The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel

by Dan Jenkins

  Real food. As in something to eat. In other words, nothing from Cheryl’s lineup of chic restaurants, the fern joints where I’d have to say to my waiter, Raoul or Humberto, “Anybody want to explain to me why it’s taking so long to osso two buccos?”

  Dimitri, my driver, said he knew just the place. He took us to P. J. Clarke’s, an old saloon and hamburger establishment on Third Avenue. First, however, we went to the Plaza Hotel, where I cleaned up and collected Cheryl. She hadn’t gone to the last round of the Open because I’d assured her I wasn’t going to win it.

  She went to the ballet instead. A matinee at Lincoln Center. She couldn’t remember the name of the ballet, but she said there were a lot of good hang-timers and butterflies hopping around on the stage. In the first act, all the hang-timers chased a butterfly, or maybe she was a swan. In the second act, all the butterflies or swans chased a hang-timer—and it was flat-out impressive that the hang-timer could leap so high, considering his bulge was larger than a volleyball.

  Cheryl had returned to our hotel room in time to turn on the TV and watch the finish of the Open. She’d heard one of the announcers mention that I’d cinched the Ryder Cup team. She was happy for me and agreed that I deserved to have whatever I wanted for dinner.

  I called Smokey Barwood, my agent, who lived in the city, and invited him to join us. My agent hadn’t gone to the Open either. Another client was demanding all his time.

  Smokey came to the back room at P. J. Clarke’s and allowed that he was “this close” to arranging a new sneaker contract for the client. The client was Mucus Benson, the all-pro linebacker. This was the same Mucus Benson who had been acquitted two months ago of murdering his girlfriend, LaToya Boyette, the Olympic hurdler, with an axe.

  “Well, who wouldn’t want to give him a sneaker deal?” Cheryl said.

  In a festive mood, I opened with three Juniors and got on the outside of a bowl of beef barley soup and two bacon cheeseburgers and a plate of home fries and closed with two more Juniors.

  Our waiter went a long way toward making my night when he proudly revealed that the front bar, which looked out on Third Avenue, was where they’d filmed some scenes in The Lost Weekend—the old movie with Ray Milland. That movie had made the saloon famous in the first place.

  “Jane Wyman,” I said.

  “Where?” the waiter said, looking around.

  “She was in the movie with Ray Milland,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  I picked up my glass of Junior and looked at Smokey.

  “This shrinks my liver, sure, and it pickles my kidneys,” I said. “But look what it does to my mind. It makes it soar. That’s not Third Avenue out there, it’s the Nile. Yeah, the Nile—and here comes Cleopatra on her barge.”

  “What are you talking about?” Smokey said.

  Cheryl said, “It’s just a wild guess, but I think he’s doing Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend.”

  “I can’t remember all of it,” I said.

  Smokey said, “Well, I did Mucus Benson in my lost weekend.”

  I asked Smokey how our mutual friend Irv Klar was coming along on the Salu Kinda instruction book, which the golf world was eagerly looking forward to, no doubt.

  “He’s finished it,” Smokey said. “He’s done quite a nice job. I don’t believe you can actually detect how much he borrowed from Harvey Penick, Ben Hogan, and Tommy Armour.”

  “What’s the title?”

  Smokey said, “Salu wants to call it The Little Yellow Book, but the publisher likes For All Who Love the Game. It’s unsettled as yet.”

  I said, “Isn’t that one of Harvey Penick’s titles, For All Who Love the Game. I’m sure it is.”

  “You can’t copyright a title,” Smokey said.

  “Really?” I said. “Hell, if that’s the case, I’d just call it Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, by Salu Kinda with Irving Klar.”

  Cheryl said, “Yeah, if that’s the case, I’d think about A Fish Called Wanda . . . The Great Gatsby . . . Gunga Din. . . .”

  “Gunga Din,” I said. “Now, there’s a truly great movie. ‘Kill . . . kill . . . kill for the love of killing!’ ”

  “What . . . ?” Smokey said.

  “The goofy old guy in Gunga Din,” I said. “The cult leader. That’s what he yells. He said it first—before Jack Nicklaus.”

