Tail Gait Read online

  Bordering this inner quad was a large outer quad, big enough for football games and gatherings in good weather. The far border was the graveyard, enclosed by a gray stone wall, the same stone as the church’s structures.

  From the large quad, the pastor’s house was to the left of the graveyard. The dwelling had grown over the centuries, with additions as well as a two-car garage. Originally a stable with living quarters overhead, the parsonage had been constructed of clapboard painted white. Its shutters were midnight blue, each with a cross cut into the top.

  As St. Luke’s was a Lutheran church, it was high church, but the décor, while testifying to a brief flirtation with gilt, was more subdued than that of the Catholic church down the road. However, it was not nearly as barren as the local Church of the Holy Light.

  Inside this delightful, warm home, a dinner party brought together friends. The Very Reverend Herbert Jones, at long last emerging from the shadow of his wife’s death, had decided to entertain this evening. Although his wife, a great beauty in her day, had passed away seven years ago, it had taken the good man that long to rebound.

  Inside, Harry and Fair Haristeen, D.V.M.; Susan and Ned Tucker; Nelson and Sandra Yarbrough, both dentists; Professor Greg “Ginger” McConnell and his wife, Trudy; Marshall and Joyce Reese; and Paul and Anita Huber all sat in the simple, pale yellow living room with Reverend Jones and his dear friend, Miranda Hogendobber. After Harry’s mother died, Miranda was a surrogate mother to her and a good friend to all. Miranda also possessed a singing voice touched by an angel, a voice in the service of the Church of the Holy Light, an evangelical house of worship.

  The caterer could be heard at work in the old country kitchen.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t let me cook tonight’s repast,” said Miranda, looking quite nice in a peach dress.

  “Because then you’d fret.” Herb smiled as Lucy Fur, a Lutheran cat, leapt to the back of his big easy chair.

  “I’ve forgotten how lovely this house is,” Trudy remarked. “Like walking back in time.”

  “Well, at least there’s no television in the living room,” remarked Susan, in her early forties. “Drives me crazy.”

  Harry, Susan’s friend since cradle days, reached over to pinch her. “Oh, Susan, everything drives you crazy.”

  “There, she said it, I didn’t.” Ned laughed. Ned was the district’s representative to the state legislature, which he usually referred to as the House of Burgesses, as it was known before the Revolution. He also, not for public consumption, referred to it as “the Asylum.”

  “She’s a perfectionist in everything, but most especially deportment,” Fair complimented Susan, using the word his mother had always used to chide him. In his head, he could still hear the voice: “Pharamond, a gentleman always walks to the outside of a lady. In this fashion, should a conveyance drive through a mud puddle, he will be besmirched, not she.”

  And so, since age five, Fair had always walked on the outside as well as performing all the duties a Virginia gentleman was supposed to perform. These duties were ironclad, regardless of race, religion, age, or class. His father’s way of enforcing the same standard was to mutter, “Don’t be a dolt, son.”

  All of the assembled that evening at Reverend Jones’s home had been raised with strict rules of behavior. While other parts of the country might see such rules as imposing on their self-expression, every Southerner knows that the way to truly insult someone is with impeccable manners. One slight shift of tone, one turn of the hand, jingling coins in a pocket, could be like an arrow shot from the bow. While none of the people there dwelt on it, each one knew manners provided vital information on social and emotional levels. To not know them was like reading with one eye closed.

  The Lutheran cats, however, were under no such dictates. At that moment, Cazenovia was in the kitchen, clawing the leg of the caterer in hopes he would drop a morsel. “Damn cat,” the caterer was heard to exclaim.

  The Reverend Jones rose, entered the kitchen to confront the unrepentant calico. “Where are your manners?”

  Elocution, the third of the Lutheran cats, sauntered into the kitchen but was prudent enough not to meow.

  “Sorry to curse,” apologized Warren Chiles, a parishioner and the caterer.

  The Reverend laughed. “I do it all the time. My hope is that the Good Lord has bigger fish to fry than a pastor who cusses.”

  “I think he does.” Warren nodded. “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Good. I’m starved. Bet everyone else is too.”

  The Reverend Jones returned to the living room and rounded up his guests. They filed into the dining room, which was painted a flattering deep ivory. A small chandelier from 1804 cast soft light on the table. An embroidered tablecloth covered many a scratch—not from the cats, of course.

  As pork roast was served and wine poured, outside the windows the sunset’s last golden rays turned deep salmon, then exploded in fire.

  Harry called their attention to it. “Look at that sunset.”

  The others paused to turn around.

  Trudy, originally from Michigan, stared at the fireworks. “I never tire of the beauty of this place.”

  “I remember beautiful sunsets over Tampa Bay when I was a kid, but there’s something about watching the mountains turn colors with the sunset, then twilight,” Nelson remarked.

  “It makes me wonder who else is watching this and where?” Sandra wondered. “Is it this beautiful right now in Asheville, North Carolina, or up in the Hudson River Valley?”

