All morning long, Sweet sent caddies to the first tee. By eleven o’clock, there was nobody left in the shed but Train and Sweet. An hour later, the first caddies out came back in, and some of them waited around to see if they would get another tote. Train stayed where he was. There was a big lump over his ear— felt like he was growing another head— and the skin was ripped open and crusty to the touch.
He waited to see if Sweet would let him work.
He found himself thinking about dogs, how they come back humble after they been beat. The reason didn’t matter, if the man was drunk and mean or he just come home in a mood to beat the dog, the dog was still sorry. It never crossed their mind it wasn’t their fault. And then suddenly it came to him that Mayflower had beat Lucky so bad he couldn’t walk. And that his mother knew what happened too.
Arthur had gone out early, and now he came back in and sat down to eat lunch. He opened his thermos and peeled the wax paper off his sandwich, mayonnaise leaking out the sides and through the bottom, looked like it weighed five pounds. Every fly in Los Angeles County was there in two minutes. Train felt his insides getting ready to heave up again, moving right to the edge.
Sweet had another glance at the picture he made, and then the phone rung again and he picked it up. He listened a minute and then hung up and sent Henry Disharoon and three other caddies back out to the first tee.
A few minutes later Henry Disharoon came back in. Sweet looked up from his desk, staring out through the wire, annoyed to see this nigger back in front of him when he just sent him out. “You sick, man?” he said.
Henry Disharoon shook his head. “Cat says he wants somebody else.”
“Who?”
Henry shrugged. Sweet picked up his telephone and dialed a number. He said, “Is they a problem up there, Mr. Dugan?”
He listened a minute and then shook his head. “No sir, he ain’t available. No sir . . . All I could do was to sent up somebody else for him in his place.” He listened a moment longer, then hung up the phone.
“Arthur,” he said, “go on up to the first and see if you can’t make these people satisfied.”
Arthur paused a minute, then set what was left of his sandwich on the bench and got up, wiped his mouth and hands on his shirt and headed out. About half the flies went with him; the other half stayed with the sandwich. Five minutes later he came back in, never said a word, just went back to the sandwich and resumed where he left off. There was a wet spot on the bench where he’d laid it.
Sweet’s phone rung again. “I told you, sir,” he said, “he ain’t available today. Yessir, I’m sure. I’m settin’ right here. . . .”
Over on the bench, Arthur had finished eating and taken a knife out of his pocket and closed his eyes and was running his finger along the length of the blade. Train thought he heard him humming.
Sweet put the phone back in the cradle and looked over at Plural. He said, “No-Tank, go on up and scare these fucking white people off the tee.” But before Plural could get up off the floor, the starter, who was supposed to keep the pace of play going, was standing in the doorway. Another man waited just outside. The starter was from Scotland, a people that was always angry anyway, and he stepped inside and turned to the man behind him and motioned him in. Train saw who it was.
“Is he here, then?” the starter said.
The Mile Away Man nodded at Train. “Over there,” he said.
“He’s right bloody there,” the starter said to Sweet, pointing. “What the devil’s got into you, man? He’s right there. . . .”
Sweet come out of his chair, as if to check for himself. “Aw, shit, Mr. Dugan,” he said. “I forgot his name was Lionel, everybody just call him Train. . . .”
But the starter didn’t have no time for that. “Come on, lad, come on,” he said, and Train got to his feet. “We’ve backed up one foursome already, waiting on this business.”
Train staggered in the sunlight but then got himself right and walked up the path to the first tee. The Mile Away Man was up ahead with Dugan, the starter, who was saying malfeasance of some sort was all you ever got when you gave the Negro authority, even over other Negroes. You had to expect it, he said.
It was the fat man again, and two players that Train never seen. They’d all hit their shots and were standing around with their caddies when Train finally got to the tee. Nobody looked too happy about waiting all this time while Mr. Packard handpicked his caddy, but it didn’t look like none of them were going to say it out loud.
Mr. Packard walked straight to the box, got ready to hit, and then stopped. “Have I introduced you all to Mr. Walk?” he said. Nobody thought it was funny but Mr. Packard himself. He chuckled the way he did and dropped a ball on the ground and then swung without even teeing it up, and was walking after it before it hit the ground. On the way down the fairway, one of the other men came over to make sure of the bets. He had a cigarette in his lips and didn’t take it out to talk. He sounded smooth and low, like the radio, like this was old business to him, but Train saw that he was afraid of Mr. Packard too, just like Pink.
“So what’s the game?” he said.
“Whatever you want, I guess.”
“Pink says it’s two hundred a side, a hundred a press. And it looks like we get two strokes on the front, one on the back.”
Mr. Packard nodded and moved away, like he preferred to walk with Train. “I thought it might tickle you to see how this comes out,” he said. The other man had gone back to Pink, unsure if Mr. Packard had agreed to anything or not.
The partner they gave Mr. Packard was a wild man, bigger and younger than Pink, called everything he hit
cunt.
The kind of player would hit six balls out of bounds in a row, then hit one good one and think the last shot was how he played golf. And every time Pink or his partner fuck something up, it seemed like Mr. Packard’s partner did something twice as bad. Like he did it on purpose.
Mr. Packard never said a word; three holes went by, then four, just kept on enjoying the sunshine and Mother Nature, never complained when Pink went into the trees again and found his ball laying in the open, or when he hit it into the creek and then made his drop fifty yards closer to the green than where he gone in. It seemed like Mr. Packard was out on the course all alone, and if he knew there was anybody there with him, it was only Train.
The fat man pulled out his flask and had a drink. He handed it to his partner and then smiled. “Funny fucking game, Miller,” he said to Mr. Packard, “funny fucking game. One day, you can’t find your own willie; the next day, the world’s a hundred-dollar blow job. Of course, it looks like History turned off the water last night, so at least today you can hit the ball off the fairway.”
“Lose some weight, Pink,” Mr. Packard said. “You’ll be able to find willie easier.” Then he turned and watched his partner hit a shot deep into the trees. “You cunt,” the man said, and then turned to his caddy for another ball. “This is a provisional,” he said, “if I can’t find the other one.”
Mr. Packard looked off into the trees. “Have the fat man help you,” he said. “He’s good at finding balls.”
Pink was about to have another pull off the flask when Mr. Packard said that, and he stopped and brought his hand down slowly and screwed on the top. He’d been slapped in public, but everybody act like they didn’t notice.
They came to the sixth hole, the hole where Florida pitched over on the green, and Mr. Packard moved closer to Train again as they walked down the fairway. Train was afraid he was going to ask about the money for Florida’s widow.
Instead, he looked at Train’s head and whistled. “That’s a pretty nice knot,” he said.
Train nodded, caught himself just before he said thank you. Train reached up and felt the spot. It was swollen and ragged. Mr. Packard was walking too close, making him nervous.
They went another fifty yards in silence, and then stopped to wait while Pink hit his ball. It rolled up about the same spot it was the last time they played. Mr. Packard was admiring the lump again, from a different angle. “Looks like something’s building a nest,” he said.
They came to Mr. Packard’s ball next, and he took out his four wood and hit it a little fat, favoring his knee, and dropped it into the pond. It was the first bad shot he hit all morning, and Pink could not keep the smile off his face.
“Shit, I thought that was right there,” he said.
“No,” Mr. Packard said, “no, it wasn’t.”
“Yo, Pink,” his partner said. “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”
Pink smiled at that. “What?”
“Nothing, she’s already been told twice.”
The other players hit their shots and then it was Pink’s turn again. He stood in the middle of the fairway, just behind the 150-yard marker, and took the five iron out of his bag. He took a practice swing— he was swinging better today, and Train guessed that the extra players made him feel safer around Mr. Packard— and then hit the ball to the green, where it bounced once and rolled past the pin twenty feet.
He turned and held the club up close to Train’s eyes, where he could see the number on the blade. “Five iron, Leroy,” he said. “It’s the five.”
He dropped the club for his caddy to pick up and took out the flask and had another drink. His eyes watered and he shook and said, “Ah, breakfast.” And that was when the connection Train been waiting for finally come around, what he reminded him of. It was one of the young wives around the club, married to a member of the walking dead, and she had a bulldog she took everywhere she went— mostly to the pool, where she could tan herself in the mornings. She was young and pretty, and they always had on a ribbon of the same color, the wife and the dog, and every time Train saw them, the dog was always on the brakes, trying to shit, when she was pulling it to the car. That was what it was, the bulldog and the lady; everything want to go their own way at once. That was the fat man from behind.
The man screwed the top on the flask, carefree and happy, and begun walking down the fairway as light as air.
Train started to walk along too, but Mr. Packard stood where he was, like he still out there in the unknown regions. He looked at the pond and the green a little while, then had a look up, like he was just noticing the day. He said, “Pink?” and the fat man stopped. “You know, I was just thinking, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”
Pink squinted at him, suspicious. “What now?”
“Double or nothing, from right here.”
“Double or nothing what?” he said.
“For the day. Whatever it is at the end.”
“How we going to bet on something now, we don’t even know what it is?”
“An aloha press,” Mr. Packard said. “You must have heard of that. One nine iron, from right here. Double or nothing for the whole day.”
“Fuck, Miller, I seen you play.” The fat man was annoyed and relieved at the same time, like Mr. Packard worried him for nothing.
“Not me,” Mr. Packard said. “Mr. Walk here.”
Pink looked at Train, and suddenly Train couldn’t feel his feet. He tried to remember if he could feel them before. His toe— he knew he could feel that. That been hurting all day. Pink smiled, to show Mr. Packard he been around the block before.
