Word Gets Around Part 21

Miss Beedie nodded benevolently. "Why sure, sweetheart." She handed the bucket to me, and the three of us started along the path-Miss Beedie walking with her cane, me carrying the bucket, and Pastor Harve with his elbow crooked in mine. We moved slowly over the uneven ground as the sun grew high and hot overhead. On the hill, Caney Creek Cemetery cradled aging monuments beneath a pecan grove. The aromas of honeysuckle and antique roses hung in the air, a comfortable blanket of scent that, were it visible, would have been soft shades of gray and blue, with lacy calico around the edges.

"Harvard's over there by the big tree," Miss Beedie said, but she needn't have told me. I could already see the climbing roses growing over Harvard's resting place, a rich spray of green and red twining over the milk-colored monument and spilling onto the ground, searching for new places to take root. When we reached the graveside, Miss Beedie picked up a vase of daisies that had wilted in the heat. I replaced them with the bucket of fresh flowers.

"There you go, love," Miss Beedie said, then slowly bent and kissed Harvard's monument. My eyes burned and spilled over. How hard must it be for them to come to this place every week, leave flowers on Harvard's grave and miss him over and over again?

"I'm sorry," I choked. "I'm so sorry. I wish I could ... " My voice snapped like a twig under too much weight. I wish I could go back and change things. We shouldn't have driven across. It wasn't worth it. I should have stopped Danny, made him turn around. ...

I felt myself sinking, returning to the black s.p.a.ce where the what ifs overshadowed everything, where the guilt made surviving just that-surviving. Nothing more.

Brother Harve took my hand, encased it in a circle that trembled, yet was strong. "Harvard's work was done." His voice was low and soothing, confident. "He's up there, singin' with the angels. He don't hurt, and he ain't tired, and he ain't sad, and he ain't ever gonna shed another tear. You know that, Lauren Lee."

I nodded, because I did know. I believed it. I had faith in it, yet at the same time, I wanted things to be different. I wanted Harvard to be here with his parents, with his children. I didn't want him to miss what was here for him on Earth.

"Only our heavenly Father knows our time to go," Pastor Harve went on, and I wondered if he was talking to me or to himself. "He who loves, and hopes, and forgives. You know you been forgiven, Lauren. You know you been forgiven by the Lord and by this man layin' here in the ground. Harvard loved you so much, he walked into the water for you. If it was you or him, he woulda chose to go. He wouldn'ta wanted to live knowing he couldn't save you." He squeezed my hand, brought it to his lips, and brushed my fingers with the gentle kiss of forgiveness, then let go. He and Miss Beedie turned away and started down the hill arm-in-arm, leaving me there to make my peace with the man who'd given his life to save mine.

I sat down beside Harvard's grave, said good-bye, whispered a thank-you that seemed inadequate. Then I closed my eyes, let forgiveness wash over me and drive away the voices that came from all the darkened corners of my soul. So many times, I'd tried to come to this point and failed. I'd tried to forgive myself for what had happened. But sitting by Harvard's grave, I finally understood. It wasn't within my power to forgive myself. I'd already been forgiven. All I could do was accept it.

The trees cast long afternoon shadows over Harvard's resting place as I took two roses from the bucket and left the cemetery behind. Driving home, I stopped at the low-water crossing again, stood in the current and let it wash around my feet. I kissed the roses, smelled their scent, then lowered them to the water and let them go. They floated away like tiny ships on a journey to someplace new.

Leaving the crossing behind, I felt my lungs fill with breath, become buoyant for the first time in a long time. The day seemed bright, and perfect, and filled with possibility. I took my time driving back to the hotel, just enjoying the feeling of being back in this place I loved, of embracing it again, of finally being home.

