Bluegrass Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  “She was more scared than you,” Paulo said, evidently under the misconception that such a remark would help.

  “She’s huge,” Emily gulped.

  “Her size makes her easier to stay up on. Just think of her as a walking couch.” He polished off his Ale-8 and eyed Emily. “You know, I think now’s as good a time as any to get over it. Right here, right now, before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it. I’ll make it easy for you. Stand up on that wall over there and I’ll sidle her up right beside you so you can just slide on. I’ll be holding the reins all the time. Five minutes. I won’t put her above a walk, I promise.”

  Emily stared at him, then stared at Paulo, calculating her chances of death and dismemberment. The horse seemed eleven feet tall.

  “Five minutes on the back of one nice horse,” Gil cajoled. “It’ll do you wonders.” Lady Macbeth gave a soft whinny of encouragement.

  “My abuela could do five minutes on ’Beth,” Paulo remarked brightly.

  “Paulo’s daring grandmother aside, you can do this,” Gil said, taking her basket of files and her handbag from her and laying them on a table behind him. “Tell you what. I’ll buy three bars of the smelliest soap you got if you do this.”

  She’d seem like the lowliest of cowards if she couldn’t agree to this. But this horse was enormous. Still, it’d be hard to find a better way to get on Sorrent’s good side. Slowly, without taking her eyes off the horse, Emily walked over to the little stone wall steps. She clutched the railing and walked up the half dozen steps until she was level with the horse’s back. Gil gave the reins to Paulo and moved over to help Emily. “Just put your left foot out over here.” She complied, thinking how odd it felt to be looking down on a man as large as Gil Sorrent. He helped her slide easily—if gingerly—onto the saddle. The horse obliged by standing perfectly still while Emily found her balance. She could feel the warmth of the horse through the material of her pant legs, the powerful and dangerous muscles flexing, her massive ribs expanding as she breathed. It was definitely not like sitting on any couch she’d ever known.

  “Take a few deep breaths up there,” Gil said, his voice a warm and encouraging tone. He waited until she looked at him. “Good. Ready to move?”

  “Okay,” she said shakily.

  Gil took the reins back from Paulo. “We’re gonna walk out along that path there,” he said, using that same even voice, “Nice and slow.” With a soft click of his tongue and the slightest tug on the reins, he led Lady Macbeth and Emily slowly out into the pasture.

  Chapter Nine

  “You know, that wasn’t so bad,” Emily said as she followed Gil to the offices after her five-minute foray into equine relations. “I’m not in any hurry to do it again, though.”

  “You done good. Course, I can’t have you breaking my perfect teaching record, neither. I appreciate your success. And you can bill me for the stinkiest soaps you got—a deal’s a deal.” Gil opened the door and flipped a bank of switches to illuminate a surprisingly sleek office with every high-tech gadget imaginable. She counted at least three computer monitors, two printers, a bunch of walkie-talkie-looking things, and a wireless headset. Not to mention a stack of spreadsheet printouts that covered his desk and the PDA and cell phone he pulled out of his jean pockets before he sat down. Emily half expected to find little horse icons wandering around on a radar screen somewhere.

  “It looks like an electronics store in here,” she said, scanning the myriad of technology. “You run a high-tech operation.”

  “I like to make use of improvements. There’s still no substitute for a good head on your shoulders, but there’s a heap of helpful technology out there these days.” One side of his mouth turned up. “Besides, it impresses the guys and makes me look cool. I can use every advantage I can get with that lot.” Emily was amazed at how a man could look rugged and slick—it didn’t seem as if those two adjectives could apply to the same man at once.

  “So why can’t you think of the soap as an advantage?” Emily ventured.

  She didn’t give up, did she? Gil put a boot on his desk. She looked so funny, sitting there clutching that basket and little handbag of hers. She carried her town council papers in a straw basket, too. Other people used tote bags or briefcases, but Emily Montague seemed to have a basket for everything. It was like doing business with Little Red Riding Hood.

