Virgin Territory (2 page)

Doug moves earth for a living. He digs holes, plants trees, deadheads flowers, and prunes shrubs. I guess you could say that he brings his work home with him, because in the evening when he walks through the door he’s covered in dirt from head to foot, and the outline of his sunglasses is stenciled onto his face like bikini tan lines; his clothes have given up their original color and have taken on the muted shades of earth. There are often soot deposits sitting in the wells of his ears, and his hair is permanently covered with a fine layer of dust. Even after he’s showered and changed into fresh clothes, the dirt lingers. His hands, which used to be smooth and sometimes even manicured, have become permanently chapped and rough. If he happens to touch me with his open palm, it’s like making contact with an Ork.

Fortunately, around that time I noticed an ad for the Spring Hill Golf Course in the local PennySaver; at the bottom in small type, it said: “Jobs available at local private golf course. Groundskeepers, golf caddies, bar backs, and ball boys.”

Being a ball boy meant I got paid a few bucks to spend my day padding around the grounds of the Spring Hill Golf Club
and retrieving lost balls while time moved slower than the laws of physics allow. I’m talking the kind of flat-line dull that makes your eyes glaze over, your shoulders slump, and your feet ache. I walked and walked until I spotted a golf ball wedged against a chain-link fence. I picked up the ball and plunked it into a wire-mesh pail. Each found ball was a major highlight of my day, a win. My basic nine-to-five thought was:
Kill me now
.

After two weeks of this, I went to see Prendergast. He’s a big guy with dark, sad eyes and a fringe of soft black hair. He wears khaki shorts and pastel-colored polo shirts with a Spring Hill emblem embroidered over his heart. Once upon a time, Prendergast was a golf pro, but then he started taking too many prescription drugs, lost his wife and his award-winning swing, ran out of money, lived in his car, went into rehab, and moved to Jupiter, where there are about ten million golf courses within a ten-mile radius. Spring Hill wasn’t Prendergast’s first job in town, and chances are it won’t be his last. If this one doesn’t work out for him, he’ll just move down the road and try another. He’s been at the Spring Hill Club for almost a year now, and though he seems pretty comfortable with his position, the clock is ticking, and the odds are stacking up against him. My fellow caddies are betting on the exact date that he’ll have his next relapse.

Anyway, as I stood in the doorway of his cramped, windowless office, holding tight to my bucket of balls and projecting an attitude of total defeat, Prendergast was thumbing through
some papers. I cleared my throat, and when I finally had his full attention, I explained why I absolutely had to give up the job of ball boy.

“What do you mean you’re feeling anxious?” Prendergast asked me.

“I mean
very
anxious,” I said. “I think it’s a result of spending too much time on my own in the middle of so much nature.”

“Nature,” he said, as though the concept was new to him.

“Yeah.
Human
nature I can handle, but things like grass? Grass freaks me out. And sky? Forget it. In New York City, where I come from, there’s hardly any grass to speak of. Lots of people, though. Lots. And, of course, buildings. Big buildings. Some of the tallest.”

I could tell by the way he blinked at me and swallowed hard that he was thinking about the World Trade Towers, the two tallest buildings in New York. Both gone.

“I was only six years old at the time,” I said, allowing my voice to crack a little. “But I’ll never forget it.” Then I shook my head and added, “Anyway, I can’t, I just can’t look for another stray golf ball or else … or else …”

“Okay. How about taking a crack at being a caddy?” he suggested. I could tell he wanted to change the subject and get me out of his office. “I mean, being a caddy is not so much about grass. It’s more about the people.”

“Sure,” I said. “I could give it a try.”

And that’s how I came to be a caddy.

