Falling for Grace

by Robert Farrell Smith

  “All right,” Leonard whined, sitting up. “I’m leaving. Before I go, however, I was wondering if you drove here tonight?”

  “I did,” I answered. “Do you need a ride?”

  “Actually,” he smiled, pulling a small bottle of something out of his muff. “I had a product I wanted to show you.”

  “Leonard.”

  “It cleans your car without any water,” he said excitedly. “You just smear some of this all over your vehicle and then brush it off.”

  “I appreciate it, Leonard, but I’m going to pass.”

  “It’s your future.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way.”

  “I’ll tell you what, though,” Leonard tried again. “I’m walking in on the ground floor of this one. Do you want to know how much money I deposited yesterday just from selling this product?”

  “I don’t suppose I can stop you from telling me.”

  Leonard ignored me, pulling a pen and a piece of paper out of his muff.

  “I’m going to write down a figure here,” he said, biting his tongue as he did so. He then handed me the paper.

  “Fifteen hundred dollars?” I read.

  Leonard just smiled.

  “You made fifteen hundred dollars on this stuff?”

  “Well, not actually, but if I sign you and four other people up before January, I’ll be eligible to win a two-day cruise to Alaska.”

  “So you didn’t make fifteen hundred.”

  “That’s just an example, Trust.”

  “An example of what?”

  “I didn’t come here to be made fun of,” Leonard said, adjusting his muff.

  “Sorry, Leonard,” I said, laughing.

  “So I guess things are going all right with you and Grace?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hear your father’s still gone,” Leonard said casually.

  “He is.”

  “I know I’m not exactly the first person people turn to for help,” he said, blushing shyly, “but if I can do anything for you . . .”

  “Thanks,” I replied, surprised by the offer.

  “You guys got enough food?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “Well, let me know.”

  Before I could say “thanks” again Leonard was gone and Grace was approaching. She sat down in front of me so that I could wrap my arms around her. I pulled her hood down around her neck so as to let loose her red hair. I kissed her on the ear and whispered something about liking her.

  I could hear her smile.

  The choir began singing some somber, reverent song that I didn’t recognize. A few bars into it, however, the three directors fell out of sync. By the time the song was really going it was as if they were singing it in a round. It was like a sacred “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The pianist was desperately trying to keep up with one of the directors, but eventually the task became impossible and she stopped playing altogether. The choir continued to sing three rounds of what was supposed to be a very somber and peaceful piece.

  I noticed Sister Johnson from the ward sitting six blankets in front of us. She seemed to be enjoying the music until her bad eyes focused in on the word that the choir’s sweaters spelled out. She frantically tried to cover her kids’ peepers. Then I watched as she instructed her husband to do something about it. He argued with her a little and then got up and wandered down to the stage. I saw him whisper something to a woman standing on the side with a clipboard. The woman stepped back a few steps and read for herself. She gasped and then in a frenzy tried to sneak on stage to rearrange the sweaters. The choir members were already confused by the round they were singing, and now this woman was tugging madly on selected members and making them move to different spots.

  The lady with the clipboard quickly finished shifting them. They now spelled “crud.” Brother Johnson returned to his wife. She nodded over a job well done, taking her hands off of her children’s eyes.

  Grace bent her head back and kissed me on the underside of my chin—the only spot she could get to from her position.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “I was just making sure you were still there.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of leaving,” I said, sounding sappy. I pulled Grace closer as the choir began to sing “Jingle Bells.”

  “You know, Christmas is only thirteen days away.”

  “I thought there’d be no Christmas,” I joked. “Seeing how the world will end on the seventeenth.”

  “Noah’s not saying it will end, just be disrupted.”

  “And do you believe him?” I asked.

  “No.” Grace smiled.

  I pushed Grace’s hair to the side and kissed her on the nape of the neck. I could feel her respond warmly. I lifted my head to see her amazing profile. Her eyes were softly closed, as if she were soaking in everything that was transpiring around her. I kissed her ear and whispered something about it being such a nice night.

  “Mmmmhuumm” was her only response.

  The choir finished “Jingle Bells” and tore into “Here We Come a-Caroling.” Halfway through the song, however, it became obvious that the choir was now facing a new dilemma. With the reshuffling of members to correct the sweaters, somehow all of the heavier singers had ended up on the back row of the risers. Now whenever those in the front row would lean back, the entire set of bleachers would tilt, lifting a couple of inches off the ground. The singers didn’t quite understand what was going on, thinking that it was simply their beautiful voices making the earth move. Unfortunately, the next song was a fast-paced, get-into-it number. The singers all smiled and swayed. Then in one fluid motion, the whole group leaned back. The risers rose. The entire choir flew backwards, men and women falling on top of and over each other.

  The congregation went wild.

  Well, as wild as a choir congregation could. The concert was temporarily postponed while cuts and bruises were attended to. The singers also took this time to remove their sweaters, seeing how it wasn’t cold enough for them anyway.

  By the time they began singing again, Grace and I were long gone.

