Waiting for Augusta

by Jessica Lawson

  Noni kicked me, then jerked her head toward the backpack. When I didn’t respond, she took out the paint box and flipped to the third-to-last page of my drawing pad, the one that was supposed to be Daddy’s birthday present.

  “Oh,” I said, realizing what she meant. “We’d like to give you this. As a thank-you.” Carefully, I ripped out the drawing and handed it to him.

  He stared a long time at the paper, and Noni finally lifted her hat a tiny bit, taking a quick peek at his fascinated expression before ducking her head again.

  “It’s me,” Hobart said. “Who drew this?”

  “I drew it,” I said. “It was for my daddy. But I didn’t finish it on time.”

  “This is incredible.” He looked at me a little hesitantly as the car came to a halt. “If I sent you a photo of someone, do you think you could get her down on paper like this?”

  “I could try.”

  “Well, write down your address, son, and I’ll get in touch.” He took a notepad from a small duffel bag and handed it to me along with a pen, then stepped out of the car. Noni got out behind me, and he gave us both an awkward pat on the shoulder.

  I handed him my address. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Call me Hobart.”

  “Don’t you dare!” warned Daddy.

  “I couldn’t, Mr. Crane.”

  “Well, okay. Come on, Ben Putter and Noni Putter. I’ll get you some passes, and then I’ve got to swing the club enough to digest the food in my belly.” He rubbed his stomach. “There’s a diner down the road that makes a great big omelet sweet and spicy enough to marry.”

  We walked into the fancy clubhouse, and everyone we passed smiled and said hello to Mr. Crane. We weaved around a few hallways until we came to an office.

  “Kids, meet Rachel Reilly, the kindest Masters secretary ever to grace the halls of this clubhouse.” Mr. Crane explained what he wanted, and before we knew it, Noni and I had specialty badges that said we could go anywhere we wanted.

  Mrs. Reilly dug through her desk. “Ya’ll want a picture? I know I put that camera somewhere.”

  “Sure. Thank you, ma’am,” I said. While I got Mama’s photograph out of the backpack, Noni squirmed beside me.

  Mrs. Reilly searched drawers, finally lifting her head and hand in triumph. “Got it.”

  Hobart Crane put his arm around me and Noni. I held Daddy in one arm and Mama’s picture in the other.

  “Look up, little girl,” the woman told Noni, who was looking at her shoes.

  “That’s okay. Noni Putter’s perfect just the way she is,” Hobart said. “Go ahead and take the picture.” Right after she clicked, Noni bolted out of the office.

  Mr. Crane watched Noni go, then turned to me with raised eyebrows.

  “Bathroom,” I said, figuring that had to be it. Either that, or she was dying to yank that hat off.

  “Okay, I’ve got to warm up.” Hobart handed Mrs. Reilly a piece of paper. “That paper is this little boy’s address. Can you copy it down quick and send him a copy of that photo, Mrs. Reilly? And send me one, too, if you would.”

  She wrote down my address in Hilltop and handed the paper back.

  “I hope you smiled big. And tell him good luck,” Daddy demanded.

  “Good luck, sir,” I obliged. “Hope you win. Thank you for helping us.”

  “You bet. It’s never a good thing to turn down a child in need.” He tipped his hat, then walked away.

  “Mr. Crane,” Daddy sighed, “I wish I was there to shake your hand.”

  I found Noni down the hallway, her pigtails pulled out and her hair hanging down free for the first time since I’d known her. It was only when she looked up that I realized she was crying. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you like Mr. Crane?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I looked at her elbow, the sweater’s sleeves covering the bruise there. I wished I could heal it. Help her stop hurting.

  I thought of her hand holding Hobart Crane’s in the car. “Are you missing your daddy?” I asked her.

  “I am,” she whispered. “I miss him so much.”

  I weaved my fingers into hers and squeezed. “I bet he’s missing you, too. Come on, sister. Let’s watch some golf.”

