A full stomach later, Pop drops me off at the Kensington Hills Country Club just before nine o’clock. Like on my first day, I sit on the green bench near the first tee. I calculate that if I bag a loop by 9:30, I’ll be home by three o’clock tops, just in time to get ready for the concert. I’ve only been to two real concerts in my life. The Beach Boys at Pine Knob and a fake Beatles band when I was twelve at the Masonic Temple.
While I’m daydreaming about the concert, Bobby Walton barks at me from his podium in front of the first tee. “Did you check in at the caddy shack?”
I shake my head, and he tells me to report to King across the bridge. Apparently I got a get-out-of-the-caddy-shack-free card for my inaugural round.
I descend the bridge to a sea of green shirts snapping towels. I wade through the crowd and enter the caddy shack. King sits in a chair with his boots on the counter behind a booth with a glass window, the kind you see at party stores in bad neighborhoods. A hearty knock on the glass and King looks up from Time magazine, and then glances down again to resume reading. I knock again and again.
“I’m not blind!” King shouts.
“Bobby Walton told me to report here.”
He closes the magazine cover, showing a drawing of President Carter under the title “Debacle in the Desert,” then takes his feet off the counter. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” He says this with a bothered, critical tone.
“Yeah, I just started Tuesday.”
“Sign your name here, pleon.” (I learn later that a “pleon”—a kid with ten loops or less—is the lowest form of caddy matter; even plebes rule over pleons.) King hands me a notepad with three columns for the three caddy ranks—honor, captain, apprentice. I scribble my name under the apprentice column. Just like at Holy Redeemer, I rank on the lowest rung on the ladder.
“When do I get to go out?” I ask King.
King coughs out a hoot. “When … I … call … your … name.”
“How long will that be?” I check my watch; it’s 10:15.
“We’ll get you out by high noon.” He opens his magazine. “Now go piss off, pleon.”
A soft knock. “Do I get paid for sitting around here? Is there a clock where I punch in or something?”
King whirls around, sticks his blond whale head out the open door, and rings a bell.
Silence.
Movement in the shack stalls. All eyes on me. Even the pinball players hold the silver balls in suspense on the edge of the machines’ flippers. “This pleon thinks he should get paid for sitting on his ass. Do you think we can find him some work?”
I’ve poked a hornet’s nest.
The caddies erupt in a chant. “Shithouse, shithouse, shithouse.”
“Gandy, get him the mop.”
A tall fellow with a cowboy hat, long sideburns, and brown dingo boots pulls out a mop and bucket from a small closet. I take Gandy for one of King’s henchmen.
“Congratulations, you get shithouse detail, pleon,” Gandy says. “It’s part of the initiation rite of all our boys and girls here at Kensington Hills Country Club.”
Gandy hands me a foul mop and bucket and leads me to the shithouse—a brick outhouse with two urinals and one toilet. I’m assaulted by the stink of urine and have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be paid for this work.
“Fill the bucket at the faucet outside the building.” He reaches into his pocket. “Here’s some soap. Scrub the floor and toilets. Get the boogers above the urinal. King always checks that.” He lifts his Stetson a tad off his forehead. “Oh, see that writing over there?”
I nod. In scrawled cursive above the urinal, someone has scribbled “Bogart’s an A-Hole.”
He points to the graffiti. “You best clean that up.”
“Who’s Bogart?” I mumble.
“Jesus, you really are a pleon,” Gandy remarks. “Mr. Bogart’s the caddy master. The head honcho. The big dick. You got a lot to learn.”
As water pours into the bucket, I stare at the bridge, tempted to run for it but come to my senses, not wanting to risk antagonizing King. It’d be curtains for caddying here. Instead, I decide to take my lumps and obey King’s orders. I mop the floor clean, using my fingernail to dislodge several pieces of dried boogers. I pour the dirty water down the drain and wash the floor one more time.
After my mop duty, I warm myself on a bench in the sun, wondering when my name will be called and checking my wristwatch every ten seconds. 11:30. I do a double take after noticing a priest carrying a golf club in one hand, sauntering down the bridge trailed by a caddy. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.
