Written by Stephen F. Moloney
Having worked up more of a thirst then what she had realised from their trek back and forth from the LaFleur Cabin, and then inspecting the Mustang hidden beneath the workshed, Maggie drained her glass of orange juice in one grateful gulp.
“You want some more?” asked Ray, picking up the near-empty jug of orange juice from off the coffee table in anticipation that the answer would be ‘yes’.
“Actually …” said Maggie, after letting out a satisfied sigh and bringing her glass back down towards her lap. “I’d love some water if it’s not too much trouble?”
“None whatsoever,” replied Ray, putting the jug back down onto the tray alongside the two empty plates which had temporarily housed their respective ice-cream sandwiches from earlier. “Is it alright if it’s from the faucet? It’s from my own well, so it’s perfectly clean.”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great,” said Maggie, holding out her glass for Ray to take. “As long as it’s wet and cold I don’t mind where it comes from.”
A smiling Ray took Maggie’s glass, straightened back up, and began to walk across the living area towards the small, out of sight kitchen on the other side of the cabin. Just as she’d done when she first saw him get up to greet her and Mr. Duggart as they crossed the range, Maggie couldn’t help but notice once more how stiff and almost laboured Ray’s gait was as he moved. For a second she debated asking him about it, see if he’d gone to a doctor to get checked out. In the end, though, given how well things were going between the pair of them and how willing he’d been – for the most part, at any rate – to open up about Mustang, she decided to leave that particular boundary ‘unpushed’.
“So, I’ve been wondering …” said Maggie, pondering aloud so that Ray could hear her from the kitchen. “Back when Mustang agreed to stay with you …”
“Yeah?” replied Ray, calling out over the sound of water gushing out of the faucet.
“Well, where exactly were you living?” continued Maggie, idly examining her hand to see if she was after getting the smallest of thorns stuck in it. “Cause I know it wasn’t here.”
“Ah, that would have been the palatial surrounds of the Catfish Ritz Trailer Park,” announced Ray, his aggrandizing tone steeped in sarcasm.
“You were staying in a trailer?!” exclaimed Maggie, sounding far more horrified at the idea than what she’d intended.
“That I was.”
“Was it at least … a nice one?”
“That it was not,” confirmed Ray, reemerging from the kitchen and walking back towards the table with a freshly filled glass of water in hand. “But for what it cost to rent one for a year, I’d have spent in a month anywhere else, so given I was trying to save up as much cash as I could at the time, for me it was a no-brainer – there you go.”
“Thanks,” said Maggie, taking the glass of water from Ray’s outstretched hand. “And what did Mustang say when you brought him back to a trailer?”
“Nothin’, really,” replied Ray as he sat back down into his armchair and sighed gratefully at finally being able to take the weight off his feet once more. “I mean, I remember us talkin’ ‘bout that night years later and him sayin’ that he remembered thinkin’ to himself when he first saw the trailer that he’d just gone and upgraded his sleepin’ arrangements from one metal box to a slightly bigger and whole lot uglier one. But on the actual night itself? Well, even though he’d opened up a bit at ‘Renée’s’, he still wasn’t much in the mood for talkin’. Plus, between the amount of food he’d eaten at the diner and how he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in, what I found out later, was like five, six days, I think at that point he was just too tired for anythin’ apart from walkin’ from my car to the trailer.”
“So he settled in pretty easily?” asked Maggie, before taking a drink of water.
“For the most part, yeah,” answered Ray, sounding as though he was trying his hardest to make sure he was remembering that night as accurately as possible. “Now, he did seem a little nervous when he first walked in – like, I had to explicitly tell him it was alright to actually sit down on the pull-out bed after I’d gotten it set up for him – but he gradually relaxed; so much so, that when I was in the middle of tellin’ him where the refrigerator was and the shower block was in case he needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night when I finally turned around to see if he’d any questions, he was after fallin’ asleep.”
“Really?” said Maggie, smiling at the idea of how exhausted Mustang must have been.
“Yep, out like a light,” said Ray, himself smiling at the memory. “So I covered him over with a blanket and there wasn’t a stir out of him for the rest of the night.”
Still smiling to himself, Ray leaned forward and went about filling up his own glass with the orange juice still left in the jug sitting on the coffee table.
