I felt heat behind my own eyes. It was hard to imagine my father saying anything like that.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded at Mick.
“You have a valuable life, Randy. A good and valuable life.” The glint was back in his eye. “Let’s do lunch on Monday, what do you say? A meat and three and let me tell you about this product.” He held out his hand and I took it.
“Sounds good, Mick.”
He gave my hand a squeeze. “Good man.” He began to walk away, but then he stopped and gazed back at me over his shoulder. “Remember what I said about your daddy, son.”
I gave him a nod. “Will do.”
10
I left Gibson’s in a fog. The irony of bumping into Mickey Spann wasn’t lost on me. Here I was about to take my own life, and the insurance policy that I had purchased from Mickey was what I was relying on to take care of my family. It was a three-million-dollar policy with no exclusion for suicide after the expiration of five years. I had bought it seven years earlier, not thinking that I might one day try to take advantage of any loopholes. But a few months ago, after receiving another demand letter from the hospital and then having my first consultation with a bankruptcy attorney, I reviewed the policy with a fine-toothed comb and even suffered through a lunch with Mickey to “better understand what I had.” I had innocently asked about the exclusions that were still applicable, and Mickey had confirmed that “not even suicide was excluded anymore.”
Mary Alice will be able to pay off Graham’s medical expenses and still have more than enough to live on.
I pulled onto Memorial Parkway. I passed the turn for downtown, which would have taken me to my office. I felt my heart rate speed up as my decision solidified. Darby Hays was dead, and I planned to join him in just under an hour. I turned left onto Highway 72 and squeezed tight to the wheel, fighting off the doubts the dream had caused.
You do have a life, Randy.
“No, I don’t,” I said out loud, beating the wheel with my fist. What would my death do to Davis? Would she be able to handle it? Davis and I had been as close as a father and daughter could be before Graham’s death, but nothing had been the same since. Now that she was driving a car, we hardly ever spent any time together.
I’ve got no money socked away for her college. I spent every dime on Graham’s medical care. Davis is a good student and a talented golfer, but getting an academic or athletic scholarship is a long shot. College will be too unless . . .
“. . . unless I jump,” I said, my voice firm as I nodded at the windshield. When I did the math and analyzed my options, I always came up with the same conclusion. This is the only way I can help my daughter. She’ll have money for college. Her future will be ahead of her.
Up ahead, the traffic was beginning to slow. What now? As the traffic came to a stop I pulled onto the shoulder and continued driving, anxious to follow through on my plan. A hundred yards up, I saw an orange detour sign. Beyond the sign, I saw what had stopped traffic. There had been a wreck in the intersection of Highway 72 and Jeff Road. A storage truck had T-boned what looked like a Cadillac sedan. When I reached the detour sign, I turned right onto Jeff Road. There was another sign ahead and, without thinking about it any further, I followed. Why isn’t anyone else taking the detour?
I scratched my head and felt my heart starting to pound. What the . . .
The end of the detour was a parking lot with a mobile home that sat where asphalt met grass. Adjacent to the trailer were a number of golf carts lined up. Why would there be a detour to the old Monrovia Golf Course? I wondered, easing the car to a stop. When I did, I saw a woman emerge from the trailer. She had long blond hair and wore green shorts and a yellow golf shirt. She smiled as she approached, and I rolled down the window.
“There are some balls on the range for you to warm up with, Mr. Clark.”
Balls? Range? As far as I could remember, the old Monrovia Golf Course didn’t have a driving range. The course was a municipal track that was home to the cheapest golf in town.
“There must be some mistake,” I managed, squinting up into her bluish-green eyes. “I’m not playing golf today. I don’t even have my clubs.”
“No mistake, Mr. Clark. We got a call about fifteen minutes ago from your friend, Mr. Hays, that you would be arriving at eight thirty a.m.”
I felt my heart constrict. Mr. Hays . . .
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“Not at all,” the woman said, walking behind my vehicle to the trunk. She opened it, and sure enough, there was my golf bag.
Gooseflesh now covered every square inch of my body. I glanced at my arms, and I was no longer wearing a button-down shirt. Instead, I had on a blue sweater. I didn’t have to check my collar to know that I was now wearing a golf shirt.
“Want to change into your spikes here or in the locker room?”
I gazed past her to the trailer. Locker room? “Here,” I managed.
“Okay, suit yourself,” she said, throwing my golf bag over her shoulder. “I’ll put these on the range. Your playing partner is already here.”
“My playing . . . partner?” I asked, opening the door to the Crown Vic and stepping out of it on shaking legs.
She flung her hair back and peered at me over her shoulder. “Yes. Mr. Bob.”
My eyes widened, but I didn’t say anything else. I walked around to my trunk and took my time slipping my golf shoes on. Then, taking in a deep breath, I ambled toward the trailer. As I walked, I noticed there were no other cars in the lot and, looking past the trailer, no golfers on the course. I didn’t see a driving range anywhere.
Darb, what have you gotten me into? I whispered, as I grabbed the knob. Then, too bewildered to think about it any longer, I opened the door and stepped inside.
11
“Oh . . . my . . . God.” I spoke my thoughts aloud as I gawked up and around at the richly adorned clubhouse. Portraits of old men, some in golf attire and others wearing a coat and tie, lined all four walls of the mammoth building. There was a chandelier that hung from the tall ceiling and a twisting staircase that led to a second floor. The smell of strong coffee and pastries hung in the air, and I noticed several men sitting around tables in the nineteenth-hole lounge just ahead of where I was standing.
There were few truths in an uncertain world, but this was one of them—I was not inside the trailer of the old Monrovia Golf Course.
I felt a hand touch my arm, and I turned to see a man wearing a brown suit, white shirt, and tie. Round glasses perched on his nose, and he had a thatch of neatly cut salt-and-pepper hair. “You’re all set up on the range, Mr. Clark. Follow me, sir.”
Swallowing hard, I did as I was told, maneuvering through the lounge and the golf shop and finally out onto a veranda. I sucked in a breath as I took in the golf course in front of me. Tree-lined fairways. Grass as “green as goose dung,” Darby would say. I saw an area where a man appeared to be hitting balls by himself. “Is that—?”
“Yes, sir,” the man wearing the brown suit said, gesturing for me to continue to follow. I walked behind him down a long brick staircase and out into the sunshine. When the rays hit my face, I felt an almost giddy sensation, reminding me of the summer days when my mom would drop me off in the morning at Twickenham. The golf team got the run of the club during the summer, and I was the team’s A player. I’d play thirty-six holes a day and hit two hundred balls and never get tired. In the dog days of late July, I’d take a dip in the swimming pool after each round.
I breathed in the fresh air and smiled at the memory. Then reality gripped me for a second. Where am I and what in the world am I doing?
As I followed the man, I remembered Darby’s words.
Four heroes. Four rounds. A tournament, so to speak, with the champions you’ve looked up to your whole life . . .
As I continued to walk toward the ra
nge, I glanced back at the clubhouse and felt my stomach tighten. I stopped and gaped at the backside of the Tudor building, marveling at the architecture. I had been here before. I knew this place. Four heroes. Four rounds . . .
When it came to me, I gasped out loud.
“East Lake,” I whispered. Darby had lined up a round for us about ten years ago.
“Yes,” the man with the brown suit said back, also whispering. I looked at him again, thinking about all the stories I’d heard about the boy who grew up playing here. The boy who would become one of golf’s greatest champions. Perhaps the sport’s first icon. I gazed at the old man again and saw the notebook he held in his hand.
“You’re Mr. Keeler, aren’t you? O. B. Keeler?”
The man smiled. “You need to warm up, sir?”
