“No kid his age can survive the winter in these mountains,” the sheriff told G. Helen. The fall air was already scented with ice. “All he has are the clothes on his back and a pocket knife.”
“And whose fault is that?” G. Helen leveled a wicked green stare from the behind the fevered stream of a long cigarette. “If that goddamned sister-in-law of mine ever stages another idiotic ambush on the needy children in this county you had better tell me first or be there to protect her from me. Because I will kick her silk-pantied ass. And then I’ll come after you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bagshaw, yes ma’am. I . . . I had no idea, I uh—”
“I’d nearly convinced Michelle Vance to let me help her. I was going to move her and her brother into one of my houses on South Chestatee. She would have stayed in school, gotten a decent part-time job, taken care of her brother just fine, thank you! Just because they’re poor doesn’t mean those Vance kids don’t have pride. They’re not criminals and there was no cause for my mink-brained piss-ant of a sister-in-law to turn them into a project for her holier-than-thou piss-ant-pious ideas of civic duty. She intended to turn Michelle over to the police and cage poor Harp like a wild cub. He was already a borderline case, and now, thanks to Tess, he’s got good reason to tell us all to go screw ourselves.”
The sheriff’s ears turned the color of strawberries. Aunt Tess’s ears, after G. Helen got through with her, looked like medallions of raw steak.
“Grandmother Helen went Green Gold on her,” my cousins (Dad had two younger sisters) whispered. In the mining country of the Georgia Mountains the term “green gold” meant fake gold, fool’s gold, gleaming on top but showing its plain metal underneath, next to the skin. Among Bagshaws, Green Gold was code for G. Helen’s regular lapses into the language of her own low-rent youth. G. Helen had history with a capitol H, most of it forbidden to discuss, even by G. Helen.
“You’re just green-gold like Grandmother,” my cousin Dew taunted. “Harp Vance’ll be kidnapped by aliens out there in the woods. Or eaten by bears. Or maybe he’ll freeze during the winter, standing up like a statue, and that’s how they’ll find him one day. Just his bones, standing there in the woods.” I remember her idiotic comments as if she and the other cousins spoke en masse, like a miniature Greek chorus dressed in Calvin Klein Kidswear. “Anyhow,” Dew et al said, chanting what they heard from their parents (and my good-hearted but morbid father,) “He’s better off dead. He’d just grow up to be trouble.”
I had already punched out two of my cousins. Dew came next. I was turning into the family’s sociopathic tooth fairy. I stood up for Harp. For his skeleton, at least.
“Young ladies do not knock the baby teeth out of their cousins’ mouths, no matter what their grandmothers tell them about giving as good as they get,” Candace lectured.
“Hit the smug little twits harder, next time,” G. Helen whispered.
But her support didn’t change the fact that my cousins were right: Harp Vance was probably dead. Throughout the long winter I looked at the tall, frosted windows at Bagshaw Downs with a misery that made me shiver. Nothing but the clothes on his back and his pocket knife. My only solace was that I knew how good Harp was with that pocket knife, and if anyone could use it to survive in the woods, I told myself he could.
Finally, when spring came, I dreamed about him. I dreamed he was among the ladyslippers, and I had to go look for him.
To the sorrow of many people in my family, I found him.
That day would be remembered in the history of Bagshaws as the moment I left the bounds of forgivable, if troubled, childhood and headed down the less sympathetic path toward adult Bless Her Heartdom.
Chapter 3
Because of me, the focus of our national family reunion stopped being barbecued ribs, bourbon punch and plunky strains of Close To You sung by skinny musicians in white bell bottoms; our celebration no longer centered around the unveiling of more pretentious Bagshaw portraits or mind-numbing speeches from two South Carolina Bagshaws we called The Family Tree Climbers, who linked us to every bigwig from George Washington to Doris Day.
No, because of me the biggest Bagshaw reunion to that date became about helping a lost boy who shamed us out of our well-fed daze. Daddy, G. Helen, and I led a platoon of our relatives to the glen, where all gasped at the site of Harp and his awful leg.
Bless His Heart.
I heard that pitying invocation a hundred times.
