Dead in Vineyard Sand (2 page)

I knew those people too. Most of them couldn't afford regular membership in any of the island's clubs, but for a reasonable amount of money they could play at late hours in the summer and more often in the fall, winter, and spring. In the mornings, before they played, you could find them at the doughnut shops, stoking up for the day. We called them the Bold Golfers because they would play in weather that kept normal people indoors.

“What's all this push to get me to play golf?” I asked.

“It's not a push to get you to play golf. It's a push for you to get more exercise.” She laughed and skipped away. “Not that kind of exercise! Keep your hands off me. I'm going to go take a shower.”

“What a good thought. I'll go with you.”

I grabbed my towel and followed her out the door.

Outdoor showers are the best showers in the world. You can't steam them up, they're open to the sky, and the best of them are, like ours, big enough for more than one showerer.

“Allow me to help you out of that bathing suit,” I said to Zee. She allowed me.

“Allow me to help you out of yours,” she said. I allowed her.

As we stood under the shower, she was a dark Venus rising from the shell, her long, blue-black hair streaming down over her shoulders, her dark eyes looking up at me, her all-over tan making her appear as though she were made of bronze.

“Pardon me, madam,” I said, “I don't mean to intrude upon your privacy, but haven't we met before? You remind me of someone, but I can't recall who.”

She let her eyes roam over me, toe to pate, then shook her head. “I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever seen you before. I'm sure I'd remember.”

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, pulling her against me.

When we finally stepped out of the shower and toweled ourselves dry, we felt clean and pure and good, the way you should when you live the simple life on Martha's Vineyard.

One of our favorite beaching spots was at the far southeast corner of Katama Bay, where the Norton Point barrier beach joins the sometimes island of Chappaquiddick. There, a shallow clam flat reaches north into the bay. It's an excellent and popular place to dig for steamer clams or, if you walk out a ways, to rake for quahogs, two of my favorite pastimes.

Two alternative entertainments are to sit in the sun under your umbrella or wade in the warm, shallow bay water, or to walk across to the south side of the beach and frolic in the ocean surf.

There, when the waves are high, there is danger. The waves can knock you down and break your bones, and undertows can pull you away from shore. Every summer there are ambulance runs from the beach to the hospital, and occasionally some bold surfer ends up paralyzed for life. Worse yet, now and then someone doesn't live to tell the tale.

As you might guess, these conditions make the beach very popular with both native and visiting teens and twenty-somethings, who like the excitement and know that they themselves will never die or suffer harm.

Smaller kids have to be watched very carefully, and are best taken to other beaches when the surf is high. On calmer days, however, younger children such as ours can enjoy playing tag with the waves and floating in tubes at the edge of the sand.

I had my own tube, and floated with Joshua and Diana when the conditions were right for them to leave shore. On noisier days I sometimes played the game called “tubing,” which consisted of seeing how high I could ride my tube on a breaking wave without being tumbled onto the sand. It was a sport that required a fine judgment: too far out was boring; too far in was disaster. I liked it for the same reason the teens and twenty-somethings liked high surf, and if asked why a grown-up man would play such a childish game, I referred to Churchill's famous remark that nothing is as exhilarating as being shot at without effect. Old Winnie knew what he was talking about.

We drove there via Katama, which was possible because this year a momentary enlightenment had descended upon the Fish and Wildlife authorities and they had decided to alter their normal policy of plover protection, which consisted of closing the beach upon sighting the first two amorous-looking plovers and keeping it closed for at least ten weeks. Instead, this year the authorities had chosen to close the beach when the first plover chick was hatched and to open it again when the last chick disappeared. The beach was closed for just two days, the time it took for the chicks to be hatched and for predators such as skunks or gulls to find and eat them.

I was filled with hope that such common sense would prevail during summers to come, but wise Zee advised skepticism. “This is a onetime thing,” she cautioned. “You're a dreamer if you expect the plover people to be smart more than once in a career.”