“So what did you do the next day?” asked Maggie, the question suddenly popping into her head.
“How do you mean?” replied Ray, putting the jug back down on the coffee table after successfully refilling his glass.
“Well, what did you do with Mustang?” clarified Maggie.
“Oh! I understand,” said Ray, sounding like he’d finally boarded Maggie’s train of thought. “Yeah, well, next mornin’ I got up like I usually did back then – so, 5 a.m. – and grabbed a shower. By the time I got back to the trailer, though, Mustang was after waking up …”
*
“What time is it?” asked Mustang groggily as he sat up in his bed.
“Just comin’ on five-thirty,” answered Ray, lowering the sound of his voice slightly as he went about hanging up his towel to let it dry.
“Five-thirty?!” croaked Mustang, his face scrunching up in disbelief. “Then why are you up?!”.
“Cause I have to go to work,” said Ray, pulling open the small refrigerator built into one of the cabinets and grabbing an apple out of it. “You think a sick crib like this pays for itself?”
After glancing over his shoulder and smiling at Mustang, Ray reclosed the refrigerator and moved towards the opposite end of the trailer where his own “room” was located.
“Alright, well, just give me a minute and I’ll be ready to go,” said Mustang, throwing his legs out over the edge of his bed and putting his bare feet down onto the floor.
Having grabbed his ever-present baseball cap from off of his bed, along with his car keys, a surprised-looking Ray turned back around and looked at Mustang, who was already in the process of shoving his feet into the worn-out sneakers he’d grabbed from his car before Teddy had towed it away the previous night.
“Wait …” said Ray, his brain clearly finding it too early in the morning to be dealing with this kind of confusion. “You want to come to work with me?”
Having just finished fixing the backs of his sneakers so that they weren’t digging into his heels, Mustang looked at Ray with an equally confused expression on his own face.
“Well, don’t I have to?” he said as if that were the only obvious outcome to Ray having to go to work.
“No,” replied Ray, matter-of-factly. “You don’t have to do anything, man.”
As opposed to quelling it, this answer appeared to only deepen Mustang’s confusion.
“So, you were just going to … let me stay here?” he asked, the concept sounding completely insane to him.
“Well … yeah,” answered Ray, not seeing what the big deal was.
“And you weren’t worried about me stealing anything?”
“Of course not,” said Ray, adamantly, before a smile broke across his face. “Plus, steal what, really?! The two other apples I have in the refrigerator?! I mean, it’s hardly going to be inspirin’ another ‘Oceans’ movie, now is it?!”
“What’s an ‘Oceans’ movie?” queried Mustang, now perhaps looking the most confused since he’d woken up.
“It’s not important,” smiled Ray, shaking his head as he was suddenly reminded just how young the kid was. “Either way, I’m happy for you to stay here on your own. You can catch up on some rest, watch some T.V., I’ll even leave you some cash to go get something to eat; or, if you want, you’re more than welcome to come to work with me – but it’s up to you.”
Having seen his choices laid out so plainly before him, Mustang took a moment to mull them over.
“Well, as I’m already up,” he said after but a second or two of thinking. “I might as well just go with you.”
“Alright then …” chimed Ray, cheerfully, before slipping his baseball hat onto his freshly-shaven head. “Well, let’s get going.”
“Plus, if I’m going to be bored for the day,” said Mustang, grabbing a hoodie from out of the duffle bag he’d also salvaged from his car before Teddy hauled it off. “May as well do it with you.”
Affording himself the slightest of cheeky grins in Ray’s direction, Mustang pushed open the door of the trailer and stepped out into the slowly brightening morning.
“Oh don’t worry …” said Ray, teasingly, from the door of the trailer. “I’ll have you workin’ so hard today you won’t have a chance to feel bored.”
“Woah, woah, woah!” protested Mustang, suddenly sounding wide awake. “Who said anything about ‘working’?!”.
“Well, you have to pay me back for that radiator somehow, right?” teased Ray, doing a good job of sounding deathly serious as he stepped down out of the trailer and closed the door with a metallic clank.
“WHAT?!” cried Mustang, horrified.
Ray started laughing.
