The Kingdom of Shivas Irons

by Michael Murphy

  Some thirty or forty spectators stood on the embankment above the green, but the place was completely silent. It was as if this was an important match, even the climax of a tournament. A tremor of fear passed through me. Famous matches had been played here, and more would be played in years to come. One could sense the ghosts of champions. Old Tom Morris, young Tom, Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones. Were they somehow present? This green had been built on a graveyard and was now a theater of the occult. A second wave of fear passed through me, but I made our threesome’s second birdie. As I lifted my ball from the hole, the commanding professional’s resonant voice rose above the applause. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “A cheer for the American!”

  As the clapping subsided, Shivas stood back from his ball, which lay about ten feet from the cup after his prodigious tee shot. There was only the sound of a distant car, and a few barely audible shouts from the golf links. A seabird’s cry echoed off the grey stone buildings. Our onlookers now stood motionless as Shivas approached his ball, placed his putter blade behind it, and calmly putted. The sequence was evenly paced and efficient. Each movement was a thing in itself. The ball dropped for an eagle two, and cheers rose from our gallery. They were louder than they had been for my shot. “They’re Scottish,” he said so that everyone could hear him. “They’re rootin’ for the home team!” Standing beside the hole, a luminous figure in the shadows of early evening, he waved with a dramatic sweep of his arm to his cheering audience. And then, with a grave, disconcerting expression, he turned and walked toward me.

  At that moment a declivity opened around him, like a hole in the air, revealing radiance with some sort of movement in it. This apparition—this shining space within ordinary space—opened and closed in the few seconds it took him to cross the green.

  When he reached my side, we stood in silence. “Michael,” he said softly. “Everybody feels a part of what we’re feelin’, each in their own way, that this flesh is the tenderest part of the soul. But only some can see it.”

  As if to confirm the fact that something extraordinary had just taken place, most who watched appeared to be transfixed. MacIver, however, seemed oblivious to the apparition. “A 67.” He nodded toward Shivas. “An 84 for me, and an 86 for the American side. And Murphy,” he paused, “ye shot a 34 comin’ in, the same as Mr. Irons.”

  Shivas placed a hand on my shoulder. “Ye deserve a drink,” he said. “Come join me in the clubhouse.”

  During this brief exchange, most of our onlookers stood without moving; but a few seemed agitated. One who appeared to be especially disturbed grabbed my arm as I walked toward the pro shop. He was a short, nervous-looking man dressed in a yellowed suit and dirty necktie. “Ye a student o’ Irons?” he asked, almost snarling.

  “We met today,” I said, quickening my steps to avoid him. “I’m not his student.”

  “What was he tryin’ to show ye?” He held my arm. “Cut right through his putter, didn’t he? Cut it right in two.” He passed his hand like a blade through an imaginary golf club. Startled, I turned to face him. “Ye know what I mean.” He glanced around to see if anyone heard us. “His putter. He cut it in two! Ye saw it. Ye were right in front of him!” Dismayed, I started to move away. But as I did, I remembered my own sensation that it would be possible to reach through a golf club.

  For a moment we stared at each other in silence. “So what did you see?” I asked. “He cut his putter in two?”

  “Ye saw it,” he whispered, pressing close like a fellow conspirator. “I’ve seen ’im do it before. He’s not a normal man. Ye know, ye played with ’im!”

  “But he didn’t cut his putter in two!”

  “Oh, but he did. I could tell ye saw it.” When I protested again, he turned away in disgust.

  Avoiding an elderly lady who was eager to ask me something, I walked briskly to the pro shop. It was closed, and I put down my golf bag. The exaltation I’d felt on the links was gone, and I needed to compose myself. The apparition, and my encounter with the man in the yellowed suit, had caused a mild state of shock.

  A fragrant breeze was blowing, and surf was sending plumes of spray off rocks beyond the fairways. A man and woman were standing near me, gazing toward the sea. Had they watched us finish? Had they sensed what I’d seen around Shivas Irons? Something about them reassured me, and I moved closer to them. The man, who looked to be in his fifties, was absorbed in reverie, but turned as I approached. “Quite a finish we had there,” I said. “You seen Irons play before?”

