The Lightning Keeper (35 page)

He had once taken a train trip across the country to California and witnessed a splendid electrical disturbance miles and miles away to the south across the Great Plains. He spent that night in the observation car at the tail end of the train, where the glass panels on the side and roof gave an unobstructed view of the display. He sent the porter to
bed after asking for a bottle of Riesling, and for several hours he sat in a swiveling velvet chair, transfixed by those bolts as various as snowflakes, calculating the energy required to produce such a marvel. There was no rain to blur or distort his perception of the lightning, only the gusting smoke of the locomotive. He took pleasure in the thought that one day, perhaps soon, these monstrously dirty machines would be replaced by locomotives running on the “white coal” of electricity produced in the mountains of the west, or even by these same lightning bolts. Indeed, why not with the aid of the lightning? There was not so very much useful energy in the individual bolt, but the destructive power of lightning must in any case be tamed, and some use might as well be found for it.

Tonight was a different experience altogether. He was directly beneath the storm and the rain fell so fast that the slanting glass roof might be a river and he a fish. When the lightning struck again on the height just above the house he heard a sound, a sigh, and out of the corner of his eye caught sight of Harriet Truscott, her bare arms folded across her breast, her mouth forming a perfect circle. He fumbled in the pocket of his dressing gown and lit a match to announce his presence.

She seemed to welcome his company. “It is thrilling, is it not? Would we be safer inside?”

“I think we are safe enough here. Your Lightning Knob is our guardian.” As if to demonstrate the point, the lightning struck the Knob again, and the outline of the mountain swam in the water on the roof. She took his arm, and he felt the warmth of her breast pressing against his shoulder.

He took off his linen robe and held it out to her. “Please put this on. I can tell you are feeling a little chill.”

“Are you sure? Will you be all right?”

“Yes. But take care with the cigar in the pocket.”

“If you wish to smoke now you may do so.”

“Thank you. An admirable solution.”

At the next lightning strike, still on the Knob, she took his arm again, then laughed, as if embarrassed by her reaction to the storm. “Have you no improving lecture for me on the subject of our mutual interest?”

“What?”

“The lightning. We have talked about it and written about it, and here it is.”

“No. I can think of nothing to say. I find it humbling.”

She gave a little squeeze to his arm and whispered, “Dr. Steinmetz, I think you must be the wisest man I have ever met, and the kindest.”

“And you, my dear Mrs. Truscott, are the soul of the world.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, but his mind was more restless than ever. The mountain, at last, was speaking to him in the language of creation, a language he thought might be lost to him. He wanted a pen and his notebook. He needed to write down these thoughts before they faded. A great work lay ahead of him, a final challenge that would require everything he knew and all his remaining strength. He had not felt this way for years.

 

T
HREE MEN GATHERED
on the first tee of the Beecher's Bridge Golf Club at ten o'clock the next morning. It was a cool, breezy day that married summer and fall. The caddy master had made note of Senator Truscott's guests and wondered whether the gentleman in the long coat intended to play, or if he would simply watch, in which case the guest fee could be waived.

“No, no, Dr. Steinmetz has given his word, and a good game of golf does wonders for a man. Just the thing after a hard night.”

It had been a hard night. In response to his wife's request, the senator made an extra effort at cocktails and dinner to draw out both Steinmetz and young Peacock, for when men got to know each other, and broke bread together, almost any difference could be smoothed over. That was the way things worked in the Senate, and in the Bible too, when he came to think of it, but it was a thirsty business, especially because the burden fell on him. It had gone well, he thought, but he did feel a little worse for wear this morning. Harriet, too, had seemed tired at the breakfast table, and when he asked her if she had slept well, she said, Yes, dear, well enough, by which he knew that she had not. Well, a man could not help it if he snored.

The first tee, just below the windows of the dining room, looked out over a broad green vista comprising the fairways of the first and ninth holes, with a strip of the original rough meadow lying between
them. To the left was the line of the evergreen forest, and in the distance was another fairway and a round, bright patch of green with a yellow flag on it.

