Seaview

by Toby Olson

  “Sign-up time, sign-up time!”

  A couple of men walked into the clubhouse. Most of the others stopped what they were doing and looked at him. A few laughed and poked each other. The Chair let the screen door slam and went to the table where John Hope was already sitting. John had the sign-up sheet ready with a few dollar bills for change beside it. The Chair took the three-by-five handicap cards out of the green-metal file box and put them on the table. He sat down beside John and began shuffling through the cards. The Chair had selected this part of the sign-up job for himself because it afforded him banter with the men. The cards listed their names and their handicaps. Every week, once the tournaments got going, Chair would spend an evening in the clubhouse going through the cards, adjusting the handicaps up or down as they were influenced by the scores the men had posted during the week. Since this was the first official tournament, the handicaps on the cards reflected the skill of the men at the end of the previous season. As they came into the clubhouse and signed up, paying their four dollars for the pot, many of them looked down at their cards when the Chair extracted them from the pile, checking to see how many strokes they had. This pausing and checking made the sign-up take a little longer, but the Chair didn’t mind that. He spoke to most of the men, joking and complimenting.

  “Cooky, you sandbagger, a seventeen! Tom, a twelve, good play last year; hope you stayed sharp over the winter. Crow, you devil, a twenty-four?! You still hit ’em good for a fat man! A.J., good God, eleven!; you tough old cocker!”

  As the Chair was carrying on, some of the men looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Sammy grinned behind his glass counter, selling balls, gloves, and tees. Then the door opened, and Commander Fred Wall entered the clubhouse.

  As commanding officer of the Seaview Air Force Station, Wall was part of the matrix of troubling circumstances that touched on play at Seaview. In the first place, and probably most important to Chair, Sammy, and the other local members, Wall was a real sandbagger. A year ago, Wall knew that this was to be his last year as commander of the Air Force Station. He was going to be transferred, a promotion, to a post in San Diego, and he had vowed that before he left he would get the trophy that went to the winner of the First Flight at the end of the summer.

  From the beginning, Wall’s experience in the club championship had pissed him off. He could not win it. Each year he would spend most of the winter sharpening his game, getting it honed to what he thought was its finest edge, and then one of these damn fishermen, or storeowners, or country schoolteachers would come up with some crazy, incredible round. They didn’t even know how to hit a ball properly. They would hold their clubs like baseball bats. They would putt like women. They would pitch and run where they should use a wedge. They would blast out of sand traps like they were digging graves. But they would score, and they would beat him soundly. He had been assigned to Seaview as a trouble-shooter, and he had shot down the trouble. When he had arrived as commanding officer, the men had been fraternizing with the townspeople to an inordinate extent. They had used the N.C.O. club and the P.X. buying beer and cigarettes at military prices. He had even found that some of the local women were living with Air Force men, in common-law arrangements, on the base. Extra duty, frequent inspection, two field days a week, and curtailment of passes and liberty had put a stop to all this. Now the men were sharp, they respected him, the place was in order. He was forty-three years old, he had pulled an entire (if small) command into shape, he was being promoted because of the excellence of his work, but he could not beat a bunch of hick civilians in a local golf tournament.

  It enraged him, and when he got wind of his transfer, he vowed that he would not leave Seaview without a trophy.

  He had spent the previous year of weekly tournaments padding his handicap. He had done it slowly, shaking his head each tournament day, talking about how hard he was working and how his golf game was going to hell. He had brought his handicap up to a fourteen. Sometimes in the evenings, in winter, he would come out and practice drives. He practiced his short game behind the B.O.Q. at the base. He figured his true handicap at Seaview was about a five or a six. He had set things up with care. He would come back a little this summer, getting himself down to a twelve or so. He would win the First Flight trophy at the end of the summer. He was very sure of the skill with which he had handled his strategy. What he didn’t know was that the enlisted men and most of the officers at the base had no respect for him at all. In the beginning they had simply disliked him, but after the word got around that he was most probably padding his handicap, they began to think of him as a real asshole.

