Something Is Out There (12 page)

And through it all he was interested in how
you
were doing.

None of us was very good on the links. Handicaps, we used to joke, weren’t really comforting, since they’d all be so unreasonably high. Anthony was the best player in the group, though often enough he’d get up into the low nineties. Harry
hadn’t broken a hundred more than a half dozen times in his whole life. Jimmy could sometimes beat Anthony but was usually closer to the century mark himself. Still, when he flushed one—his swing looked so good and he was so tall and powerful that you’d swear he was a hustler. You’d hear that purely amazing smack of the club head meeting the ball, and think, God almighty, it might go into orbit. Well, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve spent warm Sundays treading the green paradise of possibility, as Jimmy liked to put it.

Daryl and I—well, the less said about our game the better. On a bad day, it could look like field hockey. Lots of unexpected divots, some of them traveling farther than the ball itself. And occasionally with my first swing, the ball didn’t move at all.

But we always had fun. There was the talk and the comradeship of difficulty, again to use Jimmy’s words. He was naturally expressive, and he liked me because I read books and he could talk to me about them, getting the gist, since for periods of time he could rarely read more than the newspapers. He used to call me truth-seeker, a term he said he liked better than
philosopher
, and I liked it better, too. More than once he suggested I might someday be able to find a meaning in all the bad luck he’d had. That’s how he talked then. I swear, what he was going through, I don’t think anybody else would’ve been able to stand it. More often than not he’d have this mild little grin, telling you about something that, if it was happening to you, would finish you off within the week.

On this day our tee time was seven o’clock. Anthony was late, so we went to the practice green and did some putting and chipping, without saying much at first. It was, as I said, foggy. Damp and humid. It looked like the weather might lift, but you never can tell for sure in that part of Virginia; up in those
mountains, they’ve got little reflectors in the center line of the road that can glow all day long. You could look at the thick folds of fog and believe a sunny day was somewhere out there on the other side; you might even expect it to break through.

We talked some, skirting the real subject—this news about Jimmy’s wife and her new friend. One of
his
favorite topics on the links was the peculiar psychology of the sport itself, and its players. He knew the jokes, of course, like everybody else, but he also made
observations
about it, and these actually had as much to do with human nature, stuff that you and I would never think of. And he thought of
me
as a philosopher. Today was no different. You remember when that plane crash-landed on the airport runway in Iowa, and they caught it on film? A lot of people died but plenty lived, too, thanks to the pilots who brought that crippled bird in. Well, NPR reported that the pro at some club next to the airport said, quote: “About half of our golfers went home, after that.” Jimmy said, “Imagine how it was for the
other
half, the ones who stayed.” And he did a little dramatic bit, lining up an imaginary putt and then stopping, peering off in the distance. “What the hell is that? Oh,
my God!”
He feigned witnessing the horror of a plane bursting into flame on the runway, and his lips drew tight, his teeth showed. “My God! What a terrible thing.” Then he straightened up, adjusted his belt, looked at me and said, deadpan as hell, “Who’s away?”

A joke from a face as forlorn as Jimmy’s, believe me, it’s funnier than if a clown tells it.

In any case, it got a big laugh from us, even knowing the sadness behind it.

“Golf,” I said. “It’s just the nature of it. So damn punishing, so steadily humiliating that you never want to give up while there’s still a chance.”

“That’s what we keep you around for,” Jimmy said, smiling at me and loosening up with his driver. “Our own Plato, leading us into the heart of things.”

Harry said he’d probably have stayed to finish the round. “Couldn’t do anything to help, right?”

“Well,” Jimmy said, “at least you’re honest.”

We shook our heads at all the bad luck in life.

A few minutes later, Anthony hurried over from the clubhouse, apologizing for holding us up, and Jimmy turned to Daryl. “What’re you waiting for?” he said.

For a second, Daryl looked like he’d just taken a blow to his head. I thought he must be thinking about the airplane crash. “What?” he said.

“Hit away, man.”

Now he looked relieved.

“Hey, Daryl,” Harry said. “You nervous? Gotta fly somewhere?”

