My Hero

by Mary McBride

  She shrugged. “I don't know. It was just the first vegetable that popped into my head. It's a really dumb question, Cal. Can I bring y'all anything else?”

  “No, thanks, darlin'.” He flashed a fairly smug grin across the table at Holly. “I rest my case.”

  Putting her pen down and closing her notebook with a solid thump, Holly said, “You're just not into the spirit of the interview.” She reached for the Danish and took a bite.

  Across the table, her companion didn't begin eating, but rather leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, all the while aiming a smile at her that struck Holly as inappropriately amused if not slightly arrogant. Okay. So she wasn't Barbara Walters. Maybe it was the vegetable part of the question that didn't quite work, she thought. Maybe she should have asked what kind of dog he'd like to be.

  He was still giving her that nasty grin, so she swallowed the food in her mouth, then took a sip of orange juice. “What?” she demanded.

  His head cocked a bit more to the left, slanting his grin. “What kind of vegetable would you be?”

  She thought about it a minute, and the more she thought, the more she wanted to laugh. Dammit. Nobody in their right mind wanted to be a vegetable of any kind. “All right. All right. You win,” she said finally. “It was a dumb question. There. Are you satisfied?”

  “Reasonably.” He sat forward and picked up his Danish. “How many people have you interviewed?”

  “Hundreds,” she lied. “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  They finished their meal in silence, and then—after a brief tussle over the check, which Holly won, by God—they walked out into the warm sunshine.

  “What are your plans for the day?” Cal asked her.

  “I thought I'd just wander around town and get some ideas for backdrops for camera shots. That sort of thing.” She was sorely tempted to ask if he'd like to join her, but decided she really shouldn't be distracted. She needed to focus on Honeycomb itself, not Honeycomb's favorite or least favorite son.

  “Okay. Well, I guess I'll head back out to the ranch. Thanks for breakfast.”

  “You're welcome.”

  She tried not to feel sad or disappointed as she watched him walk away from her down the sidewalk. This was business, not pleasure, after all. She wasn't here to have fun. She tried, too, not to think about those long, obviously powerful legs heading in the opposite direction or the way the worn, sky blue denim of his jeans hugged that oh-Lordy just-right butt.

  When he was a hundred or so feet away, he stopped and turned slowly back toward her.

  “Zucchini,” he called.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The vegetable I'd want to be. Zucchini.” Then he laughed and walked away.

  Holly laughed, too, then shook her head, wondering how she was going to get that image out of her head during the next week or so.

  Chapter Seven

  After Cal left, Holly sat in the little park next door to the bank. In New York the space would have been called a pocket park, and chances were good that it would have been decorated with eccentric sculptures and whimsical benches and brightly painted playthings, all of them covered in graffiti, of course, but still more appealing to the eye than one gnarly-rooted mesquite bush, a picnic table stained with bird droppings, and a rusty swing set with a broken seat.

  It was already hot at nine o'clock, and she had to shade her eyes in order to read the list of names that Ellie had written for her. She'd struck out on three interviews yesterday, four if she counted Ellie. This morning's attempt to interview her hero had been a joke, at best. Still, after thinking about it, Holly was grateful it hadn't been worse. It only occurred to her after Cal walked away that you didn't ask the victim of a serious head injury what kind of vegetable he'd like to be. God. How insensitive was that? What had she been thinking? What was wrong with her?

  “Nothing,” Holly muttered. Absolutely nothing was wrong with her, for heaven's sake. “You can do this, Hollis Mae Hicks. You know you can do this.”

  Well, of course, she could! She'd produced hundreds of pieces—thousands!—over the years. The fact that they were all in her head didn't detract from their quality one bit as far as Holly was concerned. She had put together everything from hard-hitting exposés of political hacks and military morons and industrial sleazebags to poignant vignettes, little jewels of journalism that would make even Charles Kuralt weep with envy. Compared to all those pieces, a straightforward biography of Calvin Griffin, hero or not, ought to be a piece of cake. A slam dunk. A breeze. A walk in the damned park.

