Written by Stephen F. Moloney
“Just mind your step when you come down the other side here – some of the roots can be a little slippery.”
Knowing full well that the sneakers she was wearing offered little in the way of traction, Maggie was sure to heed Mr. Duggart’s advice as she carefully stepped up and through the inconspicuous gap in the treeline that he’d led her to. Once safely on the solid, though vegetation-covered, ground on the opposite side of the treeline, the first thing Maggie noticed was the wave of refreshingly cool air washing over her thanks to the comprehensive shade being provided by the dense canopy overhead. It was like stepping out of an oven and straight into a refrigerator – and it felt great.
“Feels pretty good, don’t it?” asked Mr. Duggart, clearly recognising that Maggie was enjoying the cooler temperature.
“That it does” replied Maggie, taking a moment to just bask in the welcome reprieve from the sun.
“Well, enjoy it while you can,” warned Mr. Duggart, readjusting his grip on the bag of groceries as he turned and began to move away from the edge of the treeline. “Because once we get through the other side of these trees, we’ll be right back out in the heat.”
“And where exactly will that be?” asked Maggie, reopening her eyes and setting off after the rapidly moving Mr. Duggart.
“You mean once we get through the trees?”
“Yeah.”
“It used to be the driving range” answered Mr. Duggart, elegantly ducking beneath a low lying branch with a well practiced ease.
“A driving range?!” questioned Maggie, avoiding the same branch. “You’re telling me if people wanted to hit balls before they went out for a round they’d have to go through here?! I mean, what … was it customary for golfers back in the day to just carry machetes around in their bags?!”
“No, there was no need for machetes” answered a chuckling Mr. Duggart. “There used to be an actual entrance further up the track – just down a ways from the clubhouse – but when Ray closed the club, he had me fill up the entrance and the path with trees to cut the range off from the track; with the idea being that, unless you actually knew there used to be a driving range here, you’d have no clue there was anything through here – mind this little dip .”
After carefully navigating the aforementioned dip he’d pointed out, Maggie asked Mr. Duggart another question.
“So I take it then that Mr. Thackett lives on this driving range?”
“Yep” replied Mr. Duggart, readjusting his grip on the bag of groceries once more. “Not long after he took over the ownership of the club, he built a little cabin for himself – I actually helped him do it, as a matter of fact – and, yeah, that’s where he’s been ever since.”
“So, wait … apart from going through here” said Maggie, sounding somewhat confused. “There’s no other way in or out?”
“Nope.”
“So every time Mr. Thackett needs to go somewhere, he goes through here just like we are?”
Before Mr. Duggart could answer, a realisation suddenly dawned on Maggie.
“Unless …” she continued, now thinking aloud. “He doesn’t leave – hence why you’re bringing him groceries.”
“Unfortunately so.” replied Mr. Duggart, sighing ever so slightly. “When everything went down like it did … Ray just didn’t want to face the world anymore – so he shut himself off from it.”
“Wow …” said Maggie, her voice echoing the feelings of shock and sadness now swirling around her stomach.
She, of course, had known that Ray Thackett was something of an “elusive figure”, a “recluse” even; but to hear the lengths that he had gone to in order to cut himself off from the world ten years previously – and to actually experience it given where she and Mr. Duggart were walking just to reach his cabin – was more than a little heartbreaking.
“And if you don’t mind me asking,” continued Maggie, sounding as though she was still somewhat reeling at imagining how Mr. Thackett had spent the last decade. “How did you come to be so involved with Mr. Thackett?”
“I used to be the Head Greenkeeper here.” answered Mr. Duggart openly. “And with Ray being the Caddymaster – that, obviously, being before he became the owner – we got to know each other pretty well, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
“And how long exactly would that be? As in, that you and Mr. Thackett have been friends?”
Mr. Duggart let out the kind of sigh one hears when someone is presented with a rather difficult math equation they have to try and do in their head.
“Uhm …” he pondered, each word falling methodically from his mouth as he bought himself some more time to get his calculations just right. “I guess I’d have to say … twenty … four years? Yeah, something like that.”
“That’s impressive.” said Maggie, carefully avoiding a particularly wet-looking patch of ground Mr. Duggart had just squelched right on through. “Still … when he decided to close this place down, that must have put something of a strain on your relationship, no? I mean, in making that decision he, essentially, put you and your crew out of work, right? Including everyone else employed here?”
Out of nowhere, Mr. Duggart came to a complete stop. Seeing this, Maggie immediately did likewise as he turned around and fixed her with a stern, stony glare – suddenly she was painfully aware that she was standing in the middle of a thicket of trees on an abandoned golf course with a complete stranger whom she knew pretty much nothing about.
“Now, I understand that you’re a writer,” said Mr. Duggart, his tone now business-like and to-the-point. “And therefore it’s your job to ‘find stories’ – I get that. But, please, let me make one thing crystal clear before we take another step: when Ray decided he was going to close Crescent Creek all those years ago, before he did anything even remotely concrete, he not only made sure that each and every one of the people employed here got a severance package worth two years of their salary – which he paid out of his own money, by the way – but for anyone who wanted it, he went and found them another job to replace the one they’d be losing here. So whatever you end up getting from this, when you go home to New York? And you sit down in front of your computer to start writing? Just remember that. Because Ray is a good man, Ms. Lawson – and if people end up knowing anything about him … let that be one of ‘em … please.”
