dark gold bullion at Fort Knox. The air was scented with chocolate and caramel. Delicious odors bubbled from huge copper pots behind the counters. Sweet college girls dished out boxes and bags full of the fudge along with pecan-caramel turtles and blobs of sugary white divinity and small bags bulging with crunchy pralines.

Stone spent an average of three-hundred dollars every time he walked in. The college girls had taken to chorusing,
Hello, Mr. Senterra
, the moment he cruised through the door, and the owner, a nice lady who treated him as politely as any other customer, came out of her office to supervise his orders.

“Boone,” Kanda said, “I can’t get there full-time until the girls are out of school for the summer. In the meantime,
you
have to keep him on his diet. If you don’t, he’ll look like Marlon Brando by the time he finishes this film. And I don’t mean
young
Brando. I mean
Apocalypse Now
Brando. He has to be on the set of
Deep Space Revenge
by September, looking like an interstellar commando, not Homer Simpson in silver Spandex.”

“He says he’s going to get a fudge-sniffing dog if I don’t stop hiding it.”

“Then throw the fudge away. ‘Intercept and destroy’ the enemy weapon. Tell him General Kanda has ordered you to take the mission. He loves military analogies.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But he says the Grace Vance situation stresses him out and eating fudge relaxes him.”

“He can’t blame Grace Vance for his eating habits.” Kanda tried to stay neutral on the subject of Stone’s movie troubles. She was the ultimate supportive wife, but I think, beneath it all, she felt sorry for Grace and wished he’d drop the project. “Boone, that fudge relaxes him so much his tummy hangs over his belt.”

Kanda was the kind of woman who said ‘tummy’ instead of ‘lard-ass gorilla gut.’ I promised her I’d do my best to keep Stone’s tummy somewhere north of his gold eagle belt buckle. I didn’t mention it was already getting harder to see the eagle’s head.

“I’ll keep the eagle from smothering,” was all I could promise her.

The Stone Man might be stressed out over Grace, but he didn’t see her as an enemy. Like he said, in his mind, she was just confused and would come around, eventually. He told Diamond: “When I decided to make this movie I said to myself, ‘Stone, is this the right thing to do? The widow of the man you’re honoring hates your guts. Should you go ahead with this movie anyway?’ Then I thought a minute, and I said back to myself, ‘Stone, when she sees the opening weekend grosses, she’ll be glad you did it.’”

To which Diamond answered: “She won’t live long enough to see opening weekend.”

“I don’t wanna hear any more talk like that.”

“But—”

“I’m the older brother here! And the star!”

So now Diamond was in California, cooling off at her ranch north of L.A. Probably throwing avocadoes at the coyotes. I was glad when she left because I was tired of following her every time she left Casa Senterra.

“Make sure she doesn’t go near Grace,” Stone ordered.

I didn’t tell him I’d been tracking Diamond for days, already. She only drove north of town toward Bagshaw Downs once. Wearing a John Deere tractor cap and sunglasses, I followed her in an old pick-up truck.

She stopped at a deeply wooded intersection where the main road met a side lane named Bagshaw Downs Road. Almost every old road in the county was named after somebody and their home, about half of them Bagshaws. There were no Vance Roads, not even a dirt trail. Anyway, I watched from a distance as Diamond sat at the wheel of her Hummer. I could just make out her fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Contemplating what to risk, how much her brother would be mad at her if she stormed Grace’s ancestral home, and, probably, whether or not Grace would send her flying into another box full of horseshit.

Diamond turned the Hummer around and roared back toward town. I pulled my cap low, got a glance at her stiff-mouthed face as she went by, and blew out a long breath of relief. Then I drove up Bagshaw Downs Road to see Grace Land for myself.

Bagshaw Downs lay north of town, above the sleepy ribbon of Yahoola Creek, in a fine, broad valley surrounded by a small kingdom of pastures, well-kept fences, fancy quarter-horse barns, hayfields, and wild streams. From the top of a ridge I could see the center of that paradise through the forest. I saw a stately oak grove and an extraordinary flower garden with a lion-headed fountain. At the heart of the garden bloomed a white-columned, portico-fronted, antebellum mansion that fit every glamorous stereotype of an old-South Tara.

The place hypnotized me. Maybe it intimidated me a little, too, but after Angola, I was a hard man to shake. I loved every green, open, free inch of it.
Talk to me
, Vance, I said to Grace’s dead husband.
This place scared the hell out of you, didn’t it? Wide-open places scared you the way closed ones scare me
.

Bagshaw Downs. One of the earliest Bagshaw pioneers had named it that, proclaiming his people a kind of new American old English aristocracy. It was so beautiful, so watercolor-soft and pastoral that a kid might expect bunnies from Beatrix Potter to hop across the lawn.

Ladyslipper Lost was back there. Harp Vance was buried back there.

Grace had guts. She’d never quit fighting for her dead husband’s reputation, and she was right to fight. Harper Vance was everybody’s hero. I was no one’s.

In the meantime, the coast of Alabama nearly washed away on the first full day of
Hero
filming.

“Stay in character, Suzyn! Don’t bite your lower lip, it’ll swell!” a manager yelled at the little redhead playing pre-teen Grace, as they ran through sheets of rain. The kid looked miserable and soaked and scared. I grabbed an umbrella, popped it open and placed it in her shaking hands. “Here, ma petite princess.”

Susan/Suzyn smiled a perfect, even, capped-tooth smile. “Thanks, handsome.” The real Grace had pointy incisors up front—sexy fangs, I thought of them. And no doubt she hadn’t been allowed to flirt with grown men when she was still in a training bra.

“I’m old enough to be your daddy,” I said sternly.

Susan/Suzyn grinned. “My
sugar
daddy.” The manager clucked in disgust and dragged her away.

The boy playing Harp slunk away with his agent holding a coat over his head. The actors playing Grace’s papa and stepmother ran for the safety of the caterer’s tent. Stone just slumped in his director’s chair, ham shouldered and slack-jawed, muttering. The crew got soaked before they could throw tarps over lights, camera, and action.

“I gave up
Hollywood Squares
for this?” yelled the forty-something TV actress playing Helen Bagshaw as young Grace’s drop-dead hubba-hubba grandmama. I snagged her around the waist as she tripped over the soggy skirt of her blue ball gown. Tulle was as itchy as crab netting, only worse. She looked like a big, blue, wilted morning glory. “Hey, gorgeous,” she said as I hauled her to the steps of her RV. “Who are you and where have you been all my life?”

“Boone Noleene. Security for Stone.”

“Come on inside and take care of
my
security, hmmm?”

“Thanks,
chere
, but I got to go get the boss before he drowns.”

She hooted. “Stone can’t drown. He’s full of more hot air than a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon.”

I set her on her RV’s doorstep then bolted through the downpour. The crew was running every which way, saying bad things about Alabama, rain, and people’s mothers. I missed Tex and Mojo, who would have stayed calm. They’d been left behind to guard Casa Senterra. I missed Dahlonega. I missed being near Grace. Kind of pathetic, I know—a grown man missing a woman who barely knew he was alive. But there I was, missing her.

I popped an umbrella open and held it over Stone’s head. He stood on the front lawn of his Alabama Tara, yelling instructions to the crew; in khakis and a bush hat he looked like a body-building
bwanna
in some old
Tarzan
movie. Nobody’d warned him that the brim of the bush hat was no match for a Gulf coast frog-swamper. The brim suddenly curled up like a tongue, front and back. Water drained down Stone’s chest and back. When I accidentally bumped it with the umbrella handle the brim collapsed completely. Water doused him.