Bluegrass Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  Emily let out a thin, sorry laugh. “I figured that out, finally. But I thought my brilliant realization would help a bit more than it has. It’s already Monday, and I’m still miserable.”

  “Emily Montague, queen of the solutions, doesn’t have one anymore. And you expect to feel comfortable?”

  “I want to be okay with all of it, but I can’t push a button and make it happen. I’m not even sure it will happen.”

  Sandy placed a hand over Emily’s. “This is big stuff. Important stuff. Things you and Gil have been carryin’ around for years. It’s not gonna sort itself out in a day or two. Or five. If you love him, I think you’ll know it soon enough. In the meantime, I think the two of you have a whopping load of praying to do.” She collected the empty tea mugs and stood up. “Tell you what—you stay home tomorrow and do whatever you feel will help. I’ll watch the store for you—that new computer system of George’s is drivin’ me bananas anyway, and I wouldn’t mind a day away from all that bionic nonsense. You go home and get quiet. You might just figure out how to listen if you do.”

  “Sandy, have I ever told you you’re a Godsend?”

  Sandy waved her hand as she headed back toward the little kitchen. “Not yet today, honey, but it’s only five-thirty.”

  Emily pulled in a deep breath. “Just pray I figure out how to listen, okay? I’m just gonna keep asking ‘What should I do?’ until I get an answer.”

  Mac showed up.

  Gil hadn’t counted on that, and no one was more surprised when the front-gate intercom broadcast the familiar voice. Gil closed his eyes and gave a silent prayer of thanks as he hit the button opening Homestretch’s front gate.

  “You don’t have to come,” he said when he opened the door to Mac, who extended a friendly hand. “You’re not on the town council and I ain’t been particularly nice to you lately.”

  Mac managed a half grin. “You’re never particularly nice to me. And how could I miss an emergency meeting of the Middleburg town council?” He put a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “I’m comin’. So play nice, say thank you and get in the car.”

  “You’re driving?”

  “Yeah. That way I can stomp off anytime I want to and you’ll have to find a ride home this time.”

  Gil started in on a comeback, then decided maybe this would be a good time to hush up and just accept a good friend’s show of support. As a matter of act, they hardly talked at all the whole ride into town—Gil’s head was a jumble of nerves, a tangle of all the things he’d planned to say. He’d spent the afternoon preparing his defenses, but all the reasons he’d gathered to keep Homestretch open seemed weak and useless now. He’d defended Homestretch in hundreds of ways over the years. Now, when it really mattered, with Steven’s prayers ringing in his ears, he came up short.

  The meeting room at the town hall was thick with tension. The undercurrent of mumbling, however, silenced the moment he entered. Emily did not look up. He was glad for that—he wasn’t sure what it would do to him to look into her eyes right now, with so many people watching. The spectator chairs—usually half-empty—were all occupied and Mac had to stand in the back.

  “I call this emergency meeting of the Middleburg Town Council to order,” Howard said with all the gravity he could muster. “The single agenda item being recent events involving the West of Paris bath shop and Homestretch Farm.”

  “Honestly, Howard,” Sandy cut in, “I don’t see why this couldn’t keep until next week. Don’t you all think we need a little time to put this in perspective?”

  “I don’t need another minute,” came a voice from the spectator seats. Gil turned to find Matt Lockwood staring him down. It didn’t faze Gil. He’d expected Lockwood to jump on that position.

  “Order, please!” Howard banged his gavel.

  Sandy made a sour face and raised her hand as if she were in the third grade. She could have simply asked to be recognized—and really, things hardly ever got this formal at their other meetings. But Gil suspected Sandy was making a statement.

  “The chair recognizes Mrs. Burnside.”

  Gil tried not to roll his eyes. In the full year he’d been on town council, even Howard had never had cause to use such formal language.

  “I would like the record to show—” Sandy matched Howard’s formality but filled her voice with sharp Southern bite “—that I object to the calling of this meeting.”

