The Feathery (2 page)

It would be an 18-hole money match backed by Mr. Brown of Balgarvie at 200 pounds. Hugh would give Dunn a stroke on every 6
^th
hole. He confided to me that three strokes was a lot to give Dunn, but it was a number dictated by the Society of St. Andrews Golfers.

His caddie reached into Hugh’s wicker basket and pulled out a McEwan made long-nose driving club. James ran his hand over the smooth blond thorn wood and seemed proud McNair would use a club made by his father.

"
Ye’ll put one past those Dunn gutty balls, Mr. McNair," the caddie said.

Hugh took the club in his hand and gave James a look he may have wished would quiet him on the tee. It didn’t, and the caddie announced his golf ball theory.

"
Mr. Dunn’s smooth new gutty ball might fly farther later on if nicked by his miss-hits," Hugh’s caddie said.
Dunn frowned and said, "would ye be keeping your lad quiet on the tee, Hugh?"
Hugh’s smile turned to a look of concern. "I’ll try to do that, Willie," he said.
The caddies told me a story about gutty balls. They’d said players not happy with newly purchased gutta-percha balls would give them to their caddies to whack around, and the more they were scarred, the better they flew.
The McEwan lad placed the feathery on a pinch of earth. Hugh took a practice swing with his stance wide over the ball and seemed to be looking at a church steeple target well beyond the links. His eyes went to the ball, and he placed the McEwan long-nose driving club behind it.
A smooth, deliberate swing of the driver brought the thorn wood head down to impact the ball. I heard a pleasant slap as the leather ball filled with feathers was met by the thorn wood driving club on the right spot. The bull hide must have compressed for an instant until the energy within the goose down recoiled, releasing the ball to flight. It flew from the tee on a high, climbing trajectory and soared upward and outward. The ball sustained lift for several seconds until gravity overcame the thrust of flight, and it dropped to the earth. It looked to be well over 200 yards from the tee. A loud cheer went up from the gallery.
Dunn’s smooth gutty did not hold so long in the air and was propelled at least 25 yards behind Hugh’s. It inspired only polite applause from the crowd.
After nine holes, the match was level at a score of 41 for both players. It was a different story on the final nine when McNair went five strokes up on Dunn with only two holes left.
Hugh was playing the best round of his life and kept it going at the 17
^th.
When they reached the 18
^th
tee, McEwan’s smile was broad as if he knew his hero would exceed his own record score of 81. He placed the feathery on a pinch of sand and I was within earshot when he told Hugh, "some wind has come up behind ye back, knock yer feathery oot lang with this McEwan club, Mr. McNair."
He handed Hugh the thorn-wood driver. It was a solid drive. I paced it off to its resting place 240 yards straight down the fairway. I asked those St. Andrews men following the match if they’d seen any other drive go that distance. They all claimed it was the longest drive ever on the 18
^th
. The feathery rested in a good lie for his second shot and, before Hugh could ask for it, his caddie pulled a long spoon out of the wicker carrier handing it to his player.
Hugh hit a perfect shot that bounced onto the 18
^th
green where a crowd was waiting.

Word spread to the avid golfers and golfing fans of St. Andrews that McNair was on the verge of a record, and they were on hand to bear witness to the miraculous event. All were hushed as he stood over his putt. Hugh stroked it well, and the ball dropped feather and leather silent into the hole for a 3, and a record score of 78 strokes. A loud roar went across the links and could’ve reached the center of St. Andrews. Those townspeople who hadn’t made it to the match most likely knew what the cheer meant.
Hugh was congratulated by Dunn, whom he beat by six strokes. He hesitated before walking across the green to shake his caddie’s hand, seemingly concerned on what might be said by James.
And his concern was well founded. The McEwan lad standing next to me said in a loud voice to Hugh, "did ye know Mr. Dunn broke his spoon club against the hardness of the gutty at the seventh?" Then the lad turned to me and said, "write that in your paper, sir."

I saw Willie Dunn’s grimace.
Two men hoisted Hugh up on their shoulders to carry him to his shop. His caddie skipped blissfully along behind. The lads put Hugh down in front of his shop knowing he would join them later at the society’s club room to take a drink from the Claret Jug, a tradition whenever a golfer from St. Andrews prevailed over one from Musselburgh.

I went with Hugh into his shop and to his desk. He took up a quill and inscribed his score of
78
below
HUGH
and the
26
pennyweight on the feathery. He placed the ball in a wooden box along with the record score card signed by the Secretary of the Society of St. Andrews Golfers. He slipped the cover into grooves on the box and slid it forward to closure.
His caddie was standing by the desk watching him mark the feathery. James McEwan still had the wicker basket of clubs slung over his shoulder.
Hugh withdrew the long-nosed driver Douglas McEwan made for him. With the same quill he wrote
HUGH
and
78
on the thorn wood head and handed it to James, saying, "Keep this club in the McEwan family, James, and don’t be using it to poke down rabbit holes when hunting with your ferret."
It was the proper trophy to reward his caddie with on the record day I’d spent at St Andrews with Hugh McNair, a great champion.

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
2004

I
t was eight o’clock on an all-blue-sky Sunday morning.
Z
achary Beckman and his son, Scott, were getting ready to leave their custom colonial style home for a morning of golf. Diane Beckman entered
the large country kitchen wearing a white silk robe. She was a woman who defied any disheveled, first thing in the morning appearance. Each of her real silver blond hairs had been combed in place. Her attractive face with high cheekbones held a bronze tennis court tan. Dianne’s robe covered the hint of a well formed five-foot-nine inch body developed lithe and slender by spending most of her leisure time on that same court. Those features made her true age of thirty-eight seem years below that number. Her large blue eyes widened and then quickly narrowed to a squint before she spoke.

