Fast Greens (8 page)

Around the tee there was the smell of burning air, as if the devil himself had grabbed a driver and tried to knock his ball into a hole where it could nestle a little closer to home.

Once again, the pressure was on Sandy. Looking at his clubs, he considered the task facing him. His hand hesitated, this time between the five-iron and the driver: safe or maybe sorry.

March cheered him on softly. “Swing away, Sandy. Show him how it's done.”

Sandy took out the driver.

It was a lovely swing, but just as he hit a light breeze came up in our faces. It was a lovely swing, but there was no sonic boom, no burning air. It was a lovely swing, but he wasn't Beast. The ball flew almost on the same track as Beast's, but it came down a few feet short of the opposite bank with a splash. The noise scared up a small flock of mallards who circled toward us, flashing their iridescent green and blue wings in a banking turn as they headed off in search of a course with better golfers.

“Po' little ducks,” said Fromholz.

It was up to March. He pulled out a three-wood with a little apology.

“Us short knockers gotta use a wood just to lay up.”

Taking the club back slowly as if he was in no hurry to win, March made his prettiest swing of the day.

“Most beautimous,” said Fromholz.

But Sandy knew better. “Hit soft,” he whispered. “Hit soft.”

It didn't hit soft. The ball hit hard on the sloping fairway and bounced left, picking up speed and barreling toward the water.

“Whoa ball!” yelled March. “Whoa! Hold up now! Take a rest! Grow hair!”

But the ball didn't grow hair. It just kept rolling.

“Have a wreck! Hit something! Stop!”

It hit something—the water—and sank like a stone.

March began to holler at the ball as if it had stepped heavily on his bunions.

“That's a crock of fig-plucking rat-spit! Hey, ball! Why don't you take a flying—”

March might have given us an interesting tirade if he hadn't been cut short by a fit of coughing that blew up his face like a red balloon until the muscles in his upper body were constricted to rigor, his strong right hand squeezing the life out of his driver. We stood frozen in tableau as the color drained from his face, the muscles gave way, and the driver dropped to the ground. Gasping for breath, he stumbled toward his golf cart and pulled out his medicine. Somehow he managed to get a couple of pills in his mouth, and within moments the attack was over, and March was once again looking and acting his own self.

“Goddam bum ticker, that's what I got.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Whew! Sweet Mother of Jesus, I hate that! Good thing we're just playing nine.”

“Hey, old-timer,” said Fromholz. “You look like you been ate by the coyotes and shit off a cliff.”

Sandy pushed Fromholz aside and put an arm around March to support his weight.

“You okay?”

“Son,” said March. “I'm just trying to hit every shot like it's gonna be my last.”

“Listen,” Sandy said as he climbed in to drive March's cart. “Why don't we toss in the towel?”

“Forfeit? What about your going on the Tour?”

“March, the game's not worth dying over!”

March forced a doleful smile. “Maybe not, but why don't you play like it is.”

Just then, Roscoe sauntered over to check on March.

He ain't so mean, I thought.

“March. I been thinking,” Roscoe said. “Let's play for it all.”

“Roscoe, I as good as lost this hole already. That means I'm two down with six holes to go, my chest can't decide whether to explode like a well or cave in like a mine, and now you wanna play for my land?”

“Exactly.”

“You're on,” March told him. “Sign the deed and give it to Fromholz.”

“Not so fast,” said Beast. “Does the winning pro get a share of this crummy ranch or golf course or whatever the hell it is?”

“Pro, my ass!” scoffed Roscoe as he signed the deed. “I don't see no pro! Nobody around here but sharks and duffers and mama's boys. And I don't even know which one you are. So don't get greedy, boy—we ain't won yet.”

11

March was one of those guys who even in a gusher year could never stroll past a golf ball in the water without trying to fish it out. With Roscoe's tee shot sitting pretty and Beast's almost on the green, you'd have thought his main concern was to take the penalty, get a good drop, and pray to Jesus H. Christ His Own Self for some wild hare of a hope at tying the hole.

