Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  Agatha pushed him away. “Shivas is the only man I’d run away with,” she said demurely.

  “Oh, Peter, see that,” Evan bellowed, “d’ye see that? The man steals the women too. Beats us on the course, steals the women, shows us up at philosophizen’, a man to be contended with at every turn.”

  And so the party turned to raucous repartee. Evan and Shivas joined in a Highland Fling, while the rest of us sang “Munlochy Bridge” and “Devil in the Kitchen.” They danced between the old crossed swords, which Agatha had taken from the mantel. They danced like two gazelles, locking arms, their heads almost hitting the ceiling as they jumped across the blades, their footwork flawless in spite of all the whisky. Then Peter emerged blowing his bagpipes, skirling “Scotland the Brave” with all its surging power, and we marched around the room, Julian leading the way, until Peter could blow no more.

  Seamus MacDuff’s

  Baffing Spoon

  AROUND MIDNIGHT WE STARTED slowing down. Julian slumped happily in his armchair, regarding us all with a benign look that betrayed the dark views of life he had been propounding. Agatha was urging him to go home, it being hours past his customary bedtime. No, he wanted just one more turn around the room, the old doctor said, but Peter’s lungs had reached their limit. Gradually the party came to an end, and with hugs in all directions we tumbled out into the night. The McNaughton lights were the only ones on along the darkened street, and our voices—especially Evan’s—bounced off the neighbors’ houses until a shutter flew open and someone yelled at us to stop. The leader of our revel held his Tam in front of his mouth and waved good-by, as he swayed off down the hill toward Clancy’s. Kelly managed to get Julian into the McNaughtons’ car to drive him home. Shivas and I were left alone in front of the house. “I’ll walk ye to the Inn,” he said, and we started off down the cobblestone street.

  We walked along in silence, simmering in our alcoholic happiness. I was warmed by these new-found friends. I thought of Agatha and Peter asking me to return, their smiles as I looked up the stairs to say my last good-by, then Julian shaking my hand and asking me to forget some of the things he had said, and the Greenes insisting that I have their address in Cornwall. I knew I would remember that gathering for the rest of my life.

  But then through the good feeling and warmth of friendship, through the alcoholic vapors, one thought intruded, one piece of unfinished business. How had I repressed that glimpse of Seamus MacDuff? I tried to remember whether he had said something, whether he had actually worn a tattered black tail coat as I seemed to remember. It was disturbing to think my memory and perception could be so unreliable. Something exceedingly strange had happened, yet I had forgotten it completely. I told Shivas what I was thinking.

  “ ’Tis nervous-makin’ when yer mind does tricks like tha’,” he said, “I know wha’ ye mean.” The more I let the memory develop the more certain I became that something very strange indeed had taken place on the thirteenth tee. Bolder now with camaraderie and whisky, I asked him why he had loosed that blood-curdling scream.

  “Oh, that,” he said quickly with a little smile and shrug, “I do that a lot on the thirteenth, tae scair away the divil.” He turned and looked at me. “Did it disturb ye?” he asked innocently.

  I said that it hadn’t, seeing how I hit my approach. But he must have sensed that I wanted more explanation. He gave me a quick intense look, that sudden X-ray glance of his, then turned away. We walked along for another block or two until we turned into the street that led to The Druids’ Inn, an old hotel I had found. He stopped and put a hand on my arm.

  “Michael, have ye got a bottle in yer room or a cup o’ tea?” he asked. “I feel like talkin’.”

  I said that I did and we went up to the little room I had taken for the night. To this day I can remember the excitement and sense of anticipation I felt then. I was sure he was about to take me into his confidence. But when we got to the room he simply stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I broke out a bottle of Perrier Water, something I carried with me all the way through Europe on that trip. I suddenly felt awkward being alone with him. After a few painful moments he broke the quiet.

  “Tell me about yer trip heer,” he said. He seemed utterly distracted, I could sense that he felt as awkward as I did. And then one of those abrupt changes in my perception occurred. He suddenly seemed much smaller in stature. His face looked green and wizened in the room’s dim light. I began telling him about my trip but the words were mechanical; I seemed to be watching the entire conversation from a distance. I told him about my interest in Eastern thought and contemplative practice, about Sri Aurobindo and the ashram in Pondicherry. I had a sense he was listening with half his mind.