  Howard scowled over the top of his reading glasses. “On what grounds?”

  Sandy huffed. “On account of we ain’t had a lick of time to make any sense of this. What put the fire under you all? Normally we make decisions about as slow as molasses on this council, and now y’all want to turn around and slam something into gear without thinkin’ it through just cuz you’re uncomfortable? I thought I was servin’ with better folks than that.”

  “You’d rather we put this on an ordinary agenda, beside road-widening and ATM machines?” another council member asked, her opinion obvious in her sharp tone of voice.

  Mac’s proposals. Gil hadn’t thought of those until now. All that preparation would go up in smoke. Mac’s bid to work on those projects would be killed most likely, just because Gil had sponsored his ideas. Gil ventured a woeful glance at his friend, who simply nodded with an expression that made it clear he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  “I have the right, as mayor, to call this meeting,” Howard declared.

  “You do,” said Sandy. “You certainly do. But like any agenda item, this council has the right to table a vote if it so chooses. Am I right, Audrey?”

  Audrey Lupine stopped taking minutes to flip open her big blue book of council rules and regulations, running her finger down a page until she looked up and said, “She does. I mean, we do. Have the right to vote to table any issue until a subsequent meeting, that is.”

  “I move we table the issue of Homestretch Farm until our next regular meeting,” Sandy declared, staring right at Howard.

  “Now hold your horses, people.” Howard planted his hands on the table. “Let’s make sure we do this right. And I’m afraid, Mr. Sorrent,” Howard said, turning toward Gil, “we’ll have to exclude you from this vote.”

  “I expected no less,” Gil answered flatly. He was amazed they’d even let him in the room, given the way people seemed to be acting. Unfortunately, that left six votes, which could bring a stalemate and drag this out forever. He really didn’t want this to last long; a lingering, drawn-out death would be more than he could take right now.

  “Then you’ll have to exclude me, too.” It was Emily who spoke. Her voice was soft and slightly unsteady. She still didn’t look at him. “I’m just as involved.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Howard agreed.

  It was obvious Sandy didn’t like this idea. “Now wait a minute. Y’all can cross out their votes, but don’t you think we ought to at least get their opinions on it all? Doesn’t it matter to anyone if Gil and Emily want to decide things now or later?”

  “It matters to me,” Audrey said. “This ain’t just a road or a building we’re talking about. These are people. Neighbors.”

  “Crimes,” another council member added.

  Howard banged his gavel. “If y’all can’t keep any order here…” he warned.

  “Emily,” Sandy asked, “what do you want to do?”

  There was a short, quiet pause as Emily thought through her answer. Gil guessed she had no more solidified her stance than he had—the two of them were far too torn up to make any kind of sense on something so large. But he could see how she could call the whole thing to an end tonight. She knew he was thinking of shutting down Homestretch. She didn’t know about Steven and his heart-wrenching prayer. She could call for the decision tonight, and she’d have every right to do so. Maybe some part of him even hoped she would—this was so awful, maybe it’d be better to just get it over with no matter what the outcome.

  “I want it tabled.” Emily spoke softly at first, but continued with more stre
ngth. “I think the issue should be tabled until we know more, until next week.”

  “Mr. Sorrent?”

  Gil looked up. He hadn’t even realized they’d ask his opinion, as well. It didn’t take him long to formulate his answer. “I think Ms. Montague gets to call the shots here, Howard. If she wants it tabled, then I think it should be tabled.” He’d endure another week on her behalf. It wouldn’t kill him—it felt as if he was half-dead already anyway.

  With only five remaining votes on the council, the matter was tabled by a 3–2 vote.

  Like it or not, Mac and Gil would go down together at next week’s meeting.

  There was a moment—an aching, awful moment—when Gil caught Emily’s eye. Like they had across her street the other morning. A storm of emotions passed between them in a single glance. Still, neither of them spoke.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emily spent Wednesday quietly, taking Sandy’s advice and staying away from the store to listen and heal. She cooked up a big batch of soup, took a long bath, and stared out the window waiting for some kind of peace. Finally, too restless to sit still another day, Emily went foraging through her basement for something to occupy her hands. On some shelves under her stairs, she found the books and ingredients from the time she’d dabbled in making her own soap.

