by Turk Pipkin
“Course Slammin’ Sammy was a long hitter,” concluded March, implying that Beast was not.
It was a valiant effort, perhaps the best of the three incredible drives Beast had hit thus far. Still, my heart cheered as his tee shot came up short of his goal, slammed into the ten percent of tree that wasn’t air, and fell down beneath the overhanging branches.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled Beast. “Snead never hit it over those trees!”
“Sure he did!” boasted March. “Of course, those trees were just saplings in ’forty-eight, probably a lot shorter then.”
Beast’s face began to rage into shades of scarlet. We all stepped back, except Fromholz—Dr. Cool—who stepped toward Beast, but not before slipping one hand into the bulging pocket of his jacket. It was not the pocket he’d stuffed the wads of cash into and it was not too hard to guess what he had in there. This guy took the referee job very seriously, carrying it so far as to provide protection for the participants. But March didn’t really need protection. He wasn’t even done yet.
“Oh, hell!” March said. “What a stoop I am. My memory’s all screwed up. I don’t think it was this course at all. Come to think of it, I can’t even remember if this course was here in ’forty-eight. I must be goin’ crazy—crazy like a bat.”
“The expression is crazy like a fox,” said Roscoe.
“Whatever.”
If the first confession had served to pump Beast up, the second had taken all the wind out of his sails, and then some. He exhaled a mighty blast of disgust and even I could see that the physical danger was past. Beast simmered back a few steps, Fromholz withdrew his hand from his pocket, and March stepped up to hit his own shot.
The trick had been a marvel, but despite his tactical triumph, March hit his ball deep into the right woods. A minute later, the most unimaginable event of the day happened: Sandy hit his shot and I didn’t see where it went. I was too busy watching Roscoe slip a hundred-dollar bill into Fromholz’s hand.
“Ride over there and keep March honest, ref,” said Roscoe in a pseudo-whisper, which wasn’t much under a low roar.
Roscoe knew full well that March was little or no threat on this long par five, so I figured his main intention was to distract Sandy during his swing. But if Sandy had been bothered, he certainly didn’t let on. Instead he picked up his bag and started down the fairway without complaint.
Guys whose concentration can’t be broken never cease to amaze me. I carried once for Don Cherry, a famous Texas singing golfer who hit the ball sweet despite a lot of attractive requests for autographs and an occasional jealous husband. When I asked him how he avoided distractions, Cherry told me he used to hit practice balls with a lady friend sunning nearby in her birthday suit. Once he got used to that, the rest was easy.
“Jewel darling!” drawled Roscoe as they sat in his cart in the middle of the fairway. “Ol’ March there is knee-deep in shit and coffee break’s about over. And we know what that means. Back on his head! He ain’t never gonna find that ball. Maybe you and I should run off to Foat Worth to celebrate.”
Tilting his bottle, Roscoe toasted March’s lost balls and then waited for March to give up the search. That Dr Pepper had run through me pretty quick, and with Jewel ten feet away I had to excuse myself for the woods. By the time I reached the nearest bushes, March had found his ball. From my new position I had a good view as he studied his dismal prospects, blocked from the others’ view by the same cover I was using, blocked from the green by a row of trees and blocked from a rat’s-ass chance of reaching the fairway by all of it.
Since neither March nor Fromholz saw me standing there conducting my business, it was almost like being the proverbial fly on the wall.
“How much did Roscoe give you, Ace?” March asked Fromholz.
“A hundred.”
March took out his wallet. “Here’s five hundred.”
“You want me to move it?” asked Fromholz.
“Move it?” says March. “Hell, I want you to hit it!”
March handed Fromholz what looked to be a four-wood.
Alarmed, I turned back to the fairway to see if the others were watching, but they couldn’t see a thing; I was the only witness. I didn’t even know if Fromholz knew how to play golf. Even for a pro, getting the ball over those trees would have been tough with a wood. Fromholz took a couple of powerful practice swings, free and loose, then stepped up to the ball.
“Fore!” yelled March.
