THE BATTLE AT MILLERTON

© 1988 by Richard Ploetz

All Rights Reserved

The firebox in your gut, white-hot, driving your legs like pistons--SHE IS SLEEPING WITH THAT BASTARD!  Christ it’s black out--your feet are soaked--sand?  In the middle of a lawn?  You stumble over a rake--grass underfoot again.  The Impala may have seized up three miles back but this sure as hell won’t!  You whack the forty-five automatic in your back pocket which is half-dragging your jeans down.  Five more miles to Millerton?  Ten?  You’d make it on bloody stumps--the door to her apartment (fake Colonial brass knocker glimmering like a grail before your eyes) ripped from its fake Colonial hinge--POW!  POW!  POW!  You grin at the amazement on Ernie Burr’s face, a hole the size of an orange in it through which you can see the stars--if there were any tonight--a clean hole, the kind Fearless Fosdick shot in people!  You laugh wildly, the sound ricocheting off like a horse neighing.  That conniving, unprincipled, two-timing bastard Burr--AND SHE CAN’T DENY HIM--I can’t help myself, Alex, she tells you, it’s bigger than both of us--legs churning, babbling into the black, suddenly you’re airborne.

“I beg your pardon,” offers a calm, deep voice, so close you scramble onto your knees in fright.

“Profoundest regrets,” it continues, “You encountered my equipage.”  A gray shape detaches from the general black, looms over you:  “Might I offer assistance?”

Your eyes must be getting used to the dark--he wears high boots, over the knees, and a huge coat--or cloak--that reaches almost to the ground;  and his hair, standing out from his head like a ballerina’s tutu, is so white it glows.

“I am George Washington,” he says.  He is holding a golf club.  You get up.

“I’m on my way to Millerton,” you say.  “My girlfriend is sleeping--THIS MINUTE--with a son of a bitch whose brains are going to be scattered over Connecticut!”  You don’t mean to say so much but you can’t contain it.  You jerk out the forty-five and wave it.

“I like this game,” the guy with the cloak says.  “I trust I am getting better at it.”

You notice what you’d tripped over--a huge leather golf bag.  The guy is sighting along his club like it’s a rifle.  Ahead, up a slight rise is the suggestion of a green’s disk with white flag to left of center, and the pale grin of a sand trap wrapping around to the right.  The man is now addressing the ball, an aspirin in the grass at his boots.

“A nine iron?” erupts out of you unbidden.  “For chrissake that’s a hundred and fifty yards--”  And you are pulling the five out of the bag (there’s no six iron), wooden shafted with a queer bell-shaped blade and soft silver glow.

“I caddied all through high school,” you offer somewhat apologetically handing him the club.

“Much obliged,” he says.  “The set is a gift from Revere.”

“What the hell is going on?”  You squint at the dial of your Timex.  “Nearly two a.m.--golfing--in that getup?”

He has his big hands wrapped around the shaft in a baseball grip, concentrating on the ball.  “And why are you here?” he inquires, now looking up toward the flag.

You’re holding the gun like a stubby pointer.  “My piece of shit called an Impala broke down--she is sleeping with that--BLACKGUARD--I’m bushwhacking to Millerton in order to, to--”  Beholding Ernie Burr’s sly features, you squeeze:  two shots ratchet up.

“Ah. . .” says Washington, and returns his attention to the ball.

The hit is surprisingly easy to follow, like a lightning bug arcing through the dark.  It lands thirty feet above the pin just off the apron.

“On in four,” he remarks thoughtfully, handing you the club.

You sheathe it, shoulder the bag, heavy as rocks, and follow him.  You want to see what he’ll do with this putt:  the green is a crepe with convulsions.  Besides, it’s on your way.

It seems to have grown lighter, maybe the moon coming up behind the clouds, because you can see him pretty clearly.  He stands with arms folded, one booted foot stuck forward, staring down at the ball as though it were the map of Yorktown.

“Don’t let me arrest your march upon Millerton,” he says.  “I am one acquainted with the concept of timing.”

Thirty-plus feet to the pin:  five of apron, a twenty degree pitch with ten degree drop left for about fifteen feet, then the line crosses at forty-five degrees a foot high wave over a buried drain pipe, levels briefly and rises in a reverse twenty degree tilt to the cup.

“You’ll need a computer for this one,” you mutter.

Washington nods solemnly.  He is big in moonlight.  As he squats to study the line of march of ball to pin, his cloak flares and he looks like a steel gray cone topped with a dab of whipped cream.

He stands and accepts the silver-headed putter (shaped like a flattened lady’s slipper, engraved with scenes of battle--horse, cannon, musket).  He stances over the ball, shifting in his great boots as though settling down through muck onto bedrock.  The moon throws his shadow away toward the lake.  The white flag with red four on it stands against the deep blue sky scattered with stars.  Washington smiles, a smile as enigmatic as the dollar bill’s.  The club, his only living thing, moves and the ball starts soundlessly, neither hurrying nor tarrying, rolling down an invisible track toward, as the pros say, its appointment with destiny.  Following the vectors of this man’s calculation, the ball rolls and rolls (you feel the clothes sagging onto you with night-damp);  rolls down the broad green tongue of grass like a white mouse, over the ground swell, rolls and rolls.  You and he waiting, silvered cast of Colonial golfer and caddie;  she waiting spread breathless in Millerton;  Burr hanging there up above her, silo door open and minuteman poised, waiting.  The ball entering now its final motion, rising and slowing, slower (the forty-five hangs dead metallic), slower. . .  Until you realize, with a shiver, it has rimmed the cup and stopped.  Hangs there like a crumb of whitest cake.

You turn to Washington.  He opens his gloved hands in a small gesture, retaining the putter.

You gather up his equipage and he takes it.  He mounts the horse, which you hadn’t noticed, a big white fellow he must get around the golf course on.  They look like a statue you’ve seen, maybe the picture of a statue, except the statue was green and didn’t have a golf bag.  He touches finger to forehead and the horse wheels and moves away uphill sprightly toward the fifth tee, white hocks rising and falling.