Tail Gait Page 7

  “They wanted our money,” Edward caustically observed.

  “And why not?” Thomas challenged him. “There’s no harm in making a shilling, now, is there? If we marched on London, people would sell food for a price. People have to make out as best they can, and ’tis no crime to feed a man.”

  “No,” Charles quietly spoke. “But I fear we are here for a long time.”

  “They cannot win,” Edward said of the war, his voice carrying belief. “They have had some luck, and they can fight. I thought they would run the first time they saw Redcoats drawn in a line, but they did not. Still, they cannot win.”

  “Their rifles are better than our muskets.” Thomas admired their firearms. “Their gunsmiths are good, very good.”

  “Cannons not as good as ours,” Samuel observed without emotion.

  “What good does that do unless you’re on flat ground?” Edward asked. “We couldn’t get our cannon proper set at Saratoga. That’s what Howard said.” Howard Wilson, 53rd Regiment, had gotten separated from his unit in the smoke, but he had seen the problems with the cannon and the hard push by the Continentals. He was assigned to another barracks.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?” Thomas asked.

  “We underestimated them, but for how long can they hold on?” Charles shook his head. “War costs thousands and thousands of pounds. The Crown can afford it. I doubt the colonists can. But I will wager it will not be over soon.”

  “And more of us will be coming here, I think.” Thomas reckoned they were building more barracks for a reason.

  “Lieutenant, you can do anything with a pen and paper. We saw the drawing you did for Captain Schuyler.” Sam folded his large, rough hands together. “To the life! And your handwriting is like your drawing, wonderful to see. Would you write a letter for me? For my little brother?”

  “Of course. I will write for any man who cannot write.”

  Edward admired Charles’s skill. “I can write, but not with flourishes.”

  “I want clear papers,” a corporal said. “Papers that state where I served. We will all need them to collect our pensions.”

  “You will never see a ha’penny,” puffed Edward.

  Thomas sat quite still for a moment. “A man could make a good life here. Why go back to England to fight and wait for what’s owed? I’m here. I will stay here.”

  Quiet enveloped them. No one protested. Then Sam said, “A man could make a good life here with the right woman!”

  They all laughed. They laughed even harder when Piglet scratched at the door. Charles opened it and the intrepid dog burst through with a string of wurst. Charles brushed off what had to have been part of the Hessian Christmas celebration, gave one to Piglet, and all the men took one.

  “Happy Christmas, Piglet!” Edward cheered.

  Later, Charles lay back, his head next to Piglet’s own. He thought how strange life was. The certainties vanish. What takes their place is resourcefulness and thanking God for life.

  April 16, 2015

  “Will you get back in the cart!” Susan ordered Harry, who, with the cats trailing her, rummaged in the rough.

  The lean woman trotted toward the cart, cats following on their own sweet time. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  “Susan’s a crab today,” Pewter noted.

  Since the fat gray cat could outcrab any human, Mrs. Murphy wisely kept her mouth shut. The human and two cats hopped into the golf cart. Susan floored it, jerking them all backward, as she sped to her ball on the tenth green.

  Stepping out, Susan saw her ball shimmering on the green. “Ha!”

  Harry walked up and handed Susan her putter. Out on the course late after planting the dwarf crepe myrtles for Trudy McConnell, the two passed golfers rolling back in, carts chugging. Few were headed in their direction. Late-afternoon Thursdays, except in summer, didn’t have as many people on the course as the mornings or mid-afternoons.

  Except for her caddy, Harry, Susan felt as though she had the course to herself. As a woman who could read greens, terrain of any sort, she knelt down, looked at the hole, which had been set on a slight, deceptive rise. Miss your putt and the ball would roll back if you lacked force, or roll beyond it if you hit too hard. Susan loved these challenges. Harry thought she was nuts, but then this was an old argument. With a light grip and a sharp eye, relaxed, Susan nailed the eight-foot putt.

  “I am going to be ready this year!” she vowed. “You just wait.”

  “Susan, you can do it. You can be club champion.”