My reverie lasted until I reached the Daily Hair and Body. Aunt Donetta, Imagene, and Lucy were waiting there. Before I was even in the door, Aunt Netta captured me and began relating the latest Horseman drama, and the fact that they were to meet "M. Harrison Dane himself" at the Daily airport and entertain him until Nate could find Justin and get back to town. So far no one had heard from Nate, and Dane was due in less than thirty minutes.

"You better run up and get changed!" Aunt Donetta fanned her hands in the air, then waved toward my soiled church clothes. "Land's sakes, Puggy. Today wasn't the day to take off wanderin'. Let's go. Imagene, get the pecan pie. Lucy, you better grab a brush, a comb, and a wet rag ... and an extra cowboy hat, just in case we need it. Let Bob know to get the barbecue out there. And call Harlan. Tell him Kemp's back in town, and he said he'll drive the school bus."

I didn't even bother to ask what the bus was for, or how my brother had somehow become involved. I just hurried off to my room to change clothes before Aunt Netta could blow a gasket. I'd tell her about my visit with Pastor Harve and Miss Beedie later. Right now, there was business to tend to, and somehow it involved pecan pie, barbecue, and a cowboy hat. In Daily, pretty much everything did.

Twenty minutes later, we were ready for the trip to the airport. My Durango was second in line after Imagene's van, and behind us the squatty half-sized school bus the Dailyians lovingly called the Bean rumbled and whined in idle protest at having been awakened on a Sunday afternoon for special duty. The Bean was covered with finger-in-dirt graffiti after having been at baseball camp all week with Kemp and his team. Behind the wheel, my brother looked like a deer in the headlights. "You just don't know what you've missed around here this week," I told him, and he shook his head ruefully.

"Looks like it," he said, his dark eyes droopy and tired as he watched Aunt Netta and Bob load the last of several coolers into the van. "What's the food for?"

"You probably don't want to know." As far as I could tell, part of Aunt Netta's plan was to ply the M. Harrison Dane contingent with country cookin' and lots of pie if we couldn't produce Justin Shay.

"I probably don't," Kemp agreed, pulling off his baseball cap and scratching his head. "Tell me why we need the bus again?"

Aunt Netta was pa.s.sing by and answered the question. "You know them Hollywood types. It's just like on TV," she said, then buzzed away to make sure the pecan pies were securely positioned.

Kemp shrugged helplessly and relaxed in his seat, letting the chaos continue around him. Having been involved in a few Donetta Bradford schemes before, he knew it was usually better to sit back and keep your head down than to try figuring things out.

By the time we headed for the airport, Aunt Netta's face was covered with perspiration, she and Imagene weren't speaking, and Lucy was pointing and hollering at everyone in j.a.panese. Luckily, they departed for Operation Dane in three different vehicles- Imagene in her van, Lucy with Bob in the Daily Cafe truck, and Aunt Donetta in the Bean, which meant there wasn't much chance of Kemp falling asleep behind the wheel.

When we arrived at Daily Air, Dane's plane was just turning the corner by the hangar. The stairs came down, and a man who looked like a pro wrestler squeezed through the opening. He descended to the tarmac and checked out the lay of the land, his burly arms akimbo, as if he thought he might need to put someone into a chokehold. He seemed surprised that there was no gaggle of press and paparazzi on the runway-just a ragtag group of Dailyians gathered outside the Bean and several interested Herefords looking on from the pasture next door.

A little Asian girl appeared in the doorway of the plane. Seeing the Bean, she pointed and tugged someone's arm, trying to get down the stairs to the big yellow vehicle. The arm led to Dane's wife, Monique, whom I recognized from countless movies and magazine covers. She was smaller than I thought she'd be, slender and willowy, dressed in a silk tank top, loose cotton pants, and sandals. A spray of long dark hair swirled in the breeze of the dying engines and circled her shoulders. She smiled as the girl pulled her down the ramp, then at the bottom, Monique scooped her daughter up and listened while the child chattered. Three more Dane kids of varying sizes and different nationalities, several nannies, more security, and various other personnel followed her off the plane.