  “Do ye think ye’ll stay at the ashram?” he interrupted. I said that I didn’t know, that I might or might not depending upon what I found there. He studied me as I said it.

  “Aurobindo believes in the earth—is that true?” he asked. The question surprised me. Apparently he knew something about the Indian seer, who was unknown in the Western world except to the most ardent students of Eastern thought. He jabbed his finger toward the floor for emphasis. “Is tha’ true?” he repeated the question.

  “Yes, he does,” I replied, touched by the crude grasp he seemed to have of Aurobindo’s thought.

  “Well, how would ye like to meet Seamus MacDuff?” he asked. The rapid sequence startled me. Aurobindo, believing in the earth, Seamus MacDuff—I must have looked perplexed. He stood, regaining his expansive manner.

  “Come, let us call upon Seamus in the midnight hour,” he said. “And bring the Perrier Water.” I hurried after him, a bottle of mineral water under each arm, wondering what adventure was coming next.

  We found his car, a little Morris Minor, in front of his apartment a few blocks from the Inn. His head almost touched the roof as he got behind the steering wheel. With considerable coughing and sputtering the engine started and we shot off through the deserted streets. Burningbush locks up early, like most Scottish towns.

  “The sound o’ this machine is much discussed,” he said as we careened around a corner. “Word o’ this will certainly get out.” He seemed excited. “Gi’ me a slug o’ tha’ Perrier Water,” he said as we roared through the night.

  The oldest part of Burningbush Town adjoins the first and last holes of the links. One of the cobblestone streets in this section runs into a narrow grass-covered road that leads out into the golf course and then to the sea. We turned onto it and he shifted gears. “There are animals heer,” he said, “all sorts o’ animals.” And indeed a pair of eyes gleamed in our headlight, then disappeared into the gorse.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Tha’ was a banshee,” he said decisively, as if he believed it.

  We drove out slowly toward the thirteenth hole, bumping over the little-used road, both of our heads hitting the roof of the car. “Have you ever come out here before at night?” I asked. He did not reply as he concentrated on the potholes and gullies around us. He turned the little car off, the road and stopped under a tree.

  “From heer on, we walk,” he said as he jerked the emergency brake. It was a windy night and I pulled the collar of my wind-breaker up as we got out of the car, hunching my shoulders for warmth. Shivas spread his arms toward the sky and slapped his chest. “Hah, wha’ a good idea,” he said with gusto, “wha’ a good idea.” Still dressed in his white sweater, he seemed oblivious to the cold. He set out for Seamus’s ravine at a half run, as if he knew every step of the way.

  The golf course had a different look about it now. It seemed much more precipitous and full of jagged edges. Another pair of eyes appeared and hurried away. The wind made an eerie sound coming through the fields of gorse and sharp ravines, shrill, then deep like the sound of a drum. I could hear the surf booming in the distance.

  We were descending into a gully and a small rock-slide started under my feet. I called out, asking him to slow his pace, but he had dis
appeared and there was no answer. Then as I started up the other side of the draw, something grasped my shoulder. It felt like a hand; to this day I could swear it was a hand. But as I jumped away there was nothing except an enormous boulder, a huge rock outcrop looming over my head. I sat on the rocky slope to get my breath. The impression of being grabbed had been so definite, I stared at the boulder until my heart stopped pounding. Then I heard Shivas calling down.

  “Michael, where ’n the hell are ye?” his stentorian voice echoed through the howling wind.

  I shouted back and started up the gully wall. He was standing at the top. “Something grabbed me down there, I could swear,” I said as I joined him.

  “Now, Michael,” he said, “now, Michael, have another Perrier Water.” I was still carrying one of the bottles. He squeezed my shoulder to reassure me. I jumped back. “That’s just how it felt,” I said.