  As if propelled by her own thoughts, Holly began pacing from one side of the little park to the other, careful to avoid the tangled roots and the low limbs of the mesquite bush. She'd wasted far too much time already. It was time to commit to a hook, and her instinct at the present was to go with the hill of beans theory, to make the Calvin Griffin story one of overcoming low expectations in a less-than-enriched environment. Given a few twists of fate, Honeycomb's hero might just as easily have taken a bullet in a gang fight or a bank robbery as he had in saving the life of the President of the United States.

  Now all she needed to do was to sit down with Mel's laptop, hammer out a solid plan for this production, and then follow through with it. With her hook firmly in mind, her interviews would just naturally improve. Holly grabbed up her handbag and strode along Main Street on her way back to Ellie's.

  She was just about to turn the corner onto Washington when something caught her eye through the vacant lot that sat between the barber shop and the saddlery. Over the weeds and broken bottles and paper trash, about a block to the south, Holly saw sunlight glinting off a turquoise Thunderbird convertible parked next to what appeared to be a running track.

  It was Cal Griffin's car, she was certain. After all, how many classic turquoise convertibles could there be in a town this size? Or any town, for that matter? When they'd parted, Cal had told her he was going back to his sister and brother-in-law's ranch. Obviously he'd changed his mind.

  In that instant, Holly changed her mind, too. Rather than return to her room, she decided to wander over toward the track, which she presumed was part of the high school. It wouldn't hurt to take a look at her subject's alma mater before she worked up her list of shooting locations. And if she just happened to encounter her subject in the process, well, so much the better.

  As she got closer, she noticed that the track formed the perimeter of a football field, which was torn up at the moment, no doubt ready to be re-seeded or somehow revamped for next year's season. They loved their football in Texas, and Honeycomb probably wasn't any different from Sandy Springs or any other town in that regard. The phys ed budget in her high school was double that of any other department. She'd written more than a few nasty editorials on the subject for the school paper.

  Cal Griffin wasn't anywhere in sight, so Holly walked toward the grandstand and perched on a bench in the first row, almost as if she were the first spectator to arrive for a big game. She could see the back of the school itself, and decided that she hadn't been too far off the mark when she'd imagined it would be a one story Texas-Danish modern building with tan bricks and plenty of glass. Probably hot as hell inside, too, she thought, remembering her own school while she looked at the air-conditioning units that stuck out of every third or fourth window.

  The feeling of déjà vu was nearly numbing. Not that Holly had spent much time in the grandstand at Sandy Springs High, however. She'd watched 20/20 instead on Friday nights, usually with her mother stomping in and out of the living room, making disparaging remarks about her social life.

  She wondered if Cal Griffin had been on the team here. It was easy to imagine his muscular physique in a football uniform with rippling, thigh-hugging spandex. After all, just because she hadn't gone to the games didn't mean she didn't appreciate some of the finer aspects of the sport.

  She wondered if the knife fight Cal had mentioned had taken place after a Friday night ho
mecoming game when tempers tended to flare. Or maybe Cal and Hec Garcia had come to blows over Nita Mendes, the beautician. In her imagination, Holly conjured up a bonfire and two crowds gathered at each of the goal posts—the Anglos on Cal's side and the Hispanics on Hec's, and nobody in the middle asking, “Can we all just get along?”

  But maybe the fight hadn't happened here at all. Maybe Hec Garcia lay in wait for Cal in the alley behind Ramon's. Or…oh, brother. Maybe it had been Cal who'd lain in wait for an unsuspecting Hec. If that had been the case, Holly really didn't want to know. She'd have to write a memo to Arnold and Maida, requesting that her package be scheduled for Hooligan Week, instead.

  She heard a footstep to her left, and turned just as a voice said, “You must be the little TV gal, waiting on Cal.”