“He had too much coffee this morning,” Jimmy said.

We all laughed, since Daryl drank about twenty cups a day. He set his ball on the tee and after his usual intricate preparations and waggles, made the first shot of the day. We watched it go straight up into the fog and disappear, then drop in the middle of the fairway like something falling out of blank heaven, not more than a hundred yards away.

“A pop-up,” Jimmy said. “Better than a grounder.”

I walked over and got set to hit. They were all waiting, watching, and I lucked out, hit it straight and low, farther than my usual dying slice. Daryl and I rode in the cart down to his ball, and that’s when he told me they were going to pull Jimmy’s floor plan.

I looked back to the tee, where Jimmy stood with the
others, waiting for us to hit. He was talking, and I felt very odd to hear about this new trouble in his life. “Did he tell you that?”

Daryl shook his head. “I know, okay? It’s a fact. It’s happened.”

“My God,” I said.

Daryl wasn’t even listening to me. He hit his second, using a three wood, and skipped it about eighty yards along.

“I have to face it,” he said. “I can’t hit fairway woods worth a damn.”

We both laughed. He wasn’t much good at hitting anything else, either. I took a two iron out of my bag and started over to my ball, and when I got there what he’d said finally registered. I glanced over at him. He was standing by the cart, waiting for me to hit. “How’d you know about the floor plan,” I asked, “if Jimmy didn’t tell you?”

He shrugged. “That kind of news travels fast.”

I addressed my ball, took a swing, and made contact; to my surprise it went straight and low again, under the fog. I was doing something right, and of course I had it in the back of my mind that as soon as I tried to
repeat
the motion, it would fall apart. So I thought about what I always enjoy about playing—the being out there, the fresh air, the smell of the grass, the breezes. But the fact that Daryl knew what he knew was nagging at me.

I didn’t play bad, for me. We weren’t talking much, and Daryl got even quieter than usual. He was having a rough time of it. On the fifth hole, a long par five, he lost his ball in the middle of the fairway. A hundred yards wide, this landing area, and he’d hit it so good, too. “That was maybe the best drive of my life” was his verdict as we watched it sail away into the fog. We rode out there and I topped two shots in a row, and we
spent the next ten minutes looking for his drive. Nothing. The dew on the grass was making a false shine, even in the grayness. We just couldn’t find it. I gave him a ball, mostly to get him to stop looking, and he hooked it bad into the woods on the left side. Behind us, back on the tee, they were hooting for us to get moving.

We played on in fog that was only a little less thick, a shelf hanging over us. Sometimes, going uphill, we just went on faith, heading toward where it must’ve ended up by following the line on which it vanished. We didn’t say much. We were all business, tee to green, as you often are when conditions threaten to close you down. He was playing a lot worse than I was.

When he mentioned stopping in the clubhouse for a drink at the turn, I said I didn’t want to. We were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the cart, both of our balls on the green. “Really, Daryl,” I said. “How’d you know about the floor plan?”

“I told you.”

“No, you handed me a cliché.”

He shrugged. “I’m not like you. I’m not all that expressive. I can’t think that fast.”

It came to me that I’d always felt there was something disagreeable about him, so I tried to just let this go. We went straight from the ninth green to the tenth tee, where we had to wait for some guys who were starting their round. Despite the weather, the course had gotten crowded. We hung back and watched them hit, and they were very good. I was glad we weren’t playing with them. Above us the fog kept turning on itself and looking like it might burn off.

The others came up behind us. Jimmy had actually parred the ninth with a sweet little downhill ten-footer. He’d scored a 45 on the front and was happy about it, but I swear his smile
and those sad-angled eyebrows made it look like he was crying. Anthony had a 36, without a mulligan. We agreed that the first nine was the real test and Anthony might actually keep it in the seventies. Jimmy said a 90 would make his day, and Harry added that it would make his
life
. I stopped listening, watching Jimmy and thinking about the business folding up. Daryl went off and bought a Coke, then stood under a big oak to drink it, as if to shelter himself from a relentless, searing sun. I remembered that he believed you’d burn worse on an overcast day. He was always worrying about his health. It was another thing I realized I didn’t much like about him.