  Two of the necessary ingredients were upstairs: oil and water. She checked the expiration date on the third ingredient, a container of lye, and found it was still good. That’s all that was really needed to make soap, and she had enough herbs, essential oils and scents in the house to make a batch of just about anything she wanted.

  That was the chemical wonder of soap: oil and water—two things that normally can’t combine well—are able to coexist with the addition of lye. It had always struck Emily as funny that these two uncombinable elements combined to make something as wonderful as soap.

  And it was the lye that made it possible, also known as caustic soda or sodium hydroxide. It was so caustic that rubber gloves and a host of other protective clothing sat on the shelf beside the canister. Emily flipped through the recipe book, looking for whatever scent combination would appeal to her prickly mood. “Lye must be handled with care,” the book cautioned. “It is volatile and dangerous.”

  “Sound like anyone we know?” Emily asked Othello, scooting his furry backside over as he tried to sit on the book. “Handle lye with respect, and soap-making is a completely safe process.” Hadn’t Gil said that treating those guys with respect was the key to turning them around? Respect—it turned them from unsafe hoodlums into responsible young men.

  Water and oil couldn’t become soap without lye. Certain recipes took as much as two hours of stirring in the lye-water to get the water and oil to combine in the right way. But no amount of stirring would make them combine without that dangerous element.

  Which made her think. Maybe Gil couldn’t have been the man he was now without having been the thug he was as a teen. Maybe he wouldn’t have the success he had with those men if he hadn’t had a similar past. Nothing made his crimes less criminal, just as lye never stopped being caustic. It was what you did with the dangerous element that made all the difference. Perhaps, with a little love and grace—with a lot of love and grace, actually—she could begin to see Gil’s crime as the formative experience it was, despite her own personal history. Had not Moses committed murder? And God could still use him in ways Emily could never hope to match. And King David. His murder of Bathsheba’s husband was downright malicious—one man killing another to get what he wanted. Hadn’t God still used David? Both men were used by God because of who they became after their crimes. And she knew that if she tried to weaken the lye, to make it less dangerous, the results would be useless.

  You had to wield a strong danger to get powerful results.

  Soap, Emily realized, was mercy you could hold in your hand. She ticked down through the Edmundson’s Fruits of the Spirit soaps in her head to find no mercy scent. There wasn’t a mercy scent.

  Yet.

  Gil had stacked several feet of stone wall by lunchtime Tuesday. He’d toiled hard enough to work up a sweat despite the cold air, but he still felt like a walking tornado. Part of it was the inescapable fact that Homestretch’s fate was hanging by a thread. Steven’s prayer was right—Gil had been more than ready to throw in the towel. He, the tireless fighter, had been ready to give up. But now his fierce affection for the farm and its purpose made him nervous about the impending vote. Homestretch was all about second chances—it deserved a second chance of its own. It stung that it might not get one. He was helpless to change Homestretch’s odds—he didn’t have a vote. Nor did Emily.

  And then there was everything with Emily.

  Telling Emily had been the hard, right thing. He’d known Emily would run from his past, but that was his price to pay. She couldn’t help but do so—he was what she’d spent years resenting: a person too cowardly to step forward and stop something horrible from happening. And neither of them could change what had already happened—the past is always set in stone.

  The future was worse: He’d trained himself to be content with his work at Homestretch. Then he’d glimpsed a different future, and he’d allowed himself to ignore his past and wonder about a future with Emily. But now, because of that unchangeable past, he was helpless to build that future.

  So he built the wall instead. I hate this, he prayed as he picked up a rock and scanned the wall for the right spot. I don’t deserve her but I need her. Make it go away, Lord. I can’t stand this. I can’t bear to close Homestretch now but I can’t stand to stay. He hoisted the rock into place and wedged it tight. He’d surely hit bottom again. Or sunk back down—that’s really what it felt like.

