Charming Grace Read online

  “And this charming, special town has an equally special name. Dah-LON-ega,” Walters said, getting the name perfect the first time.

  “That’s right,” Stone said. “DAH-la-na-GEE.”

  At any rate, with my translation chores done, I loitered dully by the front gate. An hour ago Diamond had roared out of the property in one of Stone’s Humvees, (“I look big, I think big, I drive big,” he liked to say.) She was touring the town, I guessed, or hunting for squirrels to run over.

  A new crowd of tourists careened toward me along the dogwood-draped sidewalk. They snapped pictures of the pretty Queen Annes and Victorians, then pointed excitedly when they saw Stone’s rented home-away-from-mansion. Click, whir, click. Like grasshoppers with castanets. They snapped the house, and they snapped pictures of Tex and Mojo, who waved. The tourists eyed me but didn’t take my picture; I waved but that didn’t reassure them. In prison a wise man learns to turn his face into a warning mask; the more you can scare some bastard with a cold-blooded look, the less trouble you have. Only one problem—that thing our mamas tell us is true.

  You better smile, poteet, or your sweet little face will freeze in that ugly expression. I used to stand in the exercise yard at Angola staring at the sun to see if I could fry the hard look out of my eyes, but all I got was a tan. I couldn’t smile—at least not a big, open smile—anymore. So I naturally scared people.

  “New tour bus must be in,” Tex drawled. “This is the fifth big crowd today. I think we should do what I did back in ninety-eight, when the boss and Diamond were filming The Kill Zone up in Canada. I was still drinking, back then. I stretched about fifty feet of Crime Scene tape across the driveway to the boss’s private ski chalet. Told the crowd to go away. Scared the shit outta them. ‘Miz Diamond Senterra has done kilt her acting coach and chopped his pecker off,’ I said over a bullhorn.”

  Mojo thumbed an unlit cigarette. “I’d believe that.”

  I shook my head. “Diamond’s had acting lessons?”

  They laughed. I headed toward the sissy picket fence at the front of the lawn, working my face muscles, trying not to chase anybody off with a look. Kids always saw through me with a kind of soft-touch radar, but there were no kids in this particular group.

  “Afternoon, folks,” I started. “Y’all want some pictures, you stand over yonder by the gate. Mr. Senterra’s working, so he can’t come out and sign autographs. But I’ll take your addresses and you’ll get signed pictures in the mail. Personally by him. I’ll see to it—”

  A pickup truck cruised up the little street, pulling a rattling wooden trailer with whitewashed plywood sides and top. The trailer rocked, and I could hear the thud of hooves pounding the walls. What kind of animal was inside? The pickup and trailer stopped along the curb. An old-man driver fiddled with a hearing aide in one ear then yelled out the open window at me. “You Boone Noleene?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Grace Bagshaw Vance sent you some manure for Mr. Senterra. Here’s a note from her.” The old man handed me a small, folded piece of paper. I stepped back, opened the note from Grace slowly, as if it were written on a butterfly’s wing, and read this:

  I owe you a favor. Here it is. P.S. Don’t take any shit off Diamond on my account.

  “You tell Grace I said thanks, sir,” to which the old man nodded and went “Huh?”

  I walked around behind the trailer, frowning. It rocked. I pulled a lynch pin from the latch on the trailer’s doors then stepped back. The doors burst open.

  Ruffled, dirty, sweaty, dusted in dried horse manure, one boot heel missing, her mouth moving sixty miles an hour on words tough enough to peel paint off a fender, Diamond leapt out. “You keep Grace Vance away from me, or I’ll rip her head off and piss down her—”

  “Diamond!” the tourists yelled.

  The whir and click of their happy cameras froze Diamond like a raccoon on a bayou back porch turning over a garbage can. She couldn’t even manage a phony pose-on-the-red-carpet-look-at-my-boobs-in-a-designer-gown smile. She just stood there, staring at those cameras with her mouth open in horror. A breeze lifted manure dust off her like she was a rug that needed spring cleaning.

  “I could get a vacuum cleaner,” I said.

  Her mouth formed silent words. You don’t want to know what they were. Then she teetered to the property’s picket fence, did a side vault over it, and wobbled quickly toward the house on one high heel. More manure dust poofed off of her. Tex and Mojo backed up so fast they ended up in the azaleas.

  “Man, she didn’t look too good,” Tex would drawl later.

  “Didn’t smell too good, either,” Mojo would add.

  I folded Grace’s note and carefully put it away in my wallet for later re-reading and admiring. Somehow, she’d won round one in a cat fight with the saber-toothed Diamond. Then she’d sent Diamond to me as a prize. A gift for me. For my sake. What was she, psychic? I’d have to figure that out, but the details didn’t matter at the moment.

  Hero would be filming in Dahlonega for the next two months. For those two months I was going to be the happiest ex-con with a dilemma in Dahlonega, Georgia, little dah big LON little ega. Whatever happened next, for good or for bad, it would be worth the misery. Some women set a man free from himself. Grace was one of those women.

  For the first time in a long time I looked up into the spring sunshine, and I felt myself really smile.

  PART TWO

  HERO

  DIRECTOR’S SCRIPT AND PRODUCTION NOTES

  PROPERTY OF SENTERRA PRODUCTIONS

  THEFT OF CREATIVE MATERIAL IS A FEDERAL CRIME

  WHOEVER HAS BEEN TRYING TO HACK INTO MY COMPUTER WILL END UP LIKE THAT BRITISH SOLDIER MEL GIBSON CHOPPED TO DEATH IN THE PATRIOT, WHICH WAS NOT MEL’S FINEST FILM WORK, BY THE WAY

  SCENE: Summer, 1980; Bagshaw Downs, a Tara-esque antebellum mansion fronted by a curving cobblestone drive, gardens, fountains, broad oaks. (Access to Downs denied by Helen Bagshaw, so filming will take place at a mansion on the coast near Mobile, Alabama; Georgia mountains in background to be digitally added in post-production.)

  We hear beautiful 12-year-old Grace’s screams, squawks of peacock, and ferocious dog snarls in front gardens; Helen, James, and Candace run out of mansion dressed in evening clothes, Helen in cloud of blue tulle and low bodice; James Bagshaw in tux; big-haired Candace in sleek gown. They race to foot of massive oak. Find 14-year-old Harp (now lanky and handsome but still rough-edged) bloodied, fighting off wild dog with his Boy Scout pocket knife; Grace up in tree, hugging terrified peacock. James chases wild dog away.

  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.