  The man who spoke was tall and lean and pure Texas from the crease in his straw Resistol to the dusty tips of his Tony Lamas. His sand-colored mustache failed to hide a warm and engaging smile.

  “I'm Dooley Reese,” he said, extending a hand. “Cal's brother-in-law.”

  Holly put her hand in his solid, enthusiastic grip. “I'm Holly Hicks,” she said. “I met your wife yesterday.”

  “She told me.” He lowered himself onto the bench beside her, nudged the brim of his hat upward, and drawled, “Hero Week, huh?”

  “That's right.” She gazed back at the track that circled the football field. “I saw Cal's car and thought my hero just might be around here someplace.”

  “He is,” Dooley said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Right over there.” The man pointed toward a small stand of oaks halfway between the track and the school building, where Holly could see one arm and one leg, both covered with gray sweats. “He's taking a little break from his workout, I reckon.”

  Holly reckoned she'd looked right at him at least twice without ever “seeing” him. If Cal had seen her, he obviously hadn't felt compelled to greet her or acknowledge her presence in any way. A little tic of disappointment registered somewhere inside her.

  “Does he do this every day?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Getting in shape for going back to work, I suppose.”

  “Yep.”

  Holly smiled as she made a mental note to cross Cal's monosyllabic brother-in-law off her list of potential on camera interviewees. “Any idea when he plans on going back?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  She almost laughed. On second thought, maybe she ought to film Dooley Reese. A few well-placed yeps and nopes would add a certain je ne sais quoi to her production.

  Across the field just then the figure in the gray sweats levered up off the ground, gazed for a long moment toward the two spectators in the grandstand, and then began walking—not ambling or moseying or sashaying, Holly was happy to see—toward them. A black dog that looked part Border Collie and part just plain dog shambled along by his side, sniffing the ground and every now and then glancing up at Cal's face as if to ask, “Everything okay? How're we doing here?”

  “I didn't know Cal had a dog,” she said.

  “He doesn't. That's ol' Bee, the high school mascot. He kinda belongs to everybody in town.”

  “Bee.” Holly repeated the name. “As in honeybee?”

  “As in yellow jackets,” Dooley said. “That's the name of the football team. For years the kids used to spraypaint yellow stripes on Bee before games until some new young English teacher made a big fuss about animal rights and so forth. Ol' Bee never seemed to mind it, though.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Guess he never knew he had rights.”

  “I guess not.”

  “That dog's taken a real liking to Cal.”

  Holly was about to wave to ol' Bee and his pal, but Dooley stopped her with a light touch on her hand. His voice was low, close to a whisper. “I like him, too, Ms. Hicks, which is why I'd hate to see some TV program make him out to be a washed-up nobody.”

  She blinked, sincerely shocked by the man's statement. “I have no intention of doing that.”

  “I hope not. You talk to enough people around town and you'll find out soon enough that the only person who thinks Cal's still got a future in the Secret Service is Cal himself.”

  “He doesn't?” she asked, blinking again. That wasn't the impression she'd gotten. She assumed Cal would be back at work, probably by the time her piece appeared on Hero Week.

  Dooley shrugged. “It'd be a miracle.”

  Holly was eager to ask him more, but the man who was apparently in need of a miracle was just a few steps away from them right now. Close enough for her to react to the astonishing blue of his eyes. Her heart seemed to skid to the right an inch or so.

  “Good morning,” she said, feeling a silly and unwelcome grin slide across her lips. “Again.”

  “Morning,” he replied, then looked at his brother-in-law. “Hey, Dooley. What's up?”

  “I need to ask a favor of you, Cal.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Your sister's been after me all week to take her up to Corpus Christi so she can try out some new restaurant there, so we're taking off around noon. We'll probably spend the night there and be home around noon tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Cal replied. The word was part simple acknowledgment and part implied question. So, why are you telling me?, he seemed to be asking.

  Holly knelt down to pet Bee's thick black coat while Dooley responded above her.

