James Ross - A Character-Based Collection (Prairie Winds Golf Course)

by James Ross

  An annoyed glance at J Dub was all it took to convey her thoughts regarding their living conditions. Four years of college and now THIS she angrily fumed to herself. She wanted to pick a fight with J Dub, but thought better of it. She knew her pregnancy was wreaking havoc with her emotions and she tried to think of something else. Marcia knew that J Dub was a good man; she would just have to trust him that things would turn around.

  One night right after the qualifying tournament, the floor heater started to sputter as they were finishing dinner. The evenings were damp and cool and managed to seep into every crevice of the trailer. It seemed like whatever could go wrong, would go wrong right now for the young couple. “You need to get that fixed,” complained Marcia.

  “Yeah, I know. The car is leaking oil and we have a baby on the way, too,” J Dub said in a frustrated tone.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “It might be time to give up the dream,” conceded J Dub.

  “You don’t want to do that,” urged Marcia. She suddenly felt guilty for complaining so much.

  “It’s another ten-month wait before the next qualifying tournament. We need to get out of here. The driving range doesn’t pay squat, I’m up all night at the truck stop, and we’re gonna have a new mouth to feed,” J Dub moaned.

  “Things will work out just fine, Honey. Normally when one door closes another one opens up.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t wait that long for the next door to fly open,” J Dub complained. “I need to make something happen . . . and soon.”

  “Things will work out how they’re supposed to work out. Be patient. Let’s get through the winter and get the baby born.” No matter how trying times would become, Marcia always looked for the silver lining. It’s just that her hormones weren’t cooperating with her lately.

  “But I’m getting antsy. The energy is there, the desire is there, but I feel like such an idiot . . . such a failure,” J Dub complained. He was dangerously close to spilling tears, as he admitted his vulnerability to his wife.

  Marcia took a moment to hug her husband. “You’re the same guy now that I fell in love with a few years ago. Sure, a better decision could have been made out on the golf course, but it didn’t happen that way.” Marcia knew that her husband ached to have that shot over. She did her best to comfort him.

  “I toss and turn all night reliving that shot,” J Dub grumbled.

  “It happened that way for a reason.”

  “Then that reason better slap me in the face pretty soon.”

  “It may not happen that fast. Just go to the range and keep your game in shape. Let me worry about this,” Marcia stated as she patted her belly.

  “Yeah, but I need to make something happen. This is not where I want to be right now in my life,” J Dub moaned.

  “Relax. Neither one of us is where we want to be right now, but we’re in this together. Accept it. Take things a day at a time,” Marcia urged as she held his chin in her hand.

  J Dub grinned. “You won’t bail out on me, will you?”

  “I’m not leaving you, J Dub, just because you made a dumbass move out on the golf course one day.” She paused to reflect. “Although I was tempted when you told me, ‘I’m the player. I’ll make the decisions’,” Marcia mocked him. “You are aware that you married a feminist, correct?”

  “Yes, dear . . . you’ll never let me forget it!” J Dub smiled at his wife and suddenly grew quiet. “If Dad would have seen that . . .” J Dub’s voice lingered until he shook his head.

  “He would have chewed your butt,” Marcia added.

  “He taught me better than that. It wasn’t a positive way to handle adversity on the course,” J Dub rambled.

  “Don’t worry about it. Next time you’ll listen to me.” Marcia broke into a big smile. She knew that she had given him excellent advice on the course before he knocked the wayward shot out of bounds.

  J Dub grinned back and chided her. “I must really be slipping to new depths to be forced to listen to a girl out on the golf course.”

  “I’ve been on your bag long enough to know that you should have taken the nine-iron,” Marcia stressed.

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “I learned long ago that you can’t stop a Schroeder when they get to thinking one way,” Marcia said. “Plus you didn’t want any ‘second guessing out there’, remember?”

  “I thought for sure that four-iron would get the ball out of that divot.”

  “You’re too good for your own sake. An average player would have just chipped out.”

  “You’ll forgive me?”

  “I guess I’ll keep you around!” Marcia teased. “But let’s see how you handle the misfortune of not getting your tour card.”

  “Good. I’ll figure out what we’ll do next,” J Dub promised.

  Marcia pulled J Dub close to her, wrapping his arms around her and whispered, “Come here, you,” and they shared a lingering, soft kiss.

  Chapter Eight

  George Pierce drove up to Lew’s gate. He grunted his name through the intercom system and waited as the gate opened. As he traveled down the driveway the gate closed behind him.

  George was the kind of guy that was always looking for an angle. He was a real con man and rotten to the core. His moral fiber didn’t contain many scruples.

  They say “birds of a feather flock together” and “you can’t change the spots on a leopard.” Both applied to these characters. George and Lew found each other. Neither was going to alter their behavior.

  Their common bond was power and greed. Both wanted to achieve that goal using other people’s money. They learned their lessons in capitalism early in life. The difference between these two guys and most successful entrepreneurs was intent. Together, their evilness was like glue. And their bond was tight.

  Lew waited outside his house as George pulled to a stop. “Did everything go okay, George?”

  “We got what we were after.”