The group in the fairway jerked their heads up in unison, kind of like cows in a field. Jewel had taught me to think in such pictures, but I don’t think she’d have been humored to be a part of that one.
Fromholz made a move at the ball exactly like each of his perfect practice swings, and the ball jumped off his open clubface and soared out of sight. I couldn’t tell where it went, but when it cleared the trees Sandy started hollering and screaming from the fairway.
“Yeah! Yeah! Great shot, March! Go! Go! Yeah!” Sandy was only about four words away from being speechless.
When you see a golfer with a great swing, it sticks with you forever. To this day I’ve only seen about a dozen truly great swings, and they belonged to Sandy, maybe to Beast, to a handful of guys out on the Tour (not all of whom have been successful), and to Fromholz. Later on I learned that our ref had shown a lot of golfing promise until he’d been hit square in the eye by a golf ball. I’d hate to be the idiot who hit a ball that destroyed something so fine in a man as tough as Fromholz.
Zipping up my fly, I ran back to the fairway as fast as I could. By the remarks I surmised that March’s ball was either on or very near the green; in two shots, putting for eagle. And Roscoe just couldn’t imagine how that duffer March could have managed such an incredible shot.
15
I was by nature neither a fighter nor a fink, falling somewhere in the middle ground of these dubious childhood achievements. I’d always made too good of grades to be hip, and I teetered precariously on the line of being a Goody Two-shoes, but I could usually be counted on to participate in a little group mayhem as long as it didn’t cause me any physical pain. Most notable among these escalating instances of delinquency in San Angelo was a boredom-induced rock fight among a group of my sixth-grade classmates. I hadn’t really wanted to take part, primarily because in the prebattle negotiations I was appointed captain of the geek team, which consisted of myself, fat Donny Ratley, and Clyde Eckhardt, the stutter king.
The three of us were sure to get pulverized, tenderized like a bad cut of meat. My ego was already injured by not being included on the team of the genetically cool, but when somebody screams “Go!” and the rocks start flying, there’s not much you can do but dive for cover, gather an armful of ammunition, and start lobbing a few long, deadly bombs between the incoming salvos.
One of the reasons I liked golf so much was because the rules were so specific. There ain’t no rules in a rock fight. Hopelessly outgunned, my army bruised and battered, and one of my troops crying shamelessly, a ray of hope broke through the clouds. A seventh kid walked up in a lull between volleys, and, unable to comprehend the murderous sincerity of the game, he wanted to play. Even though Larry Seebers wore thick glasses and threw like a girl, an extra body on my side gave us a remote chance of not dying a horrible death before the end of recess. But it was not to be. As I jumped from cover to claim him as ours, I was immediately buried by a barrage of rockwork.
“Larry’s on our side!” the other team yelled. “You guys outweigh us!”
It was true. Weight was our only advantage. And never having been on any sporting team with the cool guys, Larry fairly beamed with complicity. My protests were answered with another volley of rocks and I was driven back into my hole. The only thing that kept the game going was that, mad as I was, no one in their right mind was gonna get within thirty feet of my long slingshot arm. Nobody, that is, except a geek in glasses who didn’t know the game. Nobody but Larry.
“Here’s what you do,” his
new teammates explained as they handed him his first rock. “Run straight at Billy, screaming as loud as you can. We’ll do the rest!”
What a rube this kid was. Not questioning this idiotic directive, Private Larry ran at me, screaming for all he was worth. Just like his throw, he also ran like a girl and screamed like a girl. When he was twenty feet from me, I hopped out of the hole, took aim and hurled a ragged stone straight at his head. Thank God for safety glasses. I cracked the left lens into a dozen sections and he went down as if I’d shot him with a howitzer.
That’s about it. When Larry regained consciousness, he staggered to the school nurse, crying all the way. Only one question was asked: “Who threw the rock?”
For me there followed long hours in the principal’s office awaiting the eye doctor’s verdict on permanent blindness.
“As far as blindness goes,” I contemplated telling the principal, “I’m against it.”