  Push off, Gil, go back down and push off.

  Years ago, the man who’d set him on the right track, who’d introduced him to a radical Jesus whose mercy was bigger than his crimes, had made him do one thing: go back. On a bitterly cold night, they’d walked together to the street corner where Gil had hit rock bottom. “This is where you gotta push off from,” the pastor had said. “You gotta start with your feet on the rock bottom you know.” Gil had dreaded it, thinking it would be awful, but it was just a street corner. Ordinary, dirty, no different than thousands of others. He stood there, side by side with the burly, blessed youth pastor who would not leave him for hopeless, and claimed that spot. Claimed it for his future instead of surrendering it to his past. And it felt just like pushing off from the bottom. He stood there, shivering, promising himself he’d never go back to the person he was on that corner. Grabbing at his new life with both hands.

  But he hadn’t really done that.

  Gil dropped the stone he was holding.

  He hadn’t done it at all.

  He’d never really put that past behind him; he’d stopped now, when it mattered most. Mac was right: the best part of his new life was slipping through his fingers. Actually, he was pushing it away like a fool, like some kind of penance he’d condemned himself to pay forever. What was Jesus if not big enough to make a new man out of the skinny, stupid kid who wouldn’t do the hard, right thing all those years ago?

  How could he tell these guys Christ could transform their lives if he refused to let Him transform his own?

  It was time to take his Redeemer at His word.

  Gil left the wall and went to his office. He threw his cell phone and PDA onto the desk, walked past all the computers and printers and screens—the technology that had found him answers in the past—and picked up a plain old pencil and notepad. He headed back outside and down the front drive, barely waiting for the gates to slide open before he ducked through them to stand on the gravel shoulder.

  The side of the road by the Homestretch gate. Because that was the place to push off from the bottom again.

  Like the last time, the spot looked dull and ordinary. Patches of slush dotted brown winter grass and gravel. A side of the road like a thousand others. It offered no big revelations j
ust by standing on it. So, he set about doing what the pastor had had him do all those years ago. He hiked himself up to sit on the stone wall of the gate and pulled the notepad from his coat pocket. Snagging the pencil from behind his ear, he wrote WHAT I KNOW in capital letters across the top of his page. The pastor had said what you know at the bottom is the truest knowledge of all.

  Gil put a fat number 1 on the first line and waited for his brain to fill it in.

  After ten minutes, he scribbled “I feel lousy.” Not exactly the self-actualization he was hoping for, but honesty was always a good place to start.

  2. I want her in my life.

  Even though some part of him insisted she didn’t belong there, a bigger part of him refused to let her go. Wanted what she did to him, how she made him feel and think.

  3. She has to know about my past.

  He’d always known that on some level, even if he tried to convince himself otherwise. But why did she have to know? The other women—there’d only been a few—hadn’t had to know. He’d had women pressure him to talk about his past, but he’d always resisted. Even flat-out refused. So why now, when the information did such whopping damage, did he insist on revealing it?

  He knew why. He’d always known why.

  4. I love her.

  Emily was right: he’d held back, keeping his past as a secret, as the trump card to end it all when she got too close. Because he was terrified of her. Emily meant something real to him—something deep that he’d convinced himself he couldn’t have and didn’t deserve.

  But I want it now, Lord. I want her in my life. I want to be the man I am when I’m with her.

  Here, now, was he any different than any of his guys? Any of the dozens of men he’d helped? Without even realizing it, he’d decided he wasn’t capable of turning his life around. Convinced himself that it was too hard, that the world—or what it just Emily?—was too unwilling to grant him a second chance. Each man on the farm received a small, wooden token to carry in his pocket. Gil had stopped carrying his. At the time, he’d convinced himself it was just laziness, but now he realized it might have been something bigger. He wrote the saying that was on the token: