“He’s taking a fit,” the fat man said.
Florida was curling into himself now, his arms tight against his chest, fighting to breathe. And then he seemed to relax. That fast.
“It’s a fit,” the fat man said again. He hadn’t looked at Florida, though. Train noticed that he hadn’t looked. “I seen them do this before; sometimes they swallowed their tongue.”
Mr. Packard spoke to Train like the fat man wasn’t there. “Run back to the clubhouse,” he said. “Tell them to call an ambulance.” There was nothing hurried in the way he said it, though, and Train knew there was nothing to hurry for.
Train let go of the bag, surprised at the clatter it made when it hit the ground, and noticed something shiny just peeking out one of the pockets; for an instant it caught his reflection.
He sprinted fifty yards along the cart path, thinking of Florida, scared to death, and then kicked off his shoes and moved into the grassy fairway, running directly into the golfers behind him. There were four of them standing together on the tee, leaning against their clubs. Two of them hitched up their pants over their stomach, two underneath it. One or two, it looked like they might be carrying a baby. Scabs on their hands and arms and faces; Train had been noticing for a while now that there was a certain age when old men begun to look like they been dragged home behind the car.
“Hey! Where you think you’re going, son?”
And: “This here is a golf course, Leroy, not a racetrack. . . .”
Some of the members called all the caddies Leroy.
And then one of them speaking to another: “Is that one of ours?” The golf course did strange things with sound. Sometimes late in the afternoon you could hear a whisper across the fairway.
One of the golfers hit a ball at him— at least he seemed to hit it at him— but it sailed out over the fence, and Train paid no attention and kept coming, straight into them. They quit shouting and then edged away from the tee, decided that the runaway caddy problem was something they’d take up with the pro back at the clubhouse instead of handling it themself.
Train went straight over the tee box without breaking stride. Once he was past it he heard them yelling again, but now he couldn’t make out the words. There was another group ahead of him then, waiting in the rough behind the old foursome, and Train headed off into the trees before any of them could yell at him too.
The air was damp in the shade, and the branches seemed to grab onto his legs. He became conscious of the sounds— his feet slapping against the ground, the brushing of his pants legs as he ran, his own breathing. The cracks of old limbs breaking off trees. He was sweating, and it felt cool and safe in there, being out of sight, and just as that thought arrived, his foot hit a root and he was spinning, deaf with pain, and the next second he broke back into the sunlight, crossing the third fairway just behind another foursome, and noticed his little toe was pointed off to the side, like a thumb, and was bleeding where the nail was torn.
There was a wide creek separating this fairway from the eighth, and he ran through it, too spent to jump, dropping into the stinking muck at the bottom all the way to his knees, stumbling, falling, then pulling out and scrambling up the other side. The fall used him up and stole what was left of his breath, and he thought he heard someone laughing. The sound could have been coming up out of his own chest, though.
He headed up the long slope of the ninth hole, keeping close to the cart path now, his legs beginning to go soft. He closed his eyes and pictured Florida falling face-first onto the green, the look of confusion that come just before. He pictured the foam spilling out his mouth and nose, and knew he was drained inside too, every plug in there pulled at once. He pictured those things, and willed himself up the hill to the clubhouse, as if there was something up there that could change what had happened.
When he opened his eyes again, the building rose up in front of him and the sun was blinding off the windows where the white men sat and drank after they’d played golf. To his certain knowledge, there had never been a bleeding nigger without his shoes on inside the clubhouse at Brookline, but he ran directly over the practice green anyway, disturbing a gentleman in orange pants who was practicing one-foot putts, and through the glass doors that led into the lounge.
It was dark and cool inside, the air as still as a cave, and he stopped in his tracks and waited to see what would happen. Expecting they might shoot him. The bartender was a huge, sweet-smelling Negro called Richard, and he was staring at Train, seemed to have stopped breathing. Four ancient ladies were in a corner playing cards, a halo of cigarette smoke hanging over the table. He noticed their hands. Diamonds and bones. One of them looked up at him and smiled.
The bartender was coming around the bar now, looking left and right to see who else might have been afflicted by what just come in the door. His hair glistened under the overhead lights, and Train could not shake the feeling that he was about to be shot, and then it occurred to him, as the bartender came across the rug, that when he dropped Mr. Miller’s golf bag, what was peeking out the pocket was the nose of a pistol.
The bartender was smiling to keep the ladies from panicking. He came very close to Train before he spoke, and then leaned in so no one else could hear.
“Rooster, I ever see you again, it better be through that door, runnin’ the other way,” he said. Train could smell the pomade he used to conk his hair. He stepped back a little, needing some space to talk. The bartender glanced again at the ladies in the corner. One of them had her cigarette in a long white holder and picked it up now and had a pull. Diamonds and bones.
The bartender took his arm and headed him back toward the door. It crossed Train’s mind that he might not be able to explain what happened, but suddenly the words were right there, as easy as they were for Sweet or anybody else. “There’s a man died,” he said.
He felt the pressure change on his arm. “What man?” the bartender said.
“Florida,” Train said. “Pitched onto the green and died.”
“A caddy?”
“Florida. You know old Florida. . . .”
“No sir,” the bartender said, “I do not.” He studied Train a moment longer, then escorted him the rest of the way out of the lounge.
Train waited until he was back outside to tell the bartender that he was supposed to call the ambulance. He could see the ladies had to be protected from the sight of himself.
“This ain’t the place to come for no caddy pitched onto the green,” the bartender said.
“It’s where the man told me to come,” Train said.
“What man?”
“The man playing golf, said to tell Richard to call somebody right away.” He was surprised at how easily the lie came out of his mouth. His mother was ordinarily pleased to tell anyone who would listen that Lionel was the only child born with the male organ in the Walk family history that wasn’t an accomplished liar by the time he was three years old. She said the rest of them, it was the reason they learned to talk. He didn’t know if that was true— if there was any Walk family men around, he hadn’t met them— but it was correct that he couldn’t bring himself to tell stories. He didn’t have the looseness about him for that.
“This man say who am I supposed to call?” The bartender noticed Train’s toe then, and took a step back. Train looked at it too, and it occurred to him for the first time that he come to the wrong place. That when the man said the clubhouse, he meant the pro shop.
“Just like it was a member,” he said, “that’s what the man said to do.” Half a dozen of them had died out on the course in the two years Train been working here, maybe one or two more. The old-timers would talk about it for a month, until every one of them had said the same thing to each other—“Well, I see old Bud Sears finally shot his age”— proud that another soldier died in his two-color shoes. In some way it wasn’t unrelated to having the most trees of any golf course in Los Angeles County.
The bartender used one finger and reached carefully through his hair and scratched a spot on his scalp, trying to figure out if calling an ambulance for a caddy could get him in trouble. Then he took a comb out of his back pocket and went over the spot, still thinking. “You go on back there,” he said, “tell them Richard took care of everything.” Train nodded, but he didn’t move. “I’ll take care of it,” the bartender said, impatient to get Train away from the clubhouse.
“You don’t know where he’s at.”
“Well then, where is he, nigger?”
“Sixth green.” Train pointed, and the bartender looked out in that general direction, then went back into the lounge. He was staring Train in the eye as he locked the door against the chance that there was any more like him out there waiting to come in.
Train walked to the edge of the green, past the man practicing short putts, and sat down and pulled on the toe until he heard it pop. Then he tore off the nail, which only been hanging by a piece of skin anyway. He had calmed down enough to feel these things exactly, and the pain rolled up at him in waves, the way his stomach did when he was scared.
He stood up and walked back down the long slope of the ninth hole and headed for the sixth green, leaving small round spots of blood on the grass. You come along later, you might think it was a dog had hurt his paw.
Florida was the same place he had been before, only he seemed smaller now, like he dried up. Mr. Packard was sitting on the grass next to him, his thoughts in a distant land. The fat man was off the green, sitting on his own bag, holding the thermos between his legs. Train saw all this as he jogged down the fairway— favoring the injured foot, not really hurrying anymore, just jogging for appearance sake— past the same old men who shouted at him before. There was several groups of them now, backed up and mean. The club had its rules about starting times and the speed of play. Train kept his eyes straight ahead and he stopped only once, to pick up his shoes.
Mr. Packard looked up and watched Train come the last thirty yards. He seemed tired. “They call an ambulance?” he said.
“Yessir.” Train didn’t want to, but he had a quick look at Florida anyway, saw that Mr. Packard had closed the lids over his eyes. Somewhere behind them a golfer yelled
“Four!”
and Mr. Packard looked slowly back in that direction. Chuckled in some way that was not amusedment at all.
“You wonder what gets into people,” he said, and if whoever was back there could see the way they were being looked at, they wouldn’t be shouting anymore. Train realized suddenly that Mr. Packard was talking to him, not to the fat man. That in fact he might be talking about the fat man.
“Yessir,” he said.
Mr. Packard set his hand on Florida’s chest. “Half of them can barely swing a golf club, like Pink over there, but their half-dollar Nassau, or whatever it is, it’s still the reason everybody else was put here on earth,” he said. Pink looked up at the insult but didn’t say nothing.
Mr. Packard thought about things a minute, then did that chuckle again. “I guess they’re old and they feel it slipping away,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t seem possible to a kid your age, but it does slip away.”
The fat man poured himself another drink.
Train looked at Florida again. It was true that he couldn’t see himself laid out across the sixth green dead, still trying to smile, but he already knew he could be laid out somewhere. He’d known that a long time. He sat down to put on his shoes.