  Bending over, plucking out her golf ball, Susan beamed, half skipping back to her cart.

  “Takes so little to make her happy,” Pewter remarked.

  Mrs. Murphy always appreciated any rolling object and had been known to push around a soccer ball. “It was a good putt,” she declared.

  The next hole would punish a player who got lazy. With a slanted fairway and hidden sand traps, it called for a well-hit but not terribly long ball. A curve in the fairway meant that if you hit big and straight, you’d sail off into one of those damn traps. On the right side, a particular rough awaited.

  Using the club handed to her by Harry, Susan popped a high ball that dropped just to the right, not far into the rough, but far enough that Susan knew she’d have a devil of a time with her second shot. Through intelligence rather than power, she was working hard this season to shave a stroke here, a stroke there. Touch: Sometimes she could just feel the shot in her hands. For example, she had known the minute she hit the ball that it would veer to the right, not a lot, but enough to make trouble.

  “Damn. Damn. Damn!” She strode back to the cart, tossed her wood into the bag next to the alarmed cats. As she started to speed off, she realized that Harry was still back there. She stopped as Harry came toward her.

  “Better you figure this out now than when you start playing this summer,” said Harry.

  Susan agreed. “Yeah. But I know this hole, and I also know if there’s even the slightest wind, it cuts through the fairway. You’d better hit into, as opposed to away from, it. So what did I do? No wind, so I didn’t pay attention.”

  “Susan, it is possible to hit a less-than-perfect shot. No matter what.”

  “How would you know? You swung a golf club once, in tenth grade. I tried to get you to play with me.” Susan directed some of her ire toward Harry, who had become accustomed to this on the course.

  “What are friends for?” Harry patiently let her friend vent her frustration. “I remember. I also remember that you had no patience with me.”

  Susan lurched to a stop, hopped out. “I was very patient.”

  Harry joined her in the rough, as did the cats. Good pickings in the roughs if you liked field mice and voles. Harry found the ball, not too far into the rough but hard next to a tree stump that had been neatly sawed years ago. Susan came over, looking down in disgust at the traitorous ball.

  “Oh, bother!”

  Harry looked through the rough and back onto the fairway where Ginger McConnell had been shot. “Clear view,” she said.

  “No, it isn’t. A limb hangs low.”

  “Susan, look here. Clear view.”

  “I don’t care about that. I need to get my ball out of here without racking up the strokes. This is a real pisser, excuse my French!”

  Pewter hopped up on the tree stump. “Owee! Susan rarely cusses.”

  “Golf brings out her emotions.” Mrs. Murphy smiled. “You and I should be grateful that Mom didn’t take it up.”

  “Think she’d swear?” Pewter said, as she was joined by Mrs. Murphy on the tree stump. Good view from up here. She kept an eye out for unsuspecting mice.

  “Remember when the vacuum cleaner broke?” Mrs. Murphy said.

  “You’re right.”

  The gray cat leaned on the tiger cat. “The air was blue. Mom would cuss her way through all eighteen holes. Ha!”

  Worrying about which club she should use, Harry ignored Susan, walked back to the cart
, and pulled out a seven iron.

  Susan took it from her hand, looked at it. “Oh, I don’t know. Hand me the five.”

  “Just do it, Susan. Wait a minute. Let me move the cats off this stump, just in case.”

  “I am not going to hit Mrs. Murphy or Pewter!”

  “No, but they could jump down just as you are swinging. Let’s not take the chance.” Harry picked up Mrs. Murphy with both hands, put her down. When she reached for Pewter, the gray cat jumped down. No mice around here, with all these noisy humans tramping about!

  Susan waited for a moment for the cats to get far enough out of the way. Then, as she stood over her ball as best she could, Harry suddenly exclaimed, “Spikes!”

  “What now?” Susan exhaled, her patience depleted and utterly put out.

  “Look at this.” Harry pointed to the top of the stump. “Spike marks.”

  Susan peered down. “So what?”

  “A clear view, a good angle to height, an easy shot, and it’s thick in here. Whoever did it could just walk out, casually carrying a ball they supposedly hit into the rough.”

