A Hero of a Different Stripe, page 1
A HERO OF A DIFFERENT STRIPE
EDITED BY
JALETA CLEGG AND JOE MONSON
To Tom:
You were, and continue to be, an inspiration to us all,
even those of us you never met in this life.
Thank you.
CONTENTS
A Quiet and Unassuming Hero
Joe Monson
Olive Garden
Tristan A. Gilmore
The Justice Beacon
Mark Silcox
Get Organised
Ross Baxter
Masterpiece
Jessica Guernsey
Three Little Porcinians
Henry Herz
Subordinate
Melva Gifford
Weredodo Sleuth
Emily Martha Sorensen
Good Boy
D. J. Butler
Sidekicks
Ray Daley
A Shoppe-ing Trip
James Ivan Hughes
It’s a Kick’s Life
Randy Lindsay
Raising Words
Stewart C. Baker
New Members
James F. McGrath
An Examination of the Trash Recovered from Armstrong Lunar Park
Wendy Nikel
The Needle-Heat Gun
James Dorr
The Echoes of Silver Ridge
Eric G. Swedin
Within Limits
Scott R. Parkin
While The Heroes Were Away
Jamie Perrault
The Dragon Slayer’s Mentor
Ivan Richardson
Judging the Dark Lord
Michael Young
An Ever Quickening Fire
Staci Olsen
A Request
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
LTUE Benefit Anthologies
Other Works by Jaleta Clegg
Other Works by Joe Monson
A QUIET AND UNASSUMING HERO
JOE MONSON
Here we are!
This is the fifth LTUE Benefit Anthology! It’s hard to believe that this project was started six and a half years ago and it’s still going strong! My coeditor, Jaleta Clegg, has stoically stuck with me the entire time, and we’ve put together some pretty solid anthologies. Thank you so much for sticking with us!
Now, onto this year’s theme!
Life, the Universe, & Everything was created by volunteers. Outside of the faculty advisors when it was first organized, all of the work in creating, organizing, and running the symposium has been done by volunteers. Unless you’ve been on the inside, you have no idea how many hours are spent getting everything ready for the annual event each February. I’ve never tried to calculate it, but I suspect that, by the time the event itself winds down and everything is done, there have been thousands of hours of volunteer work put into it. Even the faculty advisors put in far more unpaid hours on it than they do paid. It’s a true labor of love.
Tom Grover was much like the other early volunteers at LTUE. He showed up to meetings, offered to help where he could, and put in many, many hours making sure everything that needed doing was done. He was a member of The Association (and later, Quark), the science fiction and fantasy club on the campus of Brigham Young University, and was involved in countless activities related to that.
However, the thing people remember about him is just how much he helped out with everything. If something needed doing, he was there. If more help was needed, he volunteered. The comment I’ve heard over and over again from everyone who knew him was that he was always ready and willing to help. And he didn’t do it for the recognition. He was a genuinely friendly and helpful person. His death in 1988 was a shock to the community, and a great loss.
In honor of his tireless volunteering, LTUE created the Tom Grover Award several years ago, periodically giving it to a volunteer for LTUE that goes above and beyond the call to help everything run smoothly, especially behind the scenes. I don’t think it’s given out every year, either (I’m not part of that bit of planning).
This anthology collects stories of ordinary, non-traditionally heroic individuals who step up when something needs doing, when they see someone in need. You’ll find shapeshifting detectives, amazing sidekicks, romance-novel readers who face down an alien menace (that’s the cover story, by the way), and even lunar garbage collectors! These stories truly capture the spirit of Tom as these ordinary people make themselves available when it counts, and often with little fanfare.
As you enjoy the stories here, consider ways in which you can be the quiet difference in the lives of those around you, in organizations to which you belong, at work, at play, and wherever. Everyone can be a hero of a different stripe and make a huge difference, even if you can’t see the difference yourself. You, too can be an unsung hero in someone’s life. Let’s be about it!
Joe Monson
February 2023
OLIVE GARDEN
TRISTAN A. GILMORE
“Here are your menus, and your server will be right with you!”
I groaned inwardly as I leaned against the divider separating the kitchen from the dining floor. That was definitely Jess’s voice seating them, and if Jess was the hostess tonight, then I was in for a long night of soups, salads, and fifty-cent tips.
Jess was my ex, and she hated me with more passion than she had ever invested in our actual relationship. The breakup hadn’t even been my idea, but apparently I wasn’t supposed to have agreed with her when she said we didn’t work. Oops.
I get it, hurt feelings and such. I wasn’t perfect, but I really hated that the hard feelings hit my wallet so directly.
I sighed, letting my sour stomach unclench and chalking the inevitable loss up to some perverse form of relationship alimony before bracing myself to begin my shift for the night. I lifted my face into a smile, rolled my shoulders, and slapped my apron pocket to make sure my pen was still there before walking around the divider into Merlot. (Each of the seating areas was named after a wine, and tonight that was my section to cater.)
