Seaview

by Toby Olson

  FRANK BUMPUS KNEW THE TOURNAMENT WOULD BEGIN at twelve-thirty, and he wanted to be back at the clubhouse for it. That is, he wanted to be sure to be there when the men began to gather, wanted Chair Fredricks, especially, to see him. He had worked hard to appear as an annoyance that was both harmless and very visible, and he knew that today would be a good one in which to push the plan. When the time came, such P.R. considerations would be important. Public opinion and visibility, the way the press would pick him up as a somewhat colorful fellow, would give a kind of power of its own. He figured he could get some work done before the tournament, so when he finished his coffee he left his mug on the edge of the park bench next to Sammy, said good day, and set out across the eighth fairway toward his home.

  He lived in a beach shack tucked in the dunes near the cliff above the ocean. The shack had no water or electricity, and often the sand would drift against it as high as its windows and cover its porch, and he would have to shovel it out. Still, he had plenty of wood and a good stove, his people would carry water in for him from a jeep they parked on the beach, and though he was in his mid-seventies, he was very tough and in good health. He had lived in the shack for twelve years, ever since he had come back to the Cape (where he had been raised to manhood) as an organizer for his brother Pamets, and he attributed his good health in part to the Spartan existence he felt the shack afforded him. And there were other things he liked about the spot as well. The outer beach that he could see from his small porch was the one that Henry David Thoreau had walked and written about. He had read the book, and he thought that Henry David Thoreau had a good, if tight, sensi-bility and a way of seeing which was valuable. A mile or so out to sea was the place of numerous shipwrecks over the cent-uries. He had read about them, and he had a map on his wall showing the shapes of the ships, their place of sinking, and their names, countries, and dates. It warmed him to know that his ancestors had found good use for materials washed up from these shipwrecks.

  It was hard to find a book that had much to do with his people out here. Massasoit’s Profile Rock was little more than a tourist attraction, and when the great King Philip appeared in a text, he was only presented in the extremity of his heroic final acts. But Bumpus felt the presence of the ancestors in the white man’s history books. He was only a mile or so from Corn Hill and equal distance from the waters by which the white man had first camped when he came here. He felt his people’s bones under the ground. His favorite thing to read was the beginning chapters of History of Plimouth Plantation. This place was mentioned in the first few pages of that text. He liked the clarity of William Bradford’s prose, though he had been a limited and too earnest man. In his own slow and quiet battle, Bumpus liked to think that his rather awkward adversaries could at least be traced back to William Bradford as their ancestor and that the terms of the struggle had been defined in Bradford’s terms, by worthy men. He felt this gave some dignity to what he was involved in beyond the justice of the claim.

  And there were men at the golf course, though not the ones he had engaged with, who gave him heart and respect for his foe. These were the Portuguese and Yankee fishermen, many of whom were now retired from the sea to golf. They were men of substance, and he liked to imagine them and himself as young men, as children, as embryos, and finally as ancestors. Back there they could have fought well against each other, killing each other as they might. Often he thought he could see these kinds of shards of racial identity in their eyes as he spoke to them on the links.

  He entered his home and walked past his desk to a corner of the room where sat a table, a stoneware pitcher, and a bowl. He poured some water into the bowl, took up a sliver of soap, and washed his hands and dried them on a towel that hung on a nail driven into the wall. Then he went to his desk, sat down, and took a folder from the top of a large pile that rested there. On the tab of the folder, typed in, were the words: Franklin M. Fredricks, CPA, Log/Correspondence. Inside the folder, stapled to the inside cover, was a piece of lined yellow legal paper containing a calendar of phone calls and correspondence dates. Most of the papers in the folder were carbons of letters and transcriptions of phone calls. He ran a thin finger down the calendar. “Letter today, Saturday; phone call Monday,” he thought. He put the folder aside and turned in his swivel chair to the typewriter that sat on the short part of the L of his desk. In this position he could see out the front window of the shack. A pair of male goldfinches were pecking at the tube of the thistlefeeder that hung from a two-by-four rig stuck in the sand.

  “Hi, boys,” Frank Bumpus said. “There’s a bobwhite coming soon,” and then he began to type.

  THE CHAIR HAD PICKED OUT A PAIR OF WHITE COTTON pants with little boats on them. The boats were set a good three inches apart, so there was no mistaking that the pants were white. They had no cuffs and were double-stitched with kelly-green thread down the outer seams. On the wide belt loops, fragments of the little boats could be made out. The boats were toylike, and each of them floated on a curl of wave that was equal to their length and about a quarter-inch deep. The waves were a few thin lines of green and blue, with the white of the background showing through. The boats seemed not to be located in any clear pattern; some were at right angles with the leg, but some were set askew, and a couple were almost upside down. Their hulls were dark green, and they had bright red masts that were topped with orange sails. They did not seem seaworthy. Each one had a small porthole with crosshatched lines in its side, and each had a little pink rudder, and a pink point at its prow.