  36

  Grainy Days and Tuesdays Always Get Me Down

  December 14th

  Tuesday evening Grace went with my mother and Wendy to homemaking meeting at the chapel. I made myself some dinner and waited impatiently out on the porch swing for them to return. It was a nice night. High above me the sky was clear, and the pinpoint bodies of a million stars were pulsating in the hard black.

  But by 9:00 Grace still had not returned home. I found myself counting headlights as they passed, teasing me with their flashy beams. At 9:30 I went in and lay on my bed. The mattress was soft and warm, and I wondered why I hadn’t been waiting there all along.

  I let my mind wander over the things in my life. Not the least of which was that I was contemplating asking Grace to marry me. We both knew it was coming, and I couldn’t think of a single reason to make it later instead of sooner. I felt very sure of who, and how wonderful, she was. Part of me wanted to wait until she had some schooling. But another part of me thought getting hitched before the semester began was a better idea. My mind buzzed as I considered the possibilities. But I grew sleepy and dozed off before Grace had returned.

  Sometime a little while later I felt hands brush against my face.

  “Mmmmm,” I said, imagining that it was her.

  My imagination could not have been more off.

  “Save it for Grace, Trust,” Leonard said, slapping a piece of duct tape over my mouth just as I opened my eyes. I tried pulling away, but my wrists and legs were taped together. “Sorry about this,” Leonard apologized. “But believe me, it’s for your own good.”

  Leonard tried to lift me out of my bed, but I was too big for him. He pulled a piece of rope from his bag and tied it around my ankles. Then he yanked me off the bed and dragged me out of my room and down the hallway. For a man that was so much smaller than I was, he was amazingly strong. I strug
gled to break loose.

  “Maaaaaaahhhhhhh!” I tried hollering.

  “Shhhhh,” Leonard whispered. “You’ll wake your family.”

  I couldn’t help thinking that was the idea, but it didn’t work.

  Leonard kept dragging. He approached the steps leading down and didn’t slow his pace one bit. With big strides, he hurried me down the steps, the back of my head whacking against each corner. By the time we reached the wood floor at the bottom, I was seeing stars. Leonard noticed Abel’s skateboard. He rolled me up onto it and pulled me out the front door and over to his car, my head dragging against the sidewalk. With a huge heave he shoved me into the back seat of his car and slammed the door. He got in and we drove away. I struggled like mad, willing him to stop and remove the tape from my mouth. I had a few words I wanted to say to him. Eventually he pulled over and turned around to face me. He reached back and yanked the tape off my mouth.

  I wouldn’t need to shave again for a year.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded, rubbing my cheeks.

  “I needed to talk to you,” he said importantly.

  “You could have just called, or rang the doorbell, or thrown pebbles against my window,” I said out of frustration. “I think those stairs gave me another concussion.”

  “I did throw a rock at your window,” Leonard insisted. “But I guess I was tossing it at the wrong room.”

  “What room?”

  “A room in the wrong house,” he added.

  “Leonard,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I didn’t know glass could shatter into so many pieces,” he contemplated, pulling a pocketknife out of his glove box and cutting the tape around my wrists.

  “So, what’s so important?” I asked, wondering if he had yanked me out of bed simply to pitch another product to me.

  “I got something on Noah.”

  “Oh, no,” I waved him back. “I’m done messing with Noah. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not making another fool of myself.”

  “This is different,” Leonard insisted. “You remember Sam the cop who was married to my sister Tina?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Well, I had him run a background check on Noah Taylor. And guess what he found?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, he didn’t find anything exactly, but he discovered a Noah Talmage that had prepared a town in Maine for a coming hurricane he had predicted.”

  “Noah Talmage?”

  “No, do you?”

  “Leonard.”

  “What?”

  “Anyhow,” I prompted.

  “Anyhow, this Noah got everyone prepared and then the warehouse burned down. It appeared to be an accident, but after Noah collected the insurance money, he disappeared. The case is still open in Maine.”

  “And you think that Noah is our Noah?”

  “Could be.”

  “What did Sam say?” I asked.

  “He told me I was watching far too many mystery shows, and to please not bother him at work. So what are we going to do?” Leonard asked.

  “Nothing,” I said adamantly, unwrapping the duct tape from my ankles.

  “Nothing?”

  “There is no way that anyone would listen to a word I said,” I reminded him. “My credibility is pretty pathetic at the moment.”

  “I’d listen to you, Trust,” Leonard said seriously, reaching over the back seat and putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Thanks,” I joked. “But the only way I’m going to believe any of this is if I wake up one morning and the warehouse on Frost is burned to the ground.”

  “All right,” Leonard tisked. “I just feel so sorry for Scott.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just feel real bad about Brother McLaughlin,” Leonard said.

  “All right, Leonard,” I bit. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well,” he said with new excitement, “at this warehouse fire in Maine, the security guard got hurt real bad.”

  “How?”