*
In the time it had taken them to drive to the course from the trailer park and do the various jobs that made up Ray’s morning routine, the bones of an hour had passed by the time he and Mustang parked up next to the workshed on the range where the pair of them had met but a few hours previously. The grass was wet beneath their feet as they stepped out of the two-seater UTV they’d ridden in from the machinery workshop and there was a low-lying layer of fog just lingering about two feet above the surface of the range just waiting to be burned off. With the summer but a short few weeks from officially arriving, the sun was already well on its way to rising and, as such, was already painting the sky above the range in the variety of pinks and oranges that betrayed the fact it was going to be another scorcher of a day.
“So, what do we have to do up here?” asked Mustang, moving casually around to the small flatbed at the rear of the UTV.
“Well, given I was meant to do it yesterday,” answered Ray, sounding a touch distracted as he rooted through the various tools and pieces of greenkeeping equipment filling every bit of available space in the flatbed. “I need to get this range ready for a guy who’ll be lookin’ to warm-up here in about an hour and a half or risk endurin’ a rather unpleasant conversation with my boss – ah, there you are.”
Having finally uncovered the red, plastic gas canister he’d been searching for, Ray yanked it out of the flatbed and gave it a shake to see how much gas was actually inside it. From the pretty pronounced sound of liquid sloshing around the interior of the canister, it seemed to be at least half-full.
“That should be enough,” muttered Ray, before bringing the canister down to his side and beginning to walk off in the direction of the workshed.
“So, wait …” said Mustang, following Ray towards the large doors of the workshed which he’d seen him lock the previous night before heading to the diner with him. “You have to cut all of this by yourself?! For one guy?!”
“Well, that had been the plan originally, yeah – here, hold that,” replied Ray, handing Mustang the canister of gas so he could go about unlocking the padlock keeping the two doors closed. “But when I knew I was goin’ to have to try and get it all done this morning instead, I called in some reinforcements to give me a hand.”
Before Mustang could get the “who?” that had promptly made its way to the tip of his tongue, two quick blasts from the horn of a truck pierced the peace and quiet of the range.
“Speaking of which …” continued Ray, looking back over towards the entrance of the range as he slipped the freshly unlocked padlock into his pocket for safekeeping. “Here he is now – surprisingly, on time.”
Recognising they were about to have company, Mustang looked back across the range just in time to see a pickup truck, its headlights cutting through the fast retreating gloom, rolling silently along the grass-covered laneway that separated the actual range itself from the main road into the course.
“Who is it?” asked Mustang, continuing to watch the pickup as it hugged the treeline on its approach to the workshed.
“Bill Duggart,” said Ray, opening back the first of the two large doors of the workshed before sliding a moss-covered cinder block up against the bottom of it to keep it from swinging back. “He’s the Head Greenkeeper here. Nice guy.”
With the first of the doors dealt with, Ray turned back and grabbed the second one just as Bill began to swing his pickup away from the treeline to go about parking it at the rear of the workshed.
“Though, a quick heads up …” added Ray, lowering his voice on the off chance of being heard over the country music Bill had blaring inside his truck. “Bill is … how to put it? … Rather ‘chatty’. So, for the sake of keepin’ our story up, it might be helpful if I know where you’re actually from in case I panic like I did in ‘Renée’s’ last night and you end up bein’ a kid named Mustang with a Jamaican accent ’cause I’ve said you’re from Kingston – but it’s up to you.”
Though he could see the logic in what Ray was saying, Mustang was still reluctant to divulge where he was from. From behind the workshed, the pair of them could hear Bill finally switch off the engine of his pickup. The muffled din of the country music that had been thumping through the speakers inside the truck fell silent and he popped open his door.
After listening to Bill step down out of his truck with a tired groan before beginning to quietly sing the song he’d just been listening to, Mustang knew he only had a few seconds left to make up his mind. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. They both ran through his head and both made valid arguments for why they should be his answer of choice. With the sound of Bill’s slightly off-key singing getting closer and closer, Mustang finally made up his mind. He turned to look at Ray.
“Florida,” he said quietly. “Orlando.”
Knowing how difficult it must have been for Mustang to trust him, yet not wanting to make too much of a big deal out of it at the same time, Ray simply nodded his head to signal his assent just as Bill called out from around the corner of the workshed.
“Well, I sincerely hope you brought your wallet with ya!” he called, his jovial, booming voice bouncing effortlessly around the four sides of the range. “Cause after making me get up an hour earlier than usual?! You’re buyin’ me lun-…”.