“It is you,” I said in awe. I spun around and gazed at the lone golfer hitting balls on the range. The man wore knickers, but he did not have on a cap or a hat. Even from twenty yards away, I recognized the long fluid motion of his swing. The sound of the crack when the clubhead connected with the ball resembled a gunshot.
“Bobby Jones,” I whispered again, feeling my heartbeat racing.
I felt a nudge on my back and looked at the brown-suited man. O. B. Keeler had been Bobby Jones’s personal chronicler, a newspaperman who followed Jones to all of his many tournaments and summarized his greatest victories and most difficult defeats. He’d written several biographies on Jones and was probably the person who knew the great champion the best. “Go on,” he said.
Forcing my legs, which were now shaking, to move, I walked toward the range. I saw my own golf bag a few feet away from Jones’s and almost laughed at the absurdity of the picture. Jones’s signless tote bag with the ancient hickory-shafted tools inside contrasted with my bright red bag with the word Titleist embroidered in white down the side. I had steel-shafted irons and woods.
“Mr. Clark?”
I turned back to Keeler, whose friendly demeanor had turned serious. “Do pay attention.”
Puzzled, I managed to nod. I started to walk toward the range again and Keeler disappeared.
Where did he go? Moving my head around the historic grounds and clubhouse, I saw no one else.
“It’s just us now.” The voice dripped with southern elegance. It was the accent I’d heard on old telecasts of the Masters and on a VHS tape of golf lessons the legend had once done with actor W. C. Fields.
“Mr. Jones?” I asked, moving toward him.
He smiled and stared back at the driving range, waggling what looked like a mid-iron in his hand. He kicked his right knee toward his left to start his swing, and then I watched as the only man to ever win golf’s Grand Slam launched a shot high into the air.
“Nice shot,” I said.
“Caught it a little thin, but it will work.” He reached into his pants and brought out a cigarette. Lighting it with a match, he breathed a smoke cloud in the air. “Hit you a few balls, Randy, and I’ll see you on the first tee, okay? Johnnie will be over in a minute to get our bags.”
“O-O-Okay,” I stammered, watching him glide away toward a tee box in the distance.
Darby, what in God’s name have you gotten me into? I thought again.
“I’d start with a few wedges, and then work my way up to the driver,” a man with a Scottish accent said, and I turned toward the sound. Leaning against a water jug was a small, stout man wearing a black ivy hat and white knickers. “Or you can hit whatever ye like.”
I grabbed a wedge from the bag and took a couple of practice swings. My legs still felt rubbery from shock. When am I gonna wake up? I wondered, putting my club behind the ball and promptly blading my first shot out onto the range. I felt heat on my cheeks as I brushed another ball out of the bucket. My next shot was a cold chunk. I hit almost a foot behind the ball and the shot barely went fifteen yards. My face was now throbbing with embarrassment, and I didn’t dare look up. I brought another ball over and loosened my grip pressure, focusing on keeping my head steady. This time, I made solid contact and the ball climbed into the air and dropped out into the middle of the range, about one hundred twenty yards out.
“There eet is,” the Scotsman said from behind me. “Nice fluid move, Mr. Clark.”
“Thank you,” I managed, beginning to relax as I struck another pure wedge. I hit two more wedge shots and about four seven irons, then grabbed the driver. I addressed the ball, playing it up in my stance, and tried to emulate the swing of Bobby Jones. Soft and smooth, I whispered. The ball launched off the face like a rocket, and I knew I couldn’t hit one any better.
“I’d save the rest of those for the course,” Johnnie said, already moving toward me to take the club.
“Good idea,” I said.
Despite carrying both bags, Johnnie walked at a brisk pace that was hard to keep up with. By the time I reached the first tee, which was about a hundred yards away, I was almost out of breath.
My playing partner sat on a bench with one leg crossed over the other. He was smoking a cigarette. His pants were knickers and he wore a shirt and tie, which I knew was the dress of most accomplished golfers back in the twenties and thirties.
