Wood & Iron

Chapter 1

Adam Wood had watched the sunset from this deck for as long as he could remember. He was proverbially born on this golf course, but its beauty had never lost its luster. Ever since he could remember, this had been his favorite time of day. The way that the rolling hills of the fairways became varying shades of green as the sun made its way to the tree line, how the dust of the desert in the distance danced with creatures as daylight gave way to twilight, the way that the grass sparkled from the fresh watering that ended at precisely 7:14 each night... but it had been months since Adam was able to enjoy any of it.

Each evening, the hanging porch lights replaced the clubhouse lights, and somehow, the fading light illuminated the sheer beauty of everything on this side of the horizon. Those porch lights were Adam's cue to slip behind the bar, greet those who were comparing scores and those who were still trying to unwind from a day at the office, pour himself two fingers worth of Broken Top Mountain Whiskey, and find the corner table on the porch that awaited him.

A few years ago, he could sit down, pull the Moleskine journal from his pocket, and begin running the day's financials. But these days, the black, bent cover of the notebook stayed put in the back left side of his pants until the round glass in front of him was almost empty. At first, it was because he was scared of the numbers he might find at the bottom of the page. But now, that worry was long gone, and the reason he waited until the bourbon had hit his brain was far worse.

Adam Wood had never been one to share his feelings with others. He was far more likely to hold in his emotions than to let them spill on anyone else, even his best friends. But lately, he'd even been hiding them from himself.

It hadn't always been this way. Adam loved this place. His parents had bought the land four years before his birth, and pictures of the ribbon-cutting ceremony showed his two-year-old figure hanging from the side of Meg Wood. He literally grew up on this golf course, his early years spent while the back nine was still being completed, his teens spent watching the clubhouse go up, and his college days spent watching from afar as the place turned into the most exclusive country club between Mount Hood and the California border.

Adam would do anything for this place, and not just because he and his brother would inherit it when Henry Wood breathed his last. Wood & Iron Golf & Country Club meant more than any paycheck or career path. It was his birthright. It was his entire world. He'd only been away for the four years he'd studied at Oregon State University, and even then, he'd pined for the smell of the 6 a.m. dew that told him that spring had finally arrived.

Henry Wood knew his son's love for what he had built, and he had always planned on passing it down to his oldest boy. In fact, Adam had already been handed the proverbial keys to this 150-acre kingdom three years ago when his father decided to spend his curtain call on the course instead of running it. He'd sat Adam down at this very table on the porch, poured them each a glass of Mountain Whiskey, and laid out his succession plan. Instead of literal keys, he pulled a small sterling silver coin from his breast pocket and handed it to his son while grasping his hand, looking back and forth from his hand to Adam's eyes.

Adam hadn't needed to look at the coin to know its significance. He'd heard the story a hundred times. It was the reason he never met his grandfather. It was a classic case of a father who was unimpressed with his son's life plans, claiming that a golf course was a childish way for a grown man to spend his working days. The argument had boiled over one night, a fistfight culminating in the final interaction between Henry Wood and his father.

In the wake of the argument, Adam's mother, a newlywed at the time, had used the final $35 in their checking account to have the local silversmith make a single custom golf ball marker. It was about the size of a nickel, and the original Wood & Iron Golf Course logo had been engraved on one side. There hadn't been enough money to engrave both sides, but Meg had proudly given it to her husband as a sign that she believed in what her father-in-law did not.