  He laughed at my fright. “ ’Twas a banshee,” he said with his big-kid grin. “They’re harmless, completely harmless.” He squeezed my shoulder again and started off toward the ravine. After he had taken a few steps he stopped, then split the air as he had done that day with a bloodcurdling scream. And then a second time—that eerie yodeling wail.

  “God dammit, what are you doing?” I gasped.

  “Gettin’ rid o’ the stale aiyer in my lungs,” he shouted back at me through the wind.

  “Jesus, can we slow down?” I gasped again. The rapid pace he was setting and the increasing weirdness of the situation had me shaking and out of breath. “Can we please slow down a minute?” I was almost pleading.

  He stopped without looking back, put a hand to his forehead as if he were shielding his eyes against some invisible sun and peered into the darkness. I stood a few yards away from him and held my sides to get my breath back. The wind was howling and snapping the collar of my windbreaker around my ears. He turned in a semicircle as he scanned the inscrutable night.

  “What are you looking for?” I shouted.

  “Wha’ do ya think?” he shouted back without turning to look at me.

  Then, just as he uttered the words, the most God-awful sound began to rise from what I took to be the ravine. It sounded like a single high note from a gigantic organ, rising steadily in volume until it shivered the night. Then around it like sunrise came a massive chord of lower register, swelling to encompass the original note and spreading until it seemed to come from all sides at once. I ran up to Shivas’s side and grabbed his arm.

  “Jesus Christ!” I shouted.

  He drew back and stared at me with what seemed to be astonishment. “What in hell’s wrong now?” His voice had an edge of reprimand.

  “That sound!” I cried. “That sound!”

  “Oh tha’,” he said loudly, pulling his arm away. “ ’Tis the wind from the ravine. It means the comin’ o’ the northern lights.”

  As he said those words, the sound began to fade away, leaving the original high note wavering in the wind, as if it were echoing off the walls of some immense cathedral.

  He glanced back to check my state, then started off again for the ravine at a half-run. My heart was beating wildly and I was still out of breath, but I stayed as close to him as I could, not knowing what would happen next.

  Though we could see no more than 20 or 30 feet in any direction, I could tell from the bench and bag stand I had seen that afternoon that we were crossing the thirteenth tee. He slowed his steps and turned left toward the ravine. I shuffled along after him, feeling the ground cautiously with my feet.

  Sensing the place again, I tried to summon my memory of where I had seen the strange old man. Where had I been standing? It might have been from the hill after we reached the green, or perhaps from this tee? The failure of my memory was unnerving. My shin hit a rock and I swore again—somehow the curses kept down my fear.

  Shivas shouted one last time, then started down a rock fall into the ravine. It was pitch black below us. There was not the slightest sign of life.

  We inched our way down the jagged incline, sliding at times in loose rock. The floor of the ravine was, I would estimate, some 40 feet below: it took us several minutes to reach it. As we climbed and slid through the rocks and dirt I could feel a growing stillness; the place was completely protected from the wind. When we got to the bottom I looked up at the boulders looming over us and wondered if we would ever get out.

  “Seamus may not be heer,” he said. “He woulda’ answered us by now.” He groped his way through the darkness up the gentle incline of the canyon floor. I stayed as close to him as I could in case another hand might reach out for me, swearing steadily as we inched along. We were coming to a wider place and the going was easier. I began to feel sand under my feet instead of gravel and dirt. He sat down on a rock. “Let’s rest a minute heer,” he said. “If he’s around, he’ll soon let us know.”

  We waited in silence for several minutes. My hard breathing and anxiety were subsiding and I began to discern the outlines of the cliff edge some 40 feet above us and the shape of the declivity we were in. As I grew accustomed to the darkness, I could see that there was a large open space around us. I ran my feet through the sandy dirt and wondered if anyone had played a golf shot from here to the thirteenth green. What would Seamus do if someone descended into his lair? I had an image of him scampering away like a frightened animal, like dirty old Ben Gunn in Treasure Island.

  “Does he actually sleep out here?” I asked.

  “In his cave over there,” he nodded toward the wall of the ravine.

  I peered through the darkness, but could see nothing, no cave opening or shelter of any sort.

