Buck called out, “Hey, Lexi, looks like I’m going to be at that tournament on Saturday. You want to play too?”
Lexi stepped from the cart. “You want me to?”
“Heck yeah,” Buck called to her.
Carla’s eyes glistened. “Thank you.”
Buck gripped his driver, holding it out straight. “Since it looks like we’re skipping the Riviera, we’ll need a place to stay tonight.”
Without taking a practice swing, he addressed the ball and let his body take over. The ball flew out at a blistering speed.
He bent to pick up his tee. “But I might need a little help explaining the new sleeping arrangements to Art.”
Carla tilted her chin in the direction of the driving range where Art and Roberta were still talking. “Art’s not going to be concerned about you and me.”
Carla’s ball landed fifty yards behind Buck’s. She made the green with her fairway stroke, but her ball rolled downhill and back into the fairway.
For his second stroke, Buck took dead aim at the pin. The ball carried two hundred yards and hit the green stiff. He’d be putting for eagle.
He waited for her to take her third stroke and then together they walked to the green. The sky seemed to open up and Buck’s heart swelled with a joy that he’d always assumed would only come with a major win. Without breaking his stride, his hand found Carla’s, afraid if he didn’t touch her this majestic moment might disappear. The world receded and expanded at the same time, as though in a dream, clear-eyed and dazzling bright, the edges softened by genuine gratitude and awe.
Buck flicked a eucalyptus leaf off his line and then squatted behind his ball. It was ten feet from the hole, an uphill lie with no break in the line.
Carla leaned in from behind, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got a good lie.”
Yes, it was a good lie, the perfectly good lie. And he’d had it all along. But it took getting to this place before he could see that every mistake and misstep of the past, every loss and insult and injury he’d endured, had simply been mile-markers on the path that brought him to Carla.
With Art, Carla and he would make a life together, a fuller, richer life than he’d ever thought possible.
He struck the ball, setting the little white dimpled globe in motion, knowing he’d already won the only game that really mattered.
appendix
old caddie jokes
The weekend golfer declares at the start of a round, “I’m going to move heaven and earth to break a 100 on this course.”
His caddie replies, “Try heaven first, you’ve already moved most of the earth while you were at the range.”
On the third hole the golfer says, “My game is improving, don’t you agree?”
“Absolutely, you’re missing the ball much closer now.”
From the fairway, the golfer looks out at the green. “Think I can get there with a five iron?”
“Eventually.”
“You’re the worst caddie in the world.”
“No. That would be too much of a coincidence, if you ask me.”
“Well, please stop checking your watch. It’s a distraction.”
“It’s a compass, not a watch,” the caddie says.
The golfer picks up the ball from the rough. “This can’t be my ball, it’s too old.”
“You teed off a long time ago.”
“This is the most miserable course I’ve ever played on.”
“This isn’t the course, sir. We left that an hour ago.”
“I’m going to drown myself in the lake,” the golfer moans.
“Think you can keep your head down that long?”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rose Gonsoulin shares a home with Chloe, Lucy, and the Weasel. They live in a house built on Termite Hill in the Scorpion Ridge area of Rattlesnake Valley, Arizona. She is currently working on a historical novel about young Sam Houston.
The Perfectly Good Lie Page 22