Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight by Ann Mauren Read Free Book Online Page B

little more interesting. That being the case, I
enjoyed a bit of satisfaction thinking that today’s adventure would
have multiple benefits.

Chapter 7 –
Legacy

    Mr. Matthews was heavy and very tall—an
absolute giant of a person. He had a pleasant face, but he wasn’t
as handsome as his voice. Being vertically challenged as I was,
even normal people seemed tall to me. But when he stood next to his
assistant and several other members of his department, while they
made up their plates of catered in lunch food, it was clear that he
was big—perhaps the biggest person I had ever encountered.
    I followed him along the table where a full
spread from a barbecue place had been set up. Containers of pulled
pork, coleslaw, corn pudding, baked beans and ten different flavors
of barbecue sauce filled up the surface area. I hadn’t eaten all
day, but my nervousness in a foreign environment filled with
curious strangers suppressed my appetite. As a result, I dumped a
mostly untouched sample platter into the garbage when lunch was
over. In contrast, the plastic cup full of ice and Cherry Coke was
completely empty when I pitched that.
    After lunch, Mr. Matthews, Dwight, as I was
instructed to address him, guided me to a leather chair inside his
office, a place where clues about his past fit perfectly with his
body size. There was an impressive collection of OSU (The Ohio
State University) football memorabilia crammed into every available
square inch of wall and desk space. The sense of collegiate
affiliation-based kinship washed over me like a warm breeze. Dwight
was a big old Buckeye and a former national title winning offensive
linesman! My grandpa had been a Buckeye, too. This shed light on
the latter’s selection process as it related to the handling of his
estate.
    I never did absorb his love for college
football, but time spent in Grandpa’s company had transformed me
into a very enthusiastic fan of The Ohio State University Marching
Band. I was hooked from the first time I saw them perform their
famous ‘Script Ohio’ routine, this amazing marching formation of
the word ‘Ohio’, in script style, versus print. Even though from
the stands it seemed like a small detail, what I loved most was
that a tuba player got to be the dot of the ‘I’, and he gyrated and
danced in the most diverting way. It seemed like a person who would
choose to play tuba wouldn’t be such an exhibitionist. I loved the
unexpected nature of the contrast I found in that. One of our
season ticket-holding neighbors said the guy was a dentistry
student named Steve. I don’t know why, but that made it even
funnier to me.
    You could purchase the band’s recordings
(tuba solos and all) and Grandpa had set me up with an admirable
collection, once he’d ascertained my more than cursory interest
there. I liked to think that I was the only person in the world who
listened to the OSU Marching Band on my iPod.
    A large photograph of the Script Ohio scene
took up most of the wall above the credenza behind Dwight’s desk,
and I gazed at it for an extended time frame, taking a mental
journey to Columbus. I was at a home game with my OSU Alumni
Grandfather, the first huge sporting event I had ever attended. It
was awesome. Over the blasts of music from the band and the roar of
the crowd, Grandpa’s voice yelled in my ear explaining what was
happening and pointing things out, like the extremely small
visiting team’s fan section of wimpy, hopelessly outnumbered
outsiders dressed in blue, completely surrounded by an army in
red.
    The Buckeyes won, of course, and afterward I
was fascinated by the singular experience of walking among a huge
throng of such happy, satisfied people. Thank goodness for the
win.
    On our three-hour drive home from Columbus
to Louisville, Grandpa and I fell easily into conversation about
the game and the stadium and the band and his days as a geology
student there. It was funny to think of him as ever having been a
young man. He’d