  “Watched ’im practice,” he said with a heavy Scots burr. “And seen ’im finish here. But ne’er followed ’im from hole to hole.”

  “You live in Burningbush?”

  “We do. On a farm out there.” Extending his hand, he introduced himself and his wife, and we talked for a moment about the beauties of his native Fife. Then he turned to face the sea. “Watchin’ you and the professional there”—he nodded toward the eighteenth green—“started me thinkin’ about an experience we had. I feel like tellin’ ye about it.” He was a muscular man with an open, friendly face. “Ye’ll think it’s crazy, though. Me and my wife here had some sort o’ vision. A phantom figure, a ghost. I thought o’ it watchin’ ye finish the hole.”

  His wife, a sturdy woman with a broad ruddy face, looked embarrassed. “We both saw it,” he said. “Watched it for five or ten minutes hoverin’ over the farm as the sun went down. Like a shinin’ light, movin’ slowly up and down …”

  “Oh, stop!” the woman exclaimed.

  “Happened four years ago,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “But I couldn’t help rememberin’ it watchin’ you and yer playin’ partners. The memory came up real strong.”

  His wife tugged his arm. “James!” she said with irritation. “The gentleman doesn’t want to hear about yer vision.”

  “No,” I protested. “I’m interested. I’d like to hear about it.” But she walked away indignantly. “It’s a sore point,” the man said with resignation. “She won’t admit it now. Says she never saw it, which is amazin’ to me. Amazin’! Been talked out o’ it by our sons and friends.” Shaking his head apologetically, he turned and followed her.

  At that moment, a tall, aristocratic-looking man approached. What revelation would he bring? “Good show,” he said with an English accent. “You held your own with that mighty professional.”

  “You saw us finish?”

  “Watched you play the last two holes.”

  I asked if he knew Shivas Irons. “I don’t know the man,” he answered. “But what a mighty drive! Are you an American?”

  I said that I was, and we talked for a moment about the pleasures of golf in Scotland. But no revelations were forthcoming, and he gave no indication that he’d noticed something strange during our play on the eighteenth green. His main purpose in approaching me seemed to be a genuine desire to express his admiration for Shivas’s golfing prowess.

  The golf links now were shrouded in mist, but the apparition I’d seen thirty-one years before was brightly present to me. Like the visitation at Muirfield that Crail had described, it had elicited different responses from different onlookers; and through most of the intervening years, I had either repressed my memory of it or taken it to be an illusion. Now, however, it seemed utterly real. A living thing, something conscious, had appeared for a moment near Shivas Irons. This would be a good time to revisit the thirteenth hole. Perhaps my glimpse of Seamus MacDuff would return with similar clarity.

  The thirteenth hole at Burningbush runs for two hundred yards up a steep gorse-covered incline to a small green situated between two twisted cypress trees. Many have called it the product of a demented imagination, and to most who see it for the first time it seems an impossible challenge. There are steep ravines to its left and beyond it, so that the only places for the ball to land are the green and its narrow fringe of fairway grass, the gorse, and the rocks below. The field of brambly bushes between tee and green, called Lucifer’s Rug, is an arena
of untold suffering. Several people have been injured on their second shot, either by falling onto rocks or skewering themselves on gorse thorns, and it is said that at least one corpse has been found “under the Rug.” Some people think it is the world’s most difficult golf hole.

  I remembered looking at the distant flag, which was whipping in a strong left to right wind, while holding my ball to the blade of my two-iron. Merely imagining their union, as Shivas had advised, seemed a deficient means of concentration. Now I needed to commune with their physical joining.

  MacIver, too, made special preparations. Without expression, he stared toward the green which, given his lack of distance, seemed out of reach, then pointed bravely up the hill to mark the path his ball would follow. But our mentor had adopted the strangest ritual. Standing one-legged, he yodeled a cry that echoed off the cliffs below. It made me jump, but didn’t faze MacIver. Seemingly unperturbed, the ever-disciplined student stood motionless facing the field of gorse that appeared to stretch into the heavens. Was he paralyzed? Legend had it that some people froze on this tee. But when at last he swung, his ball traveled high and straight—and fell short, into the brambly receptacle of Lucifer’s Rug. With a grimace, he marched to his golf bag and waited for me to play.

