The Lightning Keeper (36 page)

“None that I can see.”

Toma missed his putt.

The third hole was an easy par four if played with confidence. The flag could not be seen from the tee, but a well-struck drive would land on the rise about one hundred eighty yards out and bounce down to the hidden green. It was quite possible to make a hole-in-one here.

But in front of the tee the land dropped away into a steep hole with knobs of grass on its slopes and a growth of bracken at the bottom. Along the left side, close to the line that the ball must take, was a wall of trees with several branches overhanging the fairway.

“I call it the Slough of Despond,” Truscott remarked, staring down into the pit. The caddy reminded him of his recent success here and again mentioned the straight left arm. “Let us hope I can set a good example.”

Perhaps he followed the advice too carefully. The ball started well and was beyond the Slough when it bent left and struck one of those branches with a sound such as David's stone must have made on Goliath's forehead. Straight back it bounced and vanished down into the hole.

“Damn and blast! I shouldn't be surprised if there's water down there.”

Toma's shot was unimpressive but adequate, a low screaming mishit into the face of the slope. He could easily have joined Truscott down in the pit, but his ball skittered uphill and lodged in the short grass on the rim.

“You fellows play on to the green. I might be some time down here.”

They watched for a while as Truscott and the caddy trolled the bracken for the missing ball, watched Truscott fall and be helped to his feet. His right leg was soaked to the thigh with an oily ooze.

“What a curious geography you have here,” observed Steinmetz. “Perhaps we had better go on.”

Toma took a club from the bag and executed a lusty practice swing.

“Gently, my friend. I think it is not so far to the hole.”

Toma shortened his stroke and lifted the ball over the rise. When they came to the green they saw it lying on the far edge, just short of a crescent-shaped sand trap.

“I think I need your advice.” Toma spoke in a low voice, with his eyes fixed on the ball.

“I would hit it with the putter, but not too strongly.”

“Advice on something else.”

“A professional matter?”

“Yes.” Toma tapped his ball; it stopped halfway to the hole. He went to stand over it. “I think I must resign my job.”

“Please finish what you are doing. When your ball goes in the hole I shall discuss the other matter.”

Toma putted twice more, narrowly missing the hole each time.

“I cannot take this game seriously. If not for the senator I should go back to my office.”

“To your office? But you have just spoken of resigning. You must take pleasure somewhere.”

“I took great pleasure in my machine, but that seems so long ago. Now I must find something else.”

“Spoken like an inventor. It goes back to what I was saying last night, about engineering. Someday, by the way, I hope you will tell me how you came by your Homer. But as for the job…”

“I am no use to you. And I think the wheel is a failure. What do you think?” Toma tapped his ball into the cup.

Steinmetz did not reply, but put his own ball on the green. “Just for practice.” His ball went straight into the cup. “Ah, if only I had your strength and your youth I might have to take up this game in earnest. You feel that you have failed?”

“Ask your engineers.”

“I don't need to do that. I know the numbers. But this is now an engineering problem, and one must always expect the setbacks, have patience with them. The inventor, by nature, sees only perfection. He has no patience with these difficulties. In the long run, I have no doubt of our success. The Peacock Turbine will make you famous.”

“That sounds rather empty to me.”

“You need another challenge. Fortunately, I have some ideas on that.”

They were interrupted by the thump of Truscott's ball on the green. It rolled to within three feet of the hole.

“Our host will be pleased.”

Truscott's pleasure was muted by the recollection of several strokes lost in the bracken. Toma had won the hole handily, and the match was now even.

The hint dropped by Steinmetz had an unfortunate effect on Toma's concentration, and the assurance of his early efforts was now mired in thought. His ball seemed to follow whatever line Truscott's took, or vice versa, so that there were no opportunities to pursue the conversation that preoccupied him. Truscott, thanks to his experience around the greens, won two of the next three holes, Steinmetz the other.

The flaw in Senator Truscott's golf game was that he did not understand his limitations. He stood on the seventh tee and took a deep breath, disturbing the argyll pattern of his sleeveless pullover. “The driver please, caddy.” He held out his hand, but his eyes were fixed on the Long Water, and the flag beyond.

“The driver, sir?” The safe shot here was to the right, where the fairway bent around the water hazard.

“The driver.”

He put two balls in the water, both well struck, both falling just a few yards short of the far bank.

“How I detest this water. All right, then, the spoon.” He swung recklessly, and the ball faded far right, into the trees. “Not my best effort. But at least it's not out of bounds.”

Toma followed the caddy's advice and hit an iron down the right side. He and Steinmetz stood in the fairway, waiting on the search for Truscott's ball.

“The Experimental Site must be expanded.” Steinmetz spoke abruptly, and Toma's first thought was that he was talking to himself. “A tower on the Knob will lift the receptors clear of competition from the mountain, and if we tap into the magnetite the existing lines of electromagnetic conversion will be concentrated. What do you think?”

“I have no opinion, Dr. Steinmetz. What are you talking about?”

“Up there.” Steinmetz pointed with the putter. “We shall build the lightning laboratory. The first in the world.”

“What has this to do with the work on the turbine?”

“It is all the same work. Were you not listening last night? The turbine is merely an engine to produce energy. Lightning is the same energy, but in a destructive incarnation. Unless we tame it there can be no significant progress toward the goal, because the grid will always be vulnerable to the lightning. That is clear, I hope?”