Dane exited last. He was more una.s.suming than I'd expected, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, sungla.s.ses, and loafers. A blond-haired boy of about seven walked beside him. I'd seen the boy in a People magazine article about Dane's family. He was their eldest, adopted from an orphanage somewhere in the former Soviet block. He held his father's hand and looked timidly around the airport, his gaze settling on the wandering welcome committee of Hereford cows, then snapping toward us when Aunt Netta called out a greeting.

"Howw-dee-ee-e!" Her voice echoed across the empty s.p.a.ce and reverberated off the buildings, causing the Dane babies to swivel in the arms of their nannies, following the sound.

Completely unintimidated by the gaggle of security, Aunt Netta marched across the tarmac and performed the Daily, Texas, version of a Hawaiian welcome, handing out kisses and handshakes. Instead of dropping leis over the children's heads, she crowned them with Amber Anderson souvenir cowboy hats. While the stunned group tried to figure out how to respond, Aunt Netta waved toward the Bean with a grand flourish intended, I guess, to present our redneck limo with some amount of flair. "We brought along some transportation we thought the kids'd get a hoot outta. Y'all come right on, y'hear? We'll just pile in like nuts in a squirrel hole. The more the merrier. Welcome to Daily, Texas!"

Chapter 22.

Nathaniel Heath If not for the teenage clerk at the Wall's Pharmacy counter, all hope would have been lost. There was no sign of Justin when I got to the store, and the clerk rolled her eyes when I asked if a prescription had been filled for Justin Shay.

"Yeah, right," she said. "George Clooney was in here a while ago, too. It's been a big day."

I told her Justin Shay was my uncle who had dementia and wasn't supposed to be out alone, and yes, I realized he had the same name as the famous guy.

Her mouth opened in a silent Oh. She took pity on me and made some phone calls, then located Justin's prescription at another store on the other side of town. He hadn't picked it up yet. She was even kind enough to draw me a map. I gave her the number to my cell phone, even though the low- battery indicator was beeping. She said she'd call me if she heard anything more about the prescription.

I tried not to theorize on why Justin, who was an hour ahead of me, hadn't picked up the meds. Maybe he'd changed his mind ... maybe he was lost or stuck in traffic, maybe he'd stopped off for a burger, maybe he was headed for the airport, maybe the Horse-manmobile had broken down. ...

Maybe he'd found enough pills in his luggage to zone out completely. Maybe he was pa.s.sing out behind the wheel somewhere right now. Maybe he was about to drive off another cliff. I wouldn't be there to stop him this time.

I pictured the monster truck lying in a ditch, a heap of twisted, smoldering metal.

He wouldn't do that. He'd do what he always did when life got too heavy for him. He'd medicate himself until he couldn't feel anything.

What if this was the time he took one pill too many and didn't wake up?

The PHD truck belched and wheezed, zipping through neighborhoods and around cars like a stunt vehicle in an episode of Miami Vice. A metallic squeal announced my pa.s.sing as the post drill created a pendulum above the bed, causing other drivers to move out of the way and gape in sheer amazement.

I rocketed over a hill and saw the second Wall's Pharmacy ahead, as my phone rang. "Hey." The girl from the first store reported, her voice high and excited, "Your uncle just picked up his prescription. It showed up in the computer as filled. I called the store, and they said he used the drive-through."

"Thanks." I hung up and stepped on the gas. The truck coughed and flooded out, then roared back to life with a screech of tires and a rattle of tools. One more block, just one more block ...

Please, I know he's an idiot, but let him be all right. Make him stay put until I get there. Send down a flat tire. A flat tire would be good. I realized I was talking to someone. G.o.d, I guessed. He was probably shocked to hear my voice coming from the PHD mobile, but then, He was probably shocked to hear my voice at all.

I checked the clock. Dane would be arriving anytime. The phone beeped a low-battery warning, then died, as if to punctuate the thought that there was no point calling home base to see what was happening. So far, I didn't have any good news to report.