Dr. Steinmetz was given the honor, though he protested that he had never played the game, had no idea how to proceed.

“Like this, Doctor, like this.” Senator Truscott took his driver and demonstrated in slow motion the mechanical principles of the golf swing. “Just hit it as straight as you can for now, and we'll fine-tune it later.”

The caddy, a young man with an old face, handed Steinmetz a club. “You'll do better with the spoon. More loft to it.” He showed Steinmetz where to stand and how to grip the shaft, then teed up a new ball for him.

On his first two attempts Steinmetz missed the ball altogether, and Truscott murmured soothingly, Practice, just practice. On his third effort he produced a soft squib that rolled to the edge of the tee and fell away out of sight. Much better, said Truscott, we'll call that your mulligan.

“My what?”

“A shot that is not counted against your score. Gentlemen's rules.”

Steinmetz put another ball on his tee, muttering in German. This time he struck beneath the ball, tearing a long strip out of the lawn. The ball rose precipitously and came down on a patch of bright green atop a rise not forty yards away.

“There!” he cried in satisfaction. “Would that be what you call the green?”

“No,” said Truscott, “that is the ladies' tee, but a fine beginning all the same.”

Toma watched carefully as the caddy demonstrated the correct grip on the shaft, with the interlocking of certain fingers and the left thumb nestled in the right palm. But when he took the club himself it was one hand above the other, a baseball grip.

“Where is the green then? That yellow flag out there?”

“No, sir,” answered the caddy, “that'd be the fourth coming back. The one you want is beyond the trees and around to the left.”

“Must I aim over the trees?”

“Heavens, no!” exclaimed Truscott, “it's much too far. We are al
lowed three strokes to reach this green, but a well-placed drive, just beyond the corner there, allows the scratch golfer to attempt it in two.”

“Thank you.”

Toma swung the club once, horizontally, as if he held a bat and not the driver. He addressed the ball, tapping the grass six inches behind it. Truscott was about to offer advice when Toma swung awkwardly but with tremendous energy. The ball soared away somewhat off-line in the direction of the fourth green, and then the rotation took purchase and it veered left, climbing still, and came to rest on a distant rise many yards beyond where the evergreens bent away.

“Prodigious, simply prodigious. I think you may have a gift for the game.” The senator's own shot was a pale mirror image of Toma's. It started off straight, then drifted weakly to the right, away from the hidden green. “Ah well, business as usual, I see.”

“Might have been the wind, sir,” said the caddy, “but do keep that arm straight.”

Progress toward the green was slow. Steinmetz climbed his hill with a different club, a mashie, and it took him three shots down the long slope to reach Toma's ball. They waited there for Truscott and the caddy.

“My friend, if I had hit such a ball, and on such a day, I should rejoice. But you are distracted from your achievement.” Steinmetz was beginning to find the young man interesting. Had he not just quoted, last night, a passage from Homer in response to his own pontifical remark on the intellectual foundations of engineering? Had the boy not suggested a link between the deposits of magnetite on the mountain and his own research on this substance? That was years ago, but his patent on the magnetic arc lamp was still a source of pride and satisfaction.

“I am thinking about the work, sir, and wishing it went as well as the golf shot.”

“Like all inventors, you are impatient. In time you may learn the virtues of the engineer.”

“I think…”

“Oh, oh, here is our host. Now you must think only of the golf.”

Truscott's third shot had landed not far from the green but in a sand trap. It was Toma's turn to hit, and when the caddy handed him the spoon, he asked for the driver again.

“If you hit a shot like the last one I don't know that we'll ever find it.”

Toma thanked him for his advice but took the driver, and against all odds hit a ball that followed almost the same trajectory as the first. It bounced once on the green and caromed off sideways, down into a shrubby hollow marked with white stakes.

“Oh, what bad luck,” cried Truscott cheerfully. “That's out of bounds. It will cost you a stroke even if you manage to find it. You're up, Doctor.”

By the time Toma had hacked out of the brush, and taken his penalty, and hit a wedge to the green, he lay seven. Truscott, after several humbling strokes from the sand, also lay seven on the green. Steinmetz, as near as could be determined, had taken a dozen strokes.

“Perhaps now I shall distinguish myself.” It was certainly true that Steinmetz had been successful on the practice putting green, although he insisted on facing the hole and holding his club as if it were a croquet mallet. Now, however, his ball lay on the fringe above the flag.

“Very gently, Doctor, would be my advice. Just try to get it near the hole.”

His coat flapping in the breeze, Steinmetz stood at the top of the green and gave brief consideration to the factors that would affect the outcome of his stroke. He started the ball on its long, twisting descent, and after some twenty feet, traveling at a dangerous speed, it hit a beetle and gave a little hop to the left, right into the cup.

“Brilliant!” cried Truscott, “simply brilliant. Who would have thought it possible?”

“Almost anything is possible,” replied Steinmetz in a perfectly neutral tone.

It took Truscott and Toma two putts each to hole out. The senator came very near with his first, but Toma was deceived by the slope of the green and ended up farther away than he began.

“Fiendish, these fellows who make golf courses. A flat putting surface wouldn't be asking too much after a hole like this one.” The senator's ebullient empathy was muted when Toma sank the long putt coming back. “Good. Well, that's one hole down.”

“And how many have we?” asked Steinmetz.

“Nine, Doctor, nine.”

“I will watch, then. Otherwise we shall never finish, and I fear for my back.”

“But my dear sir, you were brilliant on the green.”

“Thank you, I was. So…I shall play the greens, and you play the rest. Yes?”

“That's it. I have been thinking how we might arrange this as a match, with the three of us and our varying experience. One must be competitive or the game loses its salt.”

“I wouldn't know.”

“What I propose is that Mr. Peacock and I play from the tees, and if we reach the green in a tie, then you put your ball on the green too, and whoever putts best wins. What do you say?”

“By such accounting I have won this hole. Would that be fair?”

“Fair enough. Mr. Peacock and I did little to distinguish ourselves.”

“And the two of you play, how do you say, equally?”

“You mean a handicap? I shouldn't think that Mr. Peacock needs any help in that way.”

The next hole was a short one, about one hundred and sixty yards to an elevated green, with pasture in between and trees right and left.

“Tell me,” muttered Toma to the caddy, “how do I hit it so that it goes straight?” The caddy again showed Toma the arrangement of hands and fingers on the shaft.

The ball flew straight and true to the green with that sweet sound that Truscott so admired.

“There,” said Toma.

“Yes. A very good shot.”

“The advantage of good advice,” observed Steinmetz.

Truscott's good humor suffered another setback when his shot—again that weak fade—landed in a trap short and to the right of the green. He set off without comment up the fairway, leaving his guests to make their own way. Steinmetz swung his putter as he walked, scything dry timothy and umbels of Queen Anne's lace now folding up into green, ribbed purses. He bent to retrieve an old ball, and when he stood up, there was the mountain again, rising above the white pines.

“I do not tire of looking at it.”

“What?”

Steinmetz pointed with the putter. The golf course was on the west bank of the Buttermilk, downstream from the falls, and from this distance and angle the crown of Lightning Knob was aligned with the dark green of the watercourse from the lake on the height of the mountain.

“We shall make another trip up there tomorrow.”

“I'm sure Mrs. Truscott would welcome that.”

“No, just the two of us, and perhaps one of my men from Schenectady.”

“Not a picnic, then.”

“No, I have been thinking about the next step.”

Truscott's wedge shot from the sand struck the flagstick halfway up and dropped straight down into the hole. The author of this miracle raised his arms in triumph.

“Couldn't do it again if my life depended on it. In the darkest moments, a ray of light. Perhaps there is a connection to divine providence, Doctor?”