I grabbed its handle and pulled the mower out onto the grass. Then I looked from fence to fence and wondered how long it would take a man to mow all that—an entire golf range—with just a push mower. Cack and I had never tried, never wanted to. But today I felt determined. Some folks might pout after a personal disaster, and some might become vigilantes. I, however, would mow.
My check of the fuel revealed the push mower was out of gas. My check of the shed revealed the melted remains of my two gas cans. The arsonist had apparently used my own cans to torch the shed.
I rushed over to Lowe’s and found that they were out of five-gallon containers, so instead of two of those I bought five of the smaller, two-gallon variety.
Across the street at a convenience store I swiped my debit card in the pay-at-the-pump slot and pulled the gas nozzle over into my pickup bed.
Perhaps I was in denial, viewing this task of mowing the range as way too important. Still, such labor would help me move forward, stay active and involved instead of dwelling on the limbo of my financial future.
The first two containers filled quickly, efficiently. Midway through the third, I lost my balance and spilled gas in the truck.
Anxious to finish and get to work, I climbed out of the bed and grabbed some paper towels from a dispenser. My blunder went unnoticed, however—except for the store clerk, who kept glancing out the window at me.
I had just filled the fifth container when a patrol car pulled into the lot, circled around the pumps twice, and eased in behind me. There I was, squatting in the bed of my pickup, a victim with five gas cans at his feet. I waved at the officer. He did not wave back.
I figured perhaps the officer was there to fill up his squad car.
Perhaps I was too optimistic.
He was out of the squad car and beside the truck before I could even twist the cap onto the last container.
“Mr. Hackett,” he said and peered over into the bed, “you’re going to need to explain why you’re carrying around these gas containers . . . just hours after your business went up in flames.”
He gazed upon my inventory and frowned his disgust, though he lacked the patented head shake of the Cackster.
“You know about my business?” I asked, pointing with the gas nozzle in the direction of Hack’s.
Foregoing reply, he reached into the truck bed, lifted a container, and sat it back down, as if testing its heft. “The arson investigator is a friend of mine. Said he didn’t think you were the type to take revenge, that you’d avoid taking the law into your own hands.” He pointed again at the containers. “Wanna explain what you’re about to do with these?”
I looked past him and pointed across the street, at empty lots in a suburban development, all of them marked with little orange flags. “Sir, my range is larger than ten of those lots put together, and so I needed a lot of gas. I was simply going back to Hack’s to mow, to expend some energy and some pent-up frustration.”
“Right, son. And I costarred in Miami Vice.”
He reached for my arm, and I figured my best bet was not to resist. I could explain myself. After all, I was a victim.
They held me on suspicion of suspicious behavior, or some such charge. Inside police headquarters they led me into an interrogation room and sat me across the table and told me I had better tell the truth. I pleaded my case with passionate voice. “I was just going to mow my driving range, man!”
The interrogating officer nodded as if he’d heard it all before. “Your range is quite large, Mr. Hackett. Don’t you always mow it with a riding mower?”
“Yessir, I do. But the riding mower was destroyed in the blaze.”
“So now you want us to believe that you intended to mow that entire range with just a push mower?”
The tone of his voice grated against my innocence. “That was my intent, sir.”
“Have you ever mowed it with a push mower before?”
“No, I have not.”
His blank stare broadcast his doubt. “Mr. Hackett, you had five full gas containers in the back of your truck.”
I made a fist but stopped just short of pounding the table. “Yes, but I just wanted to do something physical, and I needed a lot of gas. I wasn’t going to torch anything . . . I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to go, or who to go after. All we know so far is that the ‘B’ in ‘Bias’ has a long tail on it and that it was likely written by a man. Even Molly agrees.”
He exchanged a glance with his cohort. “And who is this Molly?”
“She’s a political correspondent. We date a bit.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Hackett.”
“Sir, I am not a violent man. And besides, it’s only a burned up golf shop. No one got hurt.”
His doubting, blank stare nullified my pleading, let-me-go stare. “Mr. Hackett, what you say might or might not be fact, so we’ve decided to hold you until all this checks out.”
Accommodations, of course, were poor. The cell reeked, the bottled water was lukewarm, and the next cell housed a pair of drunks who spent the entire evening debating the pros and cons of Coors Light.
Several questions the cops asked me suggested that I might have torched my own range to get insurance money—which was a total lie. Business had never been better. And my insurance was not that good.
Still, when they allowed me a phone call, I knew whose number to dial.
I called Allstate.
16
LESSON FOR TODAY
As with many a struggling marriage, oftentimes the game’s most challenging aspect is getting a grip on finances—regardless of who controls the checkbook.
Jerry Schooler was not only my Allstate agent, he was perhaps the best golfer in Charleston. Twice he’d won the city championship, and local legend held that he had once shot a sixty-five while using just six clubs—less than half of the fourteen allowed.
Today, however, I had a cop and a desk clerk watching me make a phone call, so I wanted to talk only about deductibles and the value of my building.