Having finally rounded the corner of the workshed and seeing Ray wasn’t, in fact, alone, Bill not only stopped talking mid-sentence but stopped moving entirely as he laid eyes on Mustang for the first time. Eager to prevent things from becoming awkward Ray moved quickly to fill the silence.
“Mornin’ Bill.” he said, attempting to sound as normal as possible.
“Mornin’ …” replied Bill, clearly wanting Ray to fill in the blanks he was obviously missing. “Who’s your … uh … friend, here?”
“Mustang,” answered Ray, keeping up his pretence that nothing out of the ordinary was happening as he went about opening back the second door into the workshed. “He’s the son of some friends of mine. He’ll be crashin’ with me for a few weeks until they get back from a trip.”
“I see,” said Bill, stepping aside so that Ray could slide another moss-covered cinder block against the bottom of the second door. “And when did all this come about?”
“Last night,” replied Ray, making sure the block was properly against the door before turning to look at Bill. “His parents dropped him off on their way from Orlando to Houston.”
“It was a last-minute trip,” added Mustang, hoping some additional details might quell any suspicions Bill might have about his presence before they gained any more of a foothold in his mind.
“Alright then …” said Bill, still looking a touch confused by the fact Ray, of all people, was now suddenly in charge of a random teenager, but not so perturbed to give it any more thought. “Well, it’s nice to meet ya, Mustang. I’m Bill, though I’m sure Ray here has already told you all about me – you know, like how I’m the best Greenkeeper in the State of Louisiana, for one.”
“As a matter of fact I did, actually,” said Ray, now moving away from the second door having finally gotten the cinder block into the position he wanted.
“Really?” asked Bill, genuinely, with a big smile on his face.
“Um-hum …” muttered Ray, finally taking the gas canister back off Mustang. “I told him that right after I said you believe anythin’ you’re told as long as it’s framed as a compliment.”
A wide smile broke across Ray’s face as he looked daringly over at Bill, who was trying desperately to suppress a smile of his own. Though he’d only been in their combined presence for a few minutes, Mustang could tell this kind of ‘back & forth’ between Bill and Ray was a common occurrence.
“So how do you want to work this?” asked Bill, deciding to move matters along, yet still maintaining a touch of dryness in his voice. “You know, ‘this’ being the favour that I’m doing for you at six in the mornin’?”
“Well, what I was thinkin’ …” replied Ray, smiling. “Is that given Mustang here knows his way ’round a range picker, he could start sweepin’ the balls up, you follow behind on the mower and as y’all are doin’ that I’ll get the hittin’ bays cut and laid out – sound like a plan?”
“Sounds good to me.” said Bill, sounding relaxed.
“What about you, kid?” asked Ray, looking at Mustang. “You think you can handle that?”
Mustang looked quickly out at the dew-drenched range stretching out before him all the way down to the opposite treeline. For a moment, amidst spying out individual balls dotted around the grass and looking at a small bird perched on the dented 150-yard marker just about sticking up above the fog, the bizarre fact that just hours previously he’d been facing into the prospect of spending yet another night trying to keep warm in his grandfather’s car in a clearing within shouting distance of where he was currently standing, but instead wound up getting the first proper meal he’d had in days, gotten to sleep in a proper bed and now was about to go picking balls on the same range where he’d been sneaking out to hit them over the last three days suddenly struck him. Mustang turned back to look at Ray.
“Just give me the keys.” he said, confidently.
*
“And did you end up getting it done on time?” asked Maggie.
“That we did,” replied Ray, sounding as if their work that morning still impressed him. “We cut it close, mind, but we got it done. I mean, to give you an idea, just as I was closin’ the workshed back up after we’d finished, Truman Ballas came zippin’ into the range in his own personal golf cart to go about warmin’ up for his round.”
“You’re kidding!” said Maggie, smiling in disbelief. “He had his own cart?!”
“Um-hum,” answered Ray with a nod of his head. “And no word of a lie, it was nicer than my car. It had four seats, rims on the wheels, actual doors on it in case it started rainin’, and a heater for those chillier mornin’ rounds during the winter – even though he always spent the winter in his house in Barbados. But, hey, who cares when you have more money than sense, right?”
