First to Find

by Mark Gessner

  The winter crew had the day off today, but the work of a head greenskeeper, like proverbial woman's work, was never done.

  Jim had planned to take the day off on Christmas, but the commode in the barn had other plans. He fixed the flush valve yesterday afternoon, and he'd have to go in to check on it again to make sure that the replacement valve was holding. A toilet with a leaky valve just trickled, but over a long time a drip a minute could add up to real money. He also had paperwork to deal with, end-of-year reporting and equipment requests that he didn't want to leave until the new year. Best to get it done now so it won't be underfoot come spring.

  Jim hopped into the greenskeeper's golf cart. The padded white vinyl seat was brittle and slick in the cold, but Jim didn't feel anything but a whisper of that cold through his insulated overalls. The Club provided a fleet of quiet clean electric carts for its members, but the maintenance crew needed several modified heavy-duty gas engine golf carts so they could run all day and haul loads of crew and equipment. Jim drove the metalflake green cart. Along with the house down the hill from the clubhouse, and free access to play the course when it was closed on Mondays, it was one of the perks of the job. Never mind that aside from color this cart was identical in every way to the other maintenance carts. The day crew during the summer always kept a wary eye out for any glint of metallic green. If they saw that cart coming from far across the course, it was time to quit slacking. "Hey ladies, Jimbo's comin,'" someone'd yell. They'd pick up the pace as long as that cart was in sight.

  Jim was a hardened steel rail of a man, standing just over six-foot-six. His slim physique was topped with a neatly combed thicket of black hair that was slicked straight back and kept in place with Brylcreem. "A little dab'll do ya," his wife often teased, but he always used a big dab. Jim had grayed in his twenties; the black came from a bottle. He had a wicked cowlick. His glasses were a throwback to the 1920's, perfectly circular black frames of a type you might have seen worn by a banker, accountant, or railroad telegrapher in brittle sepia-tone photos pulled from a crumbling cardboard box in grandma’s attic.

  Jim liked things neat and in place. In his hiring, his work, his dress, and in his personal life. Not a hair in his cowlick strayed, nor did any blade of grass in his charge. Not a mower, chainsaw, shovel, or rake was out of service long. "Ship shape" was his motto. He said it about forty times a day, and the crew often gave him a ration of shit about it, behind his back of course.

  He backed halfway down the drive, did a tight three-point turn, slid sideways a few feet, then rolled to the edge of the drive. He waited at the highway, leaning forward over the wheel to see if he had a clear shot for the five-hundred-foot dash down the highway to the maintenance barn. A less careful man might not have bothered to check; at this grey hour there was no one on the road.

  His drive had already been cleared by one of the crew. It was customary for Dalton, his crew foreman, to have one of his men plow the roads and driveways of the club after a snowfall, even in the pre-dawn hours if necessary, even on a holiday, once the snow had stopped. Dalton didn't have to clear Jim's drive but he did so as a courtesy. This was borne of a respect strengthened from working together daily, sometimes seven days a week, over the last thirty-five years, rather than any petty desire to suck-up to the boss. Jim wouldn't be swayed by any attempt at brown-nosing and Dalton wasn't the kind of man who'd do it.

  Ordinarily his black lab Wolfie accompanied him on the passenger seat. Wolfie had been Jim's companion for eleven years. For someone to hit his dog and then not stop or even try to render aid was beyond his comprehension. One officer said that the dog had been killed by what he called "blunt force trauma," most likely a glancing impact, a hit and run. But they couldn't be sure. No one saw anything, and the area had been covered in a heavy snow that had eradicated any trace of the incident.

  The cart crunched over the icy gravel to the side of the barn. Jim cut the ignition, then fumbled his keys out to unlock the door to the office. A chill morning wind whipped along the edge of the barn, poking a bony finger of cold into a gap between his parka and neck. He shivered and stepped into the office.