  She sat with her feet tucked tightly underneath her, as if she were afraid the farm would seep in under the door to steal her away and stuff her into a pair of overalls. How did someone living in Kentucky look so lost on a horse farm? And why did it amuse him so that she did? But it wasn’t a make-fun-of-you kind of amusement, it was something else, something more like a you’ll-come-round kind of affection. It was as if he somehow knew she’d cope with it even if she didn’t know.

  “I said I’d give your soap-for-verses plan a try, didn’t I?” he said, addressing her question.

  She reached into her basket. “Have you got a list of your men handy? That’d be a good place to start. I brought my Bible and the list of verses.”

  “Miles ahead of you.” He pointed to the SMART board on the wall behind her. “Watch this.”

  She spun her chair around as Gil punched a sequence of keys on his computer. Oh, why not pull out all the stops? He hit a few more to turn on the voice-activated commands. The SMART board, an oversize interactive gizmo that was part computer monitor, part chalkboard, lit up. With a few keystrokes, Gil cleared a task schedule he’d been working on this morning and pulled up a blank page. She looked over her shoulder at him, clearly understanding he was showing off and—what do you know?—enjoying it. He grabbed the headset off his desk, slipped it on and said into the microphone, “Open file. Hand list.”

  Emily let out a small sound of amazement as an alphabetized list of names appeared on the screen.

  “Table. Column. Tile,” Gil said, and the list became the first column of a chart and shrank to the bottom of the screen. “Open Bible.” An electronic Bible program appeared on the top of the screen, so that the screen held both sets of information. “Which translation do we need?” he said, covering the microphone with one hand.

  “How many do you have in there?”

  “All of them. Including Greek and Latin, if you’re feeling like serving up a mean challenge to my guys.”

  She smiled. “New International will do just fine.”

  Gil told the program to load, and a tiny version of the Homestretch Farm logo appeared, and began spinning slowly. “Steve’s little addition to my software,” he said off the microphone. “The guy’s gonna change the world if he doesn’t blow it up first.”

  “No wonder so many of your guys have iPods—this is the first ever techno-farm.” Emily watched as the SMART board whirred through its paces. Gil had to admit, it was his favorite purchase of the year.

  “The government grants cover lots of their basic living expenses, but I give ’em each an iPod when they get here. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve had something expensive that they didn’t steal or get stolen from them. Of course, I have ulterior motives. Since I bought ’em, I load ’em. They earn money in their iTunes accounts from me, and I screen their purchases. And, I get to pick one tune out of ten. You’d be amazed at the cool Christian music out there if you look around. Even Paulo doesn’t wince anymore when he stumbles onto what I’ve loaded on there for him.”

  Emily turned and looked at him. He hadn’t intended to go into a speech about his techno-savvy or how he wielded it to God’s advantage. There was just something about that soft, sweet nature of hers that made him show off.

  “That’s incredibly creative,” she said, with a sort of wonder in her voice that did things to the pit of his stomach. “And really effective, I bet. I wonder if anyone in Middleburg really knows all you do for these guys. Most people just think you work them so hard they don’t have any energy left over to get into trouble.”

  “Well, that, too. But that’ll onl
y get you so far. My prayer is that I finally get through to the inside, not just tucker out the outside.” Once again, he’d said far more than he planned. “Okay, let’s start with the first verse you’ve got.”

  “Psalm 32:23.”

  Gil punched in the citation, and the words The Lord protects the loyal but fully repays the arrogant came up on the screen. “Good one. Could probably apply to all of them, but I’d have to say it’s particularly useful to Larry.” With a few keystrokes, Gil copied the verse and citation, and inserted it into the table next to Larry’s name.

  “Impressive.”

  Gil found himself hiding a smile. If he had to make a guess, he was betting she could barely set up the voicemail on her cell phone. Maybe he’d download a few gizmos for her as a favor. Make “Frére Jacques” her ringtone or something. “It has its uses. What’s next?”