The truck sputtered again as I rounded the last corner. There in the parking lot, in all its airbrushed glory, was Justin's vehicle. Even though it was hard to miss, towering over normal cars, I blinked, and blinked again, afraid it would disappear like a mirage. I felt a rush of grat.i.tude, which quickly ebbed, leaving a mixed debris of anger and desire to drag Justin out of the truck and lay a right cross on him. Idiot. Jerk. Moron. Loser ...

Murderous impulses replaced the fluffy benevolence of prayer as I skidded to a halt, trapping Justin's truck between a lamppost and my vehicle. The PHD truck coughed and sighed, sounding exhausted as I turned off the engine.

I was out of my ride and climbing up to the cab of the Horse-manmobile before my truck could sputter into silence. Justin barely reacted when I yanked open the pa.s.senger side door. He wasn't doing anything, just sitting there with the prescription bottle and his hand full of little white pills.

"Stop it!" Leaning across the seat, I smacked his forearm, sending everything skittering through the truck. The bottle collided with the dashboard, and pills rained against the seat and the floor like hailstones. "You idiot! What are you doing?"

He sat staring at his hand for what felt like an eternity. Maybe he's already too stoned to know I'm here. ... I pictured sitting at the hospital while the doctors forced charcoal down his stomach and pumped it out. You'd think once or twice through that routine would be enough to cure a person.

"Hey!" he complained in delayed reaction, his head swiveling to take in the potpourri of pills. Leaning toward the gearshift, he picked up the bottle and started putting the pills back in one by one.

"Leave it." I s.n.a.t.c.hed the container from his hand and tossed it over my shoulder, sending it clattering into the parking lot. "How much did you take?"

"I didn't take ... anything." The standard denial came in a slurry mix of emotion and indignance as he stretched toward the floor. Air escaped his body in a long sigh, and he hung hunched over his legs like an underinflated superhero balloon. "I just want ... wanted one to ... " The sentence collapsed, unfinished.

Grabbing the back of his shirt, I pulled him upright. He was dressed in his horseman clothes, as if at some point he'd intended to actually go through with the day as planned. "How many did you take?" I demanded again, as his head thumped loosely against the back window gla.s.s. His eyes popped open, then fell closed. His cheeks were wet with tears and salt, his mouth tight. "Look at me, Justin." I shook him, trying to see how dilated his pupils were. "Open your eyes and look at me."

"I didn't have ... take ... any, Nate," he sobbed. "I didn't take ... I just wanted one to ... smooth the edge ... off. I flushed the stuff I had at the hotel. I flushed it the other day." His shoulders rose and lowered, and he seemed like he was falling asleep.

"You're not doing this." Doubling his collar in my fist, I yanked him off the seat with a force that rattled his head back and forth.

"Get out!" he roared and aimed a sloppy right hook in my direction. "Get away from me!" He followed with a jab I barely had time to deflect.

"You're not doing this again. You're not bailing out on this project," I said as the punch collided with the steering wheel and the horn blared.

Through a haze of moisture, Justin gave me a vicious look. "This project was a stupid idea. You should have told me that, Nate. You're like all the rest of them. You just want something. Everybody wants something. Everybody uses everybody. That's what Mama says."

I wasn't sure who "Mama" was. His mother, maybe? In all the years I'd known him, he'd never mentioned her. I only knew about her because I'd overheard a social worker talking to Mama Louise when we were young.

"Mama knows." He punctuated the words with a rueful laugh. "She knows you're just a stupid, worthless little ... She knows." He let his head fall against the window again, stared at me from beneath lowered lashes. "She knows how people are."

It occurred to me to wonder if Justin was having a complete emotional collapse, a nervous breakdown. I'd seen him close to the edge before. I'd seen him topple over it with the help of booze or pills, but I'd never seen him like this. Sober, yet drunk with emotion, incoherent.