  The barn was old, probably at least a hundred years or more; no one seemed to know for sure. It was an unremarkable western Pennsylvania dairy barn, three stories tall, wooden slats painted dark green, faded and now starting to peel, with a brown shingled roof. Three oversized green garage doors spanned the driveway side of the barn. One normal size garage door fitted into the concrete block wall on the lower level, the basement shop. The club installed these doors ages ago, back in the twenties, when this fertile farmland shucked off its agrarian husk revealing a grassy playground for the rich.

  The office had its own entrance next to the garage doors, so Jim could enter without exposing all the equipment inside to the elements.

  Once inside he switched on the office's overhead fluorescents and portable electric heater, and then shed his parka. Jim felt good to be at work. Despite the cold, he felt comfortable. He belonged here, and part of him didn't want to retire. A man is defined by what he does. To make a man stop doing what he does best because of his age, was--what? Inefficient? Unfair? No, worse than that. It was cruel. He'd miss this place, creaky timbers, leaky toilet and all.

  The office crouched in a corner of the cavernous barn, a hundred square feet of dingy but uncluttered space. A long antique metal desk divided the room. World War Two era green metal file cabinets lined the wall to the left, and corkboard covered every open square inch of wall. An antique chalkboard was bolted to the wall just outside the door. On the board someone had scrawled the crew roster and duty schedule. One of the more artistic crewmen had erased a swath out of the middle and drawn a Santa head caricature with a cartoon cloud coming out of his mouth saying "Merry Xmas, Ladies." A rectangular porthole was cut in the wall over the desk, fitted with wire-mesh safety glass. The glass was so old that it was wrinkled near the bottom, and had a perpetual coating of green-yellow grime. The grime was textured such that you couldn't tell if it was on the inside or out. The wire in-basket contained a few papers he had yet to work on. He saved the paperwork for later and walked out into the barn.

  The first order of the day was to check on the flush valve he fixed yesterday. He walked into the darkened barn, past the huge brown fourteen-inch square timbers that were holding up the center framework. Parked back within the dim recesses of the barn were five Toro Triplex greens mowers, two red Ford tractor mowers that had entered service a few years before Jim was born, and two Toro Sand Pro trap raking machines. Jim stopped at Sand Pro number two and ran his palm over one of its three circus-sized knobby balloon tires.

  "Remember when that kid tried to float it?" called out a silhouette framed by the office door. It was Billy "Dalton" Whorter, crew foreman.

  "Hey Dalton, shouldn't you be at home, enjoying Christmas cheer or something?" Jim asked, looking up.

  "Humbug!" Dalton chuffed as he walked over to the Sand Pro. He ran a leathery left hand along the instrument panel, while extending his right to Jim. The only instrument on the panel was a mechanical hour meter. The Sand Pro, like most golf course equipment and like all golf course employees, measured service in hours, not miles. Accumulate too many hours; you're scrap.

  "Took two weeks in the shop, and two G's worth of new parts from Toro," said Jim, extending his right hand to clasp Dalton's.

  "An'at was two weeks I didn't have t'spare," said Dalton, as they shook hands. Dalton's hands were clumsy man-hands with wide flat nails, hairy knuckles, thick stubby fingers, calloused and worn from years of outside work.

  "Darn kid," said Jim.

  "Good ol' 'Big Keith.' Freakin doper," stated Dalton. Dalton didn't have a problem with profanity, but wouldn't utter it in front of the boss. The substitution came out sounding forced and he regretted it immediately. Keith Busman had always insisted that he be called "Big Keith," even though he was the smallest kid on the crew. Keith swore in his defense that with such big balloon
tires, he just knew the Sand Pro would float.

  "I'll never forget the look on his face when he saw me coming. He knew his goose was cooked," Jim smiled.

  "And he was tryin' to start it!" recalled Dalton.

  "Underwater!" They both laughed. They had said this last word at the same time. Jim looked down, shook his head, and smiled. The story was an old one, oft repeated over the last seventeen years by generations of crews now long since moved on. Legend. Now, years later, they could laugh. Ever since that day, though, they had screened all new applicants for drugs.

  "They just don't build 'em like they used to," said Dalton, rapping his knuckles on the front tire.

  "This one's ship shape. It'll probably last another twenty years," said Jim.

  Fifty-eight years had passed for Dalton, thirty-five here at HVCC, or simply "The Valley" as the crew called it. He had started as a caddy back in the doo-wop years and had joined the grounds crew long before there were minimum wage or labor laws. He had a leather face to match his leather hands, products of too many summers out in the sun in the years before sunscreen. His cool blue eyes shone out from under a mat of uncombed dark brown hair. He wore a light brown sheepskin coat. Faded Levis extended down his too-short legs to black leather engineer boots.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound a shrill wind haunting the eaves.

  "Next week's the big day, huh?," Dalton said. He was trying hard to avoid mentioning the dog.

  "Yeah." Another pause for a few moments, then Jim admitted quietly, "The board's going to put Zupansky in charge."

  "I figgered," clucked Dalton, looking down and poking at a Sand Pro tire with his boot.

  Dalton, with only an eighth grade education, had been with the crew twice as long as Zupansky and knew more about how to run a golf course than anyone in the whole Monongahela river valley, maybe even the whole state.

  "He's got the turf science degree n'at," said Jim.

  "College Boy," said Dalton.

  "Yeah, but he also knows what he's doing, and he respects you, needs you, you know that?" Jim asked, stressing the point by pressing his index finger into Dalton's thick chest. Any other man touched Dalton like that, he'd draw back a bloody stump, and both Jim and Dalton knew it.

  "Okay chief, you say so," said Dalton, letting Jim's hand fall away on its own.

  "I know so," said Jim, turning, "and this course needs you too. Darn place would go to pot without you." Going to pot was about the worst thing that could ever happen to anything or anyone in Jim's world. It was the polar opposite of ship shape.

  Jim walked toward the rear of the barn, where the cramped toilet room was located. "Well, this torlit isn't going to repair itself," he called out.

  "You need a hand?" offered Dalton.

  "No, I've got it, you go on home. Say 'Happy New Year' to Missy and the kids for me."

  "Arr-righty Chief. See ya next week," said Dalton.

  You couldn't technically (or legally) call it a restroom; it was smaller than a phone booth. There was no sink, no mirror. Employees weren't required to wash hands either by state law or by custom, and if any insisted, there was always the hose out back. The door latched by a rusted metal hook and screw eye. The door didn't fit in the jamb and wouldn't close completely; there was always a gap, an inch. Considering that the room had no fan or other ventilation, in the eighty plus seasons the club used this barn, including twenty or so in which the crew employed workers of both genders, no one ever objected to the gap.

  Parked next to the toilet room was a light green three-wheeled Cushman Turf Truckster. It had been in service since the late sixties. Many a teenage crewman had learned to drive a standard transmission on this baby, and when you jacked her up to overhaul the transmission, you could tell. Still she kept on running. He ran his hands along the crudely painted metal frame, then paused a second at the gage panel to check the battery charge. This one'd need a new Die-Hard before next season. He looked up to see if Dalton had gotten outside yet. He had. Jim could hear Dalton's 'sixty-seven Dodge pickup rumbling out in the drive. He'd have to let Dalton know next week.

  Jim checked the toilet bowl for any trace of the blue dye that he had dumped in the tank the day before. There was a hint of blue. Still leaking then. He lifted the porcelain cover off the tank, flushed the tank, adjusted the valve, then flushed again. After three flush cycles, he heard the distinctive whup-whup-whup-whup of a mower engine being pull-started downstairs in the shop. What the heck? No one should have been down there. Dalton? Whup-whup-whup. The pull-start again, followed by the chugging and whining of a Briggs and Stratton 3.5 horsepower mower engine sputtering to life. Sure Dalton didn't have as much as a high school education but he knew better than to run gas engines indoors without ventilation. The basement overhead door wasn't open, he'd seen that on the way in.