  “Well, there's just one little hitch. Ruthie forgot that some real estate agent's supposed to stop by with a prospective buyer sometime this afternoon. It's not altogether certain. Just a maybe. But we can't get in touch with the guy to confirm it, and I'd hate for Ruthie to stay home and then not have them show. You know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Cal said. “I wouldn't want to be within a hundred yards of Ruthie if she got stood up.”

  “Yeah,” Dooley added with a small sigh.

  Holly, remembering her cool reception yesterday morning in Ruth's stainless-steel kitchen, silently concurred while she continued to pet Bee. She wouldn't want to find herself on Ruth Reese's bad side either.

  “We'll be home, like I said, till noon or so,” Dooley said. “Can we count on you to be there after that? Just in case this fella does show up and has any questions.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  Holly had begun to pick burrs out of Bee's thick coat when Cal's hand drifted across the dog's back and collided with hers.

  “Sorry,” he said softly. “You don't need to bother with those cockleburrs, Holly. He'll just pick up a hundred more this afternoon.”

  “I don't mind,” she said just as Bee's wet pink tongue took a swipe across her cheek. “You like the attention, boy. Don't you?” She scratched his ears. “Yes, you do. Don't you, Bee?”

  “Ol' Bee never had it so good,” Dooley murmured above her. “Well, I'm gonna be going. Thanks, Cal. I owe you one.” “No problem.”

  “Oh, and listen,” Dooley added in a voice that wasn't quite so affable all of a sudden. “I'd just as soon you didn't say anything too discouraging to this real estate fella. You know. Like the last time.”

  A rumble sounded deep in Cal's throat, menacing enough to make the dog turn his head in that direction. There was more than a little irritation in his voice when he said, “I'm not going to tap dance and hand out free soda and popcorn, if that's what you're expecting, Dooley. You know how I feel about this sale.”

  Her curiosity piqued by the exchange, Holly stood up in order to hear better. Things were definitely heating up in Heroville.

  “Yeah, I know how you feel,” Dooley said. “And you know damn well nothing'll come of it. Ruthie's just dreaming a little bit. That's all. Let her dream. It doesn't do any harm.”

  Cal responded with an inconclusive shrug.

  Dooley gave an irritated twitch of his mustache, then nodded at Holly and touched the brim of his hat. “It's been a pleasure, Ms. Hicks. I hope to see you again.”

  “Thank you. Same here. Hav
e a good time in Corpus Christi.”

  “I plan to,” he said, then turned to leave the grandstand, calling back over his shoulder, “No later than twelve-thirty, Cal. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  Holly knelt down to snag a few more burrs from Bee's neck, and after a moment said, “I get the impression you don't want your sister to sell the ranch.”

  “You do, do you?” Cal squatted down.

  “Uh-huh. What did you do to discourage the last real estate agent?” she asked.

  “It was more misdirection than discouragement.” He grinned. “The guy wound up in the next county.”

  She laughed. “I don't suppose your sister appreciated that.”

  “Not much.” His expression soured briefly before he smiled again and lifted his hand. “Here. Hold still. You've got a couple burrs in your hair.”

  “Oh, that's…”

  “Hold still,” he commanded.

  Not only did Holly's head hold still, but so did her heart as Cal's fingers deftly combed through her hair and extricated the sharp little objects from curl after curl.

  “There.” He chuckled softly, his fingers just grazing her cheek. “You can open your eyes now.”

  She hadn't even realized they were closed while all of her senses were focused on his touch. How embarrassing. “I should probably be getting back to Ellie's,” she said.

  “What are you doing here at the track?”

  “Just taking in the sights,” she said, not adding that he was one of them. “You went to school here, right?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” he drawled.

  “Did you play football?”

  “No.” He cocked his head. “Why?”

  “Oh, just…” Your great bod. The way those damp gray sweats cling and curve and, well, bulge. “You strike me as very athletic. I mean, you'd have to be, considering the requirements of your job.”

  “Yeah, well…I didn't play football,” he said in a tone that clearly signaled the end of that particular discussion.