The Nine Lessons (2 page)
If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.
—Paul Gallico
I
n Vermont
, the month of April marks the onset of what Vermonters lovingly refer to as Mud Season, a brief two-month period sandwiched between an unbearably cold winter and a ridiculously humid summer, during which time heavy spring rains and melting winter snow change the ground from terra firma to a terra quagmire-a. It is also the peak month for “sugaring,” the act of tapping sugar maple trees and boiling down the sap to brew the world’s priciest maple syrup. Needless to say, muddy roadsides and maple buckets affixed to trees are about as ordinary a sight as one can see while frantically driving a car to your father’s house in the middle of an April night.
What is not so ordinary is to witness a large moose standing knee-high in a muddy culvert drinking fresh sap from a maple bucket like a pig in a trough. Truth be told, I’d never have guessed that a moose would find the sweet maple nectar palatable if I hadn’t seen it for myself.
The moose was as surprised to see me speeding around the bend as I was to see his huge snout buried in a container of sap. When my car lights flashed across the road he jerked his head up wildly, tearing the pail right off its spigot. The massive beast then darted up out of the culvert directly into my path. As a veterinarian, I couldn’t stomach the thought of harming the gentle giant, and as a penny-pincher I shuddered at the thought of how much damage it would do to my car (which, for the record, still showed signs of the dents from my honeymoon), so I swerved hard to the right, flying off the road into the mud pit that the moose had just vacated. The car stopped just inches from a large sugar maple.
“Stupid moose!” I shouted, but I don’t think he understood me. He just snorted loudly in reply, sending a plume of warm breath into the cold night air, and then trotted off into the woods on the other side of the road. “Next time I won’t miss!” I put the car into reverse, but it was useless; the tires simply spun in place, throwing liquid dirt everywhere. Without a winch or a tow truck my car was staying right where it was.
I stepped out of the vehicle into the cool mud, made my way back up to the road, and walked the last mile to my father’s home. He lived back in the woods, in the same rustic house that I grew up in, just a stone’s throw from his favorite golf course. Since leaving home I had visited the place as seldom as possible. Erin had wrangled me into a couple of obligatory visits in recent years near the anniversary of my mother’s death, but other than that I kept a safe distance. Seeing the home brought back a flood of emotions and unlocked bitter memories of the past.
Even from a distance I could make out several glaring reminders of my childhood shining in the moonlight. An old sled, now rusted through, leaned against the side of the garage, still waiting to be used. It was a Christmas present from my grandparents when I was seven, but I’d never been allowed to play with it. “You can go sledding,” my father would say adamantly, “just as soon as we’ve cured your slice, and not a moment sooner.” There was no cure for my slice, so the once-beautiful red sled remained fixed against the garage year in and year out. When I was nine I tried sneaking out of the house late at night during a February snowstorm to take the sled on its maiden voyage down a snowy slope farther back in the woods, but London showed up before I made it halfway up the hill. He dragged me by my ear back to the house, yelling about discipline and disobedience, then found a wooden spoon and reinforced his convictions on my backside. “Your-mum-wanted-you-to-learn-to-golf!” he yelled, whacking me once on the rear after each word. He didn’t hit me hard—my pride was stung more than my rear, since I was too old, in my opinion, for a spanking. “No-sledding-until-you-can-hit-the-ball-straight!”
My gaze moved from the sled to a tall wood shed twenty paces from the driveway near the south corner of the property. I had personally chopped and stacked enough wood to fill that shed several times over. Starting at age ten my father would send me to chop wood for an hour or two every time I said something negative about golf, and if I so much as blinked when he told me to grab an axe and get to work, the punishment was doubled. I can’t even begin to imagine how many hours of my youth were spent with an axe in my hands. “Better an axe than a golf club,” I would tell myself when the blisters on my palms began to bleed. I would gently wipe the blood onto my jeans, and then pick up the axe and take another swing. “I hate that man,” I whispered frequently between blows. “I hate golf, and I hate that man.”
I paused when I reached the edge of the cobblestone path leading from the driveway to the front porch. My thoughts turned to the exchange I’d had with London from that very spot on the night I packed up my things and left home. It was high school graduation night, and he was in a particularly foul mood. I wasn’t sure what had upset him more—that I had earned a full ride to college and was starting immediately during the summer term just so I could get out of the house, or that I hadn’t invited him to the graduation ceremony to hear my speech as class valedictorian. Either way, he was plenty mad. “You’re ungrateful, that’s what you are!” he shouted from the porch. “After all I’ve done for you. After all I’ve sacrificed, now you’re just walking out the door? Ungrateful little—”
“Sacrificed?” I laughed derisively. “What have you ever given up for me? Certainly not your time! You’d put a round of golf ahead of me in a heartbeat, so don’t get all bent out of shape. You haven’t done as much for me as you think you have.”
London turned bright red. “I gave up every dream I ever had for you, and it was all for naught,” he hissed, and then retreated to the house. I finished packing up my car and drove away. I remember looking in my rearview mirror at the end of the driveway and seeing him lift the blinds in the front window to watch me go.