And I knew she was right.

That afternoon the waves were small, so while Zee and the kids played on the ocean side of the beach, I waded far out into the bay with my wire basket and
rake, and collected stuffers and littlenecks. The latter would be appetizers for tonight's supper and the former would be frozen for future chowders or stuffed quahogs.

Raking for quahogs can be almost hypnotically relaxing. You stand in cool water with the warm sun turning you even browner. If you feel too hot, you just bend your knees and dip into the water to cool off. Erect again, you rake steadily until you have your quahogs or you're ready to go ashore without them. It's a task that requires no thought, but allows your mind to float whither it will as your eyes roam the bay, taking in sailboats, distant swimmers on the beach, other shellfishermen, gulls and terns; your ears are full of the sounds of life on the bay: distant voices, the calls of seabirds, the slosh of small waves.

While I raked, I was thinking about Glen Norton and golf and wondering if maybe I should actually take up the grand old game. One thing I liked about it was that, in theory at least, you don't get to blame somebody else if you do badly. Like tennis and chess, and unlike team sports, you can fault no one but yourself for failure; on the other hand, you get all the credit if you do well.

Of course, losers always find excuses for losing: a camera clicked, a flash went off, someone moved or shouted or whispered, an official made a wrong call, someone cheated. Golf, tennis, and chess all produce sour grapes; but still, in theory, you are master of your fate, whatever it is.

I had actually played golf once: a single round in Japan decades earlier when I was seventeen and on my way to be a hero in Vietnam. While we'd waited for transport, golfing grunts, on their way to the same war, had taken me to a misty course early one morning. I'd
rented clubs and, knowing nothing about the game but what my friends had told me, had teed up on the first hole and struck a gigantic shot right down the middle of the fairway. It had gone up and over a hill and had disappeared into the mist. It was the first and best shot I ever made, and I remember thinking, There's nothing to this game.

I'd shot 108 and had never played again.

But now Glen Norton was hounding me and even Zee seemed to think it might be good for me. Hmmmm.

When my basket was full, I waded ashore and joined my family. By then most of the other beachgoers were heading home, their SUVs stuffed with sandy people, blankets, umbrellas, balls, beach bags, coolers, and inner tubes.

Later, when I came ashore after a float and a splashing water fight with the children, I told Zee my golfing thoughts.

“And what have you decided?” she asked, handing me a cracker topped with a dollop of smoked bluefish pâté.

“I've decided it's too expensive and that I've got a lot of better things to do in the summertime. Maybe I'll play some in the fall, when more of the local guys play.”

I got a Sam Adams out of the cooler and poured some down. Delish! Also illegal, but the beer police were not around.

“Hey, Pa! Hey, Ma! Look!”

Joshua and Diana had followed me ashore and were now standing and pointing out to sea. We looked where they were pointing and saw a dark head moving toward Wasque.

A big seal. It swam then sank from sight, then came up again farther to the east, and swam some more.

Sun, sand, surf, and now a seal. Being here had to be better than being on a golf course.

But we'd no sooner gotten home and showered and changed and rinsed our wet things and hung them out on the solar dryer, than the phone rang. It was Glen Norton, inviting me to play, as his guest, the next afternoon.

“A couple of my pals are coming down from Boston and we need a fourth,” he said in his usual cheery voice. “I know you'll like the guys and have a good time. I have an extra set of sticks you can use.”

“I haven't swung a golf club since I was seventeen,” I said, feeling my mouth water as I watched Zee put ice in two glasses, pour the glasses full of vodka, and add an olive to each. “I don't think your friends will want to stand around while I look for my ball in the woods.”

“Oh, don't worry about that. None of us will be playing par golf. Besides, you're in good shape and I know you can hit the ball straight. I've seen you cast.”

Zee sipped her drink, batted her eyelashes at me, smiled and licked her lips, and carried the glasses up the stairway to our balcony.

I said, “I'm not sure casting and swinging a golf club use the same muscles.”

