Mary opens the maintenance garage at the golf course before sunrise. A bird is waiting inside to greet her. A belted kingfisher, rare for Missouri in late December. In a flash of slate blue, the bird soars out through the garage opening. Three hours of tree trimming later, she sees the bird again––for two seconds, maybe three––near the sixteenth hole, under the bare oak behind the green. She cuts back limbs on trees that surround the putting surface, then works through the seventeenth hole, the eighteenth. She returns to the garage. In the break room, she heats up what’s left of the coffee she brewed for herself hours earlier—this time of year, she’s the only person on the course. As the club owner, she gives her staff two weeks off for the holidays. She flicks off the lights and exits, brings down the garage door. Walking to the parking lot, she sees the bird again, perching on top of her station wagon before fluttering away into the cement-gray sky. She wonders, is this supposed to be some sort of sign? Maybe there’s more mild weather ahead. Maybe the bird is a sign from her father, who left her in charge of the course when he passed. For her this duty was at first an afterthought; now, it’s the centerpiece of her existence. She pictures him smiling––laughing, even––at how her indifference to the golf course as a child has blossomed into obsession, the endless checklist of its upkeep a blueprint for her daily routine. When she was young, she envisioned having her own farm, and animals to care for. She figures the course is close enough to that wish, like a cloud beneath a star she’d dreamt on. But unlike a cloud, her inherited devotion to this swath of over-manicured land will never dissipate, like the sour remnant of her father’s cigarette smoke in the garage, which she’s never been able to get rid of. She gets in her car and notices a trace of the smell on her sweatshirt; she takes in two deep breaths of it before rolling down the windows and driving out onto the road.

– Richard Moriarty