Harp, thank goodness, stayed unconscious. Daddy and two other Bagshaw men carried him two miles back through the woods to Bagshaw Downs, and from there we put him in Daddy’s Mercedes and drove him to the small local hospital. His leg survived a tense two hours in surgery. The doctors pronounced him half-dead but salvageable, at least in body. “No ordinary boy could have survived six months in the woods,” a doctor told my father. “The kid’s either a hero or a psych case.”
“I’m betting on the latter,” my father said, and went to wash Harp’s blood and the odor of starvation off his hands.
TV and newspaper reporters showed up that evening, all anxious to exploit Harp’s remarkable story. His legend had begun. So had mine. I posed calmly before the bright lights, answering questions about finding Harper. “Sweetie, you’re a natural show-off,” a female reporter said.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I answered.
I was christened with a new future in more than one way that night. Candace, lurking in the shadows with her make-up kit and hairbrush still cooling from a rapid deployment on my behalf, put an awed hand to her lips as I performed. She whispered to Daddy, “Lord, Jimmy, I’m getting her an agent. She should audition for commercials. Nothing fazes her.”
Harp fazed me. Death fazed me. Loneliness fazed me. Candace just didn’t know.
That evening I huddled worriedly by Harp’s hospital bed, which was lit only by a small pool of light from the headboard lamp. He slept without moving, without even breathing distinctly, his sunken cheeks speckled with small scrapes and bruises, one long, thin leg encased in a cast from the knee down. Out in the hall, I heard Daddy and G. Helen arguing.
“James, your daughter had the guts and the smarts to trek into the woods on what the rest of us would call a childish whim, but she was right, and she found that boy and saved his life. So I say she deserves a say-so in what happens next.”
“Mother, she’s lonely and little odd and she needs help, not encouragement. Candace tries to draw her out with the beauty pageants, but it isn’t working. The last thing we need is for Grace to fall under the influence of some ragged kid who might lead her off into the woods at the drop of a hat. I swear to you I’ll help you find him a good home. But not at Bagshaw Downs.”
“No one leads Grace where she doesn’t want to go. Listen to me. She’s more like Willy than you want to see. You can’t forget Willy and you can’t erase her spirit in Grace.”
“Don’t you think I want to see Willy in her? Don’t you think I’m glad to see my wife in our daughter? But Willy wouldn’t want Grace to be reckless like her, and I don’t, either. For God’s sake, Mother, Willy might be alive if she’d been less passionate about her art and more passionate about her health—”
“James Bagshaw, you cannot blame a burst artery on passion. You couldn’t stop what happened to Willy. No one can prevent a freak tragedy of nature—”
“I despise ‘nature.’ Give me artificial security any day.”
By now I had clamped myself to the inside of the hospital room’s door, which stood open just an inch, enough for me to hear every nuance, including my grandmother’s long sigh. “I’d hoped you’d agree with me,” she said in a tired tone, “but I can see that won’t happen. All right, so be it. I’ve already made my decision, regardless. I’m taking responsibility for Harp Vance. He’s coming to live at Bagshaw Downs.” She paused. “Like it or lump it, son.”
“You do what you have to do, but I will, too. From now on, Grace will only visit the Downs when Candace and I are with her.”
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I clutched the edge of the door. Misery. Though Daddy and Candace had built a big house just outside Dahlonega, I happily spent most of my time at Bagshaw Downs with G. Helen. Daddy traveled a lot in his job as a junior partner working on big corporate law cases for a large Atlanta law firm, and he often took Candace with him. I got to run free with G. Helen.
“Nonsense,” G. Helen said. “Don’t be prissy. I’ll need Grace’s help to keep Harper in line. Did you see how he struggled when he came to in the emergency room while the nurses were cleaning out his jean’s pockets? And then Grace stepped in like a little grown-up woman and said to him, ‘I’ll take care of your pocket knife. I promise you.’ And he quieted down.”
“He was half-conscious and vulnerable, that’s all. Look, I’m not letting my little girl hang out at Bagshaw Downs around a boy no one can control, and that’s that. God knows what he’s capable of.”
“So far, he’s been capable of extraordinary pride and determination.”