Glen was full of the confidence that had probably helped make him rich by early middle age. “You'll be doing me a favor and I'll be doing you one. Once you taste the game, you're not going to want to give it up. Trust me!”

“Well . . .”

“Great! See you at Waterwoods at four, then! Make sure you wear a shirt with a collar.” He rang off while I was still trying to say, “But . . .”

I looked at the phone in my hand, wondering if Glen's phone technique had also helped him earn his
millions. Maybe if you acted like a deal was done, it really was done, often enough, at least, for you to come out ahead most of the time.

I put crackers, cheese, and chutney on a plate and went upstairs to join Zee. The evening sun slanted over our shoulders, illuminating our garden, Sengekontacket Pond, and the barrier beach that carried the Edgartown–Oak Bluffs road. Beyond the beach, white boats moved over the blue waters of Nantucket Sound, and beyond them a hazy stream of clouds hung on the horizon above Cape Cod.

Most of the cars had long since left the parking places beside the road, taking their owners away from the beach and back to their rented rooms and houses. Two ospreys circled above the pond, and a flight of cormorants passed above us, headed west.

“Not a bad spot,” I said, glad as always that my father had been smart enough to buy the place when it had just been an old fishing camp, and that I had been smart enough to modernize it into a house fit for my family. I tasted my drink and told Zee about the telephone conversation.

“Well, Vijay,” said Zee, “how much are you getting paid to play? You major players do get paid to show up, don't you?”

“If I get paid by the stroke, I should do just fine,” I said.

“Isn't Waterwoods the place where Joe Callahan liked to play when he was still president? Pretty posh for a tyro like you.”

“I don't think the Waterwoods people care how good you are as long as you can afford the fees. And I don't have to worry about those because Glen is picking up my tab.”

“Good for Glen. But if you get lucky, just be sure you don't
get conned into making bets on who wins the next hole.”

“I take that as a vote of no confidence in my golfing abilities, untested though they may be.”

“As long as you walk and carry your own clubs you'll have my complete support,” she said. “I'll even accept being a golf widow if it keeps you in shape.”

I sighed. “How soon we forget. Why, just today I thought I'd offered ample evidence of my manly vigor.”

She grinned. “Well, parts of you are in good shape. It's the rest of you that needs work.”

•  •  •

The next afternoon I drove to Waterwoods. It was the island's prettiest club, featuring tennis courts and a beautiful golf course that wound through low hills and overlooked marshes and a lovely great pond. If you didn't want to play on the courts or fairways, you could have a fine meal in the restaurant and watch the bold golfers whack balls off the first tee. Most of them didn't look much like the pros I sometimes watched on TV on stormy weekends. I was sure I would look just as bad, but knew I could never take the game as seriously.

I met Glen on the practice green beside the clubhouse, where I accepted his spare clubs, shook hands with his friends, and girded my psychological loins.

“Don't worry about your game,” said Glen. “As long as we move right along, nobody cares how many strokes you take. You only get five minutes to find a lost ball.”

We practiced putts, then we went to the driving range and teed up.

My tee shot went long and straight down the middle, and I thought, Maybe I was right before. Maybe there really isn't anything to this game.

“I thought you said you hadn't played in thirty years,” said Glen suspiciously.

I shot 108. No improvement since my last round, but good enough to have Glen ask me to play with him again the next weekend and good enough for me to say yes.

Back at the house, I told Zee about the plan and she frowned and asked, “Did you hear about the fight in the Fireside?”

“No.”

“Madge called me from the ER. A couple of bikers and a couple of golfers got into it pretty good. Three of them are in jail and the other one's in the hospital. If you're going to hang around with the golfing crowd, maybe you'd better watch your step. Or maybe you should just give up golf.”

I gave her a kiss. “They were young guys and they were drinking, I'll bet. I hang around with an older crowd. We still like our booze, but we're past our punching stage. You don't have to worry about me getting into a brawl.”