  “Well, Fred, a fourteen; hope there’s a better year for you this time around,” Chair said, using his eyebrow-raising expression as he located Wall’s card.

  “I hope so,” Wall said, and after he’d paid and nodded to the five or so men around the table who looked his way, and nodded particularly sharply to the two enlisted men from his command who were exercising their privileges at Seaview, he walked back out the door and over to the putting green to hit some.

  From almost anywhere on the course the radar domes, like huge golf balls and in strange juxtapostion to the Jenny Lind tower below them, could be seen, and as Wall crossed the road and two teenagers in bathing suits and sandals passed in front of him on their way to the lighthouse and the beach below it, he thought of the difficulties that remained for him before he was free of this place and took up his new command out West.

  The environment creeps had been after him for over a year about the supposed dangerous microwave emanations from the domes. In the middle of the previous summer, one of the hangglider enthusiasts who liked to cruise out over the cliff along the sixth fairway had caught a good enough updraft to carry him inland a little. He had circled one of the domes, close into it at about a level with its top, and a couple of days later he had checked into a hospital in Boston, feeling ill. When the doctors had examined him, done a semen test, and found him sterile, the reporters got a hold of it, and in a very short time the environment creeps had started to call and write letters and show up. In the beginning he had stonewalled, but this had only caused them to switch their fire to Wash-ington, and Washington, needing time, had dumped it back in the lap of the Air Force, into his lap. He was to do a friendly public-relations routine until Washington figured the facts and a solid position on the issue.

  About the same time as the hangglider incident, the Free the Skin Beach Coalition had pushed their own form of madness into visibility. For as long as anyone could remem-ber, people had been swimming nude, in large groups and small, at selected, secluded spots well down the beaches from the access roads. Two years ago, some national underground magazine had gotten a hold of the fact and had given the name Skin Beach to the stretches along the Cape from the light-house down past the golf course and Air Force Station. The summer the article appeared, people started to come out to the beaches by the hundreds, flaunting nakedness when-ever they felt like it. Things came to a head on a particularly hot August weekend when a motorcycle gang from Boston, the Devil’s Advocates, had raised hell and havoc crossing people’s property to get to the beaches. The towns along the beach and the National Seashore people had come down as hard as they could with local government ordinances, harassing and arresting nude bathers. In reaction, at the end of the previous summer, the Free the Skin Beach Coalition had been formed. While they and their lawyers were hassling with the towns and the Seashore, somebody got the bright idea to “liberate” the beach below the Air Force Station. This beach, one posted and used by the men at the station and their families, was neither part of the towns that flanked it nor part of the National Seashore. It was under the governance of the Air Force, and as such it fell to Wall to administer its use.

  In the beginning, he tried to use sentry watches, having his men simply run the nudies off. But his men liked better to perch on the dunes with binoculars and watch the bathers, laughing and poking each other. Once he was so pissed t
hat he went down and ran them off himself.

  One day near the middle of August, a strange group had gathered on the beach early, before dawn, and when the morning watch was set, his men reported that it looked like a major confrontation was possible. In addition to Skin Beach people, a good number of Devil’s Advocates were there. And these two groups were joined by hang – glider enthusiasts. Already the gliders were drifting along the cliff. The men reported that it looked like the Advocates had at some previous time made a connection with the hang-glider group. Their relations seemed friendly, and some of the Advocates were gliding in their leathers along the cliff and out over the mild breakers. The nudies sat a little apart from the two other groups, and the situation looked volatile.

