Seaview

by Toby Olson

  Out in the fairway, the golfers had disentangled the line of the kite. The Chief rested in his sling. Sammy and Eddie got up, and the kite flyer, when the line was loose, trotted back toward the rough, pulling his string, watching the kite rise quickly. The golfers watched him get up and go, and then they saw the

  flowered dresses and the bathers and the fog behind them. The flyer stopped when he reached the edge of the rough, but his kite kept rising, and as he watched it go it disappeared, and he was left holding a rigid string that stood up straight in the air. Most of the old women and a few of the baggy-suited men started to come together in a kind of common purpose. Their line was disheveled in the rough, but when their feet hit the fairway it firmed up again. They came to the hardpan running and hopping, occasional clamshells thumping into the ground among them.

  The golfers recognized their force immediately, and they headed for the power carts, hoping to get the carts between themselves and the oncoming flowers that were now losing their colors as the fog touched them. The Chief in the contraption was out front and vulnerable. He wound his fingers in the netting of the sling and braced his feet. Sammy and Eddie held tight to the pull-cart handles, and Sammy used his other hand to hold the crown of his hat. Wall and the hangglider pilot, though they were to one side at a place where only a few bathers would pass them, struggled to move the grounded glider out of harm’s way. A little breeze had come up, and the glider was fighting them; their arms extended above it, they tried hard to hold it down. It lifted one or the other of them occasionally above tiptoe.

  When the oncoming tide of flowered dresses and baggy suits tucked in the front of the fog gained the middle of the fairway, the Chair was the first to fall. He had been caught in a moment of indecision between the possible safety behind the power carts and that at the edge of the line beyond the hang-glider. He had started for the glider, but when it began to lift, he had pulled up and watched it. Then he had turned back toward the carts, but saw that he could not make it in time, and stopped and put his hands up.

  “It’s okay, don’t panic! Don’t panic!” he yelled. But the Chair, had a panicked kind of yell, and when they heard it they only came on quicker. The first to get to him were two very heavy women. One was ahead of the other. They were probably neighbors, and the one had reached back to get the other’s hand so they would not get separated. Just as their hands linked, they came upon the Chair, and though their hands broke apart when they hit his chest, there was enough force in their weight and movement to lift him off the ground and throw him back. As he stumbled, trying to keep his footing, he reached out for support. What he seized was a flowered sleeve. It ripped, and the whole front of the dress came away with it. At the sound of the rip, the woman clouted him with a small pearled bag, knocking his golf cap off, quaking his skull. As he fell backward, grabbing at the bag in defense of himself, he brought the three of them down in a heap, the one with the ripped dress fighting to get her hand and the bag free of the sleeve.

  Now they were all in the fog. It was like the inside of a cloud. Most of the phalanx passed and entered the next fairway and disappeared. Wall and the hang-glider were out of sight to the right. Three women had run into the cluster of power carts and stuck there, holding tight and shaking. One thin old man had run up against the Chief’s contraption, shuddering the netting and ropes, swaying the Chief a little in his sling. The old man had grabbed Eddie’s cart handle and held fast to it. He looked down at the Chief in embarrassment. He was the same size and build as the Chief, but he was a good fifteen years older, about ninety. The Chief could see that the elder thought it had been unseemly for him to run from fog while this younger man, the Chief himself, watched him do it. The Chief smiled reassuringly up at him, and the man relaxed some, smiling back. He had a bushy gray mustache and equally bushy gray hair.

  “This is a pip; this is a hell of a note, boy!” he said to the Chief, his eyes sparkling.

  “That is correct, Father,” the Chief answered. “Pretty good fun too!” And they both laughed, like a flute and a piccolo, in the fog.

  When the Chair had disengaged himself from the two women and had helped them get loose from each other, he got his rain slicker out of the pouch in his golf bag and tried to help the woman with the front of her dress ripped away put it on. She saw him with it, and she lifted her hands and pushed at the air in the fog before her.

  “Don’t look! Don’t look!” she hissed at him, and he gave the slicker to the other woman, who helped the embarrassed one on with it. Then he took their arms and led them over to the power carts. When he got them there, one of the men spoke up.

  “What’ll we do now, Chair?” Before the Chair could answer, Sammy spoke from near the contraption that was parked in front of them.

  “We’ll call the tournament for a while, scores stand, we’ll play the holes we’re on over again. This stuff’ll pass shortly. Dick, you take two of the ladies in in the cart. Crow, you take a couple, then come back and get some others. Eddie and I’ll take the Chief in. The rest of us’ll walk.”

  “I’ll walk!” said the old man standing beside the Chief’s contraption. Wall came up to the Chair’s elbow out of the fog.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going in for a while,” the Chair said.

  When they got to the clubhouse, the men were straggling in from various directions. The touring bus, with most of the senior citizens in it, was parked across the road, and the driver, in his slightly wilted gray uniform, was moving around, reasurring and taking count. Chip stepped off the bus, where he had been distributing styrofoam cups of coffee.

  “Hey, hey; hey, hey,” he said to no one in particular. “The Chipper becomes a help to the aged, Captain of Relief, Fog Savior. Wow! look at that lighthouse in the mist! Seaview happenings.”

