Bluegrass Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  He sat in the back, near the door. Even though he’d promised Emily he would come, he felt as though he didn’t belong here. Character Day was all about upstanding citizens and virtue—not exactly his home turf. The guys had given him grief earlier when he’d showed up at lunch in what Ethan jokingly called his “dress pants”—a pair of khakis rather than the ubiquitous blue jeans that were his daily wardrobe. When Ethan pulled out of him where he was going, and that Emily was the speaker, the jokes didn’t let up for a full ten minutes. But Mac, he was the worst of all. When Mac found out, he went into a four minute tirade listing all the times and places he’d seen Gil and Emily together and teasing him with an assortment of highly annoying speculations.

  It took him a moment to find Emily among all the faculty onstage. She sat off to one side, her feet tucked underneath her as tightly as they had been in his office that day. She wore a darker color dress than normal and she’d pinned her hair up, but she had a signature-color pastel silk scarf around her neck. Gil felt almost like he was looking at a reflection of Emily—some darker, one-dimensional copy of the real person. Something told him she must have looked like that on the day of Ash’s funeral. The sensation that thought produced in his gut was not a pleasant one.

  Howard made a long, mayoral introduction, comprised of a short bio of Emily sandwiched between two monologues on Middleburgian pride. Only Howard, Gil thought to himself, could introduce someone else and still make it all about him. Sandy should have made the introduction, but wrestling the microphone out of Howard’s hands at public events like this was beyond even Sandy’s negotiating skills.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m up here,” Emily said, her voice a bit shaky as she took the podium and went through the noisy process of bending the microphone down to her height. They’d had to move a box behind the podium so that she could be easily seen, and it had made for an awkward transition after her introduction. “If I were you, I’d have thought some well-known do-gooder would be up here talking today. Most of you know me from a few years ago when my husband’s death made the papers a lot. Ash Montague was a good man—a great man, actually, and he would have been the kind of guy to stand up here and be inspirational. He believed in doing good. He believed in finding the role God had set up for you in the world and going at it with all you had. God gave him an amazing musical talent and a mind for mechanics, and he figured out how to make use of those gifts and build himself a career. Now most of you wouldn’t think of a piano tuner as an heroic guy, but if any of you had Ash coach your Little League team or teach your Sunday School class, you know a little bit about what made him a hero to me.”

  A few murmurs went through the crowd. Gil suspected it was those whom Ash had taught or coached agreeing with what Emily had said.

  “I’m gonna surprise you today, though, by not talking about Ash. I’m gonna talk about another man who changed my life forever. A man I imagine most of you don’t even know existed.” She went on to briefly describe the night of the murder.

  And the man who could have stopped it.

  “We know from several sources that he was close enough to have stepped in. Ash told the police as he lay—” her voice cracked and Gil felt his heart crack with it “—lay…dying…that he’d asked the man to help. Begged him. To step in and stop a terrible crime. To do something instead of standing back and being horrified.”

  The room fell silent. Sandy was right—this would be a speech these students wouldn’t soon forget. The image of her standing there, trying to hold it together long enough to let these kids see the consequences of inaction, the cost of apathy, was indelible. The students would never forget it because the truth is that powerful.

  Gil would never forget it because it was the exact moment his heart broke. Snapped. It was the clean, sharp end of something that hadn’t even really begun.

  She went on about the pain of never finding that witness, of knowing her husband had been left to die. Gil had never wanted to leave a place so badly in all his life.

  “That man’s crime was greater to me than Ash’s murder, because he was one of us. I cannot think of Ash’s murderer as an ordinary man—he had some hideous motive, some all-consuming greed that made him an awful man. Most of us are not awful people. And yet, to me, the worse man is the one who is not brave enough to stop a crime, not the one who is awful enough to commit it. Not every crime is a choice—although I think many are—but every time you don’t act, it is a choice. Your choice. Every one of you will have a chance—big or small—to choose whether or not to help out in a bad situation. I hope you remember today when that decision comes to you. Because to me, and, I think, to Ash, that’s true character.”

  Gil sat there, his heart tearing open. It wasn’t pity he felt—he knew the last thing she wanted was pity. It was a deep, crushing sorrow.

  Sorrow because he was that worse kind of man.

  The technical term for it was accessory to murder, but Gil had always found that phrase lacking. There wasn’t a word for the lamentable act of holding down a human being while another man ended his life. For watching a murder and not stopping it. He’d done everything but hold the knife, and he’d been just as deaf to the victim’s pleas for mercy as the man Emily condemned.

  Accessory to murder. He’d done something so close to—no, not even close to, worse than—the act she deplored that he knew she could never love him. They were so different that it had been almost impossible before.

  It was beyond impossible now.

  Gil could only take in bits and pieces of the rest of her speech. He dimly registered her call to the students to be people who stepped in. To do the hard, right thing and get involved rather than stand by and watch life hurt the weak or take a good man down. She didn’t sound bitter or spiteful, but her bone-deep contempt for “the man who would not save my husband” weighted her words.

  A weight that crushed him as he sat in that miserable folding chair.

  Finally, when he thought he couldn’t even breathe anymore, she ended her speech and the room rose to its feet. Sandy rushed to the podium and wrapped Emily in a big hug, embracing her until the two of them were wiping tears from their eyes.

  He slipped from the room in a haze of pain and regret. His only thought was that he’d have to admit his cowardice to her, and he didn’t think he could survive the confession.

  Gil was so intent on groping his way through the fog in his brain, just trying to find his truck and get home, that he nearly knocked over the policeman in his path.

  “Sorrent?”

  Gil shook himself and tried to focus on the man in front of him. “Huh?”

  “Gil Sorrent, right? I’m glad I found you—I’ve been calling the farm for the last twenty minutes.”

  “What’s up?”

  “We picked up one of your guys in town, Mr. Sorrent. A Mark Santini. You’re familiar with the name?”

  What was Mark doing in town? The guys weren’t due in town today; Ethan was having them clear brush from the south pasture. “I am. Is he okay?”

  “Well, I don’t know how much detail I can give you, but we caught him breaking and entering. He was cleaning out the cash register of a local business when someone saw him through the shop window and called it in.”

  No, Lord, no. Not now. Gil wiped his hands down his face and tried to think of the right course of action. “I’ll give you whatever you need. Full cooperation.” He looked up at the officer. “Are…are you sure? Which business?”

  “A bath shop called West of Paris. Evidently the owner’s inside, she was part of some assembly today. He must have known she’d be away from the store.”

  “Emily Montague,” Gil said, his voice gruff.

  “Yeah, that’s her. So you know her?”

  If God asked for volunteers to lie down and die at that moment, Gil would have gladly stepped forward. “Yes, I know her.”

  The officer pointed toward the door Gil had just come through. “Well, seeing as I need the both o
f you, you’d best come point her out to me so I can get you both into town on the double.”

  She’d done it.

  Emily had given the speech. It was a tremendous relief, and it felt like a giant step forward. It had been hard to bring all the pain back up—and then again, it hadn’t, because the pain had never really left. She’d found ways to ignore it, gloss over it or deny it, but it hadn’t ever truly healed. She’d spent most of that first year scanning strangers’ faces, as if she’d know the bystander by some look in his eyes. They’d had tiny clues, and there’d been a police search, but no one ever really thought they’d find the man who was there that night.

  She wasn’t healed. Not by a long shot. But today felt like a step closer to it. It was that, as much as relief, that brought the tears to her eyes when Sandy hugged her. That’s what good friends do, she thought. They nudge you up to the hard places where you need to go. Thank you, Lord, for friends like Sandy.

  There were all kinds of congratulations from teachers, students and even from Peter Epson, who’d volunteered to cover the event for the paper. “This is a great story,” he told her as he shook her hand. “You did a super job up there.”

