Charming Grace (14 page)

“Where the hell have you been?” Stone yelled. He peered out at me from the center of his wilted khaki hat.

“Helping the girls. It’s a rule on the
Titanic
: Women and children first.”

“Very funny. Let’s make a run for it. Cover me.”

We hauled ass to his RV.

“Sit!” he ordered, when we got inside a custom bus, which was outfitted like a Rockefeller’s hunting cabin. He threw a handmade silk quilt around himself and sank into a leather armchair. But I continued to stand in the middle of the marble-countered kitchen, dripping on the real Italian ceramic tiles. Stone’s on-location RV was the size of a Greyhound Bus. Sometimes I subbed for the drivers, and it was like steering a house. On the walls, among swords, antique rifles, Army Ranger insignia and posters from Stone’s movies, were pictures of Kanda, the girls, his son, Leo, and Diamond. There was even a framed picture of me, Tex, Mojo, and Stone outside a studio press conference for a sci-fi flick of his called
Viper Platoon
. Stone was dressed in shiny green armor with a pair of silver antennae sticking out of the helmet. Me, Tex, and Mojo wore dark suits and sunglasses. We looked like hit men guarding a big green fly.

“Would you sit the hell down?”

I tossed a kitchen towel on the floor and stood on it. “Nah. I need to drain.”

“Stubborn Cajun. You’re still pissed I fired you over the gravel thing.”

“No, I’m used to it.”

“I’m giving you a raise.”

“You give me a raise every time you fire me. I don’t need it.”

“Hell, yes, you need it. You squirrel away every dollar to buy a ranch with.”

“Not just a ranch. A home.”

“For Armand.”

“Yeah, well. To give him incentive to be
homey
.”

“That’s why I want to give you another raise.”

“Look, I don’t need a raise. You overpay me as it is.”

He leaned forward, dripping on the leather and the tile, peering at me with the kind of look that made Hollywood gangstas and fake enemy soldiers and bad-ass space aliens blink. “Are you saying I’m not
allowed
to pay you back for saving my son’s life?”

There had been an incident not long after I went to work for him, with Leo, during a wild canoeing trip down a Colorado river that featured Stone, some of his jarhead Ranger buddies, Leo—just a scrawny teenager trying hard to be a tough dude—and me along to handle the grunt work. Some sad father-son shit had gone down, and I’d stepped into the middle of it.

“I didn’t do that for money.”

I know you didn’t. But shut up and take the raise.”

“All right.
Merci
.”

“
Mercy
, back. Okay, glad that’s settled. Now. Since we’re stuck here like goddamned stranded ducks, we might as well talk turkey. This is a helluva way to start production. Bad luck. Bad signs. Whatdy’a think, Cajun? I say Grace put a hex on us.”

“I don’t think so. Methodists don’t usually do voodoo.”

“She’s a Methodist? How do you know that? That wasn’t in the book.” He grabbed one of his well-thumbed copies of
Hero—An Insider Tells All About An All-American Hero and the Woman Who Made Him
. The
insider
had been some greedy producer from Grace’s morning talk show. A former friend. Grace had confided a lot of things to her, then the woman stabbed her in the back by selling a book. Stone then bought movie rights to the book, which gave him plenty of details he could use without legal hoorahs to stop him. Ain’t the world grand?

Under the logo,
New York Times Bestseller
, the cover showed a big picture of Grace and Harp taken at some TV shindig. Grace, in a classy black gown, looked like a million dollars with red-haired sugar on top. Harp looked like a back-alley fist-fighter who never felt good in a suit surrounded by four walls. She had twined both her hands around his arm, almost like she was steadying him or keeping him from bolting. He didn’t look at the camera. He looked at
her
, like all the lights would go out if she ever left him.

“Methodist?” Stone was still muttering, skimming through the book. “Where’d you hear that?”

“When I was temporarily fired I spent my mornings at the
Wagon Wheel
and people talked to me. The crack-necks in Dahlonega are friendly to us fellow crack-necks.”

“
Shaddup
. What’s the
Wagon Wheel
?”

“A good meat-and-three restaurant with dead animals on the wall. I sat in a booth under the biggest deer head, and I drew a crowd.”

“They knew you worked for me?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of famous since the gravel pile.”

“Hmmm. You’re southern. They’re southern. They see you as one of them.”

“Yeah, we all carry an I.D. card.”

“So people talked to you about Grace? What did they say?”

“That next time she might load the shotgun.”

He groaned. “You think she would?”

“Nah. She’s not the type. Waving a loaded gun around wouldn’t do justice to her husband’s memory. He didn’t like guns. He was a knife man. Do-your-own-dirty-work type. I figure you’re safe as long as she doesn’t pull out a Bowie.”

“Look, we’ve
got
to get her on our side. I think you’re the perfect man for that job. I figure it this way:
Use your charm
. You’ve got that Cajun
savoir fairy
.”

“It’s
savoir faire
.”

“That’s what I said.
Savoir fairy
.”

“Her husband was a lawman. I’m not exactly her type.”

“Her husband was a loner who would have ended up dead or in prison except for her. I say him and you have a lot in common. She likes you. She sent you my sister as a present.” Stone clapped his hands. Rainwater spritzed the air. “So I want you to go back to Georgia. Go back
now
. Without me and the crew there, things’ll be quiet. Go talk to Grace. Make nice. See if you can get to know her. Get her to take you to Ladyslipper Lost. I want to know what that place looks like.”

