I laid the letter of the board on the seat of the starter cart and read it with my glasses pushed up on my nose, and what it said made my heart go cold and then oddly calm. It was addressed to my husband, dated two weeks before he died, and signed by the president of the board, Mr. Garrison. It warned Howard that his membership could be suspended for “unsubstantiated accusations against an officer of this association.” Howard had never in his life made an accusation he could not prove.
Preston stood by the tee box with his hands in his pockets. He told me how he had come to have it. He had cleaned out the golf bag of his father in the garage that week, looking for the putter, and had found the scorecard folded in the pocket, and the letter beneath it. Then the board had sent him a letter of its own, offering to waive all dues and the transfer fee, if he would sign a release of every claim of the estate. “It did not feel right,” he said quietly. “I could not sign.”
I smoothed the scorecard flat on my knee. Howard had written his scores in pencil, hole by hole, in his small neat figures. Then, on the seventh, there was no score at all. Only a circle, drawn so hard that the pencil had torn the card. I knew that hole. Seven has a stone bench beside the tee, under a cedar, where the foursome of Howard used to rest on Saturdays. And I remembered, suddenly, something he had told me over supper years ago: that a smart man keeps copies somewhere dry.
“Get Connor,” I said. “And ask Dr. Alvarez, the vice president, to meet us at seven. Tell him I would like a witness.” Preston did not argue. For the first time in a month, he did what his mother asked without a speech. Within half an hour, the four of us stood around the bench under the cedar, while the early foursome waited politely at the back and pretended not to look. I got down on my knees in my navy cardigan, and I reached under the seat.
A man who keeps honest copies of dishonest things is not hoarding secrets, but leaving a lantern for those who come after.
My fingers found it at once. A tube of gray plastic, the length of a forearm, sealed at both ends with tape, wedged into a gap in the stone. Connor drew it out. Dr. Alvarez photographed it in place before anyone opened it, and I was proud of him for thinking of it. Inside were rolled papers, dry as a bone. Three years of statements from the Junior Scholarship Fund, with a column of figures circled in pencil, and photocopies of the checks, each one endorsed on the back to the same name.
The treasurer of the board, Mr. Lowell Pruitt, had written himself forty one thousand three hundred dollars out of a fund meant to send local children to college. Howard had found it while helping the nominating committee, and he had quietly gone to Mr. Garrison first, as a gentleman does. Mr. Garrison had answered with a threat. Howard, being Howard, had kept copies, written a letter of his own, and planned to deliver it to the full board the following Thursday. He died the Saturday before.
Dr. Alvarez read the papers slowly, standing in the early sun. When he finished, he took off his hat and said, “Mrs. Whitfield, I am so sorry. Your husband was right about everything.” He called an emergency meeting of the board for that evening. I did not attend, but Connor told me about it. Mr. Garrison resigned before the meeting ended. Mr. Pruitt, offered the choice between the police and repayment in full, signed a note for the entire amount and surrendered his membership in the same hour.
The scholarship fund was restored by the end of the month, with interest, and the board voted to name the next award for my husband. I was asked to sit on the committee, and I said yes. Preston came to my house that Sunday, with flowers, and sat in the living room beside the umbrella stand where the putter of Howard still stands. He told me that he had been drowning in debts of his own and had seen the membership as a way to sell a seat and stay afloat. He was ashamed.
I told him I knew about the debts. A mother knows. I told him also that I had no intention of leaving them with him alone. Together we sat down with a pencil and a legal pad. We found a way to pay what he owed in three years, without selling his house or the seat of his father on the course. He cried at my kitchen table, and I handed him a napkin the way I used to when he was nine. “You did the right thing at the end,” I said. “That is what will be remembered.”
The membership was transferred that month, but not to Preston. The board voted unanimously to place it in my name, as the widow of a member of forty one years of standing. I still do not golf. I did take one lesson, from Connor, and I hit the ball into the pond on the second hole, and a retired judge in the next cart applauded. I am told I am improving. I am quite sure that I am not.
Every morning at seven I still stand on the first tee in my navy cardigan, with a visor that Connor finally replaced. I send the foursomes off. Before I head home, I walk the course to the seventh, where the cedar throws its shade across the bench. I sit there for a moment with the sun coming over the ocean, and I tell Howard, quietly, that the pencil he left behind did exactly what he meant it to do.