  Emily smiled. “Thanks, Peter. It was an important thing to do.”

  “Emily?”

  She turned, glad to hear Gil’s voice. She’d wanted to know what he thought of the speech. From the looks of things, he hadn’t liked it at all—the man looked absolutely dismal.

  “Gil, you did come.” She went to shake his hand, but his bristling demeanor stopped her.

  “Emily, this is Officer Ryan. You need to come to the shop right away.”

  The circumstance of being summoned by a grim-looking police officer shot through Emily like lightning. An old, deep-seeded panic erupted out of nowhere. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s been a robbery at your business, Ms. Montague.”

  “A robbery?” Emily said, not caring that it was a little too loudly. “At the shop?”

  Gil took her by one elbow and began guiding her toward the door. “Mark broke into your cash register while he knew you’d be here,” he said tightly. “Someone saw him and called the police.”

  Emily spun out of his grasp. “Mark? From Homestretch? One of your guys robbed my store?” She took a step back from him, feeling like someone had just knocked the wind out of her. “Mark robbed me?”

  Emily felt the panic growing with surprising speed as she made her way back to the store. Gil insisted on driving her, and while being with him felt uncomfortable given the circumstances, she knew she didn’t have enough wits about her to drive well. She found she didn’t have enough wits even to offer a decent resistance when he insisted. Instead, she let him guide her into the truck and take her downtown, but neither of them spoke on the trip.

  Pulling up to West of Paris was a shock to her system. The flurry of men in dark blue and the barrage of questions took her back almost instantly to the horrible time after Ash’s death. It didn’t make much sense—a minor break-in shouldn’t have felt anywhere near as traumatic as the murder of a spouse—but this didn’t seem to be about logic. Old feelings and fears came back with a vengeance, offering no perspective or guidance. The policeman asking her about locks and keys frightened her just as much as the one who had asked her what type of keychain Ash carried.

  Things were strewn everywhere. Linens were tossed about like dirty laundry, and several vases and soap dishes lay shattered on the floor. One table by the front window was knocked over, and policemen were taking photographs. The pop of camera flashes screamed “crime scene.”

  Emily had just gotten to the place in life where she didn’t think of herself as a victim. And now, she was one again. It felt like the world’s evil was reaching up to pull her back into the pit she’d spent years escaping. The horrible old sensations—the tangled thoughts, the thud of her pulse in her ears, the feeling that the room didn’t hold enough oxygen—came roaring back with the sound of glass crunching underfoot.

  Worst of all was the cash register. Once a lovely old lady, elegant and classic, the antique register lay battered on the floor like a wrecked car. The drawer had been yanked out, its handle now misshapen as if someone had taken a crowbar to it. A few coins and a handful of receipts lay strewn about the dented remains. Emily reached down and picked up the marble Tommy Lee Lockwood had given her, feeling it like a physical blow to her stomach. She’d not yet gone to the bank—all her sales income from Valentine’s Day had still been in the register.

  Had been. Now, it was all gone.

  It was worse than some random act. This had been deliberate and calculated. Mark had set out to get her and succeeded. Had chosen the exact moment he knew she’d be elsewhere and robbed her in broad daylight. In some ways, that made it even worse than Ash’s murder—Ash had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this felt alarmingly personal. It made her ill to think of it.

  Gil seemed to sense enough of her distress to keep a distance, but he wouldn’t leave. She was dimly aware of his presence as she stumbled through the shop, touching a shard of glass or folding a tea towel. Some part of her knew he was as angered by this as she, that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened. Another part of her blindly blamed all of Homestretch Farm for bringing crime to her doorstep.

  Janet Bishop, owner of the hardware store down the street, came over personally to see to the replacement of the glass panes and locks in her back door. With a host of men firing questions at her, she welcomed a woman’s compassion.