But as the rest of us headed toward the pond, we were treated to the sight of March leaning out over the water, a wedge in his right hand, his left entrusted to Sandy who anchored him to terra firma.

“Hah!” snorted Beast, who didn't like golf balls and did his best to hurt them bad. “Gonna be two down for twenty thou and he's sweating over a used Titleist. What a rube!”

Of course, I could have gone in after the ball, but I had already learned that a kid carrying a bag doesn't become a caddie until he assumes the decorum of the game. I would no sooner have waded in than I'd have told Beast I thought he was an a-hole. Golf is not a game about succumbing to temptation.

So, with Sandy proving himself at least some sort of capable partner, March successfully snared the ball and dragged it to shore through the goop on the bottom of the pond. Muck and all, he tossed it to me for a quick cleaning.

“Hey kid,” he called. “What's your name again?”

I answered even though he knew it. “Billy.”

March chewed my name the way Roscoe chewed his tobacco.

“Billy. I like that. Just like when I was a boy. Billy, you know why the pond holds water?”

“No Sir. No Sir, I don't.”

“Duck shit! It coats the bottom.”

I frowned at the slimy goop that the ball had left on Beast's towel and toyed with the idea of wiping some of it on his grips. Then I saw Beast fixing me with his evil eye as if he'd read my mind. The thought of him biting off my ear replaced the idea of doctoring the grips, and I turned to toss the clean ball back to March.

But then I noticed that something about March had changed. Both his cavalier attitude and his concentration on the game had suddenly vanished. He wasn't even considering the shot he was supposed to make. Instead he was staring toward the third green, almost in a trance. I looked to Sandy to see if something was wrong. Maybe March needed his medicine again. But Sandy's attention was focused on the green as well. The same with Fromholz, Roscoe, and even Beast.

And then I knew.

Standing next to the third green, silhouetted against the blue sky and motionless except for her cotton dress billowing in the gathering wind, was a very lovely woman. Even with my young eyes I could see that she was an exceptional vision of beauty. She was shaded against the hot sun by a slender parasol and her long fair hair was gathered loosely in a bun except for a few wild strands that played about her face.

For a long silent moment, the six of us stood sweating through the goose bumps on our arms, waiting for the mirage to disappear.

A low whistle issued from Roscoe's pursed lips, but it was March, speaking in reverential awe, who gave a name to the vision.

“Miss Jewel Anne Hemphill.”

I could tell by the tone in March's voice, and by the look in both men's eyes, that to the two of them she looked exactly like the budding beauty of seventeen they first remembered from thirty years before. And the true wonder was that to me, too, this timeless woman looked just as she did in my earliest memories. I can see her still, leaning over my crib, her sweet smile stifling my infant sobs, her hair, long then as always, dancing into my stubby fingers, which squeezed tightly in an effort to keep her close.

Then another tender memory of Jewel rushed back upon me like a perfect dream. She had taken me on a picnic in the Hill Country one fine April day—April I know, because in Texas that is the month of bluebonnets. I was a little boatman surrounded by a sea of wildflowers: bluebonnets salted in patches of yellow and black Mexican hats, deep red Indian blankets, and stalks of purple coreopsis, all wavering like a painted canvas drying in the breeze. From my ship of quilted cotton, transfixed, I watched Jewel atop an island hill, a trick of the eye making her appear waist deep in flowers so that she seemed to grow out of the blossoms, her own floral-print dress floating among them like the living sail of a prairie schooner.

And ten years later I looked at Jewel beside the third green, still wearing one of her silken floral dresses, and the smell of those flowers and the sleepy hum of the bees came back upon me in such a flood that I almost began to cry.

God knows what visions rushed back upon March and Roscoe, but they were powerful enough for March to decline his shot and climb in his cart, leaving behind the ball he'd worked so hard to retrieve from the pond. He intended to get a closer look at the dream, but Roscoe cut him off.

“March, you prick! I still ain't hit.”

“Who cares?” March shot back.

But Sandy had not hit his shot either. March snorted like a bull penned next to a pasture full of cows, but he managed to stuff his hands in his pockets while Sandy knocked his ball onto the green not ten yards from where Jewel stood, applauding softly as the ball landed.

Then Roscoe, no doubt inspired by the new gallery, hit his best shot thus far, a four-iron that sent the ball flying to the banked front edge of the putting surface. Though the ball appeared to be farther away than Sandy's, Jewel applauded more enthusiastically.

After rounding the pond with their carts, both March and Roscoe had to wait impatiently as Beast, his mighty drive resting a half wedge from the green, checked his alignment at least three times and flew the ball straight at the hole. A nanosecond after the ball left his clubface, both carts were racing toward the green.

“Christ! Give a guy a chance to follow through!” Beast called after them.

Whatever was about to happen at the green, neither Fromholz, Sandy, nor I wished to miss it. I quickly shouldered Beast's bag and the three of us hurried up the hill, leaving only the big man behind.

“Hey, kid!” Beast yelled at my backside. “How about my divot?”

Thirty feet in front of him I bent over as I passed the big clump of dirt and grass and tossed it back at him.

“Let him replace his own dang divot,” I mumbled, opening perhaps the first crack in the floodgates holding back my dislike of the caddie's subservience. Those heavy tournament bags would never feel the same again.

12

Both rushing to reach Jewel, March and Roscoe skidded to a halt just below the green, jumped out of their carts, and started up the little slope. It was both childlike and wonderfully funny; one moment Roscoe ahead, only to be tripped up by March surging past, merely to be dragged back himself by Roscoe. Because of my long arms, one of my favorite kids' games had always been King of the Mountain. Coming off the starting line in the fifty-yard dash, I might have looked like a slow giraffe, and playing tackle football I was nothing more than a target for some overgrown linebacker who had failed a couple of grades. But once ensconced on top of a big boulder or sandpile I could not be easily dislodged. So it was with great merriment that I observed this adult version of the game between these two old rivals. I had heard country songs about playing the fool for love, but until that moment I'd never known the meaning of the phrase.

The greatest comedy was that somehow, after all their senseless jousting, both men arrived in front of Jewel at exactly the same moment. Standing side by side, their lungs trying to exact some purchase on the damp air, they doffed their hats, bowing low to what was obviously the single object of their hearts' desire.

“Miss Jewel,” said Roscoe as March continued to battle for his breath. “Might I say that you are looking as purty as a picture postcard.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Fowler,” she answered, turning to March for his compliment.

March took a short breath and let loose with one florid word.

“Likewise,” he panted.

It was as clear as the smile on her face that Jewel loved it all.

“You gentlemen make me feel like I'm seventeen and the queen of the ball all over again. Now stand up straight and behave yourselves. You've no more manners than a couple of pig shoats; you haven't even introduced me to your teammates. Let's see, it shouldn't be too hard. Young Billy I know already, and you … you must be Sandy. I've heard a lot about you.”

Sandy was clearly puzzled; he'd met Jewel several times and knew she must remember him.

“And this must be Animal,” Jewel continued.

“Beast,” he corrected her.

“Of course. Please forgive me; I'm not accustomed to such ferocious names.”

Though it was obvious to me, somehow the others didn't seem to notice that she was kidding them with this act of Southern graciousness and aplomb. Of course they didn't know her as well as I did. March and Roscoe had not seen her from 1935 until just weeks earlier, an absence of almost thirty years. Of the other three men, only our ref seemed to grasp the game at hand.

“Fromholz,” he said with a gallant tip of his cap. “No mister required.”

“Well, Fromholz, to which team do you belong?”

“I'm the referee.”

“How charming!” she gushed. “And who, pray tell, is winning?”

“The way I figure it, Roscoe and Mr. Beast there are fixing to go two up.”

“May I watch?” she asked.

“Damn right!” “You bet!” said Roscoe and March.

So far Jewel had yet to say a word to me. And I was too surprised to say anything to her. I hadn't the slightest idea that she was coming to the match, and though I knew of her long-lost link to March and Roscoe, I'd never seen them all together, with the exception of another of the photographs lining the walls at March's office.