  Emily shook her head as she drove through the Homestretch Farm gates. Gil seemed a complete turnaround from the man she’d considered him before. His program up there was far more comprehensive than she’d imagined. He worked with half a dozen government agencies to see that those young men got what they needed. They got GED courses, counseling, even literacy training if they couldn’t read. He’d struck her as cold before she got a glimpse of his passion for giving the guys a second start in life. How much of his own money was he pouring into that farm? By the time they’d finished assigning verses to each hand, and Gil had talked about who they were and what kind of things each of them had faced in their young lives, Emily could see his commitment. He’d go to any lengths to turn those young men around. Do whatever it took.

  She liked that about him.

  She liked him.

  Emily found she couldn’t hold onto her old view of Gil Sorrent. She wasn’t sure what to do with that just yet. As they’d worked through verse assignments, they’d talked about how each hand would take to the verse they’d chosen. She caught an energy in his eyes, as he paced the room, considering options and shifting verses around on that electric chalkboard thingy. Had she really gasped when he’d hit a key and two copies of what they’d written were printed out? That must have looked idiotic. He probably knew by now that she could barely work the speed dial on her telephone. She could only imagine he must think her a technophobic, horse-fearing sissy.

  “I’m not!” she declared to the bobble-head Chihuahua on her dashboard. “I just prefer the peace and elegance of old-fashioned things. I like charming over cool, that’s all. And it’s perfectly sane to not need to spend every waking moment on top of a horse. Or address a felt dog while driving down the Old Frankfort Pike.”

  Chapter Ten

  Gil was having lunch at Deacon’s Grill with Mac, trying to get their proposal ready for the town council meeting that night, when Audrey Lupine burst into the Grill holding a bar of Faithfulness Soap. He was surprised librarians could be so loud. “How did you know?” she kept saying to Sandy Burnside, whose coffee break had been hijacked by the wildly emotional outburst. “However did you know?”

  “Know what, honey?” Sandy said, foraging in her handbag for a tissue as Audrey was on the verge of tears.

  “I was thinking of…of resigning at the end of the month. I’ve just felt so…useless. Everybody looks up whatever they need on the Internet now.”

  “You’re a lot more than a reference librarian, Audrey, we depend on you in lots of ways,” Sandy said, peering over Audrey’s shoulder to the other Grill customers. With a raised eyebrow and a sharp glance, she cued them to echo her thoughts.

  “Yeah, sure,” “We need you” and “You’re great” bubbled up through the tiny crowd, making Audrey sniff and straighten herself.

  “This morning, I found this bar of Edmundson’s Faithfulness Soap on my desk—you know, that new stuff Emily sells down at her shop. It came with a note from the Library Board thanking me for my years of faithful service. I hadn’t even realized it was my tenth anniversary there.” Her voice dissolved into a wobbly sob on the last word.

  “You have been faithful,” Sandy said, handing her another tissue. “We know you have. And nobody needs a bar of soap to recognize that.”

  “What is it with the soap craze?” Mac whispered to Gil.

  “You think I know?” Gil shot back. “How should I know?”

  “Well, of course we know you deserve it,” Howard Epson said importantly as he eased himself up out of a corner booth. Howard must not have been the one to give the gift, or he’d have taken credit by now. As a matter of fact, he looked a little put out that someone had done something notable without his input. “Who signed the card, anyway? You should thank ’em right away.”

  Audrey sniffled loudly as she rummaged through the lavender-colored tissue paper. Emily had her hand in there somewhere, or she knew who did, that much was sure. “Don’t know.” She pulled out the card. “It just says ‘from the Library Board.’” Which seemed to miff Howard, for now someone had done something in the name of the Library Board without the permission of its esteemed chairman.

  “I bet it’s Dinah Hopkins. She’s always doin’ stuff like that,” offered Sandy.

  “But wouldn’t Dinah just have sent something over from the bakery?” Audrey asked, blowing her nose. It made sense; Dinah owned the bakery and she was the generous type. “She knows I love her sticky buns.”

