Fairway Phenom (4 page)

It was Friday afternoon, and Malik was missing a big softball game going on in the park. He’d begged his mother to get somebody
else to do the job. But no — she was not about to spend good money when she could get Malik to baby-sit. As Malik had once
put it in a moment of rare sarcasm, “Why run when you have a son?”

So here he was, baby-sitting his little sister while all the other guys were out having fun. And on top of everything, Keisha
was throwing one of her tantrums. “I want chocolate ice cream!” she shrieked over and over again. It didn’t matter how many
times Malik told her there wasn’t any, that there was only maple
walnut. “Chocolate! Chocolate!” she kept repeating at the top of her little lungs.

Malik kept offering her other kinds of treats, hoping she’d calm down, but nothing seemed to work. He was losing patience
now. He’d been trying to find out how much golf cost at Dyker Beach. First he’d called information, but he’d gotten the number
wrong because Keisha was bellowing so loudly. So he’d had to call a second time. Now he was listening to a taped message on
Dyker’s phone line telling him how much it cost and lots of other stuff he couldn’t hear over the racket his sister was making.

“I said shut up!” he finally exploded.
Weird,
he thought.
I sound just like old Mr. Quigley used to…
.

Keisha, terrified, backed away from him, her shrieks fading to quiet whimpers. Malik turned his attention back to the phone.
The taped message had gotten to just the part he wanted to hear:

“… weekdays, twenty-five dollars. Children under the age of sixteen, seven dollars Monday through Thursday, ten dollars Friday
through Sunday. Nine-hole children’s rate, four dollars Monday through Thursday, seven dollars Friday through Sunday.”

There. Ten dollars. That and two rides on the RR subway line came to exactly thirteen dollars. His allowance would just cover
it, with enough left over for a cold drink and a candy bar. Man, he thought, his mom really should give him more if she expected
him to baby-sit. It wasn’t fair — especially not with a kid like Keisha!

The kitchen door banged open and Luis barged in. “Yo! We won, homey! Seven–three! We kicked booty! I hit a triple!”

“All right!” Malik said, high-fiving his friend, then sighing sadly. “Wish I could have been there.”

“You
should
have been there!” Luis said, oblivious to Malik’s sadness. “It was outrageous. We’re gonna do it again tomorrow. You wanna
come?”

“Tomorrow?”
That was when he was going golfing!
“Um, I think I’ve gotta do something tomorrow. You’re not playing Sunday?”

“I don’t know, man. Can’t you get out of whatever you’re doing? We need you — they’re bringing in some ringer from Park Slope
to pitch for them.”

“Yeah, but like I said…”

“Well, what’s so important?” Luis wanted to know. “Your mother making you do stuff?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s right,” Malik lied. “You know how she is.” He felt bad, blaming it on her — but not
that
bad. She’d made him miss today’s game, hadn’t she? She deserved it. And anyway, he couldn’t tell Luis the real reason. Luis
would tell everybody, and they’d laugh him clear out of Brooklyn.

He could have canned his plans to go to Dyker, but he didn’t. He’d been thinking about playing golf all week, and he was determined
to go — softball or no softball.

The next morning, Malik waited till after breakfast to make his getaway. Telling his mom he was going to play softball (even
bringing his mitt along for effect), he got his clubs out of the closet and snuck them down the hall.

The worst thing would have been if Keisha had seen him. Of course, she’d immediately say something stupid like, “What are
you doing with that bag of sticks?” And his mother would hear, and she’d put two and two together about the light globe he’d
broken. She’d take his clubs away, and that would be the end of golf for him, forever.

But Keisha, luckily, was watching Saturday morning
cartoons on television. Translation: She was totally hypnotized. She never even saw Malik walk past her to the front door.

Ten minutes later, he was riding the RR toward Eighty-sixth Street, his clubs clattering in the bag as the train rocked back
and forth. He caught passengers looking at him, and he wondered what they were thinking. “Wow, he’s a real golfer!” or “Who
does that punk kid think he is, with his budget golf bag and those beat-up clubs?” Malik tried to look cool, like he did this
every weekend, but he wasn’t sure he was pulling it off.