  But as I addressed my ball, there was another terrible cry from Shivas. Louder and more eerie than his first, it caused my mind to empty. There were no thoughts of rocks or gorse, no thoughts of the Rug or desirable shots, and I swung without mental imagery. The ball rose on a low trajectory—white against yellow and then white against blue—until it hovered more than two hundred yards away, held high in the wind before dropping onto the putting surface.

  Stepping back from the tee blocks, I felt both gratitude and excitement. Deliberately calming myself, I picked up my golf bag and turned toward Shivas. But as I turned, my perception faltered. He seemed distorted, as if the space around him were somehow warped; and when he swung, I couldn’t follow his ball. As I climbed the hill, I sensed that MacIver had experienced something strange, but we didn’t talk about it. Instead I felt the land with new closeness, and let the stillness carry me. The quiet buoyancy I felt swept away questions about Shivas’s performance and the figure in a tattered black suit moving along the ravine.

  Standing again on the thirteenth green, I remembered the exaltation of that moment thirty-one years before. It had made me oblivious to the man in black who was gesturing urgently toward us. The memory of the enchantment I felt still lingered in my cells—the sound of surf, the taste of salt, the fragrance of summer grass and heather. All this green and purple land, the towering clouds and sky above, were suspended in a timeless stillness that made it hard to think about the strange-looking figure.

  But where had he stood? The opposite side of the ravine, upon which I’d presumed he had been walking, wasn’t visible from the path up the hill or from the green itself, yet he had seemed to be on a level with me. Had I spontaneously produced an apparition by the process Frederic Myers called psychorrhagy? Had the gesturing figure been a product of my hemorrhaging psyche, a projection of my subliminal mind? Or had Seamus MacDuff projected himself in some sort of spirit-body? An entry from one of Shivas’s journals implied that he could do that. Reaching into a jacket pocket, I found the slip of paper with Buck Hannigan’s address. If the man collected books from the library of Shivas Irons, he might help me answer these questions.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ON THE EVENING following my visit to Burningbush, with Crail’s book in hand, I found Buck Hannigan’s studio apartment near Edinburgh’s Princes Street. “State yer business,” a man yelled when I knocked. “Yer name and yer business.”

  “I’m a writer,” I shouted back. “I’m looking for Shivas Irons.”

  There was silence, then a distant thumping. “Yer lookin’ for who?” the man shouted again. His voice had a hard, slightly nasal quality. “Who is it ye’re lookin’ for?”

  “Shivas Irons! The golf pro from Burningbush.”

  “Are ye carryin’ a weapon?” the voice responded. “If ye’re not, come in.”

  Cautiously, I entered a small foyer, and closed the door behind me. The thumping continued in another room, along with heavy breathing. “Keep comin’.” The voice was accompanied by grunts. “Through the door to your left.” I stepped into a large, dimly lit studio to find a man doing sit-ups with weights held to his chest. “Have a seat,” he gasped. “I’m Hannigan.”

  The room had just a single window, which faced onto buildings across the street, and a ceiling some thirteen or fourteen feet high. As the sit-ups continued, I sat by a large wooden desk. Hannigan wore brown slacks, a white shirt, and a narrow red tie. With each rise from the floor, he grunted, then exhaled loudly as he lowered himself to a supine position. When he was finished, he remained motionless for several seconds, then put his weights down, sat up abruptly, and jumped to his feet athletically without touching the floor with hands or elbows. After wiping his face with a handkerchief, he put on a pair of glasses and, without apology, sat at the desk across from me. He had a thin face and closely cropped hair, and appeared to be about forty years old. With his round wire-rimmed glasses, he bore an uncanny resemblance to James Joyce. “So ye’re lookin’ for Shivas Irons,” he said with a jaunty and slightly sardonic Scottish lilt. “What kind o’ trouble has he caused ye?”