“Chris, I’m really sorry to hear about your golf shop,” Jerry said as he checked the particulars of my policy. “How’s the wife and kids?”
“I’m single, Jerry, remember? But as for the fire, the investigators still don’t know who did it.”
“Any ideas yourself?”
“I have ideas. Right now I just need to get out of confinement.” I wasn’t sure how much to tell Jerry, though after a moment of silent waffling I forged ahead. “The cops thought I was going to commit a revenge torching.”
Long, wary, insurance-agent pause. “So . . . were ya?”
“No, of course not.”
Without giving a reason, Jerry put me on hold. One minute became two, and two, four. Perhaps the phrase “revenge torching” had scared him, and now he was cancelling my policy.
When he came back on the line, I told him this was my only phone call and to please not cut me off. The cop and the desk clerk both watched me without expression. I wondered if my call came with a time limit.
“Chris,” Jerry said with calm professionalism, “you’ll need to file a police report, and then I’ll need you to total the contents inside your golf shop—item by item. If you can put it all in a spreadsheet for us, that would be best.”
“Even the three thousand melted golf balls?”
“Even those. Plus any clubs, golf bags, personal possessions, electronics, etcetera. You told me once that you’d videotaped the contents in your building, so if you have that tape it’ll be a huge help to us.”
I turned my back to the eavesdropping desk clerk and the cop, whose ears had perked up when I mentioned the word “melted.” I cannot believe they suspect me.
“Jerry, I have the video at home and will be glad to get that for ya, but it may take me a while, since I don’t know how long they’re going to keep me here. I am innocent, ya know.”
“Soon as possible,” he said, urgency in his tone. “Meanwhile I’ll get a claims adjuster out to
inspect your building. And hey, when all this settles out, let’s get together and play some golf.”
I said sure—though I did not want to even think about the sport—and forced a smile at the officer assigned to watch me. He did not smile back; he just came over and took the phone away and escorted me back to the holding cell. After he shut the door he informed me that I’d exceeded my phone minutes.
“No free nights and weekends?” I asked, nose between the bars. “No text messaging?”
“No free Starbucks, either,” he mumbled as he walked away.
Early the next morning they let me go.
It was 7:00 a.m., and a policewoman came and unlocked my cell. Without comment she escorted me to the front desk and pointed at a form on the counter. “Read it; sign it.”
I read it, signed it. But I didn’t appreciate her talking to me as if I were an average Friday night nutcase, being let go after sleeping off a good drunk.
“Mr. Hackett, since your record is clean, and you haven’t committed an actual crime . . . yet . . . we’re going to make a deal with you.”
I raised my right hand. “I swear, officer, that I was just going to mow my grass and that I was never going to set a fire in revenge.”
She looked me up and down, like she didn’t trust me. “The deal is, you get to go free if you’ll do what you said you were going to do—mow your range with the push mower.”
I glanced outside at the sun shining on the parking lot. I had only been locked up for twelve hours, but already I missed the sun. “That’s it? That’s the deal?”
She motioned to another officer standing out in the lobby. “Officer Cavin will escort you back to your truck.”
Officer Cavin was a burly man—my estimate was six-four and two hundred fifty pounds. He followed me out to the parking lot and told me he hoped my free stay in the slammer had me feeling energetic.
I drove across town with my load of gas containers, Officer Cavin right on my tail. We arrived at Hack’s and parked at the edge of the property, next to Roycroft’s Nursery, which today looked even greener beside the smoldering remains of my pro shop. The contrast was vivid—to the left of me sat ruins, to the right stood some six-feet-tall yellow flowers. Mr. Roycroft had labeled them “swamp sunflowers,” and they swayed merrily in the breeze, showing off their botanical happy faces during a week that, for me at least, had proven most unhappy.
I climbed from my truck, turned to Officer Cavin, and raised both arms. “Well, is this all an innocent man has to do to earn back his freedom? Just go mow what I had intended to mow in the first place?”
At first he just nodded and watched me unload the gas containers. I noticed too that he preferred munching raw carrots to devouring donuts. I had three gas containers in hand and was headed for the maintenance shed when he lowered his window and summoned me to his squad car.
I hurried over and arrived panting. “Sir?”
He turned down his radio, which was tuned not to police band but to a University of South Carolina football talk show. Then he rested his left arm in the window and raised a finger to me. “Mr. Hackett, law enforcement is doing everything it can to find out which person or persons committed the arson. Do not, and I stress do not, think about taking the law into your own hands. Understand?”
I wanted to shout my innocence to him—shout it loud and clear, loud enough for all of Charleston to hear—but I didn’t think it would do any good so I just nodded and said, “I understand.”
He unwrapped some celery sticks and used one to emphasize his point. I was hoping he’d offer it to me, but no such luck. “Stick to rebuilding your business, Mr. Hackett. You had a good thing going when you were teaching and not getting all political.”
I stepped back, surprised at his knowledge of me. “You’ve been to my range?”
He nodded. “My son enrolled in your junior clinic last summer.”