  “Or who watched this valley’s gorgeous sunsets back in 1820?” Marshall mused. Like Nelson and Paul, Marshall had studied history under Professor McConnell when they’d played football for the University of Virginia back in 1959.

  The dinner conversation covered sunsets and sunrises, moonrises, and whether it was better to live on the water or by the mountains. These were gentle conversations among people who had known one another for decades. After dinner, they repaired to the living room. The Reverend Jones started a fire in the fireplace. The three cats—now full—quickly plopped in front of it.

  The last frost was usually about mid-April, but last year, there had been frosts into early May. You never knew. Frosts or not, the daffodils were up already, redbuds swelled but had not yet opened. It was early spring in the Appalachians, a magical time.

  “When is your next class reunion?” Ginger asked Nelson.

  “I don’t know, but I know the team will get together in Richmond at the end of the month. We used to get together at Wintergreen,” the dentist said, referring to a skiing community west of Charlottesville, “but it’s gotten to the point where some of us can’t climb those steep stairs.”

  “Goes so fast,” murmured Harry, who, though much younger than the University of Virginia men, couldn’t believe how time flew.

  Miranda, in her seventies, smiled. “Everyone says that. Ever notice?”

  “People have been complaining about time since Pericles’s Athens.” Ginger laughed. “Before, even. I chalk it up to the human condition.”

  “Which reminds me, the human condition. How is your research going on your book?” asked Nelson.

  Trudy interjected with good humor, “If the book doesn’t kill him, I might.”

  Ginger put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Honey, I’ve been a trial for decades, what’s one more?”

  “Decade or trial?” she shot back.

  They laughed, then he answered. “The writing is slow because I fall in love with my research. Always have. I think I have visited every church built before, during, and immediately after the Revolutionary War, including this one. I’ve read the rolls of parishioners, visited the graves, noted those who were soldiers or sailors during the War, those who were prisoners of war at The Barracks just down the road from here. They all feel like people I know. I’ve read their property purchases, lawsuits, if any. In short, the detritus of everyday life. Well, Trudy has heard this so many times, but som
etimes I feel they are reaching back.”

  “That’s why you were and are such a good teacher. You brought them to life.” Nelson paid Ginger the ultimate compliment.

  “Indeed,” said the Reverend Jones. “I’ve never had the good fortune to attend Ginger’s classes, but I’ve read his books. I’m a bit of a history buff too, which you know, but I blunder about. I’ve always been interested in how the various faiths took root in this new land and, given the distances people had to travel for spiritual comfort, I often wonder about, say, a Catholic priest comforting a dying Quaker because he was the closest to the suffering man.” The Reverend Jones was an original thinker.

  “I never thought of that,” Harry said.

  “Me neither.” Susan leaned forward. “So many people, so many different ways of worshipping, thinking.”

  “Smartest thing we ever did, separation of church and state, and we can thank Madison for drawing up those Articles for Virginia when we were a colony.” Ginger’s tone brooked no interference, but then the rest agreed on this issue.

  “Who was your best student?” Miranda asked him.

  Nelson quickly laughed. “Not me.”

  “You made good grades. History wasn’t your passion, not like Marshall and Paul here.”

  “Because of you, I studied on my own. Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century gardens,” said Paul, the 1959 team’s right halfback. “Freedom gardens, as some were termed. But then, I always knew I’d take over Dad’s landscaping company. It made sense.”

  “Helps me.” Marshall smiled.

  Joyce beamed, always ready to praise her driven husband, a defensive lineman from those same days. “You must see what Marshall and Paul are doing at Continental Estates.”

  “Now, honey, they don’t want to hear about that,” Marshall drawled.

  The Reverend Jones encouraged Marshall and Paul. “Of course we do.”

  “As you know, for the last fifty years I’ve created developments that preserve land, sometimes even reconstructing the original dwellings. I really got the idea in Ginger’s classes. He showed me how to track ownership so I could be accurate, so I could build houses of the time but with all our conveniences.”

  “And if possible, I landscape them as they would have been done in, say, 1790,” Paul chimed in.

  “Don’t you receive state and federal tax credits?” Fair asked.

  “I do, Paul doesn’t. But as the developer, I do. The paperwork is overwhelming, and of course both Paul and I must go before the Albemarle County Planning Commission.”

  Paul jumped in. “Not just with historical planning, but also with environmental studies and now even wildlife habitats. Sometimes the paperwork, the prequalifications, take over a year.”

  “Public hearings too.” Marshall nodded.

  “Well, the tax credits are worth it,” Ned said, and he would know.

  Marshall agreed. “Since 2000, Reese Builders have received sixteen million dollars in state and federal tax credits.” He held up his hands. “And I promise you, half of that goes toward the studies, the artist’s renderings, the soil tests.”

  Joyce added, “And if there were just one misstep, you can bet Marshall would be vilified in the newspaper, smacked with lawsuits. It’s absurd.”

  Harry said, “It’s certainly overkill, but then most developers are probably not as careful as Marshall.”

  Marshall replied, “Most are. There’s a rotten apple in any barrel, but you’d be surprised at how most people in this business want a good name.” He smiled at Ginger. “We got off the track. You were telling us about your book.”