  At five places on the legs there were five little whales. They were the same size as the boats, and they too floated on little waves. They were pink in color, with curvy tales, and they each spouted a curl of water from their blowholes. They each had a little eye and little green lines for smiles. Near the slit of both front pockets, but not printed in a symmetrical way, there were two dolphins. These were the same size and general shape as the whales, and only their color (they were blue) seemed to distinguish them. But at a closer look, which the Chair had taken before buying the pants, one could see that the dolphins, though they sat on similar waves, had no blowholes or curls of spout, and they were not, like the whales, riding the waves but were arched in mid-dive, halfway between the exit from one wave and the entrance into another. They didn’t seem to have any pupils in their happy eyes.

  Alongside the pants on the bed was the Chair’s shirt, a knit pullover, kelly-green in color, with white stitching around the edge of the collar and pocket. A canvas cap and a belt were beside it. The cap was red and had a white-and-green emblem, a golf tee with a ball beside it, and the words Seaview Links stitched in the front of its crown. The belt was white and made of plastic, its edges stitched with black thread. It had a black, plastic-covered buckle. On the floor, below the garments, were the Chair’s socks and shoes, the socks lying neatly over the shoes, not touching the floor. The shoes were two-toned, green-and – white Foot-Joys, with scalloped dust tongues (devices the manufacturer called “shawls”) covering the laces. They had been brightly shined. The socks were new, green-and-black Argyles.

  The Chair stood in his boxer shorts and undershirt in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door to the side of the bed. He turned in a slow circle, keeping his eyes on the mirror, checking himself out. He reached up into the legs of the boxer shorts to the tails of his undershirt, pulling it down until there were no wrinkles where the elastic waistband met the shirt. He sucked in his stomach and adjusted the straps at his shoulders. Then he sat down on the bed beside his clothing. He ran a hand along the leg of his pants, and then he reached down and lifted the socks from the shoes, rolled each one down to the toe and adjusted them on his feet, unrolling the tops until they were straight and tight to his lower calves. He twisted the left one to get the ribs and the diamonds in line.

  When his socks were in order, he got up and lifted his pants, shook them slightly, lowered them, and stepped in. Pulling them up, he danced a little to get them to fall p
roperly in the leg. He noted the way the little boats fell. He turned and took his putting stance in full view in the mirror. With his left leg extended, the right back and firm, the little whale on the inside of his thigh could be seen. He smiled at himself. Then he picked up the belt and slipped it carefully through the loops. He left it unbuckled and lifted the shirt up and shook it out. He slipped it on, and rather than pull at the fabric, he did another little jig so that it fell down around his body until he could see himself in the mirror again. He adjusted the collar, unzipped the pants, and squatted with legs apart to hold them up while he tucked his shirt over his boxer shorts, smoothing out wrinkles around his body. When the shirt was secure, he gripped the pants, stood up, and pulled them over the shirt. He zipped them and fastened his belt, adjusting the buckle over his fly. He checked the pants fold to make sure the zipper was covered.

  He went to the closet and opened the mirrored door and took out a piece of rug, which he brought back to the side of the bed, and placed his shoes on, taking the spikes off the floor. Then he sat down and put the shoes on it, lifted the scalloped shawls and laced them. When this was done, he picked up the cap, smoothed back his hair, and put it on, pulling the peak down firmly. Then he stood up on the piece of carpet and looked at himself in the mirror.

  At first he stood straight, then he slouched a little, casually, putting his weight on one leg, the way he would stand while one of his partners was putting or teeing off. Then he took his putting stance again, checking the inseam of his trousers and the placement of the whales, the place where his pants met his socks, the protrusion of his anklebone with a diamond directly over it, and the arc of the side of his shoes and the way the first two scallops of the shawls angled along them. One of the tips of the laces was protruding from under the shawl, and he reached down, lifted the shawl, and opened the bow a bit, and then took his stance again and nodded. He checked his right leg to see that the pants came to the tops of his shoes. Then he took another casual stance, the one with his left hand on his hip, his right arm hanging loosely, bent at the elbow, his hand in his pocket with his thumb protruding along the fabric. This is the way he would stand in the clubhouse before they went out, talking jovially and authoritatively with the men.

  Then he took various stances and went through various motions. There was the motion of pulling the peak of his cap down with conviction, snugging it as he prepared to address his ball for a long iron shot only after he had studied the distance and other issues perceptively. There was the motion of picking and throwing bits of grass in the air, watching their speed and direction as they fell, checking the variations in wind conditions before he teed off. There was the stance of disapproval when someone moved while another was putting. There was the stance and look of condescending approval at a shot well made. Once he let his left arm rise up and fall in mild philosophical despair at the behavior of Sammy. Another time there was the look reserved for Frank Bumpus, a look of restrained intensity. Once he put his hand on his head, looking to the heavens in disbelief. Once he smiled warmly, very loose in his body, his clothing showing brilliantly, suggesting obviously desired friendship.