He got off at Eighty-sixth Street and walked the four blocks to Dyker, past luncheonettes and gas stations, grocery stores
and delis — typical Brooklyn street life. Then, all of a sudden, there it was. Big, old trees lining a high chain-link fence…
an old red-brick building with a circular cobblestone drive leading to it… a real golf course, right here in Brooklyn!

He walked into the building, fishing his ten dollars out of his pocket, and went up to the booth. “One,” he said to the lady
on the other side of the glass.

“Name?”

“Edwards. Malik Edwards.”

The lady looked at a list she had in front of her. “You have an appointment?” she asked.

“Appointment?”

“You need an appointment. Especially on weekends.”

“Huh?”

The lady sighed, exasperated. “Look, read this,” she said, shoving a brochure under the glass partition. “You want me to put
you on the waiting list?”

“How long is the wait?”

“At least three hours. No guarantees.”

“Dang!” Malik shook his head and slowly walked away, devastated. What was he supposed to do now? He’d already missed the start
of the softball game. By the time he got back, it would be over.

That stupid Keisha!
he thought. If she hadn’t been yelling so loud, he would have heard about the appointment rule on the taped phone message.
Now he’d gone and wasted his whole day!

He felt like throwing his crummy old clubs in the garbage, right back where they belonged. Malik stormed out of the building,
thinking he would just
hop the RR right back home and forget the whole thing.

But he’d gone out the wrong door. Now he was on a flat, flagstoned patio overlooking the course itself. From here, he could
see three greens, flags fluttering in the wind where they marked the holes. He could also see all or part of five holes —
long strips of closely mown grass stretching away into the distance.

There were golfers everywhere — out on the course, standing by a booth where a man in a green shirt took their tickets, sitting
at tables on the patio, eating and drinking.

Malik felt like he was in a trance. It was just like on TV, only real! And he was a part of it, even if he didn’t have an
appointment. With his bag and his cool attitude, he was sure nobody knew he didn’t have an appointment. Hey, even though he
was only on the waiting list, he belonged here as much as anybody else. And when they called his name, he’d hand over his
ten dollars and step up to the first tee, just like the rest of them!

A man on the hole marked 18 shouted and leapt into the air as his putt went into the hole. Malik
remembered the feeling from miniature golf. He couldn’t wait three hours just sitting around here — he had to
do
something!

He saw a green just off the patio where there were several little flags. Three or four golfers were putting multiple balls,
practicing their shots. Malik took his bag and went over to join them.

He soon found that putting on grass was different from putting on the carpet at mini golf. It didn’t have any windmills or
waterfalls, but it was better than carpet. The ball went truer, and you had to hit it just right. Malik forgot about the time,
and when he next looked at his watch, half an hour had gone by.

He was tired of putting, though. He spent another half hour watching golfers hit their tee shots, like at the driving range,
except instead of a square of carpeting, there was a closely mown square of grass. Some of the shots were awesome, just like
on TV. Malik watched for a long while before getting bored again.

This was going to drive him insane. How could he possibly wait two more hours?

He couldn’t. Malik decided to take a tour of the course from outside the fence. It would give him a
chance to see the course before he got to play it. Hoisting his bag over his shoulder, he walked through the building and
back out onto Eighty-sixth Street. Then he turned the corner on Twelfth Avenue and headed toward the bay.

On his left was the ninth hole — he could tell by the flag. Across the street, on his right, there was what looked like a
college campus. A sign, bordered by beautiful flowers, said “Poly Prep School.” Inside the gate were well-kept athletic fields,
looking even greener than the golf course. There were red brick school buildings. And now, coming through the gates of the
school, were four boys about Malik’s age, pulling brand new golf bags on wheeled carts.

The boys were dressed in khaki shorts and polo shirts, and they wore matching green hats with gold lettering that said “Poly.”
Obviously, they were headed for Dyker. And, of course, they had an appointment. Rich boys like that always had appointments
for everything, made for them by their parents, their teachers… whomever.