Though as a rule she never made promises to people to write stories a certain way or include particular things that she, herself, hadn’t deduced, everything about Mr. Duggart, from the expression on his face to the passion in his voice, made Maggie feel that, for one time only, she could make an exception to that rule.
“Trust me, Mr. Duggart” she replied solemnly. “Tarnishing the name of Ray Thackett is the last thing I want to do.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Duggart, nodding his head ever so slightly in genuine appreciation.
After a momentary silence fell over the pair of them, wherein the sound of chirping crickets and what sounded worryingly like a hissing snake were all that could be heard, Mr. Duggart eventually let out a small cough to puncture the bubble of awkward tension which had inflated around them thanks to the silence and reset things to their original state.
“Anyway, uh … ” he said, trying his best to sound normal. “Let’s get going, huh? It ain’t far now, anyhow.”
“Yeah, sure” replied Maggie, she, too, trying to reboot things back to the way they were. “Lead the way.”
*
After walking for about another five minutes – and after filling said time with a far lighter conversation about the actual golf course at Crescent Creek (which, apparently, in its day was lauded as the best in Louisiana) – Maggie and Mr. Duggart reached the opposite treeline from where they first started out by the track.
“Alright,” said Mr. Duggart, coming to a stop and turning around to look at Maggie. “We’re here.”
Even though this is exactly what she’d hoped for all those months ago when she’d first gone to her boss and pitched the idea of trying to do the impossible in getting an interview with Ray Thackett, to hear that she was now literally on the verge of doing just that, those pesky nerves she’d felt out by the gate came flooding back – and, going on the somersaults her stomach was doing, they’d returned with a point to prove.
“You ok?” asked Mr. Duggart, noticing the ‘deer caught in the headlights’ expression plastered across Maggie’s, suddenly very pale looking, face.
“Uh, yeah.” she answered with a determined shake of her head, trying to snap herself out of it. “Yeah, I’m good; just a little nervous – I’ve wanted this for so long and now that I’m actually here it’s … it’s …”
“A little scary?” offered Mr. Duggart, attempting to help Maggie find the words which had momentarily deserted her.
“Well, I probably would have said ‘daunting’” replied Maggie flatly before shifting her gaze off of the treeline and moving it onto Mr. Duggart. “But, yeah … ‘scary’ will do as well.”
Mr. Duggart smiled.
“You’ll be fine” he said reassuringly. “The fact Ray wants to see you at all must be half the battle, right?”
“I guess … yeah.”
“Well then,” added Mr. Duggart, moving to the side of the ‘path’ they were both standing on and gesturing in an ‘after you’ fashion towards the treeline. “You got this.”
Seeing his invitation to lead them out onto the driving range, Maggie walked past Mr. Duggart and towards a similarly inconspicuous gap in the treeline which almost perfectly mirrored the one they had stepped through to first enter the trees next to the track. Though a small, steeply faced bank separated her from her target, Maggie, again despite the severe lack of traction offered by her sneakers, made short work of the slope and proceeded to step through the turnstile of thin, wispy branches growing across the width of the gap.
Just like Mr. Duggart had said would be the case, a wave of sunshine washed over Maggie as soon as she stepped out from the shadow of the trees and down into the driving range. After walking through the refreshingly cool surrounds of the corridor of trees for nearly ten minutes, however, the heat, unlike how it had been earlier, was now a welcome sensation – a pleasant one, even.
“So …” said Mr. Duggart, stepping heavily down off the bank and taking up a position alongside Maggie. “What do ya think? Pretty special, right?”
“Yeah …” replied a quietly stunned Maggie, her eyes roaming thirstily around the surroundings of the driving range in order to drink in every little detail she could. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Surrounded on all four sides by the same dense treelines they’d just hiked through, an idyllic plot of grass, just over three hundred yards long and two hundred or so yards wide, stretched out before Maggie’s feet.
There was still the slightest film of dew covering the perfectly trimmed, richly green grass around the edges of the range where the sun had yet to beat out the shadows being cast by the trees. Unlike other ranges, there were no metal distance markers dotted across the turf which had been left dented and pockmarked by years of getting pelted – more-often-than-not accidentally – with golf balls. And there, right down at the very opposite end of the range to where they were standing, looking like something straight out of a long since bygone era, were two elegantly simple, wooden constructions; one, a small workshop just large enough to house what looked like an old fairway mower; and the other a cabin.
A cabin which belonged to the man who was just about visible as he sat outside on the porch enjoying the morning sunshine.
The man Maggie had driven over a thousand miles to come see.
The man she had wanted to speak to for over ten years, if not longer.
Ray Thackett.
Or, as the rest of the world would know him, the former caddie for a player who, in his limited time on tour, was the most famous golfer on the planet … Mustang.