Just as I turned the corner, my radio crackled and announced that a table had, indeed, been seated in Merlot. I twisted the dial to decrease the volume as I approached the guests.
“Hello, my name is Scott and I’ll be your server. How are we doing tonight?” I asked, blinking to make sure that my smile reached up and into my eyes convincingly enough. There were four of them, and they had been seated in the corner booth, which was convenient because it meant I could see all of them eye-to-eye without having to hummingbird around the table all night. Oddly, it wasn’t the usual date-night setup of two couples, but a group of three men who were all sitting opposite a woman in a sleek, surprisingly pragmatic-looking red dress. Also strange was the way that the three large, leather-clad men did not move their eyes from the face of the woman while she looked up at me and smiled.
“It’s been a good evening, thanks,” she said, sounding calm and genuine. As for the men, I might have been invisible for all the reaction they had.
“Great!” I said, eyes darting across the group again for more context. Normally, I could pin a group within the first few seconds: a business meeting, a double date, a new, awkward couple . . . but the men were large, serious looking, and struck me as hiding a lot of pent-up frustration with their posture. The middle one had a series of rings on his knuckles so large that they could have been a set of brass knuckles. The juxtaposition they offered in contrast to the woman’s relaxed smile was both unnerving, and incredibly intriguing.
Evidently, the woman intuited the reason for my hesitation, as I was about to leap into a more general greeting and presentation of specials when she winked and said, “We’re just old friends, catching up. Could you get us all some water while we look at the menu?”
I was so caught off guard that instead of maneuvering the conversation like I usually would, I just nodded and said, “Of course,” before walking away. A moment later, I was scooping ice and pouring water as I shook my head, already feeling off my game for the night.
Smile, check. Water, check. I walked back into Merlot, determined not to trip myself up this time around.
“I think we know what we’d like,” the woman said, this time before I could open my mouth. “Do you have salad and breadsticks?”
I placed the waters down in front of each and gave a wry glance toward the men, who appeared unchanged since I had been there last. “This is Olive Garden,” I replied sardonically.
The woman chuckled and said, “Perfect. House salads all around, and I’ll have a strawberry daiquiri as well. Virgin.”
“Fantastic,” I said. I didn’t even bother taking notes. I turned to the men and asked, “Would you like anything else to drink?”
The man furthest left shook his head slightly and raised his palm toward me, as though annoyed. I nodded and said, “Then I’ll be right back,” before turning and making my escape to enter their order and head to the kitchens.
“Who are they?”
I jumped as Jess confronted me around the corner of the kitchen door. Damn, when had I become so jumpy?
“No clue, just another table,” I said, trying to shrug it off. “Why? What are you doing back here?”
Jess’s lips tightened as her snark-levels leapt in response.
“Because I work here, doofus, and I was looking for you.”
“Me? Why?” I asked.
“Not because of you!” Jess snapped, each syllable sounding like the crack of a whip. “Because there are four other tables asking to be seated in your section, and I need to know if you can handle it.”
“Four other . . . what?” I replied intelligently.
Jess huffed out a calming breath and said, in a slightly less agitated tone, “There are four more tables—about twelve men—all asking to be seated in your section. It’s . . . kinda freaky.”
I just stared and blinked, and then mechanically moved past her to begin prepping a tray. I couldn’t just stand there in the doorway, and my mind was having trouble comprehending what she was telling me, so it instead counted olives into the salad. “So, they all need to be in my section? Are they family or something? Someone I know?”
“No,” Jess said, arms folded. “They all look like those guys in there with the woman. They’re creeping us out up front.”
I paused, frowning. “Are they, like, mobsters?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Jess retorted before her voice softened. “But, yeah. Maybe.”
“Well, tell them to sit somewhere else,” I said, shrugging. “You know Harvey would have a fit if you messed up his seating pattern. Just tell them it’s policy or something.”
“I did, and they said they’d wait for the same section as the other men and the woman. No exceptions.”
I turned to look at her and saw that there was real concern on her face. She was afraid something was going to happen tonight.
We were bad for each other, but I couldn’t help but feel a pang of . . . something, seeing her like that. I looked down at my salad dish and sighed.
“Well, go ahead and seat them. I’ll figure it out.”
Jess watched me for a moment, and then seemed to revert her nervous energies back into being annoyed by me.
“Idiot,” she mumbled as she moved out the other side of the kitchen and up toward the front.
What was I supposed to do, though?
What a way to start the night, I thought, loading the breadsticks onto the tray and lifting it up to head back out to Merlot.