  A couple of the women were in the clubhouse drinking coffee, talking with the golfers coquettishly. The driver came in and caught them at it, and he hustled them out and into the bus. The woman with Chair’s slicker got on still wearing it. In a few minutes, the bus was fully loaded. The last one to board was the old man. He patted Chief Wingfoot on his golf cap before he left him.

  “Take good care of that leg, Son,” he said as he turned to go.

  “Thank you, Father, I will,” the Chief said, and in a few minutes the bus pulled out.

  By the time all of the men had gathered in the clubhouse, were sitting and standing around, drinking coffee and soda, the fog had already begun to thin out. The Chair had taken charge again, and he was walking among the men, talking about the fog but trying to avoid saying too much about what had happened on the sixth fairway. This got plenty of play from the others though, and it took all that the Chair had to laugh heartily with the rest when the story of him and the two women came up. The minute the bus pulled out, he knew that his slicker had gone away with the woman, and for a moment he had a strong urge to chase after the bus in his car. This would have added fuel to the joke, and though he really hated to lose his slicker—a new one, with the same emblem he wore on his glove, that airy sphere carefully sewn into it above the pocket-he could not face extending the joke, and he let it go.

  In twenty minutes it was totally clear again, the fog had crossed the narrow Cape and sat down on the beach on the bay side. Already there were bathers walking along the road and driving up toward the lighthouse. Some had left the bay when the fog came and would now use the beach on the sunny ocean side. The Chair called for attention and told the men the same things Sammy had told them out on the sixth. When he was finished, they all shuffled out of the clubhouse and went off in their clusters to resume play. When everyone had left, the Chair walked out. Chief Wingfoot was sitting on the park bench with the grip of his niblick on the ground, his hand resting on the club head. Sammy and Eddie were finishing the last stages of disconnecting the pull-carts.

  “Okay, let’s go,” the Chair said, and he jerked at the handle of his cart and started across the road. In a couple of min
utes, Sammy and Eddie caught up with him.

  “Where the hell is Wall?” the Chair said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He set out ahead of us; he’ll be over there,” Eddie answered.

  When they got to the sixth tee again, Wall was indeed there, waiting. He had come out early to look for the hangglider and its flyer. He wondered what had happened when the man had drifted away from him, trying to pull the glider down in the fog. There was no evidence of the glider when Wall got back. The flyer had been a little scruffy and mean-looking, and Wall had suspected some motive other than pleasure in his cruising along the cliff side.

  Without any talk, the foursome hit off, resuming their play. The rest of the day went smoothly, but things were subdued. The Chair had little to say, and none of them played particularly well. They finished the eighteen holes at five-fifteen, a little later than usual. Two teams were in the clubhouse ahead of them, and one of these had ended with a plus five; they were the leaders, and when all the teams were in, at six o’clock, the plus five held for first place. Sammy and the Chair’s team came in with a minus four, out of the money. Sammy had played poorly, shooting an eighty. Chair finished with an eighty-two, losing his private contest with Sammy. Wall and Eddie Costa had pretty much played to their handicaps. It was their play that had kept the team close to even.

  When the tournament was over, most of the men left quickly. It was later than usual, and they wanted to get home and ready for dinner. Sammy had some clean-up work to do, and before the last man was out, he began to get to it. The Chair didn’t linger. What little talk there was as the teams came in had more to do with the fog and the events prior to the break in play than with the golfing, and he didn’t care to listen to this or participate in it; so before the last team was in, when he saw that already his foursome was out of the money, he made it known to anyone who was within earshot that he was leaving, and he left.

  That evening, after he had finished dinner and it was getting dark, the Chair got his clubs out of the trunk of his car and took them down in the basement to clean them up. Fog had come in again. It had begun to rain, and the rain hit against the hubcap of his car into the small rectangle of the window high in the basement wall to the left of the workbench. He could hardly see out at all, and the light over the workbench seemed a little dimmer than usual. He was cleaning the grooves in the head of his five-wood with a small penknife, being careful not to cut into the wood itself, when it began to flood in on him. He had flashes of himself throwing his driver down the fairway, of his embarrassment and the silence of the others. He saw the huge white corset covering the breast of the woman whose dress he had ripped half off. He saw the Chief in the sling, his benign stare, and he shook his head, his rage rising. He saw the woman going away in the bus wearing his slicker. He heard the men laughing in the clubhouse, and he slumped. He heard Sammy giving instructions while he, the Chairman of the Golf Commission, stood by in ineffectual silence. He gripped the vise, his fingers hitting against the head of his five-wood, and he squeezed the unyielding steel. He looked down through the foggy haze in the darkening room and saw the drops of moisture on the waxed head of the club floating on the three white letters stamped above the face. VIP the club said. He began to shake and to weep in a high choking voice. The drops on the club head were joined by others in a small flood. He was addressing his ball on a fairway in a sudden rain. He was a boy, and they were laughing at him, and he had lost his jacket.