  Susan finally realized Harry was talking about Ginger’s murder. “Oh, now, let’s not get carried away. People are in here all the time looking for lost balls.”

  “Was not Ginger killed in the middle of that fairway?” Harry pointed.

  “Yes, but we don’t know the exact location.”

  “Stand still.” Harry walked behind Susan, lifted her up so her feet hung at the same level as the stump. “Now look.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you have a long, clear view?”

  Susan wasn’t ready to agree. “Possibly.”

  Harry, strong as an ox, put her down.

  “I could have just stood on the stump,” said Susan.

  “And put your spike marks there to cover up the ones already there? I’m going to show this to Coop.”

  “Harry, don’t get carried away. It never leads to”—she paused, thinking of the right word—“safety. Now, how am I going to take this shot?”

  Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter moved back onto the fairway, where they could see Susan, who hit it just right, taking a piece of bark with the ball. The ball didn’t make it all the way to the green, but landed perhaps thirty yards from it. Not bad. With a careful third shot, Susan would get up there close to the pin. The hole might not be the disaster she’d imagined.

  Once back in the cart, Harry took over the wheel. She was tired of being jerked about, but now smiled. “Good shot. How’d you do it?”

  Susan smiled back. “Thought of what Mary Pat would do.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how we miss some people? Even though they’re gone, they’re not. They are still teaching us.”

  “It’s true. I bet those people who took Ginger’s classes still remember many of the things he said, or they look up passages in one of his books.” She turned to Harry. “Can you still hear your mother’s voice?”

  “Yes.”

  They rode in silence to the ball. From there, Susan lifted it right up onto the green. She missed her putt by inches so she was one stroke over par. Given the mess it could have been, she grumbled only a little. Driving back, they bumped over a little crack in the paved path. Harry stopped the cart. A foursome played ahead.

  “Getting cool,” Susan remarked.

  “We’ll make two more holes. Won’t get that cold.”

  “You know, yesterday haunts me. I can’t get Frank Cresey out of my mind. To see someone hit the skids like that man has. Ever notice it’s often the football players or the other team sport players who take a nosedive? Not so much golf or tennis.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they just hide it better. It’s got to be a huge adjustment to go from that kind of adoration and money to being over the hill.”

  “The good thing about yesterday was that it took our minds off of tax day.”

  Harry laughed. “Every cloud has a silver lining.” She looked ahead at the foursome. “They’re moving on.”

  “Good.” Susan bounded out. “Maybe it’s better to forget a lot of things. Focus on the present.”

  “Maybe,” answered Harry, but she didn’t sound like she believed it, not that Susan noticed. She was impatiently waiting for Harry to give her a club.

  April 17, 2015

  “Purest blue,” Harry said to the two cats and Tucker as they walked around the house, inspecting her flower beds and the sky above. “Those huge cumulus clouds, so white, set off the blue.”

  Tucker tagged right behind her human, the faint scent of a rabbit somewhere nearby enticing her. Mrs. Murphy picked up the odor too. “That bunny better not nip off the daffodils.”

  Daffodils, four inches above the ground, bulbs swelling, promised color soon to come along with the jonquils. The snowdrops had passed, crocuses still bloomed here and there, but the riot of color was only a week away, if that, that first burst of spring. Three weeks would pass until the redbuds, the yellow willows, and finally the dogwoods would explode on lawns and on the mountainsides. High spring brought with it spring fever to animals. Calves frolicked, horses chased one another, while deer observed from the distance, amused. Birds opened the sunrise with a chorus that ended only at twilight, which then filled with whip-poor-wills’ calls. Other night creatures also sang or croaked. Spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains so intoxicated people that only the most insensitive or overly burdened could keep their minds on practical matters.

  Harry ran her hands over the top of the boxwoods along her walkway. The quiet whoosh, the snapping back of the branches, satisfied her that those dark green shrubs would grow a lot this year. Not that English boxwoods ever enjoyed the annual growth of American boxwoods, but the density and shape of the English boxwood couldn’t be duplicated by any other bush.