  I was the only one who laughed at that.

  If it was all the same, my agent said, he would like to discuss my schedule. Ryder Cup participation was obviously going to change some of my plans.

  I’d already thought about it in the limo coming back to the city, I said. Memphis would be the only tournament I could play between now and the British Open because of the QE2 deal.

  Smokey was surprised that Cheryl wasn’t going on the voyage with me, or to the British Open. She had already taken her two-week vacation from Donald Hooper Realty for this New York trip, she pointed out, and she had no intention of quitting her job—she liked it—and there were other reasons.

  “I saw Titanic,” she said, “and I’ve been to a British Open.”

  I’d tried to tell Cheryl that there are three British Opens. The one they play in Scotland, the one they play in England. And the one they play at St. Andrews, which is the best one.

  But Cheryl had too many memories from our “wonderful” trip last year to Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Buddy Stark had come up with the bright idea for us to handle the British Open the way the high rollers do. Rent a house. We picked one out from the brochure the R&A real estate people provide every year. A “large and charming red brick cottage within walking distance of Royal Lytham & St. Annes” is what was advertised. A house with three bedrooms and two baths and “atmospheric grounds and gardens.” The pictures looked good. And it was only $12,000 for the week. As British Open rentals go, the price was something of a bargain.

  Buddy took Emily, the Austin scholar, and I took Cheryl. We flew nonstop from DFW to Manchester, England, which is only an hour or so from Lytham, where a travel agent had arranged for a car and driver to meet us. They didn’t. That was the start of it.

  We managed to rent a car, and Buddy drove on the wrong side of the road for the first two hours while we tried to find the house we’d rented. Cheryl finally insisted on taking the wheel after Buddy had painted the left side of our Saab green from the shrubbery he’d hugged—and had almost killed us on four different occasions at the roundabouts.

  The cussing grew louder after we found our house. It not only wasn’t within walking distance of the golf course, it wasn’t within walking distance of a town, a grocery, or anything in sight, but we were able to enjoy the aroma from the atmospheric grounds of the cow pasture directly behind it.

  A nice note from the owner, a Mrs. Dubbins, apologized for the fact that there was only one bathroom. She had intended to add on a second bath before we arrived but had run out of funds. She did not apologize, however, for the fact that there would only be enough hot water for one person to bathe each day. “Bummer,” said Emily, the scholar.

  Since we could never solve all the mysteries of the house in one week, like how to work the stove, the central heating, or find all the hiding places where Mrs. Dubbins stored her dishes and towels and what-have-you, we ate every meal out, risking collisions on the roads. We dined either in the small town of St. Annes or in quaint Blackpool, an old promenade–music hall–pleasure pier–roller coaster city where working-class Brits go to find family entertainment and sunbathe in the dark gray mist and icy winds conveniently provided by the Irish Sea.

  We laughed about all that in P. J. Clarke’s and reasoned that the lodging and death-defying trips in the car to the course and going out to eat may have had something to do with the fact that Buddy and I played lousy last year at Lytham—I tied for 62nd and he tied for 68th—and why Cheryl Haney was more than happy to stay home this time.

  “See one place without enough hot water, you’ve seen them all,” she said. “That’s m
y travel tip for the day.”

  35

  I WAS SITTING AT THE LOBBY bar in the Peabody my first night in Memphis in my brown cashmere sport coat and khakis. I was fondling a Junior, looking at the ducks in the fountain. I’d watched the ducks march in and tried to remember if there didn’t used to be more of them. I think I counted seven. I was having thoughts about Memphis, a city I liked, while I was waiting for Buddy Stark and his “mystery guest.”

  Earlier in the day I’d gotten my Memphis fix out of the way. I’d done Graceland once, years ago, and once was too many. You can’t really do Graceland unless you’ve got curlers in your hair. But I

  did the handy downtown trolley, the beautified riverfront, scrubbed-up Beale Street down and back, all the reminders of the blues guys W. C. Handy and B. B. King, and the big statue of Elvis on the corner. I’d wound up having a pulled pork sandwich at the Rendezvous, which is only a nine-iron from the Peabody.