Finally we teed off. The foursome in front of us was so good that they were long gone by the time we got to the green, and we never saw them again.

I watched Daryl go from one side of the fairways to the other, hacking away. He was making me feel like a pro.

On the fifteenth hole, an easy par four except for the little pond fronting the green, he hit his second shot into the water. He walked over to where it had gone in, then turned and waved for me to bring the cart over. I’d already hit my shot—my third—over the green, but I was at least getting my shots up a little. And by now, witnessing his round, I felt positively artistic. I drove the cart over and waited, making no eye contact as he rummaged around in his bag and finally brought out a new ball. He held it out at shoulder height and took his drop, then lined up his shot, swung, and topped it into the water; this one skipped a couple times before sinking. He took another out: drop, hit, skip, plunk. And another: drop, hit, plunk—this one went straight down, as if that’s what he was trying to do.

Then he removed his bag from the cart, turned, and swung it in a wide motion, like a waltz step, into the pond. He actually seemed composed, almost serene. Stone-cold calm. The bag
didn’t go far, just floated away from the edge slowly and started to sink. Daryl walked down the little bank and with no hesitation at all strode into the water up to his knees, and reached forward to haul the bag back out. When he emptied the water that had got into it, some clubs fell out, but he calmly replaced them, and waved for the others to play through. “I’m going back to the clubhouse,” he said.

“Just put it back on the cart,” I said, none too patient with him. “You can use my towel to dry off the shafts.”

“It’s me she’s seeing,” he said.

I didn’t know what he meant for a second.

“I feel awful about it. But I can’t help myself either.”

And then I did know. “God almighty,” I said. “What the hell.”

He got in the cart. “I’ll drop up by the green, and take a three-stroke penalty.”

“Four strokes,” I said to him. “You’ll take four, since you’re sitting at least nine over there, by the pond.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t want him in the cart with me, but his meltdown had taken plenty of time and they weren’t too happy behind us.

Up on the green, after stubbing two wedges, I missed two putts and picked up. I didn’t even feel like playing anymore.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he said. “I said okay about the four strokes.”

“I’m playing the course, not you,” I said to him. “And they’re waiting back there.”

He looked at me, then sized up his putt from where he’d taken his drop, about fifty-five feet from the hole. The ball rolled down the green, through shadows and swells, snaking left and then right at the hole, like a guided robot, nearly died at the lip, and then plopped in. My spine shook, and God only knows what his did. But neither one of us said a word. He
walked to the hole and retrieved the ball, then we got in the cart and rode silently to the sixteenth tee.

“How could you do it, Daryl?” I said to him. “This is Jimmy, for God’s sake. What the hell are you thinking?”

“She came to me, man.” He stood at the ball washer and worked it a little, dried off the ball, and teed it up. “I think all the trouble scared her. I don’t think she’s built for it. And she didn’t like being a trophy wife, either. You should hear her on that particular subject.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, so low that I didn’t even know if he heard me.

This was a par three, modeled after that famous blind par three in Scotland. A little white post gave you the line into it. While he addressed his ball and started all his waggling, I stepped to the other side, teed mine up, and hit it. I didn’t care who had honors, him with his fifty-five-foot putt and four balls in the water, or me picking up after taking seven strokes. I managed to get it up in the air. It was short, though, and dropped down halfway to the post.

“Okay,” he said again, then shanked his far right, out of bounds. “Mulligan?” he said.

I didn’t answer. I was staring back at the green we’d just vacated. Somebody, probably Anthony, had hit into the middle of it. Another ball was in the sand. I could see the trail where it had rolled down from the lip. And here came Jimmy, walking with a slight limp, carrying his sand wedge and putter. He always seemed so laggard and worn, but God, just then he looked older, too. Maybe it was the light—or just what I now knew. He waved at me, and I waved back. I felt awful.

Daryl hit again, a surprisingly straight shot that dropped down just beyond the marker. He stood back with a stupid little smug smile on his face.