  “Let’s go to the barn,” Pewter urged Harry. “I’d like to check the mouse holes.”

  Tucker, walking next to the gray cat, replied, “You’d like to see if there’s any kibble in the tack room bowl.”

  Pewter ran ahead before Tucker could bump her. “What’s it there for, Bubblebutt?”

  Mrs. Murphy ran to catch up with Pewter. This morning was a morning for running. The tiger cat drew alongside Pewter, passed her, then bolted in front of her. She stopped, then leapt over the other cat, landing behind her. “Whoopee!”

  Tucker trotted up to the cats. “You’re too fat for acrobatics.”

  “Peon!” The gray cannonball jumped and soared over the corgi with surprising grace.

  The show made Harry laugh. She joined the dash, ran up to them, passed them. Harry ran to the tractor shed and back to the barn, the three animals frolicking with her. Sheer exhilarating silliness—what could be better? Breathlessly, they all dashed into the barn, first squeezing through the small opening in the large double doors. As winter receded, Harry would open the barn doors at both ends of the aisle for more air circulation.

  The cats proceeded to play tag. Mrs. Murphy reached the ladder built on the wall up to the hayloft. Nimbly, the cat clawed her way up, Pewter in pursuit. They chased each other around the square hay bales, on the bales, between the bales, their speed increasing. Down in the main aisle, Harry listened to the thumps overhead.

  She looked at the stoic corgi. “Oh, Tucker, to be a cat for a day.”

  Tucker had many occasions to question the intelligence of the human she loved. This was one of them. “Better to be a corgi.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Pewter cried from up in the loft. She had her back to a hay bale, standing on her hind legs, claws unsheathed, as Mrs. Murphy crouched, ready to pounce.

  Behind the plump puss emerged another, decidedly different form. Matilda, the huge blacksnake, out of hibernation but still groggy, flicked her tongue. What was this fatty doing at the entrance to her home? Egad.

  Matilda had used the same hay bale for years, and Harry gave her a wide berth, plus a few treats in the spring before she revved herself up for hunting. Matilda hunted a radius around
the barn, sheds, and house from which she never varied. You could tell the time of spring or summer by where Matilda was. High summer she lived in the gorgeous old tree by the back screen door. Occasionally she would hang from a branch and swing, which sent Pewter into orbit.

  Another rocket launch was about to happen, because Matilda, eyes now wide open, drew herself up, large body curled underneath her, and let out a loud “Ssssst!”

  Pewter shot straight up, fur puffed out, turned in midair to reach the top of Matilda’s hay bale. This further irritated the snake, who now stuck her head out.

  The drama queen screamed, “A dragon! I’m going to die!”

  Prudently backing up, Mrs. Murphy hollered, “Calm down. It’s just Matilda.”

  Those glittering snake eyes now focused on the tiger cat. However, Matilda, half in, half out of her hay bale, twisted around to give Pewter the full effect.

  “Save me!” cried Pewter.

  “What the hell is going on up there?” Harry climbed the ladder, passed the hay bale where Simon the opossum hid, way in the back. Discretion seemed the better part of valor for the opossum. Although half a pet after all these years, he mostly stayed out of view.

  Seeing Harry, Pewter wailed more piteously. “The biggest snake in the world. She’s as long as the barn.”

  Pewter and Matilda regarded each other. Harry, who quite liked this snake, spoke in a low voice. “I’m going to reach over you and lift off this terrified cat.”

  Matilda turned around to fold herself back into her cozy quarters, although in fairness to Pewter’s frazzled nerves, it did take quite a bit of time for the serpent to whirl around her hind end. At last she was back in the rear of the bale, comfortable in her home.

  Harry leaned over to lift up the cat, who put her arms around Harry’s neck. “She is huge, Pewts. I’ll give you that.” Walking to the ladder, Harry put the cat down. Mrs. Murphy already sat nearby, her expression bemused.

  “You could have tried to help me.” Pewter swatted at Mrs. Murphy, who deftly avoided the slap.