Charming Grace Read online

  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.

  “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 17th. 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

  My snitch, ‘Lt. Uhura,’ was a major Deep Throat inside the Bagshaw family, but I had no idea who she might be. She’d started writing to me by e-mail a couple of months before filming started.

  “Mr. Noleene, Helen says to tell you,” one of the early notes relayed, “that she intends to keep Grace out of jail. Helen worries that Grace will cross the line and actually hurt Mr. Senterra. If you’ll help us prevent that, we’ll help you.”

  “Grace is safe with me,” I typed back on the laptop I used to send Armand notes at Angola. I type like a gorilla. Big fingers, hunt and peck. Plunk, plunk. But I come across okay. Honesty beats typos, every time.

  “You sound like a gallant man,” Helen answered by way of Uhura. “We’ve heard good things about you. We have sources. We hear you’re a gentleman and a knight of the realm.”

  “Just a hired head thumper from the swamps,” I typed back, wondering who the hell was secretly talking me up.

  “Humble, too, Helen says,” Uhura wrote back. “We like that in a head thumper. Besides, our sources say you’re a thinker, not a thumper.”

  Sources. Spy vs. spy. I tried to find out who their informant was, but so far, no luck. But if Grace didn’t know Helen and ‘Uhura’ were in cahoots for her sake, then who was her spy?

  And who was mine?

  Grace blamed Great Aunt Tess Bagshaw for dropping a dime on the gravel-pile scheme
, but I’d met Tess when Stone schmoozed her at a Ritz Carlton pre-production cocktail party down in Atlanta, and I pegged her as a small-time Bagshaw gossip-lobber, not the person who was sending me info as Lt. Uhura. Ask Tess who Uhura was and she’d probably say a brand of cold cream.

  Tess was nearly a thousand years old and looked like a cross between Queen Elizabeth and a prize-winning poodle with indigestion. “My sister in law, Helen, is no lady,” she told Stone in one of those syrupy bourbon accents that make old Southern ladies sound sly. “Oh, I could tell you tales about her if I weren’t a lady, myself. I feel it’s my duty to represent the Bagshaw family in this enterprise of yours, and to assure you that whatever you wish to say about Mr. Harper Vance is of no never mind to we bloodline Bagshaws—as opposed to being a married-into Bagshaw like Helen, who was just a little nothing when she snared a Bagshaw for a husband—anyway, we never approved of Grace marrying Harp, but of course he proved himself worthy of marrying a Bagshaw, eventually.

  “Of course, Helen thought he was just peachy from the day Grace rescued him in the woods. What a scandal that caused! Grace’s daddy, James, has never really gotten over it. Grace was just obsessed with that ragtag boy from the start, and he loved her like ice cream loves ice. You do know his presence drove a wedge between James and Helen, and James and Grace, and it’s so sad but since Harp died Grace just refuses to forgive her daddy for never liking him. And then his niece showed up. Just showed up. Mika. It’s one of those black names, you know. And you know that . . . well . . . she’s not like us, of course, and it’s quite a shock when visitors spot her in the latest family reunion photo.

  “Which is to say, Mr. Senterra, that there’s always trouble when a good family takes in people like Harp Vance, treating that boy like family, letting him corrupt young Grace and distract her from her goals and education. It’s a testament to good Bagshaw breeding that she turned out so well, anyway. Bless her heart.” The old lady cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered, “Grace’s mother was an artist from Connecticut, you know.”