I leaned over, tried to get him to focus on me. His eyes were gla.s.sy and dull. "Come on, Justin. You can't buy into that stuff. At some point, you've got to turn off the voices in your head. You know those people in Daily believe in this project. They believe in The Horseman. They believe in you." Somehow, in the s.p.a.ce of a week, we'd come full circle. Now I was the one begging him not to let the project die.

"You're such an ... stupid, Nate. They're just like everybody else. Big town, little town. It's all the same."

"You promised them something." From the corner of my eye, I caught the time on the digital clock. Dane would be there by now. "The whole town is counting on you. They're counting on this project."

Justin's head rolled side to side. "Randall's got a project for me."

"Randall's got garbage for you!" My voice reverberated through the truck. "He's got junk, and he'll bury you in it until you can't get up again. Come on, Justin. This is our chance to do something that matters. Think about all those kids who'll come to that shelter and get to run around in the gra.s.s, and breathe fresh air, and know that life doesn't have to be bad. Think about the people who'll see this film and maybe stop to think about what they're doing to each other. We all get the scars because someone put them there-just like Lucky Strike, right? Just like the horseman. This story means something. It's the start of something. M. Harrison Dane agreed to look at it, for heaven's sake. We've got to be there to show him what this project can mean."

Justin didn't answer, just sat staring out the window, his eyes reflecting the pharmacy billboard and a pa.s.sing cloud.

"It's time. It's time to change things."

He took in a breath, held it, let it out, his stare still gla.s.sy and unfocused. "Amber wants ... she said I should go to ... to some rehab ... some ... stupid place to do rehab and pray. I called her on the ... with the pay phone. ... I asked her to go back to LA with me, and-" he laughed ruefully, shaking his head-"she told me I didn't need her-I need G.o.d ... and ... and more stupid rehab."

Good for Amber. She was smarter than I'd given her credit for. She knew enough to realize that fixing the broken parts of Justin Shay was a job for someone bigger than she was. "I think she's right," I said flatly. "After we convince Dane to attach himself to this deal, there's going to be lag time while we work on the studio, a.s.semble the production team, and finish the script. I think you need to spend that time in rehab. The first step toward getting your life right is getting off the pills."

"Pppfff!" He spat. "You sound like her. You gonna pray for me, too? That's what she said-that they'd all pray for me here."

"I think they will." If Daily prayers weren't answered, I couldn't imagine what kind might be. "These people love you, Justin. They care about you. I care about you. I don't want to see you flush your life down the toilet. I want to see you give this project all you've got. I want to see you get in touch with Steph, see about Brody and Bryn. They deserve to know they've got a dad out there who cares about them enough to get off the stuff, make a decent life. You can't keep running out on them like your mom ran out on you. You can't. You know, and I know, if you keep doing what you're doing, sooner or later you'll check out-with the pills, in the car, whatever-and you won't be here for them at all. Deep down, you know that, or you wouldn't have left LA to come here in the first place."

Justin rolled his head to the side, turning his face away. Folding his hand into a fist, he tapped his knuckles against the bridge of his nose, slowly, rhythmically, as if he were trying to block out everything else in his head. Finally, he stopped, and I was afraid he'd fallen asleep. Then I decided that might be a good thing. I could stuff him in the pa.s.senger seat, head for Daily, and hope a little rest and a forty-mile drive would put him in a better frame of mind.

He muttered a few words I couldn't understand, and then, "My truck won't ... It won't start. I think it's out of gas."

I felt something between a laugh and a sigh of relief, and then the vague realization of an answered prayer, however strange. That's what you get for praying his truck would break down, doofus. "We can go in mine." I hope. I hope the PHD mobile's got enough fuel for a return trip. On the way down, I'd discerned that the truck ran on a propane tank in the bed. I had no way to put fuel in it, nor would I have known how.

"I left the script back at the hotel."