He lifted caterpillar brows that were going gray except for a hard-working stylist, who dyed them brown to match the new hair plugs. The brows spoke.
Go. Make nice. Protect my movie from that woman. Get into her woods
.

This was the man who hadn’t known me from Adam when he decided I was worth helping; the man who’d had a limo waiting for me when I walked out of prison. This was the man who’d given me respect and a chance to make good for myself and Armand—big money, high living, plus the promise of a bodyguard job for Armand as soon as he got paroled. If anything would keep Armand away from temptation, living the high life as a movie star’s knuckle-cracker was it. Why Stone cared so much about me and my bro was beyond me. But I did my damnedest to deserve that loyalty.

I had to stall.

“I’ll go see if she’ll talk to me. I’ll make nice. I’ll keep her under control.”

“And you’ll get into those woods, and get me some pictures of Vance’s grave, and the ladyslippers, and the gulch where she found him as a kid.” Stone didn’t wait for me to answer. “Go. Now. By the time I get back for location filming, she’ll be your best friend. And mine! Great!” He clapped his hands together, again. Water spritzed me. A tough communion.

Later, standing outside in the Alabama rain, just standing there getting soaked, I kept thinking about prison and Armand and what was right and what and who I needed to honor and protect and what kind of memories I wanted to remember some day when I was an old man.

There but for Grace go I
.

“Dear Lord,” G. Helen said when she read the part in the script about the dog and the peacock. “How could anyone believe I’d
ever
wear
tulle
?”

My spy in the Senterra camp kept sending me bits and pieces of the script, but couldn’t get the whole file from Stone’s well-protected computer system. G. Helen didn’t comment on the other inaccuracies in the scene. Like the fact that Daddy jerked me down from the tree and took me home and I wasn’t allowed to visit the Downs or see Harp again for a month after the incident. Like the fact that Harp’s weapon wasn’t some Boy Scout pocket knife but an old ice pick he’d found in one of the Down’s barns and honed to a razor point. Like the fact that he hadn’t just fended off the big chow dog that wanted to chew up me and G. Helen’s prized peacock.

That he had stabbed the chow to death with the ice pick.

“You can’t fault Stone Senterra for sugarcoating Harp’s life a little,” G. Helen said.

“Harp fought that dog for ten minutes before he killed him. Harp had to have twenty stitches in his hands and arms. That was the day he first thought of himself as an . . . an
upholder of natural law
. As a protector. Harp wasn’t an animal hater, for godssake. He thought of
himself
as some kind of guard dog. I don’t want to see him portrayed as an ordinary human being.”

“Oh? You don’t like your legends with a side dressing of reality? You do realize George Washington had stinking wooden teeth and Charles Lindbergh sympathized with the Nazis and the Beatles would have broken up even if John had never met Yoko Ono.”

“What in the world does any of that have to do with—”

“People don’t
want
to know the truth about their heroes. They only want the pretty picture. Give people too much detail and they’ll worry it like a scab. It’s important that people have simple, handsome heroes. It inspires them. Don’t you want Harp to be an inspiration? Isn’t that why you started the scholarship fund in his name? Don’t you want to hide the aspects of his life—the abandonment, the poverty, the fears and awkwardness—that isolated and embarrassed him?”

“Yes, but—”

“You can’t have it both ways. Either the movie is a travesty because it shows how he grew up, or it’s a travesty because it glosses over how he grew up.”

“It does both. It’s dishonest and invasive at the same time.”

“Yes, but it’s still a memorial to Harp. Don’t sweat the details, my darling, devoted, deranged granddaughter.”

“Are you suggesting I
endorse
Senterra’s cheesy film?”

“I’m suggesting that you can’t stop the movie so you might as well attempt to influence it for the better.”

“Harp would never forgive me.”

“Harp’s dead, and dead people understand.”

I went silent for several long, painful seconds. “Harp is not dead,” I said finally. “I never had a cause to believe in until I found him in the woods, and as long as I believe in him I have to fight for the truth about his life. And as long as I do that, he’s alive.”

“As long as you let his life control yours,” she answered, “you’re dead, too.”

To: Mr. Spock, aka Boone Noleene

From: Your friendly spy, Lt. Uhura, Starship Bagshaw

I hear you’re being sent to put the moves on Grace as Mr. Senterra’s emissary to the Bagshawnian planet.
Fantastique
! (See, I have been practicing my French pronunciations, in your honor.) I have duly asked for and received permission from the captain of Starship Bagshaw, Helen Bagshaw, our ally in subterfuge, to inform you of the following Grace coordinates: Grace will be at Bagshaw Downs, alone, on the morning of June 17
^th
. The estate’s employees will be off for the morning and Helen will be away at a “business meeting” with a mysterious man friend (I’m not authorized to report on Helen’s new squeeze, but after many months of talking to you via these e-mails, I know you can keep a Bagshaw family secret only Grace and I know. So yes, Helen has a hot new honey and Aunt Tess calls him “something I can’t quite put my finger on, yet.” We don’t know much about him, other than that.)

Helen wishes you the best of luck with your sojourn in Grace Land. But Helen told me to relay this order to you: (I quote her verbatim.)

“We’re only doing this for Grace’s good. You better keep Grace out of trouble with Stone Senterra. And make her remember she’s alive.”

That’s all for now. Good luck!
Bon chance
!

Lt. Uhura