Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  Grady Don has said we ought to write one of those Harry Potter children’s books about it. Call it Bobo the Mule Dick. Get rich.

  Since I’d been doing a disappearing act the past three nights, Grady Don grilled me about Gwendolyn.

  What was she like? Where’d she come from? Was she interesting? Could she talk about anything but her Kid? How many men had she Killed?

  I said she was a great American and a wonderful human being.

  Grady Don said how great an American?

  I said pretty darn great.

  He said, “Is she General George S. Patton great? Babe Ruth great? Joe DiMaggio great?”

  “You’re close,” I said.

  He said, “Well, goddamn, is she Sam Baugh great? Red Grange great? Doak Walker? Who?”

  I said, “Think of Secretariat with a sense of humor.”

  “Damn,” he said enviously.

  I watched him slice, chop, and stir his eggs over easy and pattie sausages into a hash. As he scooped it up, he said:

  “So the two of you have just been a couple of shut-ins, eating in the room every night?”

  “That’s about it,” I said.

  Grinning, he added, “I expect you ordered dinner from room service, too, didn’t you?”

  “That’s almost funny,” I said. “Borderline humorous.”

  13

  he first thing you saw at the protest site were the giraffes. Three guys on stilts in giraffe costumes. A sign dangled around the neck of one giraffe. It said: “Anne Marie Sprinkle Don’t Bother Us, We’re Above It All—Eat at Luther’s Game Food Grill on Broad Street.”

  The giraffes towered over the four Elvis impersonators in their white jumpsuits and black wigs. The Elvises were standing with their arms interlocked singing a barbershop rendition of “Old Shep.”

  I had no trouble recalling “Old Shep.” It was a sad song about a lovable dog that died. As a Kid I used to cry when I’d hear it on the radio.

  “Old Shep he has gone

  Where the good doggies go

  No more will Old Shep roam.

  But if dogs have a heaven,

  There’s one thing I know.

  Old Shep has a wonderful home.”

  When they finished the song, I asked an Elvis what the point was.

  The Elvis said, