Virgin Territory Read Free

be out and about watching other people make fools of themselves; you never know what can happen.
    Mr. Schulman hasn’t even teed-off yet. He’s standing there, addressing the ball and shimmying his behind as if trying to fit himself into a tight spot. That’s when he notices the women.
    “Kid,” Mr. Schulman says to me without taking his eyes offthe four middle-aged women who are standing in the grove. “Go find out what’s going on. We don’t want a lawsuit when someone gets hit on the head.”
    I lay down his big leather golf bag and go trotting across the close-cropped grass and into the shade of the grove. Spring Hill isn’t one of the many fancy courses for which Jupiter is famous. For instance, it doesn’t offer perks like freshly laundered towels, cappuccino machines, and valet parking; and though it’s technically a private club owned and operated by the King of the Geezers, Jack Felder, the place is very
of the people, for the people
, and
by the people
. And by that I mean just about anybody can wander onto the grounds without being asked a lot of questions or expected to show an ID.
    “Hey,” I say as soon as I set foot on the mound of soft sand and imported woodchips. “What’s up?”
    All four of the women look over at me and smile. A compact woman with shiny black hair and a toothy smile waves at me as if she needs a refill on her coffee.
    “It’s my boss,” I say loud enough so that they all can hear me. “He doesn’t want to hit you with his golf ball, and you’re kinda in the way. A lot of times the golfers send their balls flying into the trees here, and it can get dangerous.”
    The woman who waved to me is walking toward me. She walks like a marionette, her legs lifting higher than necessary and her white running shoes sinking into the soft cedar groundcover every time she takes a step. She’s a small, pretty womanwith rosy cheeks and lush eyelashes—but as she gets closer I can see that her teeth look too big for her mouth and her bangs are covering a very broad forehead.
    “You looking for my Angela?”
    “Huh?”
    My confusion must be ricocheting all over the place, because right away she says, “Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you were in the club.”
    She speaks with a Spanish accent. I can see that she isn’t from around here; her outfit is too bright for Jupiter, too many stripes, and her slacks don’t match her top.
    “No,” I told her. “I’m not in any club.”
    “Oh.”
    “But wait,” I practically shout as she heads back to where she was just standing. I can’t go back empty-handed to Mr. Schulman. I have to tell him something. The woman signals for me to
shhh
. She gestures toward the tree and then takes a step back, inviting me to come closer and look at what she and her friends are staring at. Just then, another woman in the group takes out a handkerchief from her purse, spreads it on the ground in front of her, and kneels down. She clasps rosary beads to her breast and gazes up at the tree like it’s a television that’s broadcasting her favorite show. I can see her just barely moving her lips, murmuring something, praying.
    “Okay,” I say under my breath. “This is getting weird.”
    I take a deep gulp of pine-scented air and inch myselfforward. The black-haired woman touches my arm and guides me around to the other side of the grove. I see the thing that is fascinating them; it’s the tree.
    I look over at the woman, and she makes a happy face. There are gold fillings gleaming at me.
    “Huh?” I say again.
    She looks disappointed, because clearly I can’t see what she’s seeing. She makes a point of staring at the tree and indicating that I ought to keep looking.
Look harder
, she tells me. I do, and that’s when I notice that some of the bark has peeled off the trunk, revealing a wound about two feet wide and four feet high; it’s positioned on the tree so that a person of average height has to gaze up at a forty-five-degree angle. I’m no tree