By Roger Martin

My Aunt Tillie is the last lady lighthouse keeper in the United States.  Her primary duties are trimming the wick, polishing the lenses and shining the bell.   Arduous duties, these, for the light is large and the bell huge.  Her secondary daily duty is bringing in the flags.   No, not from the halyards, but from the eighteen holes of the lighthouse golf course, for Aunt Tillie is also the greens keeper at Tolling Bell Through Dread of Fog Golf and Country Club.

Membership at Tolling Bell is severely restricted however, the lists being open only to lady lighthouse keepers and exhausted sailors clambering up the rocky shores from their splintered and sinking hulks.  And as there hasn’t been a shipwreck on that rocky isle since the Night Of The Big Storm, Aunt Tillie having polished the lenses so prodigiously, she is presently the only member.   And greens keeper.

The course could be called somewhat tight, for Tolling Bell is on a tiny island off the coast of Maine.  So small the island that there is room only for the towering, white painted lighthouse, and around its base the eighteen holes of the country club.

The eighteen holes are not of Bent, Bermuda or some exotic potpourri of grasses, but mostly sand.   Sand and pebbles.   And after a good storm, sand pebbles and seaweed and floundering fish.   Driftwood too, but none, Aunt Tillie tells me, as fine as persimmon.  Not that she would have any use for persimmon, for each of the holes on Tolling Bell is in its own sandy cove, necessitating a high iron from the tee over the intervening rocky promontory to the next cove.   Because of these topographical peculiarities, Aunt Tillie has constant need of her wedges.   All three of them: pitching, sand and rock.

A well built woman and strongly muscled from years of clambering up the lighthouse’s circular staircase, Aunt Tillie usually drives with the pitching wedge, a club she hits a smooth 145 yards.   And she commands her sand wedge utterly.  She can make that club cakewalk or strut a minuet.  Or even get down and boogie.  But the rock wedge is her weapon of choice, however, for with that iron she can tickle the ball from under the belly of the smallest shrimp in the shallowest pool.  She is a virtuoso with the most demeaning of clubs.

But she wasn’t always the good witch of the wedges, for some years ago Aunt Tillie was like many of us, a prisoner of pitching, a captive of chipping, always at the mercy of the wayward wedges.

Aunt Tillie persisted, however.   Day after day, she would polish the lenses, trim the wick and shine the bell, and then scamper down the roundabout staircase to her beloved golf course.   The fact that she scuffed, shanked and simply whiffed most of her shots bothered her, of course, but she tried and tried again.  And at night, if the winter storms were not crashing spume filled waves on her sandy coves, Aunt Tillie would play.  Not by moonlight, but by the rotating light of her bright beacon. A disconcerting game. A flash of light from the tower; quickly, hit the ball! The light races away across the sands and she is left in darkness relieved only by the sound of the surf.  The light returns; a quick scramble across the rocks, then stop once again as the darkness chases the beacon around and around.  She pauses in mid step.  A wrong move and she’s ankle deep in a seaweed festooned pool.

And it was fortunate indeed that her tiny course was laid out clockwise, for in the other direction she would have shanked fourteen balls per round into the Atlantic Ocean.

Once drowned, forever gone.  There was no ball-stocked pro shop at Tolling Bell Through Dread of Fog Golf and Country Club.

Days, months, years of this vicious pastime filled her life. Day into night Aunt Tillie struggled with her wedges. Little time to eat, some hurried chores, then pitch and chip with crazy fervor around her golf course prison. She had become entrapped in a desperate game of the mind: conquer the wedges or perish.  Her work suffered. Her health. She no longer tended the window boxes with the arctic daisies. From season unto season the tower remained unpainted. Rust appeared, corrosion on the bell, the wick untrimmed.  And still she shanked.

And then, inevitably, came the Night Of The Big Storm.  A storm so ferocious it is remembered to this day from the shores of Penobscot to the myriad dunes of Marblehead.

The storm banged endlessly at the once white lighthouse, spates of rain obliterating the beacon, the crashing of the waves pounding the bell into silence.

It was just before daybreak that Aunt Tillie, who had been afoot all night ferociously trimming and polishing, heard the desperate shrieks of drowning men, heard their cries above the din of cascading water and the arctic howl of the winds. But there was nothing she could do to help. To leave the lighthouse meant instant eternity.  She could only watch helplessly as a stately China Clipper loomed out of the night and savagely impaled itself on the rocks beneath her haven.