  Wall had acted quickly, sending his men down with unloaded but very threatening weapons. There had been a confrontation with the Advocates. His men had been rushed, and only after they had gotten their hands on the Advocates’ leader, arrested him and, in their enthusiasm, beaten him soundly in front of his gang, had things come under control. They had dispersed the trespassers and then had brought the leader up the cliff to Wall’s office at the station. To avoid the kind of incident the beating might have precipitated, Wall had released him. That had been the end of it, though Wall had received some very threatening, anonymous mail that he figured came from the outraged Advocates. The threats were grandiose: promises of future war with the Air Force Station. The letters were short and curt; there had been four of them, and then they had stopped, and the difficulties had seemed to cool down over the winter. But he had heard through the grapevine that things were being planned for this summer. There was the possibility of demonstrations of some kind by both the environment creeps and the Free the Skin Beach Coalition.

  Wall sighed, then stiffened up when he got to the putting green. He proceeded to practice, finding a spot among the others who were putting there. Chip had finished and gone back to the clubhouse to eat his lunch. Wall made a few putts, missed some, and missed a few on purpose.

  The phone kept ringing in the clubhouse, as those who were quitting work at noon called to say they would be there for the tournament so that the Chair would hold the draw. Sammy answered the phone, speaking briefly, and before it was back in the cradle would call out the names: Ed Souza, Gordon Tarvers, Sparkie Hurd … From outside the screen door, names would be called out also as those who were late pulled up. At twelve-twenty-five, the Chair had a stack of thirty-six cards in his hand, and he was tapping the corner of the stack on the table, watching the clock. At twelve-thirty he glanced over at Sammy.

  “That looks to be it,” Sammy said, and the Chair rapped the cards one last time and called out a little too loudly into the room.

  “Draw! Draw!”

  The words got to the door and out it, and as the Chair shuffled the cards and began laying them out in rows on the table, “Draw! Draw!” could be heard as far as the putting green. Those already in the room pressed in around the table, watching the cards come up, checking to see who they were teamed up with. When they saw their cards, they turned and began to look for their partners. The tournament was handled in shotgun fashion, teams starting at one, five, and seven at the same time, and by twelve-thirty-five all the golfers were headed for their assigned tees.

  As the clubhouse emptied and Earl came in to take over for Sammy while he played, Sammy reached under the glass counter and got out his fedora with the feather in it. He put the hat on, pulled the brim down to tuck it tight, broke open a cellophane bag of long “Florida” tees from his special stock, and turned and smiled at Earl.

  “Look all right, do I?” he asked. “I better, I drew the Chair.”

  “Who-ha,” Earl said flatly. “Just the right start to the season.”

  “Better believe it,” Sammy said. “See ya,” and he left the clubhouse and headed for the first tee, where the other three members of his foursome—the Chair, Commander Wall, and Eddie Costa, the fisherman—would be waiting. They were going to be third in line to hit off, but the Chair would, for sure, have them up there and ready.

  When all the golfers had left, Chief Wingfoot quit his place at the side of the door and walked down the road toward the light-house. He would turn to the right when he got there, head along the rough of the sixth fairway that ran along the ocean’s cliff edge, and when he got down to the sixth tee, he would cut through the rough to the sea perch. He would sit there and watch the ocean a while, his people’s golf course behind him. When the foursome that Chair and Sammy were in reached that hole—and that would be awhile from now—he’d have a few things to do. When he got to the tee, he cut through the long weed to the dune’s edge. He was high above the sea, the weeds tall behind him, and he sat on a ledge of shale, his feet hanging over the cliff. The tide was low: a few long clean bars, with still pools between them and the beach, were visible above the water, and a few herring gulls drifted out and along the cliff at about the Chief’s level. He took a piece of weed and put it in his mouth for the moisture. Below him, a few children, small at this distance, dug in the sand, their mother watching them from under a bright beach umbrella. He began to think of the shellfish on the Cape and the Quahog People.

  There was little of the conventional in the way most of the men at Seaview played golf. There had never been a real pro at the course, and Sammy had the job because he was a native, played a respectable game, and was willing to work long hours for little pay. The Golf Commission had renewed his contract each year for the past five. His father, a retired fisherman now doing a little charter-boat sport work in Florida, had been a respected member of the Cape’s fishing community, and the Chair’s objections each time the contract came up for review were disregarded by the other members of the Commission. They were loyal to the father, and they had a liking for the easy-going nature of the son.