“He’s barely literate. His sister was into drugs and God knows what else.”
“God knows a lot of condemning information but not much else, according to you.”
“Mother.”
“I believe Sass, Mettie, T-John and I have sufficed as Grace’s caretakers in the past, haven’t we? If Harp Vance is a threat, I do believe we’ll be able to control him. Not that I think he is a threat. I’m a good judge of character. Some would say too good for their own comfort.”
I held my breath. Mettie and T-John were stalwart farm managers who lived in a small house at the Downs. Sass was G. Helen’s housekeeper. All three watched over me like mother tigers on the Serengeti. Daddy couldn’t deny that.
Or could he? When his silence began to speak volumes, I decided to jump in.
“I apologize,” I said loudly, then popped outside the door. “I’ve been overhearing.” Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
G. Helen and Daddy gazed down at me with arched brows; him young, handsome, and frowning, giving off lawyerly vibes even in rumpled khakis and a golf shirt; her bathing me with a tongue-in-cheek smile, such an auburn-haired showstopper in her fashionable pantsuit of pastel tweed, one long, tanned hand impatiently flicking the white stiletto of an unlit cigarette. “Well, who would have imagined,” my grandmother deadpanned. “Grace, listening at the door.”
“Daddy, you always say people have to give something to get what they want. And you say the law’s not made up of wishes and promises. It’s made up of real collateral and clauses that fix it so people can sue when they’re mad.”
His shoulders sagged. “Honey, no, that’s not—”
“I can work the way your laws work, Daddy. I can give up something to get what I want. I can give you collateral.” I drew myself up formally, attempting to look like an honest plaintiff despite the spring mud staining my clothes with small smears of Harp’s blood. “I hereby do and forthwith state to all the parties of this part that I, Grace Wilhemina Bagshaw, will never complain again, as long as I’m a kid, about being in beauty pageants. I herewith and for your cause do guarantee that I will give my very very best to every talent Candace tells me to practice, even how to smile without swallowing and sing The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow. I’ll wear every fluffy thing she wants me to wear, and I won’t be scared of doing a leap in dance class, no matter how many times I fall down. I’ll work on my tan and say all the right things when the judges ask me why I deserve to be Miss Junior Peach Festival or whatever. I’ll try out for TV commercials, too. Anything that makes Candace happy.”
I clasped both hands together, over my heart, pleading. “And all you have to do, Daddy, is let me be friends with Harp Vance. Because without me he doesn’t have any friends at all. And because—” my voice trembled—“Mother would want you to let me help a poor little boy who loves the ladyslippers just like she did.”
No doubt I won the argument when I invoked my mother. The rims of Daddy’s eyes turned the deep sad color of dark cherries. He was a humorless but adoring father and I loved him as much as he loved me—and as much as we’d both loved my mother. He sat down on his heels in front of me. “Baby,” he said gruffly, “do you know how much your bravery and happiness remind me of your mother?”
I nodded. Tears rolled down my face. “Daddy,” I mewled. “Daddy. I’m not going to get hurt or die. I promise I won’t leave you like Mother did.”
He cried, too, then hugged me.
“If Harp Vance ruffles so much as a hair on her head,” Daddy told G. Helen later, “I’ll kill the little bastard.”
I went back in Harp’s room and sat beside his bed again with my chin propped on my fists, watching him sleep. Harp was not handsome. Not then. He would grow into his big, dark eyes and gangly body, become a solid man and not a wild mountain refugee. He would soften from kindness and education and deep, soul-comforting nights in his own Bagshaw Downian bed with snapshots of me, his sister, and G. Helen on the nightstand. His smile would emerge along with a devastating dimple on the right side of his mouth, and his chopped-off brown hair would become the glossy, well-fed color of a walnut armoire. But he would never be comfortable among my family or the rest of the world, and he would never trust anyone, really, but me. No, Harper wasn’t handsome or charming in the easy ways, but then again, he didn’t have to be. I had already looked into the future and decided he would match his heart.
“I have to go,” I told my sleeping prince. “But I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t you dare try to escape. You can’t get away from me.” It would not be the last time I’d threaten or bully him for his own good.