Usually, when a table is seated, there is conversation. You can at least hear the people shuffling in their seats or whispering something at each other as you enter from the kitchens, but the woman and the men were silent as I returned. The traditional elevator-style music humming in the background provided the only sound outside of the clacking dishes I set on the table. The men hadn’t moved, and the woman was pleasantly examining the painted glass pattern in the chandelier above them.
“Here’s everything but the daiquiri!” I announced, placing things onto the table with my smile as fixed as before. “It should only take a minute though. I’ll bring it straight out. Cheese?” I asked, brandishing the wedge shredder before them like a Holy Grail.
Not a peep. Nobody made a sound. The woman simply shook her head in the negative and raised an eyebrow as she watched a procession of large men in leather jackets begin to filter into the dining area led by a flustered-looking Jess. Each of them took a seat that allowed them to see the booth, and none of them looked relaxed as they watched the woman intently. Several of them jostled their elbows in the traditional fashion of “yep, my gun’s still there,” and my stomach dropped a few inches lower than usual.
Jess shot me an exasperated look as she passed back up toward the front, and I looked around at the dozen men seated throughout the section, all watching the woman and apparently oblivious to my existence. I turned back to look at the woman, and she just smiled, offering the smallest of glances toward me as explanation.
I licked my lips and turned back to the dozen men. “Uh, hello!” I said loudly, “since you all seem to be together, perhaps I can take your orders all at once? What would you like to drink?”
“Water,” a man with a shaved head barked from beside me, causing me to flinch. A few others nodded in agreement, and I soon found myself carrying a tray of a dozen waters on my shoulder, depositing them at each of the tables.
Almost as soon as I opened my mouth while depositing the water glasses, the same man said, “Salads,” with a seriousness that dried my mouth instantly. Aside from being the scariest, they were also going to be the easiest party I’d ever catered. I swallowed and returned to the kitchen without saying anything.
“What is going on?”
I jumped again. This time it was my co-server, Douglas, who was watching the edge of Merlot from the door’s window over my shoulder.
“Beats me,” I shook my head. “All I know is I just hope they don’t stick around for desserts.”
“Are they, like, with the government?” Doug asked.
“I don’t know,” I said curtly. “Just let me get them their salad so they can get out. I really don’t want any trouble around here.”
“Why would there be trouble?”
I jumped for the fourth time that night as Harvey, our manager, came out of his office into the operations area. He was only just reaching middle age, but his hair hadn’t heard the memo that people had lifespans beyond forty in the twenty-first century and had turned completely white already, including his eyebrows. It gave him the look of someone who was constantly surprised, and Harvey was simple enough that it probably was accurate most of the time.
I had to take a breath before turning to speak with him.
“Nothing, sir. Just a weird group over in Merlot; a bunch of guys in black leather jackets. But they’ve been fine, just . . . kinda serious.”
“Oh?” said Harvey, his white eyebrows up near his hairline. He walked over to the kitchen door and peered through the window. Then shrugged and said, “Well, I’ll give them a quick walk-through and see how it goes!” He smiled and pushed open the kitchen door, moving out to Merlot.
A few minutes later, while I was counting olives and peppers for the series of salads, Harvey came back into the kitchen with eyes wider than usual.
“You weren’t kidding, Scott!” he said. “They’re a tough crowd! I told that story I always tell about the breadstick we used as a doorstop, and they didn’t make a sound.” He mopped his forehead on his sleeve and shrugged. “Don’t let them start anything in here, but otherwise just keep them happy, I guess. Let me know if there’s any problem.”
I nodded and plated the last of my salad trays. Two silent trips later, all of them had salad on the tables, and no one was eating aside from the woman.
I wasn’t the anxious type, but I couldn’t help but pace as I waited before my obligatory return to ask how the food was. The good thing about having everyone in the section—and none of them eating—was that I was markedly less busy than usual.
I was also much more stressed than usual.
“Let me just walk out and see ’em,” my co-servers began asking. They all had heard or passed by my section and seen the odd situation, and now they were all curious. Some of them joked, others were just excited for gossip and a change of pace, but I couldn’t seem to settle myself. I felt on edge, and struggled not to snap at anyone to leave me alone.
What were those people doing here? They obviously weren’t eating, and they all seemed far too focused on the woman for it to mean anything good. I kept having to mop sweat from my brow, though it wasn’t hot and I wasn’t working that hard.
Eventually, I felt I had no choice but to return and check on our guests.
I walked back out into Merlot, and if I had thought it was tense before, it was nothing to the scene I now walked in on: the woman was still sitting, sipping her water, but several of the men around the room were now standing. They had hands in jackets and pockets, and it seemed to me as if they were on the verge of drawing firearms. Nothing but sheer force of habit moved me into the room, leaving behind my sense of self as I opened my mouth and asked, “Can I bring you your bills? And are they all together?”
