Walking with Jack

by Don J. Snyder

  The 11th hole. A 575-yard par-5. Wide-open driving hole. But terrible second shot. Water and trees blocking your path to the green. It’s a three-shot hole. No chance for eagle.

  “So as our year at Colby was ending, I was offered a job teaching at the University of Maine. I think the salary was $26,000, and there was the chance for tenure. I turned it down when I got an advance of $7,000 to write my third book, another novel. And off we went to Ireland because we knew that if we could find a cottage in the countryside, we could survive for a year on seven grand. Your mother and I were so crazy in love we got on the plane out of Boston on a Sunday night with two babies and we were asking the Irish stewardesses if they thought we should get off in Shannon or Dublin. We had no idea where we were even going to spend the first night. We took Dublin. I went for a walk the first morning, and I saw this little necklace in a store window that I knew Colleen would love. I bought it and the clerk told me about a cottage in county Wicklow, and off we went for the winter. We lived on cabbage and potatoes. All we had for heat was a fireplace, where we burned coal. The cottage was down a country road, five miles from civilization. That’s when I began getting up at four in the morning to write, because that was when the coal fire was dying and I needed to keep it going.”

  The 12th hole. A 189-yard par-3. A pretty straightforward hole. Water down the left side.

  “After my third book was published, it became clear to me that I was never really going to be a popular writer in America. What I mean is all three books lost money for their publishers. The movie deal in L.A. had vanished. Colleen was pregnant with you, and it was time to settle down. I was thirty-eight. I think I was ready to settle into a life of teaching. I was hired at the University of Maine for one year, and while I was there and we were living in Bangor, I was hired into a tenure-track job at Colgate. We fell in love with the place. You took your first steps there. We were living in a dream until I got fired, and you already know that story. We moved home to Maine. I couldn’t get another teaching job, and it had been five years since my last book was published. I was working hard on a new novel, but because my first three books had lost money in New York, no one there wanted to even read this new novel.

  “We were broke when I was hired to work as a laborer building a mansion house on the shore through the winter. We worked ten-hour days outside in brutal weather. Some mornings it was twenty-five below zero when I walked down the beach to work. I began keeping a journal there, and eventually that led to a cover story in Harper’s Magazine and a book contract with one of the best editors in New York at Little, Brown that paid me more than I would have earned as a day laborer in five years.”

  ———

  The 13th hole. A 426-yard par-4. A good hole for us if you can avoid the trees up the left side from the tee. It’s a ninety-degree right-to-left dogleg.

  “About two months before the book was published, Disney bought the film rights for a ton of money. That’s when I took us all to Ireland to spend the summer there. You remember this part of the story. I think that taking you and your sisters to see where your great-grandmother had lived before she immigrated to America was one of the coolest things I ever did as a father.

  “Over in Ireland I got an e-mail from the top literary agent in New York, Lynn Nesbit. She had read my book and she knew about the Disney deal and she wanted to take me on. This was 1997. I was forty-seven years old, and Lynn got me four book deals in the next six years, including a two-book deal with Alfred A. Knopf. We bought our first house in Maine. And I was about to step into the one story that I was probably put on this earth to write. My mother’s story.”

  The 14th hole. A 420-yard par-4. Another hole that requires two good shots to have a chance for birdie. Must stay left of the bunker off the tee. At least there’s no water on this hole.

  “You know, from the time I was a kid, I knew there was something wrong with my father. As I said, he never was able to really look me in the eye. He was an old man now, and when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, he told me about my mother, who had died sixteen days after giving birth to me and my brother. She was only nineteen years old. They had been married for only nine months. I decided to find out all that I could about her and to write their love story. It was a book I called Of Time and Memory, and it was a pretty big hit. I went all over the country giving readings. I was on the Today show. The front page of USA Today. What I learned writing the book was that the only way my mother could have saved her life was by terminating her pregnancy. She made the choice to give up her life for us. When she did that, she was really choosing her babies over the boy who loved her, and my father barely survived. He worked at a print shop in those days; it was the job he took when he came back from the war. So he stood at the big Linotype press printing up the engagement announcement. Then the wedding invitations. Then the notice of the twin babies. Then the notice of the funeral.”

  The 15th hole. A 462-yard par-4. We must hit a three-wood here to avoid the creek that cuts across the fairway at 300 yards. From there it is a straight shot to a tricky green that slopes steeply off the back half to awful ground.

  “The month after the book was published, Oprah Winfrey began a new enterprise of making book videos that she hoped would do for books what music videos had done for records. My book was the first she chose, and I was sent out to Hollywood, where the brilliant young director Mark Pellington had been hired to direct the project. He took a film crew to Pennsylvania and produced a haunting thirty-three-minute film.

  “It was during the time I spent with Mark Pellington when I pledged myself to one day making a feature-length motion picture of my mother’s story. I spent ten months reading all the great scripts and in 2002, when Hallmark Hall of Fame bought the film rights to my novel Fallen Angel, I fought for the chance to write the script. I was in northern Ontario on the set of the movie, telling the star, Gary Sinise, about my mother’s story and the screenplay I planned to write about her life. And, Jack, those days on the set of the movie, with your mother, were the happiest days of my life. Beside our bed I have one photograph of Colleen sitting in Gary Sinise’s chair. I look at it every day, and for the last eight years I’ve told myself every morning when I open my eyes and every night when I close my eyes that someday I’m going to see your mother on the set of my mother’s movie.”

  The 16th hole. A 415-yard par-4. A good birdie chance for us if we can stay up the right side off the tee. We’ll take a three-wood off the tee and then go for broke here.

  “The summer before Of Time and Memory was published, I was up early with the radio on, National Public Radio. News of a bombing in Northern Ireland in the town of Omagh. The IRA had chosen that day to set off the bomb in the center of the town because that was the particular morning when mothers took their children into town to buy their back-to-school uniforms. Those innocent people slaughtered. Most of them were mothers and children. Hundreds wounded. We never think about the wounded. There are now several people in that town who had both feet blown off in the blast. And others who were so horribly disfigured that they wear masks over their faces. If you were to go to Omagh tomorrow, you would see the people in their wax masks.

  “I heard that radio news, and I knew that I had to go there right away to bear witness to what had happened because I had been there with you and your sisters and Mommy and we had been so happy.”

  The 17th hole. A 228-yard par-3. A tough hole with water up the left side and bordering the green and bunkers up the right side. If you land in these bunkers, you risk flying the ball off the green into the water on your second shot.

  “I wrote my next novel, Winter Dreams, living one winter in the Rusacks Hotel, on the 18th fairway of the Old Course. You were in love with golf, and I wanted to write a novel with a lot of golf in it. I fell in love with Scotland, and I poured myself into that novel. And then came seven years when I worked almost exclusively on the screenplay of my mother’s book. You know that story—3,628 pages of script and none of it h
as been good enough.”

  The 18th hole. A 578-yard par-5. Nightmare hole. Golf Digest has called this the roughest finishing hole in golf. If you take the direct route, it’s a tee shot with a 240-yard carry over a lake onto a narrow landing area. And then a second shot of 230 yards over a pond to another small landing area. If you go up the right, there’s another pond right in the middle of the fairway, and from there you’d need a perfect second shot. Impossible. We could easily make a 10 on this hole and miss the cut. There is a bailout area to the right off the tee, but it’s miles from the green.

  “So here we are at the end of my story, Jack. Down in Texas with you, chasing your dream. Back home my new novel has been published. My ninth book. Mommy is happy running her little preschool. You and your sisters are healthy.”

  “What’s next then?” he asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “What about writing?”

  “When I was home over the break and out hunting on the marsh one morning, I had a new vision for my mother’s movie. After we’re finished in Texas, I’m going to write a new draft of the script. We’ll see what happens.”

  “You need to get your mom’s movie made,” he said.

  DECEMBER 12, 2011

  Game Day. Colleen has been writing to me and telling me on the phone to please remember to give our son one hug each day and to tell him that I love him.

  I have not done this. Somehow I feel it would be awkward for both of us.

  But this morning as we walked to the practice range, I told him this: “Here’s what I love about how you play golf, Jack. First, you never make excuses. I’ve heard other golfers out here complain about the course, the wind, the greens. Not you; when you play like a dog, you admit it. Second, you refuse to play scared. And third, you never quit. We’ve been in four events so far, and in each one we’ve had one of our playing partners walk off after blowing up the front nine.”

  “We’ve got twelve tournaments here this winter,” he said. “This is our fifth. I’m just getting started, man.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “That’s good.”

  Then he asked me if I remembered telling him the story of Bobby Jones ripping up his scorecard and walking off the Old Course the first time he played there. “What hole was that?” he asked.

  “Number 11. The par-3,” I said.

  “We were walking past the bunker.”

  “Hill bunker. Front left.”

  “Yeah. You stopped at the bunker and told me the story.”

  “Of course I remember. And all the times I caddied there, I always told the same story to my golfers. He took three swings in that bunker and couldn’t get out. So he quit.”

  “The next time he played there, he won the British Open, is that right?”

  “Yep. Nineteen twenty-six. On his way to winning the Grand Slam. No one’s ever done it again. But Jones grew up privileged; maybe he thought that just because he had this beautiful swing and he played so well, he shouldn’t have to struggle on a golf course. He had to learn stuff that you already know.”

  Yesterday I surprised Jack and bowed out of our second practice round. I needed to rest my right knee. But most of all, I thought some time on his own out on the course would be a good break for him. He played his practice round well enough to win $45 from three other boys on the tour, and on the practice range this morning before round one began, it was nice to see him talking and joking around with the boys. I have to remember to step aside from time to time this winter.