  “Let’s watch some golf!” Daddy repeated in a croaky shout, and in spite of the fact that I was hours away from scattering my father’s ashes, I felt my smile go all the way to my big Putter ears. Noni thought that Augusta National had the power to make miracles.

  Maybe, just maybe, a day on this golf course could do more than make my father proud of me.

  Maybe it could make him stay after all.

  Maybe there was still a chance I wouldn’t have to say goodbye.

  HOLE 15

  The Sistine Chapel of Golf Courses

  In the back corner of the art room at Hilltop Primary School, a poster of a painting used to hang. Once a week, when we had class with Miss Stone, I would soak it in. Blue water with green lily pads and pink flowers. Swirls and movement. Jump in, the lily pads used to tell me. The water feels so fine. You’ll float like us. The first day I saw it, I asked Miss Stone how somebody could make a picture that told you to come inside it and live there for a time. She didn’t know the answer, but she’d always tell me something new about the artist if I lingered after the rest of my class walked out.

  This one is a watercolor painting, she said, but he also used oils and pastels.

  He spent twenty years of his life painting water lilies.

  He liked to be outside and paint things from real life.

  His father wanted him to join the grocery business, but he wanted to be an artist.

  Augusta National Golf Club was like that Claude Monet painting. Just knowing something so incredible existed in the world made me feel changed.

  Noni and me and Daddy leaned on the railings of the clubhouse porch, so far from the split-rail fences of Hilltop. The scents of grass and flowers and possibility mingled with the grounds workers and pockets of reporters. Noni put her elbows on the white wood and cupped her chin in both hands. I let my hip be cushioned by the rail and stared, soaking in Augusta National Golf Club’s eighteen-hole course, feeling warmth settle into me, like a flower must feel when it opens to let the morning sunlight nestle inside.

  I could see why Daddy might confuse the grounds of a golf course with church. Augusta National looked and felt like a place where a person could come to pray, like a wide open cathedral dotted with loblolly pines stretching straight toward heaven. I knew this was a place I would never capture on paper. It couldn’t be put down. It was a living, breathing, rounded, moist piece of earth that burst with the most beautiful shades of color I’d ever seen. Greener green grass and trees and bushes, pinker pink flowers, whiter white flowers, bluer blue sky than I thought possible.

  I poked Noni’s shoulder. “Can you feel it?”

  She smacked my arm and adjusted the sun hat on her head. “Feel what?”

  “This place feels like magic. Let’s go explore.”

  “While we’re exploring, we better think of a magical place to hide out tonight.”

  “Right.” To be real honest, I hadn’t been certain that we’d even get on the course, so I didn’t have a hint of a plan for where we’d wait after the day was over. All the sneaking, all the leaping over fences and sprinting from security I’d envisioned, all the distractions Noni and I had talked about . . . We didn’t need any of them. All those barriers had been swept away by Hobart Crane.

  We looked over the clubhouse, flashing our special badges at anyone who glanced at us with a slight side eye. Strolling to areas we shouldn’t, we walked around the Par 3 course near the tournament course, crept along the edges of the fishing pond named after a president, and generally made ourselves at home.

  We watched as play began. More and more people filled the grounds, but there was a grace to it all. While the people walking around the Masters were mostly white, not everyone was. Crowds formed in places, mixing together,
watching the players, watching the Masters, brushing past each other, standing right next to each other like their skin colors didn’t matter. Or like, if they were the kind of people who carried protest signs, for a few hours they could turn off whatever made it matter to them. Or maybe, for some of those people, it really didn’t matter. It was hard to tell the insides of people just by looking at them.

  Television cameras were there, and we stood for a while near a few of them, hearing three reporters talk about who they thought might win this year’s Masters. Hobart Crane, Jack Nicklaus, and Homero Blancas were their favorites.

  “Hey, think we should stand behind the cameras and wave to Uncle Luke?” Noni asked me.

  It was tempting. The thought of my tied-up uncle watching golf news and seeing us saluting him from Augusta National was a satisfying one. “Maybe later.”