‘Thank goodness,” she breathed, “I remembered to bring in the flags.”  And then silently she peered through the foam flecked windows as the shattered ship drove itself time and time again onto the rocks below.

But with daylight there was nothing to be seen. No scattered shards of wood and canvas, no jolly Jack Tars breathing their last.  It was if the storm had never been.

Aunt Tillie strolled her golf course, sand wedge in hand, idly shanking pebbles and seagull eggs. The sandy coves were pristine.   “How strange,” she mused,  “that there

would be no detritus on these lighthouse links.”

But she was wrong, for debris had been deposited.

And in human form.  As she climbed down the rock that led to the sixth green she saw something stirring below on the sand.  At first glance she took it to be some giant flower from the sea, a many hued anemone from the ocean floor.

But as she drew closer the flower groaned and sat erect and she saw it was a man.  But a man unlike any shipwrecked sailor she had seen, for this man was tall, lithe and blond, and bedecked in peach slacks with a lime green shirt with collar turned up and raglan sleeves.  White alligator skin shoes with golden toe caps sheathed his manly feet.     

Aunt Tillie fell back, shielding her eyes. “My, you’re bright,” she said.

“Well, thank you, the tall stranger said as he scrambled to his feet.  “You can tell that just by looking?”

Aunt Tillie raised an eyebrow. “Forget it,” she muttered.

The stranger shrugged, then flashed her a gleaming smile and glanced around with a proprietary air. “So this is Tolling Bell Through Dread of Fog Golf and Country Club. Small, isn’t it?”

Aunt Tillie smacked her sand wedge into the palm of her hand.  Once, twice, three times.

“Small? I suppose so.  But how do you know this is Tolling Bell?  And what do you want? And where did you come from?  And why are you dressed like that?”  She paused for breath and the stranger smiled again and held out a strong brown hand.

“Permit me to introduce myself.  I am Swings O’Smooth, the Prince of the Short Game.   I know all golf courses and all strokes. Master of them all,” he added perfunctorily. “And I’m dressed like this because I’m a golf pro.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Tillie, her eyes wide.

“Oh, indeed,” said Swings, “and I’ve been sent here to reveal to you the Secret of the Wedges.  After just one lesson from me you’ll never have anything more than a four inch putt.  From one hundred yards in you’ll be deadlier than William Tell.  And a whole lot prettier.”

“Prettier than now, or William Tell?” she snapped, ever one to push a bargain. 

Swings shrugged.  “My powers aren’t limitless, I’m afraid, but I’ll do the best I can.”

Aunt Tillie’s eyes narrowed.   “What’s the catch? Why are doing this for me?”

“Oh, no catch.  No siree Bob, I can make you an artist with the wedges.  I’ll show you every trick known to man, and a few others.        You’ll be famous.  Rich as a season money leader.    And I’ll do all this free. Not one penny will it cost you.”

Aunt Tillie didn’t hesitate.  “I’m yours,” she said. “Show me, show me.”

“Steady on, old girl,” Swings O’Smooth laughed. “Not so fast. Before I show you any secrets you must promise me one thing.”

“Yes, yes! Anything!”

“Perhaps you are familiar with the River Styx?” Swings smiled suggestively.  “It encircles the lower depths. Hades, if you will.”

Aunt Tillie paled and stepped back.

“It’s been running to a high flood lately, and that old duffer Charon has had nothing but trouble navigating. Some ferry man.        Should be retired.  We’ve had plenty of complaints from the lost souls, I can tell you.  Missed connections.  Lost baggage.”

Aunt Tillie stared at him aghast.

“And we almost lost poor old Cerberus.  Yapping along the flooded bank and slipped in.  Caught his leash around a rock.   All three heads were under water and we had the devil’s own...”

“Stop!” cried Aunt Tillie.

...time finding him in the mists.  So we’ve built a lighthouse on the south bank of the Styx.  Very  modern, too.   No wick to trim. It’s all yours when your days are done here at Tolling Bell.     And,” he added, “you’ll have rights to all the balls in the Styx.”

Aunt Tillie was mortified.  “Never,” she said. “Mastery of the wedges may be worth more than a mess of potage, but I could never sell my immortal...”

“You’ll shank for the rest of your days.”

“Begone, you fiend!”

“You’ll cut surlyn balls.”

“Go, shoo, scat!”

“You’ll three putt forever,” Swings O’Smooth snarled, and his bright green eyes shone with a dragon’s glare.      “All these curses and more will be on your golf game.”

Aunt Tillie raised her sand iron above her head. “In the name of the USGA get thee hence,” she shrieked and leaned forward to smite the snarling pro.