  The story of this first round of our fifth tournament is that after failing to make the cut last week, Jack had a mountain to climb, and he began the round by making five straight pars, which included dropping two putts from twenty feet. He then landed the 573-yard par-5 in two and missed the putt for eagle, the putt for birdie, and the putt for par. But instead of falling apart, he righted the ship and stood on the 18th tee at six over par. We would make the cut barring some disaster on the final hole. I wanted to play safe up the right side, but he bashed his driver 358 yards over the lake to the narrow island only 23 yards wide, then took a five-iron the remaining 223 yards over the second pond, leaving himself eighteen feet past the hole for another eagle putt, which stopped one inch from the hole. So with the birdie, he shot five over par and will probably be in the middle of the leaderboard after round one. A hell of a comeback from our last tournament.

  The best thing that happened out there today was meeting Barry O’Neill, one of our playing partners, a brilliant young player from Waterford, Ireland, who finished with a 67 and has the lead going into tomorrow’s final round. Barry and I talked about Ireland all the way around, and when we finished, I asked him if he would play some practice rounds with Jack after our Christmas break, heading into our final six events. “It would mean a lot to me,” I said to him. “There’s really nothing I can teach Jack out here.”

  “He hits the ball a fuckin’ mile,” he said when he shook my hand. Then he said, “Any father who goes to Scotland at age sixty to become a caddie for his boy is a hero to me. I’d be honored to help your son.”

  You’ve got to love the Irish!

  DECEMBER 13, 2011

  A skirmish in the hallway just after 4:30 this morning. A man’s angry voice. A door slamming. Children crying from the bottoms of their hearts. I cracked open my door, and this is what I saw: The man lumbering down the hallway toward the exit. The woman, maybe twenty years old, in a polka-dot dress that was a foot too short and ripped open up one side. Her four children, all under age five, hanging on her arms and legs as if they were afraid of being washed away in another flood. Before I could close my door, the woman turned to me and asked if I could help her. I’m ashamed to admit this, but my first thought was: five years ago, four children ago, a hundred pounds ago, didn’t she have a fine chance to make par, standing on the tee, the sun is shining, it’s a straightforward par-4, and somehow you end up making a 10, and you’re out of the match before it’s scarcely begun. Life slips away so easily.

  She asked me for $5 for bus fare. I gave her a little more than that.

  ———

  Instead of driving up the left side of the fairway on the 1st hole, Jack pushed his drive right, which placed us among tall trees. I wanted him to punch out and go for the green in three on this opening par-5. But he went for it and hit a spectacular shot that cut around the trees and landed in a green-side bunker. His birdie putt lipped out. Then he lipped out a par putt on number 2, and then another par putt on number 3, and he hung his head and never picked it up again the whole round except on the par-5 6th hole. We were facing 268 yards over water and trees to reach the green in two after his drive. I started to hand him a five-iron to play safely right of all this. He took his hybrid instead. I was thinking, How stupid is this? The objective is to make a birdie on this hole, and we can be putting for a birdie if we play this second shot safely and take a wedge to the flag. His shot clipped a branch about a hundred feet high and fell into the water. Not our last stupid shot of the day. The killer was the harmless par-3 number 8. We were standing three off par on the tee and swinging pretty well. The pin was in the middle of the green. To me it was a sucker pin, because going for it and missing even slightly left meant the ball kicks off the green into the water. I said nothing. I just watched the ball fly straight for the pin, land slightly left, and skip off into the water.

  We let this round slip away because of stupid decisions. And so what that he hit two amazing shots on number 18 to be putting for an eagle? I’m sick of amazing shots. I just want to play smart shots and make pars. And I said nothing, but I am growing tired of this now. I know that every father who ever played golf with his son would consider it a dream to be caddying for his kid on a pro tour. But I am beginning to think that I can do nothing as a caddie or a father to get through to Jack that if he isn’t more patient out here, he’s never going to turn a corner. He is killing himself now, I can see this clearly. And this isn’t easy for me to admit, but
the truth is we are not working together. We’re miles apart. Today by the 7th hole I would have taken a year splitting rocks in a quarry rather than caddie another round for my son.

  DECEMBER 13, 2011, TUESDAY NIGHT

  Maybe there’s a lesson here. If you can climb out from under your disappointment and take a six-pack of beer to a Tin Cup range and pound a million balls side by side under the stars while the armadillos race tumbleweed across a field lit up like a carnival, there are things between fathers and sons and golfers and caddies that get resolved. In the first place you can talk to each other without actually talking to each other because you’re just hitting golf balls. And then there’s the rhythm of the swing, which seems to carry the words. With the pressure off, I began by saying, “Can you imagine that we ever ended up in a place as strange as Texas?”