The Second Coming

stopped and zing, the ball flew straight for the cup like a missile locked on target.
    Bertie came by. Will Barrett beat him seventeen up on eighteen holes. Bertie looked left and right. “You don’t have to turn in a scorecard here, do you?” “No.” “Thank God. It won’t affect your handicap.” “That’s right.” Bertie winked. “We missed the Seniors here but we’re signed up for Hilton Head and the whole Southern tour. We can’t miss.”
    2
    A wiry old man was watering a young pine with a bucket.
    Will Barrett watched him for a while. At first the old man appeared as part of the scenery and therefore of no particular moment, old-man-watering-tree-in-front-of-old-folks’-home. Then it occurred to him to wonder. Why would anyone want to water a pine tree with a bucket?
    Standing on the porch, he asked him.
    The old man frowned and went on watering but presently he replied: “They planted these seedlings too early. They should have waited till the winter months when there is plenty of rain.”
    â€œSeedlings? Those are not seedlings. They’re two years old. I know because my wife had them planted.”
    â€œThey still need water,” said the old man, not raising his eyes from the pine.
    â€œYou know about plants?”
    Yes, he did. His name was Lionel Eberhart, born in Kingsport, Tennessee. He had started out as a gardener in Asheville with one old truck, hiring out himself and wife and two sons and one daughter to tend lawns. They weren’t afraid of work. He started his own nursery. Before he retired he was wholesaling lots of one hundred thousand rhododendron and laurel to Sears, Roebuck.
    â€œWhy did you retire?”
    â€œMy wife died. I had three heart attacks. My two sons wanted to put me here. My daughter wanted me to live with her but her husband didn’t. So the doctor put me here. But that’s all right! They all right! I wouldn’t want to live with them! So.” He went to fill his bucket.
    â€œIs that all you can find to do around here, water a pine tree?”
    â€œThey got a gardener. Your wife took care of everything. She surely was a nice lady. They got ever’ thing around here a fellow would need.” Still, he did not raise his eyes from the small wet pine.
    He gazed down at the old man. Quick and wiry, an East Tennessee Yankee, yes, he’d drive his wife, sons, daughter crazy with his puttering. Yes, of course he’d seen the old man before, always outside, walking with his quick stoop, raking leaves, watering trees, pestering the gardener. He’d live another thirty years.
    3
    Jack Curl was leaving for Hilton Head and an ecumenical meeting between a Greek Orthodox archimandrite, a Maronite patriarch, and the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, a meeting suggested in fact by Jack Curl. Could Jack Curl reunite Christendom? He laughed, socked himself, and did a turn. Why not? Isn’t it just the sort of damn fool thing God might favor? Actually Marion had conceived the idea before she died and even provided the funds.
    â€œYou mean that’s the sort of thing the Peabody Trust would undertake?” he asked Jack.
    â€œYou got it, Will,” said Jack, his laughter turning off like a light.
    â€œAnd you want me to put Marion’s money in a trust to be administered by you.”
    â€œOr Leslie. Or both.”
    â€œWell, which?”
    â€œTake your pick. Then we’ll run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    Jack Curl shrugged and looked vague. “You’re the lawyer. Check it out with Slocum. It comes down to naming a trustee or co-trustees. I’m glad to serve.”
    Jack Curl showed him around St. Mark’s before he left, even though Jack must have known that he used to pilot Marion through once a week in her wheelchair. The dining room was pretty and the food good, tables for four, ladies in dresses and hairdos, gents in coats and ties, grace before meals.
    â€œNow,” said Jack, “I’m going to show you something that’s going to blow your mind. Not even Marion knew about it. It’s strictly off limits to the ladies. Okay. I’m going to show you a bunch of guys having a ball. I spend a little time here myself. A little, ha.”
    They climbed steep steps. A door opened into a spacious attic. Tracks and trains ran everywhere through a waist-high landscape. Not