“No,” Charles quietly spoke. “But I fear we are here for a long time.”
“They cannot win,” Edward said of the war, his voice carrying belief. “They have had some luck, and they can fight. I thought they would run the first time they saw Redcoats drawn in a line, but they did not. Still, they cannot win.”
“Their rifles are better than our muskets.” Thomas admired their firearms. “Their gunsmiths are good, very good.”
“Cannons not as good as ours,” Samuel observed without emotion.
“What good does that do unless you’re on flat ground?” Edward asked. “We couldn’t get our cannon proper set at Saratoga. That’s what Howard said.” Howard Wilson, 53rd Regiment, had gotten separated from his unit in the smoke, but he had seen the problems with the cannon and the hard push by the Continentals. He was assigned to another barracks.
“What do you think, Lieutenant?” Thomas asked.
“We underestimated them, but for how long can they hold on?” Charles shook his head. “War costs thousands and thousands of pounds. The Crown can afford it. I doubt the colonists can. But I will wager it will not be over soon.”
“And more of us will be coming here, I think.” Thomas reckoned they were building more barracks for a reason.
“Lieutenant, you can do anything with a pen and paper. We saw the drawing you did for Captain Schuyler.” Sam folded his large, rough hands together. “To the life! And your handwriting is like your drawing, wonderful to see. Would you write a letter for me? For my little brother?”
“Of course. I will write for any man who cannot write.”
Edward admired Charles’s skill. “I can write, but not with flourishes.”
“I want clear papers,” a corporal said. “Papers that state where I served. We will all need them to collect our pensions.”
“You will never see a ha’penny,” puffed Edward.
Thomas sat quite still for a moment. “A man could make a good life here. Why go back to England to fight and wait for what’s owed? I’m here. I will stay here.”
Quiet enveloped them. No one protested. Then Sam said, “A man could make a good life here with the right woman!”
They all laughed. They laughed even harder when Piglet scratched at the door. Charles opened it and the intrepid dog burst through with a string of wurst. Charles brushed off what had to have been part of the Hessian Christmas celebration, gave one to Piglet, and all the men took one.
“Happy Christmas, Piglet!” Edward cheered.
Later, Charles lay back, his head next to Piglet’s own. He thought how strange life was. The certainties vanish. What takes their place is resourcefulness and thanking God for life.
April 16, 2015
“Will you get back in the cart!” Susan ordered Harry, who, with the cats trailing her, rummaged in the rough.
The lean woman trotted toward the cart, cats following on their own sweet time. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”
“Susan’s a crab today,” Pewter noted.
Since the fat gray cat could outcrab any human, Mrs. Murphy wisely kept her mouth shut. The human and two cats hopped into the golf cart. Susan floored it, jerking them all backward, as she sped to her ball on the tenth green.
Stepping out, Susan saw her ball shimmering on the green. “Ha!”
Harry walked up and handed Susan her putter. Out on the course late after planting the dwarf crepe myrtles for Trudy McConnell, the two passed golfers rolling back in, carts chugging. Few were headed in their direction. Late-afternoon Thursdays, except in summer, didn’t have as many people on the course as the mornings or mid-afternoons.
Except for her caddy, Harry, Susan felt as though she had the course to herself. As a woman who could read greens, terrain of any sort, she knelt down, looked at the hole, which had been set on a slight, deceptive rise. Miss your putt and the ball would roll back if you lacked force, or roll beyond it if you hit too hard. Susan loved these challenges. Harry thought she was nuts, but then this was an old argument. With a light grip and a sharp eye, relaxed, Susan nailed the eight-foot putt.
“I am going to be ready this year!” she vowed. “You just wait.”
“Susan, you can do it. You can be club champion.”
Bending over, plucking out her golf ball, Susan beamed, half skipping back to her cart.
“Takes so little to make her happy,” Pewter remarked.
Mrs. Murphy always appreciated any rolling object and had been known to push around a soccer ball. “It was a good putt,” she declared.
The next hole would punish a player who got lazy. With a slanted fairway and hidden sand traps, it called for a well-hit but not terribly long ball. A curve in the fairway meant that if you hit big and straight, you’d sail off into one of those damn traps. On the right side, a particular rough awaited.
Using the club handed to her by Harry, Susan popped a high ball that dropped just to the right, not far into the rough, but far enough that Susan knew she’d have a devil of a time with her second shot. Through intelligence rather than power, she was working hard this season to shave a stroke here, a stroke there. Touch: Sometimes she could just feel the shot in her hands. For example, she had known the minute she hit the ball that it would veer to the right, not a lot, but enough to make trouble.
“Damn. Damn. Damn!” She strode back to the cart, tossed her wood into the bag next to the alarmed cats. As she started to speed off, she realized that Harry was still back there. She stopped as Harry came toward her.
“Better you figure this out now than when you start playing this summer,” said Harry.
Susan agreed. “Yeah. But I know this hole, and I also know if there’s even the slightest wind, it cuts through the fairway. You’d better hit into, as opposed to away from, it. So what did I do? No wind, so I didn’t pay attention.”
“Susan, it is possible to hit a less-than-perfect shot. No matter what.”
“How would you know? You swung a golf club once, in tenth grade. I tried to get you to play with me.” Susan directed some of her ire toward Harry, who had become accustomed to this on the course.
“What are friends for?” Harry patiently let her friend vent her frustration. “I remember. I also remember that you had no patience with me.”
Susan lurched to a stop, hopped out. “I was very patient.”
Harry joined her in the rough, as did the cats. Good pickings in the roughs if you liked field mice and voles. Harry found the ball, not too far into the rough but hard next to a tree stump that had been neatly sawed years ago. Susan came over, looking down in disgust at the traitorous ball.
“Oh, bother!”
Harry looked through the rough and back onto the fairway where Ginger McConnell had been shot. “Clear view,” she said.
“No, it isn’t. A limb hangs low.”
“Susan, look here. Clear view.”
“I don’t care about that. I need to get my ball out of here without racking up the strokes. This is a real pisser, excuse my French!”
Pewter hopped up on the tree stump. “Owee! Susan rarely cusses.”
“Golf brings out her emotions.” Mrs. Murphy smiled. “You and I should be grateful that Mom didn’t take it up.”
“Think she’d swear?” Pewter said, as she was joined by Mrs. Murphy on the tree stump. Good view from up here. She kept an eye out for unsuspecting mice.
“Remember when the vacuum cleaner broke?” Mrs. Murphy said.
“You’re right.”
The gray cat leaned on the tiger cat. “The air was blue. Mom would cuss her way through all eighteen holes. Ha!”
Worrying about which club she should use, Harry ignored Susan, walked back to the cart, and pulled out a seven iron.