  The tournament may have been the hottest ticket in town, but Mr. Crane had been right about the food being affordable. Stations were set up selling sandwiches, moon pies, candy bars, cola, you name it—all for less than two dollars. I got a pimento cheese sandwich, which Daddy said was the specialty of the Masters.

  “Like drinking mint juleps during the Kentucky Derby,” he said. “Only cheaper and better on your liver.”

  I used Hobart’s money to get a shirt for me and Noni and a key chain for Uncle Luke. Noni occasionally ticked off information she’d read in Daddy’s Augusta book.

  “Lots of people,” I said.

  “Up to thirty thousand people walking around on Saturdays and Sundays during the Masters,” she shot back.

  “How do you think they get the flowers to bloom right on the exact week of the tournament?”

  “They put ice under the azalea bushes if they start to bloom early.”

  “Everyone’s so calm around here.”

  “Rules, Benjamin Putter. No running, no shouting, no cameras, no food from outside, no—”

  “I get the idea.”

  We wandered as we saw fit and clearly Augusta had found us worthy after all, because when we returned to Amen Corner, the turn that spanned holes eleven, twelve, and thirteen, the great Sam Snead himself was just about to hit a tee shot off twelve. The sight of him swinging his club, walking across the famous bridge named for Ben Hogan, and finally standing alone on the twelfth green, sheltered between Rae’s creek and a wall of flowering azaleas . . .

  Well, it took my breath away.

  Daddy was overwhelmed when I told him who we were watching.

  “My God,” he said, when he was finally able to speak. “All the Masters winners get invited back for life, but most of the legends don’t show up to play after they stop being competitive. Mr. Snead must’ve made the cut, and he’s almost sixty.” His invisible hand clutched the side of my arm, pulling me toward him. “Take a picture in your head, Ben,” Daddy told me, his voice hushed to a reverent whisper. “Living legends are traveling this course today. Legends-to-be are walking it too. Breathe, son. Soak it in. You tell your children about this moment, you hear me?”

  A single bead of sweat dripped down my temple. I wiped it away, knowing that if I ever had any children, this moment and place would be nearly impossible to describe. I had the strangest feeling, like I was standing inside one of my father’s dreams. Sam Snead was playing golf right in front of me. Ben Hogan, not playing, was probably placing his feet on Augusta National somewhere, watching the tournament. And the ghost of Bobby Jones was here, too.

  This was the first year Bobby Jones wasn’t alive to be at Augusta National during the Masters, but I felt certain that his spirit had found its way here. I could feel that sure as I felt my father leaning close. I could almost smell the soft hint of barbecue smoke that always flavored the air around him, lingering beneath the Old Spice cologne he used to wear on special occasions.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll try to tell them.”

  • • •

  We walked along the course, stepping behind the crowds lined up along the fairways. They were called galleries, which brought to mind places people went to stare at art and think about it. And that’s kind of how it felt to me, being at the Masters. Like I was seeing the biggest painting in the world—like it was so big and I was standing so close that I’d been able to step inside. It was hard to tell where the Masters ended, and me and Daddy’s urn began.

  Certain holes were more magical than others, carved into the landscape like perfect golf glens that had been there since time began, but we saw them all.

  Three pimento cheese sandwiches into the day, midway down the fairway on hole number eight, the crowd gasped and a wide shot came down two feet from where I stood, chewing. Noni jumped, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the ball, let alone move. The crowd shuffled, and Hobart Crane marched through like Moses, parting the gallery of people like sea water. His face was all business as he looked for the ball.

  “There, sir,” said Noni, then ducked behind a group.

  Hobart jerked around like he’d been shot. Then Mr. Crane stood still, his head tilted, eyes wide and seeking something. He looked lost. His caddie gently told people to stand back, then set down Hobart’s bag, waiting patiently to pull the next club out as directed.