  “It doesn’t really matter who got it for you,” Sandy said. “It matters that you got it. That you know we think you’ve served us faithfully and we ain’t in any hurry to loose you. You got that, darlin’?” With one arm she hugged Audrey’s shoulders, while she cued applause from the Grill with the other behind Audrey’s back.

  It was all Gil could do not to shake his head in wonder as he stood there, applauding the town librarian and her faithfulness. The moment lunch was over, he took a little trip over to West of Paris. “All right, fess up,” he said as he opened the door. “You gave the bar of Faithfulness Soap to Audrey, didn’t you?”

  “Pardon?”

  She was acting casual, but she had a grin behind her eyes, he could see it.

  “Dinah Hopkins bought it?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Sandy?”

  “No, why?”

  “So you have no idea how somebody knew Audrey was thinking about quitting the library? No concept of how a bar of Faithfulness Soap mysteriously appeared on her desk to thank her for being so…you know…faithful?”

  The grin came out from behind her eyes and played full across her face. “I may know something about that.”

  “But you’re not telling.” Gil stared at her. “Do you know everything about everyone around here?”

  She didn’t answer. She just stood there, grinning in that peach-colored lacy sweater of hers, without saying a word.

  “There’s got to be another solution. Widening that road is just plain wrong. Might as well just extend the freeway and put in an exit ramp with four fast food chains.” Sandy Burnside took off her sparkly reading glasses and tossed them on the table.

  Gil’s composure hung by a thin thread, and Mac’s wasn’t far behind. It was already 10:00 p.m. and the council had three more items on the docket. If Howard hadn’t gone off on one of his tangents and forced the whole council to listen to a detailed account of his last mare sale, they could have been a whole hour ahead.

  “That’s just the point, Ms. Burnside,” said Mac. Gil recognized the I’m-trying-not-to-get-angry tone in Mac’s voice. The two of them had worked for weeks on this recommendation, and most of the council members had dismissed it in a matter of seconds. “If we adjust the roadways to handle the traffic now, we won’t have to do anything drastic in the future.”

  “I don’t see why we have to do anything now,” Emily said, running her fingers down the tables of projections Mac’s company had put in their proposal. “This report says we won’t need that kind of infrastructure for another four years.”

  “But we’ve already agreed the road needs resurfacing now,” Gil counter
ed. “If we do the expansion now, we’ll save money in the long run.”

  “Save money,” Sandy looked up, “or just make it easier to run those fancy computer cables?”

  What have these people got against technology? Gil screamed in his head. “You’ve already seen what it’s been like to try and retrofit the high school with Internet access. People want Internet access. Tourists want Internet access. We need to plan ahead or we’ll be forever playing catch-up.”

  “Well, I like catsup,” Howard joked. Howard always thought any argument could be solved by the right joke. “Especially on hot dogs.” Gil felt validated when everyone moaned. Not that it helped. He mentally counted to ten and tried to remember that two hours ago, he’d actually liked most of these people.

  “I’m not asking you to say yes or no tonight,” Gil said with the most level voice he could. “Let’s all try to remember the principle of first reading and not squash an idea without really considering it.”

  “We’ve been considering it,” Sandy Burnside sighed. “I don’t think another two weeks is gonna make this idea seem any better to me.”

  “Well,” Emily said, “I suppose we could look at these traffic projections again. I’m not convinced we know what kind of traffic we’ll have in four years. I’d hate to add another lane only to find out we don’t need it.”

  “But we will need it,” Gil retorted. “We’re already starting to need it. It’s a four-lane road, people, not a shopping mall.”

  “One tends to lead to the other,” Sandy said, bringing a chorus of agreement from around the table.

  Gil looked straight at Emily. “Can we just let this sit for a session or two? Let people get used to the concept?” He hadn’t expected anyone to say yes tonight. As a matter of fact, he’d fully anticipated that the project would only get approved with a two-year delay. To get anything done in Middleburg, you had to plan for resistance and compromise if not outright opposition. Come on, Emily Montague, work with me here. I got a dozen guys memorizing scripture in the shower—that says you know your way to a solution. He stared at her. He raised an eyebrow.