Having long-since finished his second glass of orange juice, Ray leaned forward and placed it gently back down onto the tray still sitting on the coffee table between himself and Maggie.
“So you never wound up buying anything … ‘extravagant’ with the money you made with Mustang?” asked Maggie.
“Not really, no,” answered Ray, after taking a second or two to think. “Maybe this place? And the renovation work on the workshed – but … yeah, that’s about it. See, I was broke for so long that when I eventually did get some money? I wasn’t gonna waste it. I was gonna use it to try and do some good for some people.”
“Like you did for me and my mom.” added Maggie quietly.
“I guess so …” said Ray, mimicking Maggie’s quiet tone. “Yeah.”
Before they could fall too much into a contemplative silence, Maggie thought it best to ask the question that had just popped into her head.
“So, tell me …” she began, after ever-so-slightly clearing her throat. “After you’d finished getting the range ready, what happened then?”
“Well, oddly enough,” said Ray, happy to go along with reverting back to the original topic of conversation. “After seeing him drive into the range, instead of headin’ over to his usual bay where he always warmed-up, I saw that he was making a beeline right for the workshed.”
*
“Is he comin’ over here?” said Bill, sounding an odd mixture of both surprised and suspicious as he looked off at Truman Ballas speeding his golf cart across the range towards the workshed.
“Sure looks like it,” replied Ray, closing the second door of the workshed as he, too, took in the rather peculiar sight of Truman approaching them.
Off-hand, Ray reckoned he’d had about three encounters with Truman Ballas in all the years he’d been at Crescent Creek. The first time was when Truman bumped into him outside the pro-shop because he was too busy talking on his cellphone to pay attention to where he was walking and, instead of apologising, merely tutted scornfully at Ray before carrying on his way past him. The second time was when Ray happened to be caddying for another player who’d been drawn against Truman during an edition of the Memorial Matchplay a few years’ previously and an irate Truman had launched into a full-blown tirade demanding he be allowed to replay a shot he’d flailed into a bunker because, according to him, Ray had moved just as he was about to hit (which he hadn’t) and his shadow had distracted him.
And the final – and most recent – encounter he’d had with Truman was when a particularly nasty weather system moved in over the Creek one afternoon and set about dumping a deluge of rain on the course, thus making it unplayable. Ray, who’d been out on the side of the course furthest from the clubhouse when the rain started because he was doing a favour for Bill, found himself walking back to the clubhouse in the worst of the downpour when he heard the electric hum of a golf cart speeding along the path he happened to be walking on. Hoping to see one of the greenkeeping staff when he turned around because it would mean he’d be able to get a ride back to the clubhouse, Ray, instead, found himself taking in the sight of Truman, who was completely alone, barreling towards him in his golf cart as he was obviously heading back to the clubhouse as well due to his round being interrupted by the weather.
Seeing this, Ray came to a stop and stood to the side of the path. Though there was no earthly way he could continue driving along the path and not see him, Ray, just to be sure, raised his hand and aimed a little wave at Truman in order that he’d see that he was, indeed, standing there. In the torrential rain. A good ten-minute walk from the clubhouse. As it turned out, however, Ray’s wave wound up not counting for much, for not only did Truman not stop to pick him up – despite the ample room in his cart – but as he sped past without even so much as glancing at him, he drove right through a puddle that had gathered on the path and splashed the already soaking Ray with water.
So, needless to say, to see Truman now cruising across the range towards him, Mustang and Bill didn’t exactly have Ray looking forward to whatever was about to transpire.
Having finally reached the entrance to the workshed where the three of them were standing, Truman brought his cart to a stop. He buzzed down his slightly tinted window – because of course his cart had electric, tinted windows – and looked out at Ray and the others.
“You’re the Caddymaster, right?” he asked, the words slightly garbled because of the large cigar clamped between his teeth. “Thackett?”
“Yeah,” answered Ray, the smell of cigar smoke and Truman’s rather overgenerously applied aftershave filling his nostrils despite the fact he was a good eight feet away from the cart. “That’s me – can I help you?”
“Yeah, you can,” said Truman, taking his cigar out of his mouth and gesturing towards the teenager sitting alongside him. “I need two caddies for me and my son, Byron, here.”