My mind raced back to the present as I approached the stone steps of the front porch. I strode purposefully to the door and pounded hard until I knew I had his attention. Moments later the porch light flipped on and the door flung open, revealing my father, London Witte, standing in a white undershirt and red boxers, armed with a three-iron in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other. London never drank, but for as long as I could remember he kept a bottle of liquor at the ready, just in case he needed to drown his sorrows once and for all. As a kid I’d seen him on several occasions in the middle of the night, clutching that same bottle of Scotch while mumbling to pictures of my mother in the parlor.
His face dropped when he saw me. “Augusta? It’s the middle of the night, lad. What on earth are you doing here?” He looked me up and down. “You’re covered in mud.”
“You did this to me,” I groaned. “The mud, the moose, the car, the pee stick—
everything
. It’s all your fault.”
He looked puzzled and miffed all at once. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m sure if you come in from the cold we can sort it out.”
Sort it out?
I thought.
That would be a first.
Dad went to find some spare clothes while I stripped down to the bare essentials. “Good morning, Mom,” I said, waving to an eight-by-ten framed head shot of her propped up at one end of the fireplace mantel in the adjacent room. The other end of the mantel held a photo of London and her staring into each other’s eyes on their wedding day. “It’s been a while since you’ve seen me dressed like this, huh?” Between the two pictures were lined my father’s most prized possessions: a row of glass-encased golf balls. All but one of the tee-mounted spheres was signed by a famous golfer, and he loved telling visitors every inconsequential detail of where and when he’d obtained them. The only one of the bunch that wasn’t autographed by a golf legend was centered on the shelf between the others. To my knowledge, my father had never spoken to anyone else about its origins, and he never let anybody touch it.
When London returned, I dressed quickly and then we each took a seat in the parlor, with mother’s framed mug shot looming overhead.
“Now then,” he said, yawning. “What’s it been? Eleven, twelve months? I don’t see you or hear from you for nearly a year, and now you show up in the middle of the night fuming about something I’ve done?” As a native of the United Kingdom, my father spoke with an obvious accent, but it always became more pronounced when he was tired. He yawned once more and glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s bloody late—this better be good, or I’ve half a mind to use this mashie on your backside. Maybe knock some sense into you, lad.” He twirled the three-iron in his hands and glared.
“You’re the matter,” I said, getting right to the point. “You and golf. Why couldn’t I have just had a normal childhood, with a father who wasn’t completely consumed with hitting little white balls around day after day? Would it have been too much to ask?”
London rested his chin on the butt of the club. “How’s that now? What do I have to do with you showing up here dressed in mud?”
It was probably childish of me, but I huffed aloud to punctuate the gravity of what I was about to say. “
Everything!
Don’t you see? If you had been a
good
father, you’d have spent time teaching me things, or doing things with me other than golf. With you it was always golf or nothing, so when I failed as a golfer that’s exactly what I got from you—nothing. If you had cared just a little bit, then maybe I wouldn’t have been caked in mud tonight, because I’d be at home celebrating with my wife.”
He raised his eyebrows questioningly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, do I have to spell it out for you? You know as well as I do that you were a terrible father.”
His jaw tensed, causing his facial muscles to twitch. “I’ll admit there were things I could’ve done better, but I don’t understand how my shortcomings back then have brought you here tonight in such a tizzy.”
I stood and paced across the room, pondering whether I should tell him about the earth-shattering news I’d been given earlier in the evening. He kept his eyes fixed intently on me as I moved about. “It’s very simple,” I said at last, starting slowly and then picking up speed as I went along. “If you had been a better father, then I wouldn’t have come here tonight, and I certainly wouldn’t have been caked in mud. There would have been no mud, because there would have been no car stuck in the mud, because there would have been no moose in the maple bucket, because I wouldn’t have been out driving, because my wife wouldn’t have been locked in the bedroom crying, because I would have probably been more prepared to deal with the fact that the pregnancy test had a giant purple plus sign on it!”
My father sat staring up at me. When his brain finally caught up with the words, his eyes lit up and he shot out of his chair. “A plus sign!” he hollered, raising his arms above his head. “Augusta, praise be! You’ve scored a hole in one!” He leaped over and tried to hug me, but I brushed him and his enthusiasm off like a pesky fly.
“You don’t get it. I don’t
want
to be a father. For seven years of marriage I’ve tried hard to avoid this very thing. How can I be a father? The only example I ever had of parenthood was
you,
and that’s not likely to help me much.”
London’s face was starting to show red, blotchy traces of the fiery temperament I’d known so well in my youth. It was oddly comforting to know that I could still get his blood boiling with a few well-phrased shards of contempt. He backed up, looked at me angrily, and then sat back down. He was gritting his teeth when he spoke again. “Why did you come here tonight, Augusta? To throw darts at me?”
“Yes!” I shot back proudly. “Now you’re getting it! But I also wanted to tell you thanks.” A questioning look flashed across his eyes. “Thanks for putting golf ahead of everything else in your life. And thanks for always making me feel inadequate. Oh, yeah, and thanks for never being there for me. Thanks for nothing.” My father had never been one to back down from a heated exchange, and when it came to verbally duking it out with him I’d always been equal to the task. However, on this night he was visibly refraining from firing back at me. In fact, to my surprise, rather than getting angry with me for my venomous words, a sadness welled up in his face that I’d never seen before.