  Jim dropped his screwdriver and hurried toward the basement stairs.

  Chapter 16

  VOICES UPSTAIRS. MCCHASNEY, UNMISTAKABLE, though older now, more frail, a bit of a waver in the voice. Someone else, that gravelly voice, that just had to be Dalton. So he was right, Dalton was still here. Shit, they'd both have to be close to ancient now. He crouched behind the furnace. If Dalton came down, he'd have to kill him quickly and quietly. He’d liked Dalton and didn't want to have to do that.

  After a few minutes Dalton left. The killer could hear him start up his truck and crunch out of the drive and onto the highway. A couple of minutes later he heard flushing sounds from the toilet room. Toilet room. That was another thing that pissed him off. When would these rich assholes put in a real employee restroom for the crew? Not like they didn't have the money, tightwad motherfuckers. Twenty years later they still didn't have a proper employee restroom, forcing workers to perform their private functions where anyone could walk by and see and hear. The rich were always sticking it to the working man. Treated them like slaves, then threw them away when the work was done.

  He took a deep breath, count of four, held it, then let it out. It was time.

  He picked the Brush Monster up off its rack, then set it on the ground. He released the blade clutch, clipped the black wire to the silver-tipped electrode of the spark plug, set the choke, then gave the pull-cord a good quick rip. The Briggs and Stratton gave out a hearty Whup-whup-whup-whup! C'mon baby, Jimbo had to have heard that. He pushed the choke in a quarter inch, then pulled the cord again. Whup-whup-whup, then the satisfying rumble of the ancient four cycle machine as it sputtered to life. Good work Dalton my man, only you could keep this old shit running forever. The basement shop filled with white smoke as the machine burned off a film of engine oil, and he suppressed a cough. McChasney had to have heard the engine starting. He'd be on his way, hoping to tear someone a new asshole, no doubt. He pushed the choke all the way back in, then lifted the bulky machine up and strapped it on. He took several steps backward along and then underneath the creaky wooden staircase. He engaged the blade clutch. The thin metallic whine of the ten-inch blade sliced through the air, forming a ghostly lethal disc, reaching full speed within seconds. With no blade guard, he'd have to be careful not to hurt himself with it.

  McChasney--well ol Jimbo was another matter.

  Chapter 17

  JIM HIT THE STAIRS running. He'd thrown open the basement door out of habit. In the summertime the door was always jammed from the humidity, but here in the dry of winter, it flung open and clattered angrily against the wall of the barn. Contacting the wall, it had sprung back so that it slapped Jim on the back and nearly pitched him hands first down the stairs, but he hung tight to the wooden handrail and bolted down the stairs two steps at a time, a skill which those under six foot three can only marvel at.

  When the killer saw that Jim was on the stairs and moving fast, he took three steps out from under and then alongside the staircase, twirling as he did so. In a great underhand swinging motion, he swept the whickering brush monster blade up and hooked it back. The blade shattered the handrail in an explosion o
f pencil-sized splinters of ancient wood. Many of the splinters would later be found embedded three inches into the ceiling, and a small one pierced the killer's thigh, though he wouldn't notice it until later.

  The blade continued in its deadly arc, not even slowed by its contact with the handrail and the boney morsel of human flesh that was once Jim McChasney's hand. It pulverized the hand, sending bone fragments and blood flying out to catch the splinters that it had just ejected. Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrium, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, and hamulus. Eight carpals, metacarpals one through five, and fourteen phalanges (proximal, middle, and distal), all fragmented and embedded in the ceiling for some lucky homicide detective to have cold-sweat nightmares over for the next five years. No piece of that hand larger than a pencil eraser was later found.

  A fifth of a second after the rail and hand were shattered, before Jim had even any idea what was happening, let alone time to formulate an escape, the blade completed its arc and sliced deep into his chest. The ping of brass shirt buttons ricocheting off the ceiling and walls rang out over the drone of the engine.