“Yes.”

“Now, suppose we are playing our game of golf, and a storm comes up. I stand over there, with my feet in the water, and I make so.” Steinmetz raised the putter straight up at the heavens. “What do you think?”

“I would say you are mad.”

“Unless?”

“Unless…unless you wish to be struck.”

“Exactly so. That is the object of my plan. I want the lightning to come to me.”

“And what have I to do with this?”

“You are young. You are strong. And, as you were telling last night, you have experience with tunnels. The iron cores must be sunk into the magnetite like the roots of a tree.”

Toma said nothing.

“This is your new work, or the work I can suggest to you. You will be part of something important, very important. You will be my lightning keeper.”

“I don't know what to say. I must think.”

“Good, you will think, then. I see the senator has found his ball.”

“Fore!”

The senator played onto the green. He was not in a mood for small talk or encouragement. Steinmetz whispered to Toma, “You cannot lose this hole except by foolishness. Be patient.”

Toma hit his ball with the same club. It bounced twice and rolled to the front edge of the putting surface. A little pitch put him within two feet of the flag.

“I'll give you that one,” said Truscott. “That way I won't have to count up my own score.”

Steinmetz won the eighth hole, another par three with a steeply sloped green. Truscott and Toma, having driven the green, both took three putts. Steinmetz placed his ball several feet behind Truscott's and watched carefully what happened to his host's first putt. He did not make the same mistake. He was home in two.

Victory on the final hole seemed to be in Senator Truscott's grasp. He hit two fine straight shots to the green below the first tee. Toma, short and in the deep grass, took the cleek and swung as he had at the beginning of the round. His ball soared over the green and rolled back down the hill.

“You have done me a favor, I think,” said Steinmetz.

Truscott overheard the remark. “We shall have to see. The ball may not be on the putting surface proper.”

But it was, and so Steinmetz was entitled to play his ball. “Where shall I drop it, sir?”

“Oh, anywhere you like. I'm afraid it won't make much difference.”

Indeed it did not. Steinmetz needed only the one putt, and Truscott's par counted for nothing.

Harriet was waiting for them at the top of the hill. “Fowler, your leg. I hope you didn't hurt yourself again.”

“No, I won't use that as an excuse. It was a fine game, but I shall have to change. I don't think they'd let me in the dining room looking like this.” He walked off, favoring his right leg, in the direction of the locker room.

“And you, Doctor, did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes, a strange game of course, but in fact”—and here he glanced at Toma—“I think I am the winner. And now I am famished.”

 

O
N THE
T
UESDAY
after Labor Day, the Truscotts stood on the platform, waiting for the 10:23 from Pittsfield. There had been a frost the night before, and the senator saw scarlet and yellow everywhere he looked. Could this have happened overnight? There were spots of color in Harriet's cheeks. He thought she looked particularly beautiful.

“Ah, the Icebox of Connecticut.”

“My father used to say that.”

“Did he? Please give him my kind regards. I'm sorry I did not have time to say good-bye to him.”

“Yes, of course. Fowler, see how beautiful the trees on the mountain are, and the swamp maples along the river. I do wish you were staying.”

“I wish I could. It will be quite different in Washington.”

She thought of that drawing room swathed in white, a room of ghosts. How would he manage?

He took her hand as if he read her thoughts. “Don't worry. Powers and the staff will know what to do, and we'll muddle through until you come.” She looked down at her hand in his, at the green stone that caught the sun.

The senator drew a deep breath. “You must be pleased. Everyone I have met in the past two days has complimented me on your singing, as if I had anything to do with it.”

“I am glad it is over. It loomed so large beforehand, and now it doesn't seem very important at all.”

“You have been preoccupied this whole week, understandably so. But now that's over. Oh, and Dr. Steinmetz sends you his compliments. He was sorry to have missed the event.”

“You have had a letter?”

“Yes. The arrangements to do with the lease on Lightning Knob. I said they could have it for a dollar a year, provided he does not beat me at golf again. Ha ha!”

“Dear Dr. Steinmetz.”

“Yes. He is welcome, of course, whenever the lightning business calls him here. I should have asked you, but I knew you would be pleased.”

“At first I was of two minds about what is to come. I did not like the idea of anything being built up there, but Dr. Steinmetz was so persuasive about it. I have never felt quite safe with the lightning so near, and especially if you are away in Washington. But now all the lightning must strike the Knob, and that is good. I will be glad for his company. I am glad, too, that Toma has taken to the idea.”

The senator looked at his watch. “Should have been here already.”

“Will you sit down?”

“Thank you, no. The knee doesn't bother me now.”

“When will you come back?”

“When I can, when I can. Perhaps Thanksgiving. Certainly for Christmas.”

“I shall write to you every day, boring letters I'm afraid.”

“You have written me letters when I was there and you here, and I was not bored at all.”

“Yes, but that was…well, I shall make them as interesting as I can.”

“Beecher's Bridge will not be duller for my absence. I shall be glad to hear how the work goes along up there, and I expect you will have Dr. Steinmetz to entertain from time to time. There is no need to play the widow just because I am in Washington.” His words were meant to cheer her up, but they had the effect of reminding her that they would not live as man and wife until her father died, and that she had chosen this.

“Fowler, you know that I would never do anything you didn't approve of.”

“Of course you wouldn't, Harriet.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and bent down to kiss her cheek. “Of course you wouldn't.”