  “It’s terrible,” Janet said, wrapping Emily in a great big hug. “You, of all people. You just sit tight, and we’ll have you fixed up in no time. That pane will be replaced within the hour. I brought you three types of new locks to choose from, okay?” Janet seemed to understand Emily’s need to do something concrete in all this confusion, something to help her regain control. She put three boxes down in front of her, opening the tops to display three shiny sets of brass fixtures. “All of them will do the job better than that old lock. Top-notch, each of them. You just decide the one you want.” They were all elegant, graceful lock sets. It was comforting, in an odd way. Somehow she’d been sure Janet was going to bring big, ugly, institutional-looking things that Emily felt would scream “you’re not safe anymore” every time she used them.

  She decided on one with filigree around the deadbolt, thankful that Janet understood why choosing stronger new locks might be such an emotional decision. She’d never been more grateful for her friendship with Janet than she was this afternoon. Janet handled the glass replacement with the same comforting sensitivity.

  Gil stayed at the shop for a while, inspecting the new locks, sweeping things up, keeping his anger down to a low simmer. She knew he was putting off his visit to the police station—who knows what he would do when he finally got a chance to talk to Mark? Even while he was keeping things under control, he looked like he wanted to kick something hard and far.

  The whole town had waited for Homestretch to bring crime to Middleburg. People had lived in distrust the first year—herself included—and while no one would openly admit it, everyone had been surprised when there hadn’t been a single incident. Everyone had waited for a problem that never arrived.

  Until now. Now those unspoken fears had come to fruition, and Emily was keenly aware that her misfortune might likely spell the end of Homestretch Farm. The rational part of her felt bad, but the irrational, wounded part of her wanted someone else to pay for what had happened. For the sense of safe, small-town peace that was now gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gil stood up against the massive mantel that capped his living-room fireplace. It was a large, rustic room, lined with solid beams and wood paneling that had seen decades of history. This was the room where all of Homestretch’s most important events took place—good and bad. Today felt squarely in the latter.

  He looked at his Bible, sitting in its customary place on the corner of that mantel, and said a prayer fo
r the right words. The farm knew Mark had gone missing, but only Gil and Ethan knew the extent of the troubles now facing Homestretch. And no one knew yet if Mark had acted alone.

  “What’s up, sir?” Larry asked.

  The use of pleasantries like sir, ma’am, please, and thank you was one of the first lessons at Homestretch Farm. When the newbies came, they mostly just grunted at each other and everyone else, using such a complicated form of slang that Gil often had to ask for a translation. Gil made it clear that he didn’t expect to be called sir in casual conversation; only in more formal situations like house meetings or in public. The boys were instructed to use sir and ma’am at all times in town, and so far only Steve had been recalcitrant in doing so. Then again, Steve bucked the system on everything.

  This kind of stuff was always tricky. Accuse them of consorting with Mark, and they’d clam right up in defiance. Come down too soft, and they’d think only Mark got caught and not fess up when it would do the most good. They’d look for the easy out, the clean getaway, because that’s the life they’d had. The concept of the “hard but right thing” never came easily to these guys. Most of them hadn’t ever had Character Day, or role models, or even parents who paid them any kind of attention.

  “Homestretch has a big problem, and we’re going to put our heads together and figure out what to do about it.” He waited, still facing the fire, for one of them to give the What’d-we-do-now? speech. “Everybody always blames us,” was a favorite defense of these guys, mostly because it worked. Playing victim of the system was a tried-and-true defense in their world. It deflected blame and evoked pity—a few favorite tools of the outcast and rebellious. He’d heard more versions of it than he could count. Most of them he’d used once or twice himself.

  No response came. Well, now, perhaps he should take that as a good sign. He tucked his hands in his pants pockets and turned slowly, leaning back against the mantel. The glow of the flames played across the faces looking back at him, and Gil was startled at the strength of emotion welling up inside. The guys each had a different expression, from defiant to annoyed to hurt. This group had driven him crazy with more grief and more headaches than he cared to recount. They’d also given him more satisfaction than any year he could remember.