Malik hid behind the trunk of an old tree while the boys passed by, so they wouldn’t see him toting
his ratty old bag. When they’d turned the corner, he resumed his walk along the fence.

About a hundred yards farther on, he stopped. Someone had made a hole in the fence large enough for Malik to squeeze through.
On the other side of the hole was a tee. A sign at the side of it said, “7th hole. 430 yards. Par 4.”

There was no one in sight on either side of the fence. Taking a deep breath and making a bold decision, Malik pushed through
the gap in the chain link and onto the golf course.

If he’d been rich, Malik reasoned, he wouldn’t have had to baby-sit his stupid little sister. He’d have heard the part of
the phone message about appointments and he’d be playing right now. It was society’s fault, he told himself. Those four boys
probably never had to baby-sit or do anything else to earn their allowances. He just bet it was true.

Armed with this reasoning, Malik took out a ball and his longest club — the one with the wooden head and the broken neck and
the number one on the bottom. Looking around on the square of mown grass, he saw two white cubes marking the edges of
the spot he was supposed to hit from. All around were pieces of the wooden things Malik had found in his golf bag — obviously,
these were tees, and worked the same as the rubber ones at the driving range! Pleased with himself for figuring this out,
Malik took a tee out of his bag, forced it into the hard ground, and placed the ball on it.

He was ready. He stepped up to the ball, just like that guy Al at the driving range had taught him, and swung — nice and slow
and easy. The ball soared high in the air, and landed way out in the middle of the mown area of grass!

“Whoa!” Malik breathed, amazed and pleased. Putting the club back in his bag, he strode off toward his ball, strutting like
a world-class golfer.

There were four golfers on the green in front of him, but Malik figured he could hit again safely — he was still plenty far
from the hole. As he stepped up to the ball to hit his second shot, another foursome walked onto the tee behind him.

“Hey you!” he heard them shouting at him. “Get off the hole!” He could see them waving at him, obviously angry. But he didn’t
care. He was almost halfway to the green — he figured if the hole was
430 yards long, he had to be out at least 180. They couldn’t catch up to him, and they wouldn’t take their shots for fear
of hitting him.

Or would they?

Malik hit his second shot — another beauty, except it tailed off to the right and into a sand trap. Malik knew about sand
traps from watching golf on TV. They were bad places for a golfer to be. He wondered what club to use to get out of one.…

The golfers on the green had already gone by the time Malik got to his ball. The foursome behind him — all big, tall, fat
guys who waddled when they walked — were still yelling occasional curses at him. Malik couldn’t make out exactly what they
were saying, but he got the general idea. If they ever caught up with him, he’d be in big trouble.

Malik hit his sand shot in a hurry, using the shortest club he had — the one that said SW. But he only drove the ball deeper
into the sand. Again and again he swung until finally he made contact — and the ball sailed way over the green and into some
woods on the far side.

Malik hiked up the steep hill to the green, and then past it into the thick woods. Here, the land
sloped sharply downhill to the fence that fronted Twelfth Avenue. There was lots of undergrowth, and Malik considered himself
lucky to spot his ball without a difficult search through the brambles.

Except it
wasn’t
his ball — it was a brand-new one, much nicer than any of the ones he had. Malik took it and stuffed it in his golf bag, then
looked around some more. He spotted another ball behind some weeds, also new, also not his. This ball, too, went into the
zippered pocket of his bag.

Within two minutes, Malik had gathered seven balls, most of them as good as new, to add to his collection — and he still hadn’t
found his own! He wanted to stick around, but he knew if he delayed much longer, the mean foursome behind him would be within
range. He might get caught here, in the fenced-in corner of the course, where there was no escape except by leaving his bag
behind and scaling the fence in a hurry.

He went back up the steep slope to the green. Just as he was about to crest the top of the hill, he heard their voices from
the other side:

“You see that kid anywheres?”

“If I get my hands on him, I’m gonna teach him a lesson he won’t forget!”

“Hey, over on the tee — you see a little kid around? He snuck right on the course at the seventh tee!”