Swings 0’Smooth fell back, tanned arms crossed in front of his face.  “No, not that. Not the USGA,” he whimpered, and suddenly there arose from the rocks around him a ululation so loud, so all encompassing that Aunt Tillie clapped her hands to her ears, giving herself a good whack with the sand iron.  She dropped to her knees.

“Two stroke penalty! Two stroke penalty!  Stroke and distance!”  The myriad voices shrieking and wailing from the rocks hurt her head.    “Out of bounds!  Late for starting time!  Too many clubs. Abusing a marshal!”

The voices cried over and over and as the din rose to a horrible cacophony Aunt Tillie noticed a strange thing.  Swings O’Smooth’s peach pants were changing.  Before her incredulous gaze they shimmered and shifted and suddenly were a pair of shapeless jeans with a hole in one knee.  His lime green shirt with the collar turned up and the raglan sleeves became a dirty white T-shirt and his alligator skin shoes were transformed into scuffed sneakers.

Swings O’Smooth looked down at himself.   His face was ashen and his hair turned from honey to mouse in an instant.  And then there arose around him, on the smooth sand of the cove, a whirlwind of tees and divots and ball markers.  Scorecards and pencils and sun visors sailed around his head. Sweaters, umbrellas, putters and boxes of X outs bounced on the sand at his feet.  Aunt Tillie ducked to avoid a flying bottle of sun tan lotion.           When she looked up, Swings O’Smooth was gone.

The storm stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving the sand littered with merchandise enough to stock a pro shop.  Then she noticed the wailing from the rocks had ceased. All she could hear was a tiny crab scuttling across a cashmere sweater.  She scrambled to her feet and surveyed her sandy sixth green.

“Why, the nerve of that man,” she said.  “Tempting me like that.”

She swung, and scuffed an X out into the waves and a flicker of regret ran through her. Oh, what might have been.

She had trouble sleeping that night. She dreamt of Charon and Cerberus and even Old Nick himself. And she played such wonderful wedge shots.  Every swing a thing of beauty.  But, of course, reality came with the dawn. Sighing, she arose and dragged dispiritedly through her morning chores. Finally she was free, and taking her wedges she stepped out of the lighthouse. And stepped into the brightest rainbow she had ever seen. A never-ending arc of color surrounded her.

“My goodness,” she thought, “I’m the pot.” As she strolled to the first tee of Tolling Bell through a haze of changing hues, snow white doves circled gloriously overhead and ptarmigans sang in the lichen.

“What a wonderful, wonderful day,” she said, and teed up a gleaming new ball and sailed it serenely over the rocks to the first green.  A perfect shot.  Aunt Tillie was astounded. And even more so when she sank the putt for a birdie.  Her first.  And on the second hole the same thing.  And on the third, the fourth, the fifth.  She could do no wrong. Perhaps Swings O’Smooth had misunderstood and left her with the secrets after all.          She smiled.     

“More fool he,” she thought,  “I made no bargain.  Besides, it’s just natural talent.  And lots and lots of practice.”

And she continued happily around Tolling Bell Through Dread of Fog Golf and Country Club, birdies and pars flying from her wondrous wedges.

And to this day Aunt Tillie plays in exemplary fashion, never questioning her talent, happy with the rainbows and doves. And ptarmigans.

But every now and then, when she’s trimming a wick or polishing a lens, my Aunt Tillie pauses and gazes out across the Atlantic and wonders if there really is a lighthouse on the River Styx.

Author Bio
Born and educated in New Zealand, Roger Martin has lived in Australia, Canada, England, France and the United States.  A working lifetime has been spent as a dockyard, slaughterhouse, and oil refinery worker, newspaper reporter, radio writer and announcer, military fighter pilot, major airline captain,  actor and playwright.  Fifteen recent productions of work by Roger Martin, include Words Of Mass Deception, Stories/Stories, Sea Spray, Is There Anyone There?, Room 110 Wants...", Sunday Night In The Manganui Hotel, Binkie Comes Through, Unexpected Encounters (six short plays), The Ladies’ Home Companion, and In Print.  His play Women Always Win won first prize in the 2003 Theatre League of South Florida Full Length Play Competition. He was selected for DownStage Miami 2001 to study with Edward Albee, Maria Irene Fornes and John Guare, and is a recipient of a Playwriting Fellowship from the State of Florida for his play The Great Blasket. A member of DGA, AEA, SAG and AFTRA, he lives on Miami Beach.