And with that he drove away, both hands on the wheel, the celery stalk clutched in his teeth.
I filled the mower with gas and cranked it on the second try. The raw indignity of being falsely suspected lent me even more energy than I’d felt the previous day. With gritted teeth I pushed the mower, and although each pass from teeing area to boundary fence took long minutes to complete, the monotony of the task gave me time to think about rebuilding, to ponder who did it, and also to reflect on Molly. She had offered to accept blame—and that was an impressive gesture.
Two hours passed quickly, but only one quarter of the range had been mowed. Drenched in sweat, I paused at the boundary fence and called Molly on my cell.
She answered with, “Chris! I’m one minute from going into a press conference. How are you and what are you doing?”
“Mowing my range with a push mower. Probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I’m estimating this’ll take over seven hours, and that’s if I don’t pass out.”
“I hope you don’t pass out when I tell you my news. I have three days off so I’m coming back to Charleston Friday to help you find who did it and to help you rebuild.”
“You really don’t have to do that, Mol, but—”
“No arguments. See you Friday.”
No doubt she was the busiest woman I’d ever pursued. I was glad knowing of her return, but any romantic thoughts seemed squashed by a new thought orbiting in my head—could my neighbor be the arsonist? As I trudged the length of the range again and again, pushing the mower and soaking my T-shirt with sweat, I kept looking over at Mr. Roycroft’s thriving nursery and wondering if he should be a suspect, that perhaps he wanted my land to expand his business. But I just could not fathom that such a mild-mannered guy would commit such a crime.
I dismissed the thought completely a few minutes later when he came rumbling across my range on a brand new Toro riding mower. He sold that brand at his nursery, and this one still had the price tag dangling from the steering wheel.
He pulled up and waited for me near the 150-yard marker. “Chris, use this for today, will ya?” He shouted over its engine noise. “You’re gonna kill yourself pushing that thing.”
He climbed off, and I thanked him as I swung one leg over the seat and mounted the idling Toro. He hustled back to his nursery, and I mentally crossed him off the suspect list and chastised myself for even considering him. Definitely not Mr. Roycroft.
When I finished, I returned the mower to him and filled its tank with the remainder of the gas I’d purchased. The smell of burnt wood beckoned me, however, so I excused myself from chitchat and walked over to what remained of Hack’s Golf Learning Center. There I kicked again at charred plywood and various piles of ash and debris. I found one of my old PING putters in the rubble, its grip melted, its shaft blackened. The bronze head of the club still looked usable, however, so I went and set the thing in the back of my truck.
I spent the next hour sifting through the mess, all the while juggling two desires: finding anything salvageable and searching for more clues that might point to who did it.
Around the back of the pile I reached the place where the door to my range had stood. Visions of customers coming and going through that door fought with fresh memories of Cack riding back and forth across the Bermuda in his caged cart, taunting the clientele. Where had those good days gone?
In an effort to avoid self-pity, I lifted a section of Sheetrock and peered beneath it. The burned cash register lay on its side. After disposing of the Sheetrock I managed to pry open the drawer of the register. Of course the drawer was empty; whoever did this had even taken the coins—dimes, nickels, pennies, all of it.
A new wave of frustration welled up, a fluid combination consisting of cops suspecting me, fire ruining me, and the audacity of someone stealing even a man’s coinage. Suddenly I wanted to break something, something big. So I leaned down and raised the Sheetrock again. But before I slammed it against the ground I noticed a gaping hole in the middle, where a fireman’s axe had busted through. With the Sheetrock held in front of me, I peered through the hol
e and saw something unexpected: no startling evidence, just Mr. Vignatti’s gray Volvo pulling into my parking lot.
Mr. V got out slowly, clearly not looking forward to what he was going to say to me.
He called it a very bad thing.
According to Mr. Vignatti, the clause in section 14B of our lease agreement stated that I, the leasee, shall not engage in any action that promotes or encourages protests, social upheaval, criminal behavior, or conduct unbecoming of a golf professional. This clause was included on the day I signed the lease, and I had never thought twice about it.
Mr. Vignatti held great pride in his reputation as a businessman, however, and he’d definitely thought twice about it. He had thought about it so much that he asked me to leave the rubble pile at Hack’s and follow him to his office. “Chris,” he said, climbing back into his car, “we need to have a talk.”
Ten minutes later we sat at opposing ends of his rectangular conference table, this time without including Mr. Roycroft.
Mr. Vignatti gazed at my file for long moments. “Chris,” he said, “I am sad to get to this point. I am sad in my heart because you impressed me as good at the teaching of golf.”
I knew where this was headed, and I was determined to halt it before it got there. “But Mr. V, please understand that it was not my idea to—”
He pulled a section of newspaper from my file. “Look at this article from the newspaper. It says, ‘A golf property leased from local businessman George Vignatti was set ablaze Monday night. According to authorities, the attack may have been fueled by claims of politically biased activities on the part of the leasee of the property, golf instructor Christopher Hackett.’ ”
Par for the Course Page 13