  I told him about the lady in the bookstore and handed him Crail’s book. There was silence as he studied my face. “We’ve met,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Ye look familiar.” In the soft light cast by a lamp on his desk, he seemed farther away than the five or six feet between us. “Well!” he exclaimed. “Ye’re Murphy! From California. The man who saw the light of God and promptly fled.” Startled, I didn’t reply. “So ye’re the man who told the world about Shivas Irons,” he said with seeming disbelief. “This is a surprise. A surprise indeed!”

  “So you’ve read Golf in the Kingdom?”

  “Oh, I’ve studied it. Studied it well.” He pulled a battered English edition from a drawer, slid it across the desk, and watched as I thumbed through it. There were notes on some of its pages. One was inscribed in a subchapter titled “As Luminous Body.” It read: “Murphy on the 13th hole. What really happened?” Another chapter, titled “The Crooked Golden River,” had seven or eight question marks in its margins.

  “You’ve really read this,” I said uneasily. “You seem to have questions about it.”

  “Have ye found any traces of Irons?” he asked, disregarding my remark.

  “Just that.” I nodded toward Crail’s book. “But I take it that you have.”

  “No letters?” he asked. “No reports of his whereabouts? No word from his friends?”

  “Not a trace.”

  It was hard to tell what he felt during this exchange, but I sensed that he was stunned by our meeting. “Murphy,” he said, “I’ve been meanin’ to write ye for several months, ever since I read yer book. I’ve got my own questions about Shivas Irons.” He paused, as if to gather himself. “But let me ask ye first. How much of the story can ye vouch for? How much of it really happened?”

  It was a question many readers asked, but I never felt comfortable answering it. “Most of it,” I said with hesitation. “But there’s more to the story than there is in the book. My memories are still developing.”

  “Still developing?” He looked surprised. “After, let’s see—thirty-one years? Ye’re still rememberin’ things after a third of a century!”

  His ascetic features had a stern, slightly pugnacious cast, but in the room’s soft light they also had a strangely luminous quality. Had we met before? “You seem familiar,” I said. “Have you been to San Francisco?”

  “In ’82. But I doubt we’ve met. I was holed up with colleagues in Berkeley.”

  “At the university?”

  “At the Lawrence Lab. I’m a physicist.”

  “What kind of a physicist?” I was certain now that we had met.

  “Ye look su
rprised.” He gave me a sardonic but engaging smile. “I don’t work in a lab, if that’s what ye mean. They pay me to think. I’ve a research post at the university here, to ponder things such as Bell’s theorem and hyperspace. D’ye know the terms?”

  “My institute has conferences on Bell’s theorem. You must know John Clauser and Henry Stapp.”

  “Well, it’s a little world. So ye’re acquainted with the mysteries o’ quantum theory. Yes, I know Clauser ’n Stapp. But I didn’t see either of ’em in ’82. Another group paid my way, to work on supergravity.” He shook his head with amusement and just the slightest hint of regret. “But it didn’t turn out as expected. I pretty well shot down their theories.”

  Hannigan, I thought, might be a world-class physicist. “What are you working on now?” I asked.

  He hesitated, as if deciding what I would understand. “Officially, on string theory. Unofficially, on possible relations between hyperspace and living systems. Does that make sense? It should.” He leaned across his desk, his blue eyes brightening behind his steel-rimmed glasses. “In case ye’re wonderin’ why I collect books from the library of Shivas Irons, I think there’s a connection between my theories and him and Mr. Seamus MacDuff.”

  “Between hyperspace and Shivas Irons?”

  “There are hints o’ it in yer book.”

  “In my book!”

  “Ye’ve never thought of that? Weren’t ye hintin’ at it with all the talk o’ ‘true gravity’ and yer experience on the thirteenth hole?”

  “I’m not sure what happened on the thirteenth hole. You might find this hard to believe, but my memory of it has evolved through the years. Not simply changed, but developed.”