Four caddies play basketball on a concrete court, shooting the ball at two hoops with chained nets. Other caddies are playing horseshoes and smoking cigarettes. Taking pity on me, a kid who looks like he’s strolled off the movie set of Quadrophenia (I saw the flick last year at the midnight showing with Jason Sanders but fell asleep thirty minutes in) sits down next to me with his black hair cut mod-style, wearing punker Doc Martens boots and an Army parka, a mile too baggy for him, with a UK patch on the shoulder. His neck shows a small knife wound. A green caddy apprentice badge shines on his coat next to a bunch of other buttons with odd phrases: “Blackburn Mods!” “Scooters 4 Life,” “The Specials,” “Mods Are Back.”
He taps me on the shoulder. “Oi, mate. Can I scrounge a melvyn off ya.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. He pinches his thumb and index finger together, presses them against his lips, and puckers up. “Ya know, a cough and drag?”
I shake my head. “I don’t smoke, bloke.” He tells me his name is Owen Rooney and asks me how many loops I’ve carried.
“Just one, you?”
He flashes me a pair of fives. “Country cousin.” Just evolved past pleon stage. “You dig The Jam or The Chords?”
I’ve never heard of these British bands, so I change the subject. “Didn’t realize caddying would be this hard.”
“Not ’alf bad if you stick with it … How ’bout The Clash?” He pulls a short switchblade out of his pocket and starts whittling a small stick. “’ang in there. Gets easier on your bones after a few rounds.”
I give Owen a half smile, thinking maybe this kid isn’t half bad, and then I quiz him about what he knows of this country-club version of Lord of the Flies. “Aren’t there any golfers? What’s the deal with sitting around here all morning?”
“Cos loopers outnumber them twenty to one.” A rabbit’s foot hangs from his belt loop. “You’ve got to get ’ere early in the morning to get out straight away.”
Nothing worse than getting up before the sun rises. “That sucks.”
He whittles away on his stick. “Well, if you wanna avoid the queue, get ’ere around six in the morning.”
A roar comes from inside the shack. Through the window, I can see a group of caddies crowding around a pinball machine. I turn back to Owen. “I get up that early once a year.”
A kid across the way tosses a horseshoe and misses. A chain net swallows a basketball. Wood shavings fall on Owen’s black high-top boots. “Sounds like you just like milkin’ the day.”
“We drive to Florida every year for spring break to visit my cousins in Cocoa Beach,” I say. “My dad always stops at the same Holiday Inn just past Atlanta. He gets us up at the crack of dawn. I fall asleep in the car and wake up in the Sunshine State.”
“Never been, just Brighton Beach where the sky’s usually pissin’ rain.” He pauses. “It’s a bloody contest.”
“What is?”
“Seein’ who gets ’ere first.” A red, white, and blue basketball rolls over, and Owen kicks it back to a caddy in Deadhead threads. “Rat and Chip always get here first.”
“I’ve met Chip, but who’s Rat?”
“Don’t worry.” Owen trims his stick down to a sharp point at one end. “You stick ’round
long enough, you’ll meet ’im.”
I nod over at the shack. “What’s up with numbnuts?”
“King’s a real prick, so stay away from him.”
My newfound friend slips his knife back into his pocket, stands up, and then bends down, shoving the pointy end of the stick into the ground. He pulls out a golf ball from the pocket of his parka, and places it on his newly crafted tee on the grass between the shack and the basketball court.
“Grab me that ol’ twig behind you,” he says.
I hand him a rusted five-iron, leaning against the shack. He steps up to the ball, aims, and whacks the ball down the middle of the makeshift basketball court, over the fence, and out of sight across Kensington Road.
“Hey!” the Deadhead says.
Owen gives him the Italian salute, and says, “Piss off, maggot!” He gives me back the club like I’m his caddy and yanks his new tee from the ground, shoving it in his pocket.
Owen sits down with his back against the shack. “By the way, make sure you don’t let King see you leave any earlier than six o’clock, or you’ll be in his doghouse. A hard flick of the wrist, and a golf ball rises a mile above his head. “Bogart gets on his ass if he runs out of caddies.” The ball lands in his hand, and he pulls another golf ball from his parka and hurls it to the heavens.