"Golf again, Zachary?" She angrily confronted her husband. "We’re supposed to play a tennis match at ten with the Swansons. He’s a large developer," she said, her voice reaching a high pitch, "and I need him."

"Sorry, Diane, but Scott has his heart set on golf with me today."

Diane turned in a white silk flourish and stormed out of the kitchen. Zachary told Scott to wait in the car then followed Diane upstairs toward their bedroom. He opened the same door that was slammed shut a few minutes before, and entered the large master bedroom with a four post bed and oriental rugs scattered in places to cover the polished oak flooring.

"No excuses or apologies, Zack. It’s always golf, golf, golf. Damn golf. I hate it! And you spend all your spare time with Scott…none with me." Her voice was shrill, on the edge of a scream.

Zachary Beckman was only an inch taller than his wife at five-ten. His hair was black with a slight sprinkle of gray flecks hinting of more to come after his age of thirty-five. His face was not a classic handsome one, but was made rugged good looking by a broken nose not set properly after a rugby match. His body was toned, not only by golf and tennis, but by daily work-outs. His steel gray eyes expressed a marine pilot’s intensity when he said, "there’s a good excuse this time, Diane."

She looked at him through some tearing . "What might that be?"

"I was going to wait and tell you tonight when we were at the restaurant. But here goes." Zack took a deep breath. "I’ve volunteered to go to Iraq and I wanted to play golf once more with Scott before I left."

 "Are you crazy? Iraq? Why?

"The Marine Reserve trained me to fly helicopters in combat, and I’ve got to go."
Diane glared at her husband in disbelief. "You volunteered for this? When do you leave, and for how long?"
"This coming Tuesday, for a year, unless I’m extended."
She glowered at him in disbelief for ten seconds before she decided to take two steps forward toward the arms waiting to encircle her. "Oh, Zach, I don’t like this one bit. Please be careful. Don’t make me a real widow instead of a golf widow."
Zachary Beckman laughed. "I’ll make sure of that."

Later, when he was with his son on the 15th hole at Balboa, Zack told Scott about his going to Iraq.
Scott’s eyes filled with tears. "How long, dad?"
"Should be home in a year."
Zachary stared at his son for a long time. Scott had the same silver blond hair and blue eyes as his mother. But growing fast at twelve he’d
be taller than her. His hair had started to meander down below the neck line…not Marine Corps length, but Zachary wouldn’t rebuke Scott about
his hair style, instead he took a digital camera out of his golf bag and said, "I’d like to take a picture with me of you swinging a golf club…"
Scott took his stance on the tee and swung a driver from his junior golf set while his dad clicked the camera several times.
When Zack finished taking the pictures, he looked into Scott’s golf bag. "At the rate you’re growing, you’ll need an adult set of clubs next
year. I’ll buy you some when I get back."

CAMP VICTORY, IRAQ

E
leven months into his tour in Iraq, marine Captain Zachary Beckman was in the backseat, pilot’s position, of an AH-1W Cobra attack-helicopter starting out on what he hoped would be one of his last missions before returning stateside. After the pre-flight activities, he looked at the snap-shot of his son, Scott, taped in a blank spot between several instruments on the fire-wall in front of him, and smiled.

As the Cobra lifted off, there was transmitted banter with his fire control operator in the seat in front, about the mission and course to the target area. They flew low and fast over the desert for thirty minutes until the reported insurgent strong-hold was reached. They sighted their target. It consisted of two wood frame buildings. As Zachary started his pass to launch rockets at the buildings, all hell broke loose from both sides, front and rear. The helicopter started taking multiple hits from heavy caliber machine guns on the ground.

"It’s a trap!" Zachary yelled, trying to bank the Cobra in a climbing, tight turn away from the ground-fire, but on that heading ran smack into two Stinger missiles shoulder launched by a pair of Iraqi bad guys. What happened next took place in fifteen seconds. The Cobra chopper started flying erratically because several hits severed a rotor blade and pierced some hydraulic control lines. Zachary tried, with the little control left, to make a hard-landing. But the Cobra was too low and moving too fast. The chopper hit the desert floor with a metal crunching impact followed by a ball of flame.

First to reach the burning helicopter was a thirteen-year-old Iraqi boy. The wreckage was still burning fiercely when he got there. He picked up a singed snapshot from the sand and studied it for a moment. It was a picture of a kid swinging a strange object. The boy shrugged his shoulders, tossed the photo away and sat down on the sand to wait for the wreckage to cool so he could search it for a much better prize.

T
he rituals of the wake and funeral took on an unreal form for the late Captain Zachary Beckman’s thirteen-year-old son, Scott. The funeral parlor lighting came mostly from four large candles above the closed casket. Burning wax combined with the floral offerings to fill the viewing room with a sickening sweet smell. Relatives, friends and a detail of marines glided slowly passed the casket. Scott and his mother greeted each and listened to their whispers of the proper funeral words. No tears came from Scott Beckman because his sorrow was frozen stoically in place.

Deep anger stayed with Scott at the graveside on a hill, under cloudy skies. Standing near a solitary palm tree, he watched his father’s casket being slowly lowered into a dark rectangular hole. After the burial words from a rabbi, a marine officer in dress uniform handed Scott’s mother a neatly folded American flag. As she took the flag in both hands, a group of Cobra helicopters flew below the clouds and low over the cemetery.