Harp’s eyes fluttered. He stared at me, half-awake and groggy, before his dark gaze shifted. He took in the shadowy room with a horrified expression that twisted my stomach. We existed in its center, under a small umbrella of sepia light. “Don’t let nobody turn out the light,” he whispered. “I can’t stand to be alone in the dark no more.”
I gasped. Harp Vance was afraid of the dark—one of his many small, painful peculiarities, like loving glossy Santas and believing I was an angel. I thought of all those lonely mountain nights in the pitch-black woods. What that must have done to him. How much darkness he’d endured. Nobody but him in his darkness, he thought.
I opened my Barbie purse and pulled out the ladyslipper he’d been clutching when I found him. ““Look what I have! I saved her for you. G. Helen got me some wet paper towels and a little plastic bag full of dirt, so look! She’s been watered and she’s all perked up! She says she’s feeling much better, thank you.”
He watched in dull amazement as I set the battered little orchid in a water cup on his nightstand. “You’re plain crazy, you know.”
“No. I’m peculiar. That’s much more interesting.” I pointed to the orchid. “She’s your angel. She’ll stay right here and make sure you’re just fine whenever I’m not around to look after you. But she needs a name. You have to name your angels, otherwise they won’t know to come when you call.”
He frowned in groggy silence. “Dancer,” he said.
“Dancer. Oh, that’s beautiful! Perfect!” I carefully put one hand over his and whispered, “Dancer and me, we’ll always be here. You’re not alone in the dark. Not anymore.”
Finally, he smiled.
HERO
SCRIPT AND DIRECTOR’S NOTES
PROPERTY OF STONE SENTERRA
WHOEVER YOU ARE, DO NOT TRY TO GET INTO THIS FILE, AGAIN!
DAHLONEGA: Classic small town, nice little state college, lots of trees, big old houses, historic square. Mayberry with money. Kids on sidewalk in front of the fudge shop, (note to self: order more chocolate pecan fudge,) old people sunning on the courthouse lawn, ROTC cadets practicing salutes. In the mountains outside town there’s the U.S. Army Ranger Camp. Kickass bastards. God I love those guys.
SCENE: Fade in on storefront hardware store, 1970’s, morph to same storefront, 2002. Now a café and wine bar. Do Drop In, a sign says in a shop window next door. Harp Vance
and GBI partner Grunt Gianelli walk into an ice cream parlor.
HARP
(to clerk)
This is my new partner. He’s from New Jersey. He’ll probably ask for ‘a soda pop and a strawberry ice.’ He means a Coke and a slushie.
Note to self: No. Grunt speaks first. I play Grunt. Grunt always speaks first.
Second Note to self: Tell Boone he’s not really fired. AGAIN.
Chapter 4
“Tell us about your husband’s home town, Mrs. Vance,” reporters asked me after Harp died. “What made it so special to him?”
“No one but me could find him here,” I said. “He liked it that way.”
Dahlonega sprawls over a high, rolling knoll with views of blue mountains and misty valleys. Small homes and businesses, backyard gardens, churches, ball fields and a Wal-Mart are scattered among a blanket of old trees over old mine shafts and legends of untapped gold veins. North Georgia College curls along one side of downtown like a good-hearted dog laying close to a fireplace; there are no fences, no serious security gates, and no sense that the tough old military school has minded adding women and liberal arts over the years. A couple of fast roads zip down to Hwy. 400, the four-lane headed south to Atlanta, but otherwise the roads outside town are narrow and quiet, sneaking like veins into the surrounding ridges and hollows and creek valleys, where even smaller, often graveled, lanes feed life to the farthest edges of the peaceful state of mind that is Lumpkin County.
Dahlonega had been the center of celebrity attention before, but nothing like Stone Senterra. Before Stone, Dahlonega, Georgia’s major brushes with fame had been Mark Twain, Susan Hayward, and a corny silent western titled Tom Brown and the Shady Valley Gang.
Ride fast, boys! Black Bart’s escapin’ up the ridge to that old west town that’s really a bunch of shacks left from an Appalachian gold mine. Watch out for the placer trenches and the mercury residue!