  Mood Music

  SOMETIMES IN THE EARLY EVENINGS, ON DAYS WHEN IT was slow, Sammy and Chip liked to get out and play a little Hit and Throw Ball, one of the games they had invented, Chip giving the names. On this particular day, one following four days of heavy rain and a week after what Chip had named Fog Day, the sky was bell-clear, the temperature warm and dry, and most everyone on the Cape had headed for the beaches, staying there for hours, a little glassy-eyed in wonder at the weather. In the later afternoon, as if by some plan, a lightly cool breeze had come up, very soft and just a little bracing, and most of the beachgoers, in sweet wonder exhaustion, had headed home for drinks, and evening cook-outs. A couple of foursomes, husbands and wives, had started out around four o’clock, but when they got to the sixth tee and saw the ocean from the high dune cliff, they could not help themselves. The second foursome joined the first one when they got there. They left their clubs standing like a strange committee in their hand carts around the tee and went through the brush to the sea perch and sat down, talking in low tones about the weather and the sea, counting the buoys on the lobster pots, making friends with each other.

  For close to a month now, ever since the French Canadian campers, the weekenders, and the other summer tourists had been coming to Seaview Links in some numbers, Sammy had The List out and ready behind the counter. Sammy and Chip had started keeping it two summers before this one, writing down the most interesting questions the tourist-players asked, once they were out of sight. The List got longer, and only a few of the questions were the fake ones that Chip added, appending his name after them in parenthesis in his small clear hand.

  THE LIST1. Is this the golf course?

  2. Are you open?

  3. Where did you buy the rest room signs?

  4. How do I stand?

  5. Are you cutting the grass?

  6. Do you sell charcoals here?

  7. Do you sell fishhooks?

  8. Do you believe me when I speak? (Chip)

  9. Is the Coke good?

  10. Is this the old building?

  11. Is this the clubhouse?

  12. Is this the right place?

  13. If it rains, will I get wet? (Chip)

  14. Do you rent balls?

  15. Is that the ocean?

  16. Can my friend walk with me? Can she hit my balls?

  17. Are you a French Canadian too? Sacrebleu! (Chip)

  18. Are you a native?

  19. Are these the score cards?

  20. Is that the foghorn?

  21. Are there any places to eat?

  22. How deep is the ocean? (Chip)

  23. Is it going to rain?

  24. How high is the sky? (Chip)

  25. Can I wear golf shoes?

  26. Does it get cold when it snows?

  27. I’m from an elite club in Philadelphia. Can I play here?

  28. Did anybody turn in a ball?

  29. Are those wooden clubs old?

  30. Do you remember anybody? (Chip)

  31. Is this the bus stop?

  32. What do you do when you play nine holes?

  33. What are winter gloves?

  34. Is this where you play golf?

  35. Will you read this lighthouse? [The Chipper hands over a copy of JW tract to listener] (Chip)

  36. Is the wind blowing?

  37. Is it raining up here?

  38. Do you have buffets?

  39. Where is the ocean beach?

  40. Who did that wonderful job on the aprons? (Chip)

  41. Can we play in one bag?

  42. Do you have little sticks to hit the ball off?

  43. What do you do in the winter?

  44. What kind of white bread is in the sandwiches?

  45. Who is the best chipper on the course? (Chip)

  46. Can I get married on the cliff?

  47. Who makes the grass grow? (Chip)

  48. Do you have to take a test to play?

  49. What happens when it rains?

  50. What happens when the fog comes in? (Chip)

  51. Is that the lighthouse?

  52. Am I right – or left – handed?

  In Hit and Throw Ball, one made every other shot by chucking the ball in the general direction of the green. If one was on the green when a throw shot came up, one simply bowled the ball at the cup. Sammy and Chip also played Cross Golf, Over and Under, Change, Back Ball, and other invented variations. Chip was waiting on the second tee, practicing his windup, when Sammy drove up in a power cart. Ordinarily, on a day as sl
ow as this, Sammy would put his sign out on the door, but on this day the Chair had come in to work at the handicap cards and said he would watch things while Sammy went out to play. He was very nice about offering to do it; it was that kind of day, and ever since the Chair’s encounters in the fog he had seemed a little more relaxed, a little easier about himself. Bob Days, an electrician at the Air Force Station, was doing a little volunteer wiring at the clubhouse and said he would watch out for things too.

  Sammy and Chip teed off, both electing to hit their first shots, and when it came to the second, Chip winged his off into the rough to the right of the fairway so that he could get to where the blueberries were. After Sammy had thrown his and they had had a friendly, joshing argument about whether Chip had thrown his ball out of bounds, they both got their balls to the green. Chip was one shot behind Sammy when they got there, so while Sammy had a bowl, Chip had a putt. Sammy missed his bowl, complaining that the green had not been well cut and that that had thrown his ball off. Then they argued about the quality of Chip’s work on and around the green, joking and trading insults. Chip said that nobody who dressed as bad as Sammy did had any right to complain about anything that had to do with quality or taste. Sammy retorted as how Chip might do a better job once he got out of Cape Tech and became an adult. Things went on this way until they, like the others before them, reached the sixth tee and saw the ocean. They could not help themselves either, and they went to the edge of the cliff, said hello to the husbands and wives, and sat and looked.