No, that would never do. Maybe I could raise the money to buy Larry a seeing-eye dog like old man Parker’s fat Lab that peed on everyone’s leg. Maybe I could donate one of my own eyes. I finally settled on trying to pass for seventeen, joining the Marines, and shipping off to Vietnam as an adviser. Anything, just as long as they didn’t make me stay after school for the rest of my life.
In the third grade I’d been unjustly accused of scratching a dirty word onto the wall of the cafeteria. In fact, I’d been playing a childish game of make-believe with a toy car, but the principal didn’t fall for the truth and sentenced me to a week of staying after school. I was like a wild animal chained, serving time without end, each tick of the clock like Chinese water torture on my brain.
My transgression was more severe this time and I was now old enough for corporal punishment. For throwing rocks, I got five golf-swing swats from the principal’s maple paddle (we called them “licks”). For being a smart-ass (“As far as blindness goes,” I told him), I got five more. This from a man who really enjoyed his work. He busted my butt; worse yet, he broke Jewel’s heart. She was just down the hall listening to each echoing blow while pretending to teach second graders how to read. Looking back on it, I realize that this was the event that started our move away from San Angelo the following year. Jewel didn’t believe in beating children, especially her baby.
I cried softly on five of the swats and howled like a dog on the rest. During the week’s enforced vacation that was added on for not telling who else was involved, I played a lot of golf and found that much more enjoyable than sitting on my sore ass.
16
“That lyin’ sumbitch!” said Beast. “He’s got a lot of balls to pull that crap on me.”
March’s medicine had not set well on the big man’s stomach. Not only had Beast’s tee shot ended up under an oak tree on number four, but the ball had dropped down so that the trunk of the tree stood between the ball and the spot where Beast should have been standing to make a swing. He could take a left-handed stance and rotate one of his long irons so that the toe of the club pointed straight down at the ground, swing like a southpaw and probably hit it a hundred yards. But hell, March was putting for eagle. Beast had to do more than hack it back into play. He had to pull something out of his hat.
He snatched his one and only fairway wood from out of my hand and began to experiment with various stances: both feet ahead of the tree, both behind it, standing on one foot or the other, and finally bear-hugging the trunk with both arms as if he were humping it. But it was just no use; he couldn’t see the ball for the tree.
The best option, at least the one he chose, was to stand with the tree between himself and the green, his body aiming to hit the ball way left, and the face of the three-wood opened to hopefully slice the ball back in the proper direction. He also had to start the ball low to avoid hitting the overhanging oak limbs, and he had to stop his follow-through dead or he was likely to carry the club and possibly his hands into the trunk of the tree.
It was cool there in the deep shade, a pleasant spot to watch him consider each of these options as his attention turned step by step from being duped by March to the business at hand.
Taking the club back faster than usual, he tomahawked the ball, carving hard and furious at its upper right corner. Launching out from under the tree like an artillery fusillade, the shot exploded as the clubshaft slammed into the hardwood trunk and snapped cleanly into two pieces.
“Son of a bitch!” Beast screamed as he threw down the short end of the stick. “Son of a bitch never sliced!”
I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t cursing about the broken club or the pain that must have vibrated through his hands to his brain. He was pissed off because the ball had failed to do exactly what he wanted, furious because he’d hit it straight when he wanted it to slice.
“Son of a bitch! I should have hit it left-handed!” he said as he stomped off.
The ball’s straight flight path had taken it into the woods left of the green—out of bounds. Beast declined to take the penalty stroke and drop another ball beneath the tree, so he was out of the hole—and so was I.
I picked up the two pieces of the three-wood, marveled at the sharp edges of the broken steel, and put them both in the bag.
“Them new shafts break a mite cleaner than the old hickory clubs.”
I jerked my head up and saw Roscoe sitting in his cart nearby.
“I used to break a club or two myself, but I got tired of picking them hickory splinters out of my hands so I had to give it up. But like the man said, ‘It’s better to break one’s clubs than to lose one’s temper.’”
I had to laugh at that one.
“Now you’re laggin’ behind, Spud, so quit lollygaggin’ around and climb your butt in here.”
