Halfway up the block, some lady pushed a flower cart unexpectedly in my path. I tried to dodge her, but Marshall Faulk couldn’t have made that sharp a cut in the Weejuns I was wearing. My trailing leg did me in, catching the back edge of the cart. It spun around and went crashing over on its side. I didn’t know what they were, but some awfully pretty flowers ended up all over the street. I didn’t have time to stop and apologize, but I did yell “Sorry!” over my shoulder as I continued my sprint up the street.
The courthouse soon came into view. It was a half block ahead of me on the right. I shot across the street, halfway hoping a passing truck would put me out of my misery. No such luck.
As I scampered up the front steps to the main entrance, I saw the large clock overhead. It read 10:08.
Judge Welsh’s chambers were on the fourth floor. There was no time to wait for the elevator, so I headed up the stairs. By this time, I was wringing wet and breathing hard to boot.
I started taking two and three steps at a time and just as I reached the landing for the fourth floor, fatigue took its toll. I missed a step and fell heavily, tearing my pants and scraping my knee, which began to bleed. The contents of my file scattered across the floor. As I scrambled around retrieving them, I tried to ignore the throbbing pain in my leg. Unfortunately, most of my clothing was now stuck to my body either from perspiration or blood, and that would be more difficult to conceal from Judge Welsh.
I was now not only late but unsightly, and I knew that Judge Welsh was going to have a field day with me. I paused at the door with gold lettering that read “The Honorable Harold R. Welsh” and for a moment considered not going in. Maybe I could check into a hospital and plead illness as an excuse. Or I could just leave town, never to return. I rejected both acts of cowardice and pushed the door open.
The first thing I saw was my opponent, Shaun Abercrombie, sitting on the couch in the judge’s reception area. Abercrombie wasn’t much older than me. He had only been practicing a couple of years and was an associate at another downtown law firm. His expression told me that I must have been quite a sight.
I was a little surprised to see him still sitting in the anteroom. Judge Welsh usually started on time whether all parties were present or not.
“Well, I’m relieved to see y’all didn’t start without me,” I managed to say.
Abercrombie’s eyes were still wide in amazement at my appearance. “The judge is marrying someone right now. He should be done in a few minutes.” He then paused for a moment before asking, “What on earth happened to you?”
I was about to make something up when the door to the judge’s chambers opened. A smiling couple walked out, followed by the judge’s secretary and law clerk (who presumably had been the witnesses). The secretary, whose disposition sharply contrasted with that of her boss, invited us inside. I followed my opponent in, hoping he would shield me from view in some way.
The judge was already seated at his desk looking at his file on our case. He looked up over his reading glasses at the two of us and was nodding an invitation for us to be seated when he stopped abruptly, gave me a second look, and said, “You look like crap.”
The pretrial conference pretty much went downhill from there. I should have expected as much. It is too painful to repeat here all that Judge Welsh told me. Suffice it to say that his ranting included pointed advice about laundry and dry cleaning as well as personal hygiene.
Whenever I went through a particularly unpleasant experience as a child, my father often consoled me by saying that I would someday look back on the experience and see the humor in it. He was wrong. It’s been quite some time since that pretrial, and I have yet to laugh about it, although I will admit that story has entertained a number of my friends.
The best I can say is that I managed to survive. As I stumbled out of the courthouse and back onto the street, I consoled myself with the thought that Judge Welsh had neither sanctioned me nor thrown my case out of court. We still had a trial date, and except for my personal humiliation, neither the case nor the client had suffered any real harm in the process.
As I continued my walk back to the office, however, I was surprised to find myself thinking about the notes again. If anything, my experience with Judge Welsh should have taught me that I could ill afford such distractions. If this was any indication, I had to decide whether I was going to be a lawyer or the golfing version of Don Quixote. It didn’t look like I could do both.
At least that’s what the sensible side of my brain was saying. On the other hand, I couldn’t seem to push away these mysterious notes. As I limped back to the office, I began thinking again about the one I had just received and the clues it contained.
This had something to do with the Augusta National Golf Club—that much was clear. Several people—most of whom were apparently dead—knew something that my note writer seemed to want me to bring to light. I wondered whether that was the reason for his nom de plume, “Moonlight.”
Was the secret that Augusta National had another course? I had never heard of Augusta having 36 holes. I was no expert about the place, but it seemed hard to believe that a course that was subjected to as much media scrutiny as Augusta National could operate another golf course in total secrecy. Then, again, if Congress could build a bomb shelter in the middle of the famed Greenbrier resort and keep it a secret, why couldn’t Augusta National do the same thing with a golf course?
And who was “Moonlight,” anyway? What did the name signify? Then it hit me. During my adventures with Beau Stedman, I discovered that virtually every caddie at Augusta National seemed to have some kind of a nickname. Carter and Eumont either were caddies or worked with caddies at Augusta National. If this Moonlight character knew them, chances were that he had been a caddie as well. “Moonlight” may have been the nickname he was given in the caddie yard.