  With a small brandy snifter in his hand, Ginger chuckled. “The people who fled to Nova Scotia or back to England during Revolutionary times have been swept under the rug but they also helped create this country. Many lived over on Twenty South, the main road to Scottsville. And, of course, a few lived right here in what is now Crozet.” He sipped, then continued. “Over decades, I’ve tracked these men and their wives through Oxford and Cambridge. A young assistant will call me tomorrow with the latest findings. As there is a five-hour time difference, it won’t be long after that until tee time!”

  “Speaking of golf, I can’t wait to get back out.” Susan sat upright, enthusiasm on her face.

  “If I played as good as you do, I’d be thrilled too.” Paul laughed. “For me, it’s a fair amount of wishfulness, but I will prevail.”

  “That’s what we all say.” Nelson teased him and they all laughed.

  The pleasing aroma of the burning wood added to the closeness of the evening.

  “I’m eighty-two now and I wish I had eighty-two more years.” Ginger smiled. “I’m just getting to the point where I see how it all fits together, the puzzle of the centuries. I will not live to see the next generation of historical breakthroughs. I hope UVA is at the forefront of these.” The others, startled, looked at him with alarm, except for Trudy, who knew how her husband truly felt.

  Nelson spoke lightly. “Ginger, you will forever be the history professor at UVA, and the department will continue your research without regard to political fashion. And you will always be a tolerable golfer.”

  They laughed again.

  The Reverend Jones shared Ginger’s emotions. He was in his seventies, and a lifetime of living and learning had only just begun to truly fall into place. He was only now understanding what Vietnam had meant to him when he was a young combat soldier in the Army. Despite the treatment at home, which both he and the nation finally overcame, he was grateful because he had learned to lead. Those lessons of being responsible for other men never left him, and he believed that sense of duty had made him a decent pastor.

  Those who attended St. Luke’s would have amended that to “a great pastor, a man of feeling, conviction, and love.”

  As the evening finally broke up, Susan reminded Nelson of tomorrow’s tee times.

  “I’m at one o’clock. My goal is to score my age on my birthday.” Ginger smiled.

  “If anyone can play his age, it’s you,” Susan complimented Ginger. “That’s what Nelson meant by ‘tolerable.’ ”

  —

  Driving home, Harry turned to her husband, all six feet five inches of him. “Honey, what’s the big deal with shooting your age?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it is a big deal. Aren’t you caddying for Susan? I’d think you’d know these things.”

  “Ha! The real reason I caddy for Susan is usually whoever is playing with her that day asks me to do it. She obsesses over what club to use, wastes time and more time. I just whip out a club and hand it to her.”

  “But you don’t play. How do you know?”

  “Years ago, when we were all in high school, I asked the school coach to tell me. Then I read some and watched some.”

  “God, Terry Baumgartner! Hadn’t thought of him in years.” Fair slowed for a patch of ground fog.

  “Golf is a beautiful game. I just never had the patience for it. I need speed, whether my own or my horse’s. I’d lose my mind standing over a little white ball and whacking it.”

  “Honey, millions of Americans are losing their minds. It’s a heartbreaking game.”

  “Isn’t that the truth! Susan can remember greens, weather, you name it, from thirty years ago when she was twelve! I can hardly remember last week.”

  “You remember a lot.” He smiled. “But this shooting-your-age thing. Hardly anyone ever does it.”

  April 11, 2015

  BoomBoom Craycroft and Susan Tucker rode in one green golf cart while Nelson Yarbrough and David Wheeler rode in another. Harry, as promised, rode in a third cart, along with her two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter; Susan’s golf bag; and a small thermos of hot tea sitting in the cupholder.

  Brilliant sunshine flooded the fairways, yellow buds swelled on willows soon to open to a light green unique to the season. Spring, long and cool, promised more floral glory shortly. A ten-mile-an-hour wind from the west ensured that the day would feel
cool even if the mercury climbed into the low sixties. As it was, the temperature at 2:30 hung in the high fifties, sweater weather.

  The carts pulled up at the third tee. Despite a lingering light frost, people were eager to get out and begin a new season. Of course, this year their game would improve. They just knew it.

  The foursome, having played together over the years, kept to a well-oiled routine. The ladies drove first off the ladies’ tees, then the men followed from the men’s tees.

  BoomBoom, an 11 handicap, never one to dally, pulled her three wood from her bag, teed up, and hit a beauty straight down the long, long fairway. This course was built in 1927, land was cheap back then, and five-par holes could be built without destroying the budget. Four- and a few five-par holes were common on these grand old courses. Farmington didn’t need a lot of doglegs. If you could hit straight and true, read the roll of the land, you would enjoy playing the old course the old way. Still, sand traps, some tricky fairways, and deceptive sight lines here and there forced a player to think.

  But then thinking is the easier part of golf; executing is another story. Susan, a 4 handicap, watched BoomBoom, another childhood friend. BoomBoom could drive. Her short game often let her down, but a woman really had to blast to match the tall blonde off the tee.