No, Wynnona’s life and death was not interesting to me, sitting there all that night in the trailer of death. There are lots of Big Wyns in this day and age. They might not be sports stars and media darlings and they usually don’t end up lying crumpled in a bloody heap…but they are out there. They are the businessmen who like to manage using fear as the primary motivational tool. They are the husbands and sometimes the wives who exact some measure of revenge against the helplessness of living in this modern world by making miserable the lives of all those close around. They are the pool-hall bullies with the meaty fists and the college professors with the smarmy repartee. They are all those who are not happy unless the world is remade to their liking, and that’s such an impossible job that they are rarely, if ever, happy.
No, I spent that long night and morning thinking about Harold, the little guy who had finally had enough. That doesn’t happen often enough. The little guys like Harold are used to taking abuse, putting up with the bullying, making the best of it, shrugging their shoulders and putting their best foot forward.
Like most of the little guys, Harold did not demand much. He wanted peace and quiet, some time to do some fishing, perhaps a little respect in place of affection. But even those small demands are too much for the Big Wyns of the world, who are threatened by any demand which does not originate with or have a direct bearing upon themselves.
Harold’s story would not play in the media, I knew. The little guys are rarely, if ever, heard. That’s why they’re little guys. He would be remembered as that crazy guy who blew away that famous golf lady. Not as a man abused for years who finally had enough and did something. Even if it was a drastic something.
I remembered Wyn’s phrase when I had confronted her with the known truths in her windowed suite of rooms. A bunch of damn mumbo jumbo. Sitting there amid all the expired lives oozing blood onto the floor of Harold’s trailer home, that phrase kept coming back to me. In fact, it was what Harold had said when I suggested that he didn’t have to live his life under Wyn’s thumb. It was what Wyn had said when she realized that her house of cards was about to come crashing down on her. A bunch of damn mumbo jumbo. After sitting helpless in that trailer for five or six hours, watching three bodies cool, I realized it was the perfect summation of what life is all about. A bunch of damn mumbo jumbo.
I felt badly for Harold and for all the other little guys in the world. It stayed with me for the next day or two, while I was floating in and out of interviews with the police and the media and the police again. I kept it to myself, bottled up inside, and instead simply reported the events as they had happened. I did my job.
The headlines were screamers, including the one over the story I filed with my editor in Boston. He thought it was good enough to copyright and enter for some big national reporting prize. I told him I thought that was all a bunch of damn mumbo jumbo. After all, my account was just a factual report of events. It said nothing about the little guys having taken about as much as they could take.
The final round of the tournament was cancelled and for a few days, it appeared that the future of the Ladies Professional Golf Association was in some doubt as well. With both the commissioner and the chairman of the player’s council murdered, followed by a flood tide of scandal and rumor — Casey Carlyle was arrested as an accessory to the murder of Benton Bergmeister — the idea of continuing to play a game seemed suddenly irrelevant. Honie Carlton was treated for shock and seemed to be doing well back in the hospital. But she would, no doubt, have nightmares for years to come.
I was inundated with requests to spill everything I knew to all the network news and talk shows and the gossip tabloids. Since I could never tell the difference between the two, I declined to be interviewed by either one. Monday afternoon, I was packing my bags and beginning to think longingly again of my quiet and peaceful little beach shack on the bluff above the sea, where I could be alone and think. The telephone range. It was Mary Beth Burke.
“Hacker,” she said. “Some of the girls and I have been meeting and we’ve reached some decisions and we want you to be the first to hear them. Can you come down?”
I went. I figured the immediate prospects for the Tour were pretty bleak. Sponsors would probably withdraw in droves, clubs would cancel their contracts and the TV boys would be running hellbent for the hills to avoid this juicy sex scandal. The LPGA could expect excellent coverage from the supermarket tabloids for months to come.
In the hotel meeting room, most of the Tour’s big-name players were seated around a long table. Patty Sheehan, Betsy King, Rosie Jones, Nancy Lopez, Pat Bradley and a few others. Sybil Montgomery was there, and Mary Beth Burke appeared to be chairing the whole thing. They all looked curiously at me when I walked in and sat down.
“Hacker,’ Burkey said, “We’ve been having a real cat fight in here for the last few hours, but we’ve scratched it out and come to some agreements.”
I looked around the table. I could see on their faces that the discussion had been both candid and brutal.
“We’ve all agreed that the one thing that’s most important to us is that we keep playing golf,” Burkey said. “All of us in here, and I’m sure just about every girl on the Tour, agree that playing the game is what we’re all about. The money, the glory, the fame and fortune stuff is all well and good, but it ain’t worth shit if you can’t play the game.”
She looked around the table and seemed to draw strength from the nods of agreement she saw.
“Now, we ain’t stupid and we know that there’s an awful long road ahead of us,” she continued. “We’re gonna lose sponsors, we’re gonna lose tournaments, we’re gonna lose TV money. Hell, even the golf-ball people might not give us range balls!” There was laughter all around. “But we’ve finally agreed this morning that we don’t give a rat’s ass! We’re gonna dig our heels in the dirt and keep on playing. If it turns out we have to play for a hundred bucks first place money in some bohicket muni in front of seven people and a dog…well by damn, we’re gonna do it. Because that’s what’s important…playing the game. We figure once people understand that we’re serious, they’ll come back to watch.”
Mary Beth looked around the table again.
“This time, we’re gonna run the show the right way,” she continued. “Everyone in this room is gonna be responsible. We’ve held our first election already, and our lil ole British princess has been officially selected and duly sworn in as our new head bitch!”
Sybil gazed at me with eyes bright and alive and proud.
“So that’s about it,” Mary Beth concluded. “We just wanted you to hear about this because of all you went through in the last few days, and we hope that you’ll see fit to give us another chance to prove ourselves some point down the road.”
It was my turn to study the faces of the famous golf professionals gathered around the conference table. I saw resolve and determination and pluckiness. I saw also peace and that new-found inner power that belongs only to those little guys who decided to stop being little guys.
I stood up.
“When you get things straightend out and put on your first tournament, call me,” I said. “I’ll be there. And I’ll even pay my own way!”
They hooted and laughed as I turned away and headed for home.
JAMES Y. BARTLETT is an award-winning writer, editor and author. His work has appeared in dozens of magazines, including Esquire, Bon Appetit, Forbes FYI, and Hemispheres. He has published six nonfiction books about golf and is the author of the Hacker Golf Mystery series, published by Yeoman House Books. He lives in Rhode Island.
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Death from the Ladies Tee Page 20