  “You’re kidding?” Lew was amazed that George could obtain Margaret Morton’s signature so quickly. “That fast?”

  “There was no problem. She’s damn near dead,” George said viciously. His sinister chuckle signaled evil intentions. “I wasn’t there two minutes. I pushed the power-of-attorney form in front of her and she balked. But then Walter got her signature on a tax document. She signed it before it stopped moving across the desk,” George gloated.

  “When do we start?” Lew probed.

  “ . . . Right away. How’s your loan coming?”

  “Joe, down at the bank, said I have to find somebody with golf experience before the bank will approve the loan. I have to find some kid willing to bust his ass from dawn to dusk and not steal from me,” Lew explained.

  “Got anybody in mind?”

  “Yeah, I got a line on a local kid that’s down in Texas now. He just got out of college and missed his chance at the tour. I need to see if he might want to run a golf course.”

  “How much time do you need?” George inquired.

  “Deed it over to me right now and I can make a quick trip to Texas,” Lew suggested.

  “I want my cut first,” George demanded.

  “That might be six months off. I’m going to try to get the kid up here. We need to keep the business rolling and generating some cash flow.”

  “Give me a few days to work with Mary Jean,” George mumbled.

  Lew’s smirk indicated that he didn’t mind the delay. “No problem. I’ll need some time to see Walter and pay a visit to the kid in Texas. Hell, I still need to find him.”

  Chapter Nine

  Walter Hancock really wasn’t a bad guy. At least he had some semblance of a conscience, a quality that some of the guys he socialized with lacked. One of Walter’s problems was that he assumed the stereotypical persona and lifestyle of an accountant and needed some cheap thrills to feel important.

  After getting his accounting degree, Walter continued for his MBA. Then he passed the CPA exam an
d got hired by a ‘Big Six’ accounting firm. The long hours in the downtown office weren’t really his cup of tea. He always used to joke that sitting in his cubicle was like sitting in a beige prison. But he was good at what he did, so he sat in his beige prison debiting his credits.

  That was until he got in with some executives at one of the large corporations. They had been making a killing in their company stock and stock option programs. Walter figured out a way to shelter their income and cut their capital gains.

  He wasn’t afraid to do that. He would push the envelope when it came to saving a client a buck or two from Uncle Sam. One thing led to another. A friend referred a friend and so on and so forth. Before long, Walter had assembled quite a little book of “Who’s Who” that he was representing which increased his value as the ultimate asset for any company . . . at least one that wanted to make money.

  He broke away from his staid job at the accounting firm and opened up his own little one-man accounting office. That’s the American way. But for Walter it meant that he would have the liberty to stretch the rules a little farther and increase his value that much more.

  He was the type of guy that was dangerously influenced by others. Being out on his own doomed him because it allowed him to meet characters that had wicked objectives. And Lewferd E. Zerrmann had a knack for finding the four-leaf clover in a field of grass.

  Walter liked operating out of the older two-story Victorian home. The kitchen was convenient for his continuous snacking. The various rooms were put to use holding reference books, past files, and tax returns. There was paper cluttered everywhere! That was the way that Walter liked to function.

  When Lew came through the door, Walter was snacking on a doughnut. He looked up to peer over the glasses resting on his nose.

  “Did you get that French whore scent out of your clothes yet?” Lew asked as he grabbed a seat.

  “Man, that’s some powerful shit. I stopped at the quick trip and poured orange soda over my head so that my wife wouldn’t notice,” Walter quipped.

  “We’ve got to do that again real soon,” Lew suggested.

  “Find me a large account. I’ll buy.”

  “Speaking of which,” Lew uttered, “George said that everything went well during your meeting with Margaret.”

  “We got her to sign a tax form. I’m not sold on trying to do things this way,” Walter said as he lapsed momentarily back into his accountant mode.

  “Who the heck is going to know? The old lady is out of it. Just make sure she gets her allowance,” Lew persisted.

  “But it just isn’t right.”

  “What difference does it make? Who cares if it is a cash asset or a property asset?” Lew ranted.

  “I don’t have the authority to start moving assets without her permission.”

  Lew’s powers of persuasion didn’t stop until he got his way. “She gave both of you her signature. She trusts you. Let’s make a deal.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “ . . . You’re the executor of the estate, aren’t you?”

  Walter nodded but was clearly uncomfortable with the way Lew was pressuring him.

  Lew continued, “I want to get that ground.”

  “Then I’ll have to get it appraised,” Walter stated.

  “Screw that. It takes too long.”

  “I have to get fair market value for the estate. It’s my fiduciary duty,” Walter advised. He was accustomed to more subtle “creative accounting” than Lew’s deal.

  “Then I know just the appraiser to use,” Lew suggested.

  “Besides you’ll need it for your bank loan.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “Is the bank giving you a hard time?” Walter asked.

  Lew dodged the truth. “There are some issues.”

  “What are they telling you?” Walter pressed for an explanation.

  “First off, they want somebody with experience running the place,” Lew stated.

  “And you don’t know crap about golf,” Walter surmised.

  “ . . . And could care less about it. I want the land,” Lew simply stated his objective.

