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Authors: Gregory McDonald
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Wahler said.
It was a thick brass plate three meters in diameter hanging from its own oak frame. A leather-headed mallet as tall as a man stood beside it.
“You can hear it from anywhere on the place,” Wahler said.
“Who gets to hit it?”
“Taylor, I believe.”
“Must make him regret he has ears.”
Flynn peered through the steamy window into the kitchen. He counted six servants inside, all male and all apparently Vietnamese.
“Anyway,” Wahler said as they continued their walk around the building, “as time went on the five original friends invited their friends. They brought their sons here, when their sons grew to a certain, non-critical age. The clubhouse grew.Expenses mounted. I think the thing was formalized into a club sometime around the turn of the century.”
“And the membership became limited.”
“I suppose so.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know. The original five members, their friends, their sons.”
“And it became secret.”
Wahler took a deep breath and blew out vapor. “It was a place for them to get away. From their wives and small children. Their offices. Their duties. The public eye. Let their hair down, drink what they wanted to when they wanted to, play poker all night, play their silly, sophomoric games, hunt, fish. To coin a phrase: fart when they want to.”
They walked up a grade at the back of the clubhouse.
There a large, round area had been flattened and smoothed. A cement circle had been laid in the ground. Red and yellow stripes crossed in the center of the circle. Lights were sunk into the ground, their heavy glass covers flush with the surface of the ground.
“Odd, isn’t it,” Flynn commented, “how much a helicopter pad can be made to look like a hex symbol?”
To one side a huge earth satellite communications dish appealed to the southwest sky.
“That dish can pull in signals from almost anywhere,” Wahler said.
Flynn smiled. “Modern magic.”
Down to their left another big area had been cleared and arranged as a skeet-shooting range.
“And down there,” said Flynn, “a place of symbolic sacrifice. Clay pigeons.”
“What I notice,” Wahler said, as they continued their stroll, “is that these men, in building and maintaining this place, in coming here, are trying to recapture their own youths. But look what they recapture. Not their home environments. All of them being upper-class, they really didn’t know their homes. They’ve recaptured, or rebuilt, their lives in boarding schools and summer camps.”
“Locks on the refrigerator doors,” said Flynn. “I’ll bet they have boxes of cookies hidden in their rooms.”
“Poor D’Esopo,” Wahler said. “Clearly not well brought up. Thought he could go to a kitchen in the middle of the night and find something to eat.
“I find it all sort of sad,” Wahler continued. “This is still the only home most of these men have. The only place they don’t have to be buttoned-down examples to their communities.” Flynn ran his eye over Wahler’s striped shirt, rep tie and three-piece suit. “One member,” Wahler continued, “a world-famous composer, conductor, a darling of society in every capital in the world, comes here, says very little, never touches the piano, slops around in muddy boots. Every morning he goes out with a big axe and just knocks down trees. Sunup to sundown. No pattern; no point to it at all. He doesn’t even trim the trees. Just chops them down. He’s devastated acres. Wouldn’t you say that’s fairly eccentric behavior?”
“We’re all true dialectic systems,” said Flynn. “Even I have raged at the moon. You, too, I expect.”
Wahler laughed. “Once, at my apartment, I strangled a lampshade with my necktie. In the morning I couldn’t figure out what I had done or why I had done it. I just knew I had done something that felt good.” He laughed again, and said more quietly. “‘Once!’ It was only three weeks ago.”
“I would think,” Flynn
It was a thick brass plate three meters in diameter hanging from its own oak frame. A leather-headed mallet as tall as a man stood beside it.
“You can hear it from anywhere on the place,” Wahler said.
“Who gets to hit it?”
“Taylor, I believe.”
“Must make him regret he has ears.”
Flynn peered through the steamy window into the kitchen. He counted six servants inside, all male and all apparently Vietnamese.
“Anyway,” Wahler said as they continued their walk around the building, “as time went on the five original friends invited their friends. They brought their sons here, when their sons grew to a certain, non-critical age. The clubhouse grew.Expenses mounted. I think the thing was formalized into a club sometime around the turn of the century.”
“And the membership became limited.”
“I suppose so.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know. The original five members, their friends, their sons.”
“And it became secret.”
Wahler took a deep breath and blew out vapor. “It was a place for them to get away. From their wives and small children. Their offices. Their duties. The public eye. Let their hair down, drink what they wanted to when they wanted to, play poker all night, play their silly, sophomoric games, hunt, fish. To coin a phrase: fart when they want to.”
They walked up a grade at the back of the clubhouse.
There a large, round area had been flattened and smoothed. A cement circle had been laid in the ground. Red and yellow stripes crossed in the center of the circle. Lights were sunk into the ground, their heavy glass covers flush with the surface of the ground.
“Odd, isn’t it,” Flynn commented, “how much a helicopter pad can be made to look like a hex symbol?”
To one side a huge earth satellite communications dish appealed to the southwest sky.
“That dish can pull in signals from almost anywhere,” Wahler said.
Flynn smiled. “Modern magic.”
Down to their left another big area had been cleared and arranged as a skeet-shooting range.
“And down there,” said Flynn, “a place of symbolic sacrifice. Clay pigeons.”
“What I notice,” Wahler said, as they continued their stroll, “is that these men, in building and maintaining this place, in coming here, are trying to recapture their own youths. But look what they recapture. Not their home environments. All of them being upper-class, they really didn’t know their homes. They’ve recaptured, or rebuilt, their lives in boarding schools and summer camps.”
“Locks on the refrigerator doors,” said Flynn. “I’ll bet they have boxes of cookies hidden in their rooms.”
“Poor D’Esopo,” Wahler said. “Clearly not well brought up. Thought he could go to a kitchen in the middle of the night and find something to eat.
“I find it all sort of sad,” Wahler continued. “This is still the only home most of these men have. The only place they don’t have to be buttoned-down examples to their communities.” Flynn ran his eye over Wahler’s striped shirt, rep tie and three-piece suit. “One member,” Wahler continued, “a world-famous composer, conductor, a darling of society in every capital in the world, comes here, says very little, never touches the piano, slops around in muddy boots. Every morning he goes out with a big axe and just knocks down trees. Sunup to sundown. No pattern; no point to it at all. He doesn’t even trim the trees. Just chops them down. He’s devastated acres. Wouldn’t you say that’s fairly eccentric behavior?”
“We’re all true dialectic systems,” said Flynn. “Even I have raged at the moon. You, too, I expect.”
Wahler laughed. “Once, at my apartment, I strangled a lampshade with my necktie. In the morning I couldn’t figure out what I had done or why I had done it. I just knew I had done something that felt good.” He laughed again, and said more quietly. “‘Once!’ It was only three weeks ago.”
“I would think,” Flynn
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