  You can’t accuse “Mimfuss pull” of being even close to what a Texan normally thinks of as barbecue, but I take the position that there’s no bad barbecue, even the chopped skin they brag about in North Carolina.

  I’d been playing in the FedEx St. Jude Classic every year since I’d been on the Tour, and I’d always stayed at the Peabody. I like to know where I am and why it’s there. Otherwise, all you ever see is a motel and a golf course. I don’t call this stopping to “smell the flowers,” as Walter Hagen said, but I do call it fighting boredom.

  Most guys out here don’t do it. They’re motel rats, and not just because they’re cheap. Their interest doesn’t stretch beyond their own golf games is what it is, although some of them like to fish. They’ve never seen downtown Memphis.

  For that matter, they come to the Colonial every year and never scout out Fort Worth, or even care to know what it’s all about—they only know Ben Hogan was our Elvis.

  One thing I thought about when I was in Memphis was something only another stat junkie might be aware of. It was in Memphis at the old original Colonial Country Club in 1960 that Ben Hogan did a last-hurrah thing. Hogan, who was forty-eight years then, tied for the Memphis Open that year with Tommy Bolt and Gene Littler. They played off at eighteen holes and Tommy Bolt won with a 68 over Ben’s 69 and Littler’s 71. But it was the last time that Ben Hogan—Hawk, Bantam, Wee Icemon—would finish in first place after the regulation seventy-two holes in any tournament. Landmark deal.

  I may have been thinking more about Hogan than the ducks when Buddy Stark tapped me on the shoulder at the lobby bar in the Peabody.

  “Come on over, we have a table,” he said.

  I went over and joined Buddy and his “mystery guest,” who was none other than Mrs. Knut Thorssun, the former Cynthia Keeling.

  My reaction: “You want me to say Gott in Himmel, leapin’ lizards, or roast my Mother Goose?”

  In a tight pair of designer jeans and low-cut green top and frizzy new hairstyle, she didn’t look like any married lady, mother of two.

  “You’re not really that surprised, are you?” she said.

  “Probably not,” I said. “Buddy told me he was bringing a ‘mystery guest.’ I was hoping it would be you and not Renata.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Cynthia said.

  “You should,” I said. “You look great, Cynthia.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “I’m in love,” Buddy said.

  “I believe you,” I said. “Who wouldn’t be in love with this lady?”

  “We . . . are in love,” Cynthia said firmly.

  I sat down and looked around for a waitress, and turned back to the two of them. “This love deal,” I said. “This is something that’s been going on awhile, behind my very back I take it?”

  “We’ve always been attracted to each other,” Cynthia said. “We’ve been good friends since I used to come out on the Tour, since Buddy was married to the exquisite Laura. We’ve shared a lot of feelings . . . laughter . . . problems . . . traded a lot of knowing glances.”

  “You slippery dude,” I said to Buddy.

  He shrugged.

  Cynthia had been in Austin with Buddy, looking around for a castle to buy in Barton Creek. It was where she and Buddy planned to live after they were married. Which would be after her divorce from Knut, and after the settlement that was going to peel off Knut’s skin. She had already filed—the day after he won the Open.

  I said, “Cynthia, is it smart for you to be out in public with Buddy if you’re in the middle of a divorce and a skin-peeling? Where is Knut, as we speak? I know he’s not here.”

  “Munich,” she said. “He’s getting a million-five appearance fee to play in the German Open.”

  “Gott in Himmel,” I said.

  Cynthia wasn’t sopping up the white wine like the last time I’d seen her, which was at Augusta. She was nursing along half a glass. She was still smoking, though, and I enjoyed being near it.

  “You haven’t heard the other good news,” Buddy said.

  The other good news involved Knut and Cynthia’s boys, the unruly little shits as they were known far and wide.

  Cynthia grew excited and a trifle animated as she talked about what she’d worked out for her sons. They were presently under house arrest in Palm Beach—Renata and two Miami Dolphins in charge. But within the month Sven and Matti would be put in chains and driven to a remote part of Virginia and enrolled in a military academy, the Jeb Stuart Institute for Young Men.