Mr. Schulman’s gaze is directed toward a grove of pine trees in the distance. Unlike the pine trees of my childhood—the Christmas variety, which were generally fat and squat and covered in twinkle lights—the pines of Florida stand tall and thin with a toupee of green fluff swaying way up high. This particular stand of trees looks tense, almost comical, and out of place just planted there in the middle of the third fairway. But that’s the whole idea—the trees didn’t just accidentally grow there; they put them there in order to make an obstacle. While many holes on the Spring Hill course are designed as a straight shot from the tee to the putting green, this one is called a “dogleg,” because it bends dramatically. I’ve watched plenty of golfers attempt to cut the dogleg, but it’s always accompanied by the sound of the ball hitting a tree trunk. Watching a golfer have a fit because the world isn’t going according to plan isn’t exactly my idea of how to spend a summer afternoon, but then on the other hand sitting alone at home teaching myself to play the guitar isn’t that great, either. Given the choice, I’d rather be out and about watching other people make fools of themselves; you never know what can happen.

Mr. Schulman hasn’t even teed-off yet. He’s standing there, addressing the ball and shimmying his behind as if trying to fit himself into a tight spot. That’s when he notices the women.

“Kid,” Mr. Schulman says to me without taking his eyes off
the four middle-aged women who are standing in the grove. “Go find out what’s going on. We don’t want a lawsuit when someone gets hit on the head.”

I lay down his big leather golf bag and go trotting across the close-cropped grass and into the shade of the grove. Spring Hill isn’t one of the many fancy courses for which Jupiter is famous. For instance, it doesn’t offer perks like freshly laundered towels, cappuccino machines, and valet parking; and though it’s technically a private club owned and operated by the King of the Geezers, Jack Felder, the place is very
of the people, for the people
, and
by the people
. And by that I mean just about anybody can wander onto the grounds without being asked a lot of questions or expected to show an ID.

“Hey,” I say as soon as I set foot on the mound of soft sand and imported woodchips. “What’s up?”

All four of the women look over at me and smile. A compact woman with shiny black hair and a toothy smile waves at me as if she needs a refill on her coffee.

“It’s my boss,” I say loud enough so that they all can hear me. “He doesn’t want to hit you with his golf ball, and you’re kinda in the way. A lot of times the golfers send their balls flying into the trees here, and it can get dangerous.”

The woman who waved to me is walking toward me. She walks like a marionette, her legs lifting higher than necessary and her white running shoes sinking into the soft cedar groundcover every time she takes a step. She’s a small, pretty woman
with rosy cheeks and lush eyelashes—but as she gets closer I can see that her teeth look too big for her mouth and her bangs are covering a very broad forehead.

“You looking for my Angela?”

“Huh?”

My confusion must be ricocheting all over the place, because right away she says, “Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you were in the club.”

She speaks with a Spanish accent. I can see that she isn’t from around here; her outfit is too bright for Jupiter, too many stripes, and her slacks don’t match her top.

“No,” I told her. “I’m not in any club.”

“Oh.”

“But wait,” I practically shout as she heads back to where she was just standing. I can’t go back empty-handed to Mr. Schulman. I have to tell him something. The woman signals for me to
shhh
. She gestures toward the tree and then takes a step back, inviting me to come closer and look at what she and her friends are staring at. Just then, another woman in the group takes out a handkerchief from her purse, spreads it on the ground in front of her, and kneels down. She clasps rosary beads to her breast and gazes up at the tree like it’s a television that’s broadcasting her favorite show. I can see her just barely moving her lips, murmuring something, praying.

“Okay,” I say under my breath. “This is getting weird.”

I take a deep gulp of pine-scented air and inch myself
forward. The black-haired woman touches my arm and guides me around to the other side of the grove. I see the thing that is fascinating them; it’s the tree.

I look over at the woman, and she makes a happy face. There are gold fillings gleaming at me.

“Huh?” I say again.

She looks disappointed, because clearly I can’t see what she’s seeing. She makes a point of staring at the tree and indicating that I ought to keep looking.
Look harder
, she tells me. I do, and that’s when I notice that some of the bark has peeled off the trunk, revealing a wound about two feet wide and four feet high; it’s positioned on the tree so that a person of average height has to gaze up at a forty-five-degree angle. I’m no tree expert, but to me it doesn’t look that exceptional.