“I need to get home by five because my friend’s got tickets to Springsteen at Cobo.”
“Sounds like it’s robin. Me brother Jake saw the bloke at Hammersmith Odeon.” Head still, pupils tracking the flight of the golf ball.
A blonde girl appears and leans against the shack, using the window of the building as a mirror to smear on lip gloss. She smacks her lips and gives herself a satisfied smile. She turns around in her white overalls, her eyes landing on us before she strolls into the shack.
“Hey,” I say, “get a load of her.”
Saturn’s dimpled moon crashes to Earth and bounces onto the court. “That be Gigi Arnold.”
Huh. Cute as a dumpling covered in vanilla pudding.
He exchanges his golf balls for a magnifying glass, roasts an ant on a sun grill, and turns it on the girl. “Lovely set of bacons.”
Don’t know if he means her legs or something else. “By the way, why do you do this?” Maybe he wants an Evans scholarship, too.
“Me three older brothers carried. Besides, we could use the bread. All goes into the family pot. Pocketed seven quid yesterday.” He tells me his family moved from England last fall, and I ask him where he lives now. “We’re artful dodgers at the Palms Motel, but Mum and Dad are searching for a new flat in the Valley. Hills might as well be posh Chelsea, and the links here’re beautaful.”
The Valley’s the poorest area in the county and to Hills kids might as well be Mars. Of course, Owen is from East London, practically another galaxy away.
King’s voice booms from the shack, shouting out names. Owen Rooney jumps up and dashes inside. He comes back out a few seconds later and says, “Check out some Bowie. I’ll start ya in the beginner class. See you baked, mate.”
Then he runs across the bridge in his clunky boots for his morning loop, stops, and yells back at me, “Do ya wanna play some golf with me Monday?”
I give him a thumbs-up. (Pop would love to see a golfer in the family besides himself; perhaps it’s something the two of us can do together as I get older.) I barely understand two words Owen says, but he seems nice enough for a Britwit, as Billy calls them, and it’s nice to meet a stranger in a strange land. I’m finding out Kensington Country Club is a place where you just learned on the go.
In the shack, a bunch of green shirts surround a pinball machine, coaxing a player, who I can tell is racking up bonus points by the sounds of the bell. The pinball machine theme is Charlie’s Angels, the trio of girls in their standard pose, toting guns, tight jeans, and cleavage. Farrah’s belt buckle earns a bonus point. The crowd sounds a collective groan and a high-pitched “Shit!” echoes throughout the shack. The game ends, and the crowd melts away. Gigi Arnold gives the machine a smack on the side with the palm of her hand, then saunters away. The machine chirps back at her. King calls her name to caddy, and she says, “’bout time, for fuck’s sake.”
After what seems like a lifetime, King calls my name for a loop. Across the bridge, Bobby Walton gives me a large brown bag even heavier than my first one. Another guest bag. This day I know where to line up, the holes to expect, and the basic rules. I look out at the sea of green turf and wonder on which hole I’ll drown.
A boy with a blue captain’s badge that reads “Timmy” inspects my bag. “Ha. You’ve got a hacker.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Timmy hasn’t even seen him hit yet. “How do you know?”
“His sticks are in tubes.” He turns up his snotty nose. “Only duffers use those.”
I peer down at my bag. Each club has its own plastic black tube like a sheath for a sword.
A wiry man with slick brown hair comes over and slaps me on the back. “We’ll have fun today, son.”
I hate back slappers, and I’m not your son. The member throws a tee in the air to get the party started. The tee lands, pointing toward my player. His tee shot rockets straight before comet trailing out of bounds. He hooks his mulligan (golf lingo for a do-over) too, and the ball disappears toward the fence. Timmy was right. The man would hook and hack all day long.
At the halfway shack at Number 9, Owen Rooney passes by me after filling out his caddy card on eighteen, and I ask him how his loop fared.
“’E’s a right Arnold.” (Arnold Palmer=farmer=spends all day in the rough.) Owen can go home, and it’s only 2:30. My group slow-pokes from tee to tee, but I’ll still easily make the Springsteen concert and have time for a quick nap before we go.
By 4:30, I finally make it to the eighteenth hole. I grab my caddy pay stub and jog toward the bridge, feeling the excitement build for the most epic night of my life, and wonder what song Springsteen will open with tonight. Probably something off Born to Run, like “Thunder Road” or “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” to get the crowd on its feet. Like that’s even necessary at a Springsteen concert. King appears from over the arch of the bridge and stops his cart next to me.
“Get in,” he says in a gentle, breezy tone, just like the bluebirds singing in the trees in the fine warm air this summer afternoon.
I wave King off, my mind a million miles away on E-Street in Bossland. “I’m going the other way.” Maybe he’ll open with “Spirit in the Night?” Golf carts with rattling clubs zoom by me and disappear across the bridge to the north course. Owen had told me if the famed south course was full, members have to settle on the eighteen-hole course on the other side of Kensington Road.
“Hop in, I’ll drive you,” King says, smiling. I hesitate but hop in the cart anyway. Perhaps he isn’t such an asshole after all. King pulls hard on the steering wheel, and the tires spin into a screaming U-turn. Straight back toward the first tee, not the caddy shack.
“Hey, where are you going?” I protest.
“I’m not going anywhere, but you are.”
A sonic boom rips through my heart. “But I have plans tonight.”
His foot floors the pedal. “Members come first. Your ass is mine while you’re still on country club grounds.” Brakes squeal to a halt on the cart path in front of the first tee. Bobby Walton hoists a gigantic red-and-yellow golf bag and plants it in front of my Converse high-tops. Three caddies loiter in the hot, boiling sun with bags at their feet. I figure Bobby Walton will excuse me from caddying because I have Springsteen tickets, but before I can ask him, an old man with black hair slicked back in vampire style steps out of a cave door next to the caddy bench. “Good, you found one, Walton.” The caddy master turns toward me. “What are you waitin’ for? Get out there!”
I stutter and mumble “But I have tick—” before stumbling out to the tee box
, dragging the golf bag with me, too scared to plead my case to Bogart. His tone makes it clear he’s in no mood to grant me a day pass.
An electric rainstorm is my last hope because steel clubs are lightning rods. But God’s floor is a swirl of blue and white colors with no black clouds in sight to save me. The only rain is dripping down my sunburned cheeks, which I rub away quickly with my green-striped caddy towel.
I can forget The Boss.
My heart sinks as deep as the sandy bunker I pass on the first green. A hate for everything in the world crashes down on me like a miniature Hindenburg exploding in my brain. Rocket will be wondering why I didn’t show and will probably call the morgue. He knows I wouldn’t miss The Boss unless I’m dead, which sounds good to me. But I can’t give up my future for one concert by quitting now. I try not to imagine the empty seat next to him in the front row at the concert.
A million trampled blades of grass later, I pretend I’m at the concert, where at least I get to make the song choices. Virginia’s Mensa-Netics technique of envisioning where you want to be in life is surprisingly helpful, but I’d never tell her that, so I decide to open with “Badlands” (my third all-time favorite Springsteen song) and close with “Blinded by the Light,” saving “Born to Run” for the encore.
Four dreadful hours later, while on the eighteenth green, I add “Rosalita” as the second encore and “Spirit in the Night” as the third. After I finish my round in darkness, I trudge across the bridge, turning my pay stub in to King.
In the empty shack, a lone light bulb hangs from a ceiling above King’s lopsided head. “You need a caddy shirt.” He disappears below the counter, emerges with a folded green-mesh shirt, and hands it to me. I unfold the shirt, admiring the country club crest—a horse’s head and golf bag. King eyes my pay stub. “You owe me a buck.”
I have to actually pay to miss Bruce & the E-Street Band?
“The shirt costs twelve fifty, you only made eleven-fifty for two rounds,” Bogart’s henchman continues. “You owe me a buck. You do know simple math, don’t you, pleon? Or don’t they teach you that at the flunky school you must go to?”
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