  “The school is 150 years old and no one has ever escaped,” she said. “The concrete walls are thirty feet high. The nearest town is twenty-five miles away, one of those Somethingburgs. They can have visitors one day a year. They wear uniforms. They drill. They study. They get their little asses beat regularly. They can’t write letters or receive mail. They can’t make phone calls or receive phone calls. Every two months they’re allowed to go to town under armed guard for about an hour, to buy toothpaste and stuff.”

  Buddy said, “Tell him what they get to do for fun.”

  “Clean toilets,” Cynthia said, smiling with satisfaction.

  I asked how long Sven and Matti would be in the academy.

  “Till they finish high school with honors,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a long time.”

  “Yes!” Cynthia said, her eyes sparkling. “Isn’t it wonderful? The world will be safe for eight, nine . . . ten years.”

  I wondered if she’d inquired into what the future usually held for graduates of the Jeb Stuart Institute for Young Men.

  She said, “They keep up with that. The vast majority go on to college, obtain their degrees, and become good citizens. Some pursue careers in the military, of course. And they freely admit that they sometimes do turn out a small number of homosexuals. That’s what I’m rooting for.”

  “You are?” I said.

  “You bet,” Cynthia said. “The little fuckers won’t reproduce. That’s a blessing for society—and nobody will ever call me grandma.”

  I sipped my cocktail and said, “Well, Wilmer . . . Sven . . . Matti . . . I’m sorry to lose you as sons. But you can always get another son. There’s only one Maltese Falcon.”

  The lovebirds were kissing. They didn’t hear Sydney Greenstreet.

  THE MEMPHIS tournament has been played on three different courses. It started on old Colonial, the Bill Langford course built back during the First World War, the course where Cary Middlecoff honed his game. Then it moved to new Colonial, the course Joe Finger did in the early ’70s. Now it’s played on one of our TPC things, Southwind, which Ron Pritchard designed in the ’80s with Fuzzy Zoeller and Hubert Green looking over his shoulder as consultants.

  Even though Southwind has a dozen water holes and small greens, guys tend to kick it around, which means it’s normally not my kind of course. In the past I’ve shot even par for two rounds and missed the cut by six strokes. There’s a fun deal for you.

  But making the Ryder Cup team juiced up my confidence and this
apparently put some “nonchalant” in my game, Mitch observed, and I spent the week watching my wedges nestle. I have no other explanation for why I got hung up on those 67s and shot me the 268 that tied me for fourth and garnered me a tidy $170,000.

  I might have won the whole fandango if I hadn’t played the ninth hole like Alleene or Terri. It’s a 450-yard par four with water along the left of the fairway and guarding the green on the left. Twice I tried to see if my ball would float. The first two rounds I went double-double at the ninth just as straight as an Indian goes to shit.

  But I was happy for Buddy Stark, grabbing himself a W like that, his first victory of the year. Looked like he came out doped with a 64. But he stayed in his funk and added 68, 67, and 66 for 265. It brought him home two ahead of Zinger and Sutton and swooped him a young $630,000.

  “What the fuck got into you?” I said to him, giving him a warm handshake in the locker room.

  He grinned, “Just showing off, I guess—for you know who.”

  Cynthia had used good sense in not going near Southwind all week. She watched it on TV. If a single caddy or Tour wife or player had seen her it would have been all over ESPN that evening.

  Buddy did tell Jerry Grimes about the Cynthia deal, promising to kick Jerry’s ass from Memphis to Cloyd Highway if he blabbed it around. Jerry took an oath and joined us for dinner.

  Buddy, Cynthia, Jerry, and I celebrated that night at the Rendezvous. Buddy and Cynthia did a job on two bottles of white wine amid their cuddling. Jerry stuck with beer. I stuck with Junior.

  We only hit the high spots of Buddy’s triumphant Sunday round—he knew better than to take us eighteen holes. We all got around to agreeing that Knut Thorssun was a universal buttwipe, perhaps the all-time. Eventually we ordered as much barbecue as the waiter could carry.

  It was the old food critic Jerry Grimes, after cramming another bite of “Mimfuss pull” in his mouth, sauce trickling down his chin, who looked up at us and said, “It’s not very good . . . but idn’t it good?”