Dead in Vineyard Sand Read Free Page B

restaurant and watch the bold golfers whack balls off the first tee. Most of them didn’t look much like the pros I sometimes watched on TV on stormy weekends. I was sure I would look just as bad, but knew I could never take the game as seriously.
    I met Glen on the practice green beside the clubhouse, where I accepted his spare clubs, shook hands with his friends, and girded my psychological loins.
    â€œDon’t worry about your game,” said Glen. “As long as we move right along, nobody cares how many strokes you take. You only get five minutes to find a lost ball.”
    We practiced putts, then we went to the driving range and teed up.
    My tee shot went long and straight down the middle, and I thought, Maybe I was right before. Maybe there really isn’t anything to this game.
    â€œI thought you said you hadn’t played in thirty years,” said Glen suspiciously.
    I shot 108. No improvement since my last round, but good enough to have Glen ask me to play with him again the next weekend and good enough for me to say yes.
    Back at the house, I told Zee about the plan and she frowned and asked, “Did you hear about the fight in the Fireside?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMadge called me from the ER. A couple of bikers and a couple of golfers got into it pretty good. Three of them are in jail and the other one’s in the hospital. If you’re going to hang around with the golfing crowd, maybe you’d better watch your step. Or maybe you should just give up golf.”
    I gave her a kiss. “They were young guys and they were drinking, I’ll bet. I hang around with an older crowd. We still like our booze, but we’re past our punching stage. You don’t have to worry about me getting into a brawl.”
    Famous last words, as they say.

3
    â€œThe secret of my game,” I explained to Zee the following Monday, “is simplicity. I only use a putter, a seven-iron, and a three-wood. I do all my driving with the wood and all my chipping with the seven-iron.”
    â€œAnd all your putting with the putter, I’ll bet.”
    â€œYou’re sharp. That’s why I like living with you.”
    A few minutes later, I had the house to myself, since the kids were in school and Nurse Zee had gone off to her job at the hospital’s emergency room.
    I used my time to do some weeding and pea picking. Off-islanders are usually surprised to learn that Vineyarders can pick peas in June, but thanks to the Gulf Stream, which usually keeps island winters milder than those on the mainland, we can often plant our peas in March and pick them three months later. Ours were actually snow peas, the kind you eat pods and all, and I planned to use them in a shrimp and snow peas stir-fry for supper.
    With the peas and most of the other ingredients safely in hand, all I needed was some shrimp, so I headed down into the village to get them. I could have substituted scallops, pounds of which I had stored in our freezer, but my mind was set on shrimp. By such small things are our fortunes altered.
    Many kinds of delicious fish and shellfish are readily available from the Vineyard’s great ponds and the surrounding seas, but shrimp are imported, so you have tobuy them if you want to eat them. Thus, to the fish market I went, avoiding the newish Stop & Shop grocery store, whose outlandishly high prices offended my sensibilities.
    On the Vineyard, of course, all prices are outlandishly high. The explanation, always given with a perfectly straight face, is “freight.” The owners of the liquor stores will tell you that’s why a bottle of booze costs several dollars more here than on the mainland; a grocery store owner or a gas station owner will make the same claim for the mind boggling cost of his wares. The real reason, as everyone knows, is monopoly capitalism combined with collusion among competitors selling the same stuff.
    Since islanders are stuck with this form of