  Walter stepped right into Lew’s world of thinking. “The financials won’t support a very high price.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Lew was in a buyers’ mode.

  “But I owe an obligation to my client,” Walter explained.

  “Screw the client!” Lew hollered.

  Justification was one item that Walter could fudge about without feeling too guilty. “We do need to dispose of some things . . .”

  “Why don’t you owner-finance me?” Lew suggested.

  Walter smiled and said, “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “Let’s draw up a contract.” Lew frothed at the mouth.

  “Not so fast. I’ve got to get George involved too.”

  “Make that land disappear from the books,” Lew proposed.

  With a grin Walter said, “I’m pretty creative.”

  If Lew was going to wheel and deal he wanted to make sure that he maintained the upper hand. “Then make sure that it’s a favorable price.”

  Walter took the bait. “Go and line up your kid. I’ll need a few days as well to get everything set up with George.”

  Chapter Ten

  Mary Jean Graham was one of those women that could turn a man’s head. She had gotten divorced after she had met George Pierce, although one had nothing to do with the other. She was in her early thirties and had the body of an aerobics instructor. It was easy to see why George had recruited her to work for him.

  She knew her strengths and accentuated them to the delight of males who cared to notice. One day her hair would be up, the next day it would be down. If she wore business slacks early in the week, she would have on a skirt later in the week. The constant was that whatever she wore was tight and magnified her gorgeous figure. Her body language made her outfits even more appealing. A hot-blooded male had trouble concentrating when she was present.

  Anything that Mary Jean possessed in the body department was missing between her ears. Even though she was as friendly as she could be, her thought process was a little scattered. But, no matter what George told her to do, she did it with a smile far more sophisticated than her intellect.

  Mary Jean knew the value of non-verbal communication and was very effective mitigating any hard feelings or confusion that might arise from a closing. George really did find a diamond in the rough with Mary Jean. She had the country girl naiveté and city girl moves to get what she wished. George found a faithful employee in Mary Jean and took care in grooming her for his needs.

  The day after George had met with Walter and Margaret he approached Mary Jean at the receptionist desk. He had a copy of the tax form with Margaret’s signature. “Good morning, George. Did everything go okay yesterday?” Mary Jean asked.

  “It couldn’t have been any better!” George answered. “In fact I’ve got a little project I want you to start on.”

  “And what might that be?”

  George handed her a file. “I have a signed tax form for an influential account. I want you to take this document and copy it. For the next several days I want you to start practicing how to write the signature of Margaret Morton.”

  “ . . . Margaret Morton of the Morton family?”

  George nodded.

  “How neat is that?” Mary Jean exclaimed.

  George had the grin of a kid that had just taken candy from a baby. “When you get it perfected, let me know,” George insisted.

  “I can’t sign for her and notarize.”

  “Sure you can. When you sign her name to the power-of-attorney form that I’m going to give to you then we’ll be able to do anything that we want,” George rationalized. He winked at Mary Jean. “We’re going to be awfully busy the next three to six months.”

  Mary Jean looked at George with a bewildered look. “What are we going to be doing?”

&
nbsp; “You always wanted to live the good life, relax, and work on your tan on a tropical island, didn’t you?” George inquired.

  Mary Jean flashed a devious smile. She had always known that she and George would eventually end up together. Yet, Mary Jean still looked a little confused. Even though they had been lovers for quite some time, George was still her boss and she wasn’t about to dispute what he was saying. After all, he was the expert.

  “Just make sure that it’s a perfect match,” George continued, “and we’ll march a lot of closings through these doors. The estate has condos in Southern California, a ranch in western Nebraska, apartments in Tulsa, a hotel in downtown St. Louis, lots of acreage in Southern Illinois, and shopping centers in Louisville, Nashville, and Denver. All of it needs to be sold.”

  Mary Jean nearly spit out the sip of coffee she had just taken. “Can we get all of that property sold that quickly?” she stammered.

  “If you can get her signature perfected we can.” George paused for a minute and reflected on his next admission. “You know, having a law license, the majority of the stock in a title company, and a faithful employee almost gives me a license to steal,” he commented with a smirk.

  Mary Jean glanced at him out of the side of her eye and grinned. George leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  Chapter Eleven

  Valley Trail Driving Range—Humble, Texas, January 1984 . . .

  Vince, the owner of the VALLEY TRAIL DRIVING RANGE, held a soft spot for golfers competing in the qualifying tours and snapped up J Dub the moment he applied for the job. His research indicated that he was a ‘good guy’ and noticed that he had a very pregnant wife that was depending on him as well.

  He was happy to give him a job for as long as he wanted to stay, although he knew he wouldn’t stay long. Humble is not the sort of town most people settle down in and take root. The range wasn’t anything special by any means; and the range itself occupied a field that seemed to flood every third year or so. When the water would come up, Vince had a habit of leaving the balls on the ground and taking off for Houston to enjoy a long weekend. Vince knew that the golf circuit was filled with “wanna-be’s” that missed a crucial shot and needed a short term job to save enough money to get back home. Thus, he was pleased to give J Dub an opportunity.