  Near the end, he went to a drawer in the dresser at the foot of the bed and from among carefully stacked packages of golf balls, tees, markers, and hats—his winnings over the years in the tournaments—got out a new glove from a pile of them. The glove was dark green with a white flap of Velcro on its underside to secure it, and in the middle of the flap was an emblem, a spherical figure, a transparent matrix of parts, in the middle of which was a small green club head. At the tip of the flap was a pearl button that could be removed and used as a ball marker. He slipped the tight glove over his hand, securing the Velcro. He went back to the mirror and stood before it. He lifted the gloved hand in front of his body at a level with his chest, the back of the glove facing away from him, the sphere and the pearl button clearly visible in the mirror, in a position where all would be able to see it. He formed a loose fist with the hand, his index finger extended and pointing. He was about to speak, and they all were listening attentively and with much anticipation for what he was about to say.

  Chip’s Special Seaview Map

  First Tournament

  THE CHIEF STOOD BESIDE THE SCREEN DOOR OF THE clubhouse, almost as still as a cigar-store Indian or like an official greeter, and nodded to the men he knew by sight and the ones he did not know, as if it were his place to welcome them to the tournament. They had a greeter in the town at the end of the Cape, that historic seaport. He was an old man and once selected he had the job for life. He wore clothes that imitated what the Pilgrims had worn, though his were acetates and vinyls, and he carried a bell that he rang as he walked the streets crowded with tourists, greeting them and crying the news of the town, his town, if he struck one as more than a transformed emblem of the real past. The Chief had this greeter in mind, but since he knew he wore the history of his people in his features and demeanor, he had opted for a more insidious twist, and his costume consisted of no more than a Seaview Links golf cap and an old wooden-shafted niblick that he usually held by its head and used in his brief and economical gestures as a pointer and a kind of walking stick. Otherwise, he was dressed in a pair of khakis and worn tennis shoes and a blue chambray shirt buttoned at the collar of his thin neck. His hair was black and straight, and it hung below the back of his cap, short but touching his lined neck, cut straight across. Though seventy-four-years old, tall and thin, he stood with the grace of one who was no more than fifty.

  The Chair was one of the first to arrive. He parked beyond the clubhouse, a little up and across the road from it. He did not miss the Chief standing there as he passed, and he was already slightly pissed as he sat on the seat of his car, his legs out the open door, and put his golf shoes on. He got his clubs out of the trunk, left them leaning against the split-rail fence that led up to the first tee, crossed the road, stared in the eye of the Chief as he passed him, and entered the clubhouse. John Hope had arrived before him, and the Chair nodded to John and rolled his eyes a little, giving one of his head gestures toward the door behind him. John nodded in understanding and smiled.

  Across the road from the clubhouse, to the right of the path leading to the first tee, Chip was putting the finishing touches on the putting green. He wanted to make sure that the apron was in good shape; a lot of men used it, standing a few yards behind it, practicing their chips on tournament days. While he was digging in his bag for his implements—his small clippers, wide-toothed comb, his bug spray—he glanced up and saw the Chief standing by the door. The Chief was looking his way, and Chip looked at him and smiled and mouthed the words “Hi, Chiefie!” in an exaggerated manner, and the Chief read them and smiled back. Chip started on the high side of the green, the place where there was the most room for the men to chip from, and began to work one side to the other, kneeling and combing the grass upward and clipping the uneven ends off. When he found ladybugs he put them on his shoulder, singing “Ladybug, Ladybug,” but most of the other bugs he found got a brief shot of the spray. When he had finished with a section of fringe, combing and clipping it, he would watch as it slowly lowered itself, and when it did not lower fast enough for him, he would stand up and make his shadow fall over it. This took away the light energy of the sun and would cause it to bend over quicker. He worked carefully and methodically and with considerable skill. He was just high enough so that his attention was clear and focused; the overly intense perception time was gone, and he liked best to be this way. The Chief liked to watch the way he worked.

  Back in the clubhouse, Sammy was finishing up with ordering the gear in his small pro shop. He straightened the stacks of shirts, and he pointed the brims of the hats forward in their nestled piles. The Chair was out in the small attached garage talking animatedly with John Hope. He’s bugged by the Chief again, Sammy thought, and he laughed to himself as he looked down at his shoes. He had picked new ones out for the Chair’s benefit. They were garish, two-toned or
ange-and-brown, and he had worn peds instead of socks so that it looked like he was barefoot in the golf shoes. He had ragged the ends of his cutoffs a little, and a couple of strings of white fabric hung from them. He had put his gold chain with his save the whales emblem on it around his neck. His Save the Whales bumperstickers on the glass counter was another thing that bugged the Chair. His fedora, with the new white feather in its band, was ready under the counter. He thought he would save that, a final touch, just before the tournament began.

  By eleven-forty-five a good number of men had rolled in. There were at least twenty of them, some standing in the clubhouse talking, others out front messing with their bags and clubs, a few across the road chipping and putting. Some laughter came from the putting green. Chip’s high-pitched giggle could be heard. He hadn’t quite finished in time, and the balls were bouncing around him, some hitting his legs, him grabbing some of them in flight or on a first bounce as he worked on the last patch of fringe. At twelve o’clock the Chair stuck his head out the door and yelled with a kind of impatient urgency.