At first, I decided just to sit back and wait for more mail that might answer these questions. After all, I had plenty of other things to do in the meantime. But I couldn’t help but feel that whoever was behind this wanted me to make the next move. If this was some kind of a test, and I failed to respond, he might decide that I wasn’t interested—or capable of helping him—and disappear altogether. Too, it occurred to me that, if this was an old caddie like Carter and Eumont, his time might be running short, and he might be too old to come to me. What if he were in a nursing home somewhere and unable to travel? (That might also explain the shaky handwriting.)
All that aside, I guess I was kind of like those Civil War buffs who spend their time and money visiting old battlefields just for the fun of it. As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste, and after all the fun I had with Beau Stedman, the idea of once again traveling back in time was hard to resist.
At that point, I suppose my next step was obvious. There was only one thing to do. I had to go to Augusta and find a caddie named “Moonlight.”
Not just yet, though. Gloria took one look at my bloody knee and insisted that I immediately go to the hospital for stitches.
Chapter 5
THE DRIVE FROM Atlanta to Augusta on I-20 is a pleasant one. The landscape has enough changes in elevation to maintain interest—certainly much more than the flat delta country in South Louisiana where I spent three years attending law school at Tulane.
Still, the scenery wasn’t enough to distract me from thinking about the silliness of what I was doing. Like any new lawyer, I had precious little spare time. Instead of relaxing with a girlfriend or watching a ball game, I was chasing after someone—or something—for reasons that even I didn’t understand. The absurdity of it all made me laugh out loud at one point. What would Emile Guidry have thought of his new protégé if he knew what I was up to? Perhaps he would have thought that I lacked the down-to-earth pragmatic sense of reality that a Butler & Yates lawyer should have—and shown me the door. Of course, I preferred to think that he would have congratulated me for my intellectual curiosity and said it showed that I had the instincts of a
good trial lawyer. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what his reaction would have been.
Even with a brief stop for gas and a sandwich, I made the hundred-mile trip in two hours. Although I had plenty of time to think during the drive, as I exited onto Washington Road in Augusta, I still wasn’t sure just how I was going to find “Moonlight”—if, in fact, that was his name.
I knew better than to try to drive down Magnolia Lane at Augusta National. Security there was tighter than it was at the Pentagon. No matter what story I offered, I knew that I would be politely but firmly turned away. I had to find out where the caddies gathered when they were away from the course.
Augusta National is located on the west side of Washington Road. The east side (across from the club) consists of small shopping strips, restaurants, taverns, and souvenir shops. I didn’t think I would find any caddies there, but I had to start somewhere.
While most of these places are jam-packed during the Masters, their business falls off considerably during the rest of the year. I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot at a place called the “Green Jacket Tavern.” The building was probably a little too upscale to be a caddies’ watering hole. When I walked inside and saw the vast array of imported beers behind the bar, I knew that I wouldn’t find anyone I was looking for, and I was right.
I tried a couple more places down the street. Still no luck. No one seemed to know where the caddies could be found. I was coming out of a little old hamburger shack about a mile or so down the road from the club when a slightly built elderly black man came up behind me as I was unlocking my car. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I must have jumped three feet when he spoke.
“Say, Mister, did I hear right that you’re lookin’ for some caddies from the National?”
I turned around and looked at his broad smile, which revealed two gold teeth.
“Yes, I am. I need to find one of them badly. I’m a lawyer from Atlanta, and a relative of his died and left him some money.” It was a lie that I hoped was not too obvious.
If the fella didn’t believe me, he didn’t let it show. “You might find some of ’em at Phil’s Bottle Shop over on Wade Street. It ain’t far from here.” He pointed over my right shoulder. “Go back toward the National two blocks, turn right on Hamilton. It’s about three blocks down on the left, on the corner. You can’t miss it.”
I thanked him and started to get in the car. He touched my sleeve and said, “Think you might help a fella buy a beer?”
I dug in my pocket and handed him a couple of dollars. He turned without thanking me and headed back down the street.
Phil’s Bottle Shop clearly sounded like a neighborhood joint. If so, there wouldn’t be any tourists there. I had no trouble finding it, and I was right. Phil’s Bottle Shop was not a place for out-of-towners. There weren’t many cars around, so I had no trouble parking right next to it.
When I walked into the bar out of the bright afternoon sunlight, I couldn’t see a thing. In fact, I thought my eyes would never get adjusted. I managed to feel my way over to a stool at the bar.
That’s when I noticed it had gotten quiet. I looked around and realized I was the only white man in the place.
An older man appeared from the back of the room, walked behind the bar, and came over to me. He eyed me more out of curiosity than suspicion and finally said, “Can I get you sump’n?”
I smiled nervously and asked for a Miller Lite.
He pushed a can in front of me. “Gotta buck?”
I pulled a dollar from my wallet and handed it to him.
Trying to sound as casual as I could, I said, “I was told I might find some guys here who caddie at the National.”
He frowned. “You a bail bondsman?”
“No.”
“Repo man?”
I shook my head.
He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you a cop then.”
I shook my head again. “No, I’m not a cop, either.”
“Then what you want here? You a writer or somethin’?”