  I’d noticed the caddies throughout the morning. Each man was dressed neatly in white coveralls. The white uniforms made the caddies look professional and serious and important and courteous. Each man walked behind their assigned player, carrying his load and picking out clubs. Each man was colored.

  When I whispered a question to him about it, Daddy said Augusta National had a Negro-caddie-only policy, and while other professional tournaments allowed players to bring in their own caddies, this club required use of Augusta National caddies during the Masters. Though Daddy only made saints out of golfers, he had a special spot for caddies, and I’d heard enough here and there from Daddy to know that some of Augusta’s caddies were becoming legendary in their own right.

  Mr. Crane’s caddie cleared his throat. Hobart broke out of whatever spell had grabbed him and stepped to the man, exchanged a few low words, nodded, and accepted a four iron.

  “But why not have white caddies, too?”

  I saw Daddy’s shoulders rise and fall. “It’s tradition here. White club members, colored caddies. Just the way things are, Ben. The caddies are well respected here. Some of them form real close relationships with their Masters players.”

  So colored men were good enough to give advice to Masters players and club members, good enough to carry equipment, but not good enough that the people running Augusta National would ever let them join their club. Something wasn’t right about that.

  “Augusta National is a private club,” Daddy said. “They’ve got the right to do whatever they want.”

  It reminded me of the school protests. “Like in Hilltop,” I said.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  When our school integrated, the parents who took their kids out said it was their right to do that. They said they weren’t going against the law by building a private school that shut out colored students. I looked down at Daddy. “Just because something’s allowed and it doesn’t break any laws, I don’t know if that makes it right.” I didn’t expect him to answer and I didn’t need his opinion. I just wanted to tell him mine.

  A crowd roared approval of some shot at the golf green ahead of us.

  “What was that?” Daddy stood on his ashy tiptoes, looking this way and that. “Who shot what?”

  “Must have been a good putt, Daddy.”

  “Well, get over there and tell me what’s going on.”

  He listened while I narrated our path, then told me background on holes and great shots that happened there long ago. But part of my mind drifted, not sure if I felt heavier or lighter.

  Just concentrate on your daddy, the lump in my throat said. For as long as he’s here.

  • • •

  Noni seemed to have settled into a quiet daze. We followed Hobart Crane for much of the day, and I
kept hoping he’d look our way and wave, but he was all business. Daddy loved his swing, and when I stopped to really look and could see it right there in person, it was a beautiful thing. Easy and effortless.

  “They seem confident, Ben, but even professional golfers constantly question their swing. They’re on a quest.”

  “For what?”

  “For the one swing that defines them. A swing that comes easy and natural and fits them perfectly. One they can be proud of.” He paused, then cleared his throat. “The best I can say is that I tried, son. I didn’t find my swing in the time I had. I don’t know that I’d ever have found it. But I tried.”

  He’d spent more time at the golf course than at home. His hands always seemed to be full of either clubs or barbecue equipment. I thought back and couldn’t remember a time when his hand had held mine. He’d been on a quest to find his swing. “I know you tried, Daddy.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, son?” He coughed. “I’m not talking about golf anymore. I’m talking about . . . being your father. I never quite got there. I know that. Do you see what I’m saying?” His voice was soft and faint, like a golf ball hit high in the sky that you tried to follow, lost in the sun, then found again.

  I didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I could glimpse it, like an abstract watercolor where you couldn’t define the picture, only know that it made you feel something. I saw how some parts of his life had gotten tangled around him like Spanish moss, beautiful and strangling at the same time. And I saw how he was like the Spanish moss, too. It wasn’t his fault; he just didn’t know how else to grow.

  HOLE 16

  Abbott’s Tree

  It wasn’t until four o’clock or so that I remembered that we needed to figure out where we’d wait while Augusta shut down for the night. The golf ball stuck in my throat pressed against its prison, rolling around like it was getting ready to make a break for it.

  “I need a solid meal before we decide where to hide,” Noni told me. “Let’s eat in the clubhouse.”