"You're the De Chef lad, aren't you?" asked Dalton. He sat on the right of the office manager's desk, Harrow on the left. The office manager was out.
"Well, sir, yes, you might say so. Except that on my father's side I'm a Hunt. L. Hunt of Texarkana. Maybe you've heard of him. Electrical contracting. Soroptimist's man of the year, 1954. First exalted ruler of the Arkansas Elks. Largest distributor in the South for the Vermillion Socket."
"Can't say that I have," said Dalton. "Sit down and tell us about your mother. Specifically, her father."
"Well, he's dead, sir."
"Sorry to hear that. Did he have any other offspring?"
"Yes, he had a son."
Hunt saw V. Rodefer Harrow's jowls quiver.
"And where does your uncle live?" asked Dalton.
"He died as a child. He was three. A hunting accident. It sounds crazy explaining it," said Hunt, sitting tentatively in one of the fine leather chairs purchased by the office in better days. He sat with his hands on the polished wooden arm rests as if ready to leave instantly on command.
"Tell us about it. We know the world is made of many strange things. The perfect truth itself is strange."
"Well, he was drowned in a feeder stream."
"Nothing strange about that," said Dalton.
"It was what he was doing at the time, sir. He was hunting, if you can believe it."
"I do. And at what age did you start hunting?"
"Well, grandpa—my mother's father—started me young, and then he died, and Ma made me promise never to do it again, and I just haven't hunted since. And when she died, she left me the place up at Plaquemens, his place. Uh, he died of a heart attack. And, well, with the estate, the first mortgage on it, I went into business. I joined Dalton, Harrow, Petersen and Smith. And I don't hunt."
"You said 'it.' What's 'it'?"
"Oh, like a talent we have. I'd rather not discuss the subject."
"I'd rather you would."
"Well, sir, it's personal."
"I can see your reluctance. Both V. Rodefer and I can understand your reluctance. But we'd like you to trust us. As friends."
"As friends," said V. Rodefer Harrow III.
"As good friends," said Winthrop Dalton.
"I'd rather not, sir, it's really embarrassing."
"Friends shouldn't be embarrassed in front of friends," said Winthrop Dalton. "Are you embarrassed in front of me, V. Rodefer?"
"I'm too rich to be embarrassed," said V. Rodefer Harrow III.
"My apologies for V. Rodefer. He's from the coast. Please continue."
"Well, we have a special talent in our family. At least on my mother's side. It has to do with objects. It sounds simple, but it's really complicated, and its got a sordid history, and my mother made me promise never to pass it on. And it looks like I'm not going to because I don't have a son."
"We know that, but wouldn't you teach it to someone else?" asked Dalton.
"It's not something you can exactly teach. You can only teach it to certain persons, you know. Some people can tell where an object is by feel, and there's a certain hereditary thing at work here also, if you know what I mean."
"You've got the 'it' then?"
"Oh, yeah. Just as if my father's side had been De Chef."
Harrow's jowls jiggled in delight.
"Could you show it to us, the it, of course?" said Winthrop Dalton.
"Sure," said Hunt rising from the chair. He collected a piece of note paper, a pen, a calendar, popped them once lightly in an upturned palm and, then, announcing "the wastebasket there," flipped the pen sideways, then the calendar, and then with a skimming slash of his hand hurled the paper aloft. The pen, like a small spear, hit point first and rattled into the bottom of the metal pail. The calendar clunked in on a direct line, and the paper veered up, then around, settled to the right of the basket, and then leaned left and in.
"With the paper, it's the air. Paper is the most complicated. Like the real secret is your not working with constants. People only know it when they, say, fire a gun and there's a stiff cross breeze. I mean like twenty knots. Know what I mean? Or golfers on a muggy day, it's really got to be muggy though, and then they realize they're not working with a constant. It's really a form of sensitivity, knowing where everything is in relationship to everything else and its mass, of course. Most people consider air nothing, but it isn't. It's a thing. Like water or that desk. Air's a thing."
"This skill you have works with all objects?" asked Winthrop Dalton. V. Rodefer Harrow leaned forward over his paunch, the light shining on his tightly stretched dome.
"Sure."
"Let's go to a golf course," said Dalton. "For a friendly round."
"A thousand dollars a hole," said Harrow.
"I don't have—I hate to say it for a man in the market, but I don't have a thousand dollars."
"That's very typical of men in the market. How much do you have?"
"I have thirty-five, no, thirty-three cents. I bought a Danish. That's what I have."
"We'll play for that," said Harrow.
"I don't have greens fees."
"We'll take care of it. Do you have clubs? Never mind, we'll get you clubs. Don't think of yourself as poor just because you don't have money. We suffer reversals too, but the key to our 'it,' so to speak, is that we don't think of ourselves as poor. And we don't want you to either."
"Absolutely not," said V. Rodefer Harrow.
If it had not been these two particular men, Ferdinand De Chef Hunt would have been embarrassed to be out on the course with two men in vests and rolled up sleeves and street shoes.
Dalton had argued with the club pro over the price of rented clubs, something that would have withered Hunt's pride, if it had not been the Winthrop Dalton who had done it. Dalton asked for the cheapest balls.
When Dalton teed off on the par four 425-yard first hole, he sliced viciously into underbrush that lined Lake Ponchartrain. He delayed other starts behind him for twenty minutes while looking for the ball, even though he found two others in the process.