The passenger’s seat was once again empty, Jewel having abandoned Roscoe for a closer look at some wildflowers in the far rough. I thought about telling her to watch for snakes, then remembered that she could handle herself.
“I said haul your butt in here. There’s nothing wrong with riding now and then. Hell, I been doing it ever since March blew a hole in my leg.”
I looked at him wide-eyed, my face a slow green waiting to be read by an old caddie. I was sure of what he’d said, but unable to believe it.
“Oh yeah, it’s true. March was jealous of me and Jewel, so he crippled me with his thirty-ought-six. But never mind that. That’s all in the past. Bygones are gone by and all that stuff. Now climb in here and let’s have us a chew.”
Burying three fingers and a thumb into a pouch of Red Man, Roscoe withdrew a gigantic wad of tobacco and stuffed it into his cud.
“Dig in!” he said, extending the open pouch in my direction.
I looked closer at the jumble of stems and leaves, and the smell about knocked me out of the cart.
“Just pick a cheek and shove it in!” he said. “Jewel tells me you’re her blood. I hadn’t figgered that. We’re gonna be great friends, you and me.”
Taking a small pinch, I placed it gingerly into one cheek. It burned like the dickens.
“Hell, boy! We ain’t gonna have none of that pussy-style chewing around here. You ain’t got enough to taste. Come on! Make like an outfielder: grab yourself a fistful!”
Aw, what the hell! I crammed my right cheek with the stuff and felt an immediate wave of giddiness.
While we drove slowly to the green, Roscoe began to tell me a little story about golf tempers—his own, that is. Shortly after he and March moved Fowler Oil to Austin, Roscoe goes out by himself for a practice round. But he just can’t get it together: one shot a hook, the next a slice. Finally he comes to a dreaded par three, a long shot over water. Fearing the worst, Roscoe takes a big cut at it, and damned if he doesn’t hit a nice high shot that soars toward the green. But halfway there a friggin’ bird dives at the ball; the two collide and both fall dead in the water. He can’t believe it. Of all the damned luck!
Somehow Roscoe avoids losing his temper. Instead—very calmly, according to his reckoning—he d
ecides to quit golf forever. This is not a rash decision. He simply knows it’s over. Taking all the balls from his bag, he tosses them down and hits them one at a time into the lake, his only aim a tiny island of pampas grass. His target might as well have been Mars, because each shot is worse than the last: a slice, a duck hook, fat, topped, a shank. Each shot fills him with joy because he’s one ball closer to the last damn shot he’ll ever have to hit.
“The last ball! Hallelujah, just one more crummy shot,” Roscoe told me. “So I take a half-assed swing at the ball … and it cuts through the air like a bullet, lands dead in the center of the pampas grass—a virtual hole-in-one! Holy moly! I was stunned. It looked just like the pros! Trying to remember exactly how I did it, I start searching like a madman for a ball, any ball—in the thick grass, in the rough, in the bushes—nothing! Finally, I remember where there’s plenty of them balls. So I wade into the pond—damn near drown when my boots fill up with water—and find me a couple of golf balls so I can keep playing.
“You can’t quit this game, son!” Roscoe concluded. “It’s the game that gets to quit you!”
Either the story or the chew was very moving, for at that moment I hopped out of the cart and upchucked in the flowers by the green.
17
These guys really had it in for the youth of America. First March offers me a glass of Scotch and a golden opportunity to corrupt my morals, then Roscoe makes a play for my grandmother and forces a wad of tobacco down my throat. Did they want my help, my affection, or my soul? Whatever it was, they sure had a funny way of going about it.
For all I knew, Roscoe’s leg could have been the result of childhood polio; I’d seen kids just a few years older than me who had that same kind of limp. Maybe Roscoe was conning me by blaming March. Roscoe had a history of that sort of thing, or so March said. Who was I to believe? Had March entered into a partnership with all of a valuable ranch and left it with half a worthless one? Or had Roscoe come into the deal with two good legs and gone out a cripple? The only answer was that neither was to be trusted: they were both a couple of hustlers.