“Mr. Jones, it is an honor to play with you.”
He rose from his seat and flicked the cigarette on the grass, quickly stomping it out with his spikes. “The pleasure is all mine, Randy. Call me Bob, okay?”
I nodded, feeling butterflies in my stomach. How does he know me? It was all so surreal, as I heard Darby’s voice again in my mind.
Four heroes. Four rounds . . .
“How does your head feel, Randy?” Bob said, as he took the driver that Johnnie had already pulled out of his bag for him to hit. He smiled at me and then walked onto the tee box of the first hole at East Lake.
“My head?” I asked, taking my own driver from Johnnie and gazing at the legend who was now sizing up his first tee shot.
Bob chuckled. “You drank enough to down three men yesterday.”
I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. But before I could respond, Bob launched his drive down the fairway. It was, as I would expect, a beautiful golf shot carrying at least two hundred seventy yards on the fly.
“Nice shot,” Johnnie called out.
Bob glanced at me. “This is a four-hundred-yard par four. Slightly uphill. Nice and straight hole to start with.”
“I know,” I told him, walking around him and putting my tee in the ground. “I’ve played East Lake before.”
Feeling adrenaline flooding my veins, I aligned my body parallel to the fairway and, without further thought, swung the club. I knew I had flushed it the minute the head of the club hit the ball, and I held my follow-through as the ball climbed into the air. I couldn’t tell where it ended up, but my guess was that I was at least close to Jones.
“Nice one,” Bob said.
“Very nice indeed,” Johnnie said, taking the club from me and beginning to churn his legs down the fairway.
As I began to walk side by side with the great champion, I spoke without looking at him. “How did you know about what I drank?”
I felt a strong hand clasp my back and give it a squeeze. “I know everything about you, Randy. We all do.”
“We . . . all?”
“Four rounds, remember?”
Four rounds. Four heroes, I thought, nodding at him.
“Randy Clark,” Bob said, speaking in a lower tone. “Second place, 1968 Alabama State Amateur. Played number one on the Alabama golf team in the late 1960s. Tried to make the tour but missed getting through Q school by a single stroke. Girlfriend Mary Alice got pregnant and Randy gave up his dream of being a golfer and went to law school. Became a lawyer in Huntsville, Alabama. Developed an insurance defense practice.” Bob paused. “You know, I was a lawyer once.”
I smiled at him. “You wanted to go into trial la
w, right?”
“I did, but then in one of my first trials, the judge on the case asked to play golf with me and started giving me favorable rulings.” He shook his head. “I never wanted any favoritism. If it wasn’t going to be pure, I wanted none of it, so I stayed out of the courtroom from then on.”
“You were the greatest golfer that ever lived . . . I mean, you know . . .” I began to fumble my words as I realized what I was about to say.
Bob laughed out loud. “You mean until Jack came along.”
“You both are incredible players.”
He nodded. “I once said that Jack Nicklaus played a game unfamiliar to me, and I meant it. He hits the ball farther and straighter than any player before or since.”
“He’s pretty much done now,” I said.
“That so?” Bob said. “He’s playing in my tournament this week, isn’t he?”
I smiled, knowing that Bobby Jones, along with Clifford Roberts, had founded the Masters golf tournament. “Jack is in the field, but most folks aren’t giving him much of a shot.”
“What do you think, Randy?”
I sighed as we reached our golf balls in the fairway. “He’ll never be what he once was.”
“Are any of us?” Bob asked.
I peered at him, but he was not looking at me. Instead, he was gazing ahead at the green. “What do we have here, Johnnie? One forty?”
“Aye,” the Scotsman said. “One thirty-eight for you, sir, and Mr. Clark has 141. We are going uphill a bit, so you may want to take a little more club.”
“Hand me the nine iron,” Bob said.
I looked at the green. That was probably the right club for the yardage. But with the incline, I knew I needed more club. “Me too,” I said.
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