  “I can’t see it,” I said as I peered at the inscrutable rocks.

  “Right there.” He nodded toward the cliff again. Still I could see nothing. It occurred to me that Seamus might enter through some tiny hole.

  There was a protected feeling under the looming canyon walls, a heavy feel to the air. We sat for several minutes savoring the stillness of the place. Shivas seemed abstracted, in a state like the one he went into before dinner. He sat looking at the sky, as he had on that window ledge. Watching him, I remembered Evan Tyree’s story about the night-long trance so many years before.

  He gazed at the starry sky for several minutes, then he pointed upward and asked if I saw a constellation of the zodiac (I cannot remember which it was). I said that I didn’t; that the only things I could recognize were the Milky Way, the North Star, and the Big Dipper.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “for I’d like to show ye somethin’ ye’ve probably niver seen. It’s the real zodiac, the true one. That there is Hogan.” He pointed at a constellation he had named after the famous golfer and then at another named “Swilcan Burn.” He traced the outlines he saw in the sparkling sky, but I could only see an amorphous mass of stars. “Too bad ye canna’ see it,” he shook his head, “it’s too bad. Ye’ll see it though if ye look a while.”

  Apparently he had discovered a new zodiac. He gazed up at it and began to hum a plaintive Irish melody. As I looked at the sky I saw an outline of Ben Hogan’s Indian profile appear amidst the other constellations. It was the only one I could recognize besides the Big Dipper.

  Shivas was silent again, then his resonant voice broke the stillness. “He’s na’ heer,” he said decisively, “but let’s wait a while in case he retoorns.” He began rummaging about in the rocks around him, and in a moment had gathered some twigs and branches. He took a match from his pants pocket and ignited the little pile he had made. It took flame immediately. “I’ve aye been good at startin’ fires.” He smiled proudly. “Now find me some bigger pieces.”

  We built ourselves a rousing fire and settled down to wait for Seamus. The towering cliffs were alive in the firelight. “Gi’ me some o’ that Perrier Water,” he said.

  He leaned back against a rock and gazed reflectively into the flames, as if he were willing to wait indefinitely. “Do you think he might be asleep?” I asked. “Why don’t we go look?�
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  “Oh, no”—he raised his hand in warning—“niver do tha’—it would distoorb him somethin’ awful. I ken his ways. He’s na’ heer, I tell ye, he’s na’ heer.”

  I asked him where Seamus might have gone, seeing what an ungodly hour it was.

  “He has another place he goes to upon occasion. But he loves to work at night—that’s when he can feel the things he’s studyin’.”

  “Feel them?”

  “Feel them, tha’ is what I sayed.” He cocked his head and looked at me gravely. “Ye’re interested in ’im, aren’t ye? How would ye like to see his weapon?” Without waiting for my answer he got up and went over to the rocks he had said were Seamus’s cave. In a moment he returned with a long black gnarled stick that looked like a gigantic Irish shillelagh. He was waggling it as if it were a golf stick. “This heer is Seamus’s club,” he said, gazing at it fondly. He swung it at an imaginary golf ball. “Would ye lik’ to see it?”

  He handed it to me carefully, holding it gently with both hands as if it were carried on a velvet cushion. It was the meanest-looking stick I had ever seen. Black and gnarled and hard as a rock, it was about the length of a driver. On one end there protruded a heavy burl with a flat face. It was a golf club fit for a caveman. I waggled it as he had done and swung it carefully to avoid hitting the ground. It swung easily. I swung it again. It zipped through the air as if it were perfectly weighted. I swung it three or four times more, it seemed to swing by itself.

  “Tha’s enough,” he said, abruptly taking it back. “Tha’s enough,” and started swinging the thing himself, half a dozen times as if he could not stop. “We must na’ damage it on the rocks heer,” he said as he swung, “or Seamus ’ll gi’ me dreadful hell. But ye must see this.” He put the club down and went over to Seamus’s hiding place. In a moment he returned with two white objects about the size of golf balls. He carried them as he had the stick, as if they were on a cushion. “These are his balls,” he said with a fond wry smile. “Look at them.”