“What’s going on?”
Mr. Schulman shouts from the other side of the fairway. He and Mr. Loomis have moved themselves into the shady sidelines, and I can see that Mr. Loomis had taken his hat off and he’s mopping his bald spot with his monogrammed sweat towel.

I wave at them, hoping to offer some kind of reassurance but at the same time signaling for more time.

“So,” I say to the woman, “are you guys finishing up here, or are you going to be a while?”

She gives me a hard look, and I can tell that I’m a disappointment to her. She steps closer to me, places her hand on my arm again, and whispers, “Look. It’s Mary. Can you not see her?”

“Mary?”

“Yes. The Mother of Our Lord. The Blessed Mother. Right there. On the tree. She’s here for you.”

The woman’s words send a chill up my spine.
She’s here for you
.

The Blessed Mother is here for me?

Jesus
, I’m thinking.
How am I going to explain
this
to Mr. Schulman?

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve run home, gone straight to my room, and Googled the Blessed Virgin Mary. I could’ve learned all kinds of interesting facts—like what she was up to and why she’d chosen a tree on a golf course in Jupiter as the site of her latest appearance. But that’s not the way it happens.

“What d’ya want my laptop for?” Doug asks as he pulls his whole head back and squints down his nose at me. I’m feeling like a menu with no featured special.

I don’t mention the tree or the women or the golfers. I’m also not going to discuss the threats and ultimatums that Prendergast made in an effort to get the women to vacate the premises. I figure something like the Blessed Virgin Mary showing up at the golf course on a Tuesday afternoon is a situation too complicated for Doug to understand coming off his workday. There’s a moment when I think maybe he might appreciate a description of the police car bumping and careening across the fairway with
its lights flashing and sirens wailing. We were all pretty impressed at the time. But then I realize that it’s more of a you-had-to-be-there situation, so I just shut up. I also don’t mention how the cops had treated the women as though they were a bunch of armed jihadists with a plan to blow up Jupiter. And I leave out the part of the story where the women were physically escorted off the course while being told by Jack Felder, the owner of the club, not to set foot on his property again or he’d be forced to take legal action against every last one of them. In the end, I tell Doug that I’m doing a report on the Virgin Mary for extra credit for my world religion class.

“But it’s summer,” Doug reminds me.

“I’m getting a jumpstart,” I tell him. “It’s part of my new plan.”

“Yeah, right,” Doug scoffs before moving on to the next thing, which is a beer.

His back is turned toward me, and as he pops the cap of the beer bottle, I notice that there’s a clod of dirt stuck to his neck. I don’t say anything about that, either. Why bother.

Doug didn’t always work in the dirt. Back in New York, his place of employment was an editing bay; he sat for long hours in an airtight studio, staring at a video monitor, pressing buttons, and making the lives of various brides and grooms add up to something. His job was to record the goings-on of longtime friends and family who’d come to celebrate the love of a brand-new Mr. and Mrs. He’d edit out the embarrassing bits, add
snazzy graphics, and generally make everyone look a lot better than they looked in real life. He delivered the edited memories to the bride and groom in the form of a single mastered DVD, all for a set fee. In those days Doug was always in demand. Someone was always getting married and as a result, I didn’t see much of him.

When we moved to Florida, everything changed. Doug and I are now practically joined at the hip. He insists that we eat dinner together Monday through Friday; it’s become a ritual. Dinner is never fancy. This evening, for instance, Doug picked up burritos on his way home from work. Because the burritos come with a salad and a garnish and cost twice as much as drive-through, they’re considered “gourmet.” Doug says he can taste the difference. I’m listening to him as he compares the contents of the fancy burritos to the crap we normally eat. I arrange my face as if I’m actually paying attention, but really I’m thinking about the Blessed Mother.