"I brought another one for you." After the dramatic conversation, it was a surprisingly nondramatic ending. "Let's go."

Nodding, Justin took the key from the ignition, then looked around at the pills. I waited to see if he would grab one or two. He seemed to think about it, then finally just brushed them out of the way and climbed down from the truck, little white pills falling off of him like rain. I met him at the PHD mobile.

"You came in this?" he asked, eyeing the giant corkscrew suspended over the flatbed.

"It was all I could get on short notice."

"Is it gonna make it back?"

"I hope so." Climbing into our ride, I turned the key and the engine wheezed, wheezed, wheezed, then coughed, squealed, and grumbled begrudgingly to life. "Buckle up." I grabbed the proposal packet from the dash, where it rested on a pile of receipts and some drawings of Justin's ranch gateway. "This is going to be a wild ride."

We returned to Daily in record time, considering that the truck took forever to rev up to third gear and was moody about going into fourth. We didn't talk. I didn't want to, and Justin was occupied with the proposal-getting focused, I hoped. I left him alone, kept my complaints about the traffic and the truck to myself, because I had a sense that any little thing could upset the horseman's tenuous return. I hoped that, when we got to the ranch, he was up to the task. He was going to have to sell Dane on the project, and to do that, he needed to be fully lucid, on top of his game.

When we rolled through Daily, the place looked strangely deserted. The stores were closed, which probably wasn't unusual on a Sunday, but even the Daily Cafe had shut down. The lack of atmosphere on Main Street was disappointing. I wanted Dane to see Daily as it really was. In the treatment, I'd set several scenes in town.

"Who died?" Justin poked his nose out of the script long enough to look around.

The horseman, I'm afraid, I thought, but I didn't say it. A haunting possibility formed in my mind-one in which Dane, upon arriving in Daily and finding The Shay conspicuously absent, had gotten back on the plane and taken off. Now everyone in town was at home, mourning the demise of the film project.

I left off considering the worst case scenario as we sped through town and took a left before the Buy-n-Bye. The post truck blew smoke rings, the gears grinding and the auger swinging in a squeaky pendulum, ticking away the minutes like a giant clock. I tried to think positively, to believe that Dane, now in Daily for almost an hour, was happily enjoying a tour of the ranch, so enthralled with the ongoing construction and plans for the future foster shelter that he hadn't even noticed his host was nowhere to be found. Maybe Amber had made it back from her publicity trip and she was crooning a little southern gospel to entertain everyone.

It was a nice scene, charming to imagine, if hard to believe.

My knuckles drummed impatiently on the steering wheel as we skidded around corners and chugged up hills, me downshifting repeatedly to make it to the top and Justin shooting me irritated looks because he was trying to study the packet.

"I think I'm sick," he complained as we b.u.mped through a low-water crossing, the back and forth motion making the post drill almost turn a three-sixty.

"Don't you get sick in here," I said, as if by threatening him I could prevent it. "I mean it, Shay. You keep it together. We're almost to the ranch."

The little church and Amber's house whizzed past the window. A couple miles farther, and we'd find out if there was still a chance or if all was lost.

Justin swiped an arm across his forehead. "Oh, man, I'm gonna hurl. Stop here."

"Hold it." I wondered if he had any concept of the dire nature of our present situation. We were ridiculously late. We had only about two daylight hours left to woo Dane, if he was, by some slim chance, still present and even remotely woo-able.

What were the odds of that?

"Stop the car!" Justin demanded, slamming his fist against the door. "I said I don't feel good."

"I don't care!" One more mile, just one more mile. "Cowboy up, already." I was surprised to find myself spouting the cowpoke code, but at the moment, I was willing to try anything.

"You sound like Willie."

"Well, Willie's right." I sh.o.r.ed up the crumbling walls of Fort Hope as the ranch came into view. "And by the way, cut the guy a break. If you had cancer, you might not want to broadcast it to everybody, either."