I guess he thought that I might be looking to do another story like the one that had appeared a year or so ago in one of the major golf magazines. It profiled a number of the caddies who used to work for the pros during the Masters back in the years before Augusta National allowed the players to bring their regular caddies. “No, I’m not a writer, either.” I knew it was time to tell him just what I was doing here if I was going to leave in the same state of health as when I arrived.
“I’m a lawyer, and I’m trying to find someone who has been sending me letters.”
The bartender’s eyes narrowed again. “What kinda letters would a caddie be sendin’ to a lawyer?”
“Well, they’re kind of hard to describe. In fact, one of the reasons I’m here is that I can’t figure them out. I was kind of hoping I could find the guy who wrote them, so that he might tell me what he meant.”
The guy stared at me for the longest time. He then slowly turned away and began to walk down to the other end of the bar. That’s when I noticed the two men huddled together there. He talked with them for a few minutes, and then one of them came walking over. Like the bartender, he was in no hurry.
Because the light was so bad, I didn’t realize how big he was until he got within a few feet of me. This guy was huge—at least six-foot-five and maybe 300 pounds. He had a toothpick in his mouth. As he looked me over, I struggled to maintain bladder control.
I thought he was never going to speak. Finally, he reached up, pulled the toothpick out of his mouth, and said, “I hear you askin’ about some caddie from the National. Is that right?”
“Yes, I am.” For some reason, at that moment I wondered if my car would be on blocks when I went back outside.
“I might know him. If I did who would I tell him is lookin’ for him?”
“My name is Charley Hunter. I’m a lawyer in Atlanta. I’ve been getting some letters. They’re kind of strange, but I think they may be from a caddie here at Augusta.” I paused long enough to see if he appeared to believe me. Sensing no reaction, I asked him, “Have you ever heard of a caddie called ‘Moonlight’?”
Although he tried to hide it, I could tell that he knew something about Moonlight. He put his toothpick back in his mouth, chewed on it for a moment, and then said, “I may have heard that name somewhere, but I’m not sure. Let me check with my buddy over there.”
He turned and ambled back over to his drinking partner. After he spoke to him for a second, the other fellow jerked his head in my direction and laughed.
This time they both walked over to me. I began to think that I may have made a big mistake coming to Phil’s Bottle Shop. Feeling a little panicky, I looked around the room for a telephone, in case I had to call 911 if mayhem broke out. All I saw were a couple of well-worn pool tables and a jukebox.
Although my new friend’s companion wasn’t quite as big, he was still a lot bigger than me. He gave me a hard look before asking, “You play?”
I figured he was trying to hustle me into a game of eight ball. I looked over at the pool tables and back at him. “No, not really.”
He shook his head in irritation. “No, man, golf. You play golf?”
“Oh,” I answered nervously, “yeah, sure.”
“You got a handicap?” His tone suggested that this was a test of some kind.
“It’s around six, but I haven’t been playing much…”
“Yeah,” he broke in sharply, “they all say that.” He paused for what seemed like a long time, looking me over. Finally, he asked, “Who won the tournament last year?”
He caught me by surprise. “You mean the Masters, right?”
He gave out a sarcastic laugh. “Man, what other tournament do you think I’d be talkin’ about ’round here?”
Christ, I thought, this is worse than being called on in law school. After a moment of panic, I remembered and told him.
“Okay,” he said grudgingly. He was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Now… who came in second?
”
To my everlasting relief, I knew the answer to that, too.
Just as I began to wonder how long this would go on, the big fella with the toothpick broke into a grin and said, “You okay… but that man you just asked about is the craziest white man I have ever known.” With that, he threw back his head and laughed heartily. So did his companion. “The only ‘Moonlight’ we know is teched in the head. You can talk to him, but you ain’t gonna make no sense outta anything he says.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head slowly. “That old man’s stuck in the past. Used to talk about carrying for Bob Jones and his friends at some place we never heard of. Then he said he made it all up. I don’t think he knows where he is half the time.”
“Really?”
There was a great deal of sympathy in his voice as he continued. “To hear him tell it, he’s been on the bag for everybody from Jones on down to Arnold Palmer. But we know better. The man’s got a bad case of the ‘wanna-bes,’ you know what I mean?”
Suddenly I knew that my earlier suspicions had been right on target after all. I was getting notes from Ernest T. Bass. And I had wasted an entire Saturday to drive over to Augusta just to find that out.
I started to leave. I almost got to the door when something made me decide that, as long as I’d come this far, I might as well try to meet my tormentor face-to-face. Turning back, I said, “Do you know where I might find this Moonlight fella?”
The smaller companion nodded. “For all the good it’ll do you, sure. He lives less than a mile from here.”
They started laughing again at the thought of me trying to interview the “craziest white man” they knew.
The directions they gave me were easy to follow. I went back outside and was momentarily blinded by the bright midday sun. When I got my bearings, I was relieved to see my car sitting in the exact spot I left it with all its parts intact. It was a 10-year-old Chevy, and it wasn’t much. But it was all I had, and I was at least a year away from affording a new car.
The Greatest Course That Never Was Page 3