Hope faded from the bum’s eyes. “Sorry, no.”
Then Jack really didn’t have any work for him. Still, this was the first time he ever encountered a panhandler who offered to work for food and actually meant it. The guy took a drag on a cigarette and stared into space as an awkward moment stretched. A faded purple tattoo of a familiar star on the man’s bicep was blurry and faded.
“You were in the army?” Jack asked.
The guy blew out a lung of smoke. “Twenty-two years.”
Jack didn’t have a bleeding heart. Heck, his last girlfriend told him he had a lump of iron for a heart, but too many military vets ended up addicted on the street, and if this guy was willing to work, Jack would find something for him to do.
“Can you dig a trench?”
The man nodded. “If someone gives me a shovel.”
That was how he and Doc ended up living together at the Roost. Doc had been an army psychologist, and listening to the woes of suffering veterans had taken its toll. He drank too much, his wife left him, and he ended up on the streets.
Doc had his troubles, but no driving offenses—just old fines for vagrancy that had cost him his driver’s license. Jack easily covered the fines and court costs to restore it.
“Doc got his license back a few months ago,” Jack said to Raymond over the phone.
There was a long pause before Raymond spoke again. “Look, I know you’re new in town, but you need to watch out for DocGibson. He’s fallen off the wagon before, and usually ends up back on the streets.”
Jack didn’t have time for this tonight. He knew all about Doc’s issues, but Raymond was within his rights to worry about a ten-thousand-dollar piece of equipment in the hands of an alcoholic. “Tell you what … I’ll be down in half an hour, okay?”
“Sounds like a better plan,” Raymond said.
An hour later Jack returned to the golf course, wheeling the ungainly pump out to the waterfall. It was a moonless night and they were in the middle of nowhere. Doc held a battery-operated lantern as Jack prepared the area. The two decorative boulders hiding the valves were only about twenty pounds each, and he hoisted them aside to get the pump into position. For tonight, his only goal was to redirect enough water back into the reservoir to keep the environmentalists off his back.
Same with Alice Chadwick. She wanted to impede his progress, and he wouldn’t let her . . . even though he kind of liked her prissy fussiness. The way she fiddled with her pearl necklace was strangely appealing.
He respected Alice Chadwick’s old-fashioned gentility, but his life savings was invested in this course, and he wouldn’t let her meddle with it.
Getting the utility pump hooked up and operating went off without a hitch. Within twenty minutes the temporary patch had the recirculation working in the fountain again, and on Monday he’d call in the professionals.
It wasn’t until the clean-up that a major problem hit. Jack was hoisting one of the decorative boulders back into place when he slipped on a wet patch and dropped it on his foot. It didn’t hurt that much, but for a hemophiliac, this could quickly become a nightmare.
His string of curses turned the air blue, and Doc looked at him in curiosity. “You okay?”
Jack dropped to the ground and unlaced his work boot, carefully lifting his foot free, then peeled his sock off. No skin had broken, but that didn’t mean he was in the clear. There could be damage beneath his skin that could plunge him into dangerous territory.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Hey, can you drive me back to the Roost? I’ve got something I need to do right away.”
Doc looked at the mess of equipment scattered around the fountain. “Should we load up first?”
“Sorry, I need to go now. It’s urgent.”
Jack was able to live a normal life most of the time, but no hemophiliac could ignore an injury like this. Even now he could be bleeding beneath the skin and his blood’s inability to clot could land him in the hospital.
Doc nodded agreeably, and Jack hurried into the passenger seat. As soon as the truck rolled up to the Roost, Jack rushed inside. The mini-fridge was the only appliance Jack kept wired to the generator around the clock, and he needed to get to it immediately. Every pore in his body perspired and nervous energy made him tremble as he grabbed the vials of life-saving clotting factor. It was dark inside the Roost, but he’d been doing these injections three times a week for decades and could perform the task blind-folded.
It took a while to warm the vial to room temperature, rolling it between his palms as he worried.
It would be a day or two before he’d know if he was in the clear. Once when he was a kid, Jack had stumbled on a staircase at school and twisted his ankle. Everything seemed fine until the middle of the night when he awoke, his ankle swollen to twice its normal size and the pain so severe his dad had to carry him to the car. He spent three days in the hospital, strapped to pumps and IV devices, until his ankle joint returned to normal size.
Medical technology had come a long way since then, and tonight’s additional infusion would probably ensure that he’d be okay.
To the outside world Jack appeared to be the epitome of vibrant health, but it was an illusion. Hemophilia had caused all manner of strange twists in his life, and he’d learned to live with it by becoming a fighter. No matter what the challenge, Jack planned, strategized, and persevered. Early on, he recognized the futility of sinking into the deceptive comfort of self-pity. He refused to become a victim of his condition and kept his gaze fixed on a singular vision: to become the best golf course designer in the world—a man who would never again be homeless, hungry, or paralyzed by the fear of an unpaid medical bill. That dream became his anchor, rendering him unstoppable, even unreasonable. His relentless drive, sharpened by hardship, transformed every hurdle into fuel for his ambition.
Obstacles became challenges to solve, whether it was hemophilia or a pretty local professor who thought she could interfere with his career.