  “Seems the electricity was off, and the guard lit one of those hundred-hour candles to find the fuse box and kabamo. All the gas that was stored in there with the food and supplies went up in flames. The guard was wounded, and blamed for it all.”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard replied coolly. “But I guess there’s nothing we can do.”

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked in defeat, beginning to wonder if there really might be some connection between our Noah and this fire in Maine.

  “I say we arm ourselves with weapons and hold the warehouse hostage until Noah clears out of town.”

  “Any real suggestions?”

  “We could knock out a couple of the city’s power grids,” Leonard schemed. “Then, in the dead of night, steal everyone’s car keys so that no one will be able to drive. Once that is accomplished. . . .”

  I shook my head.

  “Too complicated?” Leonard asked.

  “Just a little.”

  “I’m tapped as far as ideas,” Leonard said, as if I’d be disappointed in him.

  “I thought you had already run a check on Noah?” I asked, remembering a past conversation with Leonard. “You said he was clean.”

  “I had spelled Noah wrong when doing my search on the Internet,” Leonard said, embarrassed. “Turns out I was getting personal information on some other guy.”

  I sighed in defeat.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I offered. “Let’s just drive over to Noah’s place and tell him what we know. If it’s true, he’s sure to get spooked and leave town. If it’s not, well then, he’ll throw us out, and we can go home and get some sleep. Does that sound okay?”

  “You realize it’s 12:30?” Leonard pointed out.

  “So he loses a little sleep for a change,” I said callously. “If what you say is true, we need to know now.”

  We drove over to the edge of town and back into the Dintmore Hills. I knew Noah was renting a farmhouse in the hills, but I had no idea where it was. Luckily, Leonard had a small hand-drawn map that he had sketched out a few days ago after secretly following Noah home. When we were close enough, we flipped off our headlights and crept over the small crest in front of Noah’s temporary house in the dark. At about two hundred feet away, Leonard stopped the car and shut it off. In the clear night I could easily see the outline of the house and barn next to it. It was a nice-sized home, with a huge square barn sitting no more that fifty feet away. Next to the barn were what looked to be a couple of old grain silos. They stood next to each other, one significantly taller than the other, looking like giant batteries with their weathered tops eroding and gone. A tiny porch light was on at the house. It was a small light, little more than a decoration, but in the moonlight, I could see Noah’s tiny white car parked out front. He was home. With any luck he would still be up.

  I hesitated, both mentally and physically.

  I knew that Noah was capable of lying and deception. But insurance fraud and arson really didn’t suit his sweater-wearing charms. The last thing I wanted to do was walk in there and accuse him again, only to have him blab to Grace about what a complete idiot she had for a boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend if he chose to put it that way.

  “Go on,” Leonard prompted.

  “I don’t know,” I stalled. “Besides, aren’t you coming with me?”

  “And blow my whole dome thing?” Leonard asked incredulously. “Besides, from what you’ve told me, Noah seems to talk a whole lot different when it’s just you and him.”

  “I need a witness, though.”

  Leonard looked hard at the house in front of us.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he whispered, forgetting that there wasn’t another hearing ear within two hundred feet of us. “I’ll slip into that barn and hide. You see if you can talk Noah into having your conversation in there.”

  “How am I going to do that?”

  “That’s up to you,” Leonard
said. “But if you can get him to talk in there, I can witness everything that’s said. Plus if he goes ballistic on you, I can let the cops know what happened afterward.”

  “Thanks for the comfort,” I said.

  Leonard quietly got out of the car and crept across the field and up to the barn. The barn was old enough that getting in presented no problem. After a few moments, I said a quick prayer and drove the rest of the way up to the doorstep. I got out and looked down at my wrinkled clothes. I was thankful that I fallen asleep dressed.

  I walked to the front door, the dry ground shifting under my feet like sheets of paper. I could hear a TV or radio on inside. I readied myself and knocked.

  Thirty seconds later I was staring into the uncertain face of Noah.

  “Trust,” he said uneasily. “What are you doing here this late?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said.

  “Well, I do have a phone,” he snipped. “Why don’t you just run on home and call me in the morning?”

  “Actually, it’s about Maine,” I threw out, wondering if he would bite.

  He flinched ever so slightly. My heart began beating faster.

  “What about Maine?” Noah feigned disinterest, looking over my shoulder to see if anyone else was around.

  “We’re alone,” I said.

  “You came out here by yourself?”

  “Do I have reason to be afraid?” I asked him.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well then, could we just talk a moment?”

  “Maybe we should,” Noah conceded. “Why don’t you come inside.”

  “Actually, I was hoping we could talk out here.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well . . .” I had no idea what to say. My mind whipped wildly as my thoughts fought to align themselves. The best I could come up with was, “My grandmother died in a farmhouse like this one.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said, knowing I had no choice but to complete the lie. “It was awful,” I mournfully explained. “Somehow one of the old walls collapsed, and, well . . . well, she and I were really close.”

  “What’s going on here, Trust?” Noah asked, obviously not buying my story.

  “Nothing,” I insisted. “I’d just rather talk out here.”