  In the old days, before the tourist boom, golf was one of the only recreations available down on the Cape. The shape of the course was such that most of the tourists disdained to play it when they did start coming. Though Earl and Chip had done a lot for the tees and greens, the fairways looked like somebody’s backyard that had never been seeded. Earl kept the weeds low as best he could, but the fairways were mostly tufts of weed, occasional small carpets of wild rye, patches of grass, dandelions, and sand, with bits of stone here and there and shards of broken clamshells up from the beach. The shells were there because when it rained, the gulls, who dropped clams from great heights in order to break them for food, drifted in over the course with their catches and let them fall along the fairways.

  When Sammy reached the first tee, the Chair was looking the other way, busily commenting on the hits of the foursome in front of them. When they had all hit, he turned and saw Sammy’s hat and new feather. Fred Wall was looking too, but his mouth didn’t drop open the way the Chair’s did. He was able to keep his commanding officer’s demeanor in the face of such things. The Chair snapped his mouth shut and kept his peace; he would not give Sammy the satisfaction of comment.

  When the foursome ahead of them had reached the green, Sammy went to the tee to get ready. Sammy was a two-handicapper, the Chair had six strokes, Wall had his fourteen, and Eddie Costa had nine. Sammy had the honors, and he stuck one of his special long tees in the ground and put a new ball on it, the ball standing a good two inches above the grass. He had a wide stance and a very fluid if abbreviated swing. He cracked the ball off its high perch and curled it a good way out to the right of the fairway, where it rolled up the last rise and quit about fifty yards from the green. The Chair, though his hit was long and straight, caught a tuft of grass, bounced high in the air, and came up about seventy yards short, on a line between the two small traps on the left and right front. The Chair got a lot of hip into his swing, and just before he hit the ball he had the habit of lurching slightly in a little jump in the direction of flight.

  Eddie Costa was the loosest hitter of the four. He teed up and took a stance that was very open, his left foot po
inting directly down the fairway. He gripped the club like a fishing pole held for a side-style surf cast, and he got ready by turning the head in small circles halfway up into his back-swing. Just before he hit, he banged the club head hard on the ground behind the ball. When he clouted it, the force of his swing caused him to come off both feet, and he would wind up in a slight crouch, his feet wide apart, his toes pointing down the fairway, his eyes intent on watching the ball. His hit, as usual, was low and straight: it kicked up a puff of sand about a hundred and fifty yards out at the top of a low hill in the fairway and shot in the air for another thirty yards. It got a good bounce and came to rest on the down side of the hill to the right, about eighty-five yards away from the green. Fred Wall had the only conventional shot in the group. His swing was very careful, practiced, and mechanical. He was a little to the left, but he was straight. He finished in a good spot, on the hill to the left of the green, about fifty yards out, with no traps between him and the flagstick.

  Eddie Costa played his second shot in a style that was distinctly different from his first. Eighty-five yards away, and with the edge of the trap between him and the pin, he elected to play a pitch-and-run shot. He had nothing above a six-iron in his bag. He never needed the loftier clubs, and for his shot he selected a four-iron. Still using his fishing-pole grip, this time he choked up significantly on the club shaft; his left hand was well down on the grip, and there was a good four inches between it and his right. He planted his feet beside each other, digging in by kicking at the sand and grass tufts. This time he did not bang the club head on the ground but instead took a series of short half-swings, moving the club back and forth from his shoulder to the ground behind the ball. The half-swings got stronger and quicker, and at the end of them he hit. The ball shot off the club face, again very low and straight. It hit about fifteen yards short of the trap, approached it, entered it, and rolled through it, jumping a little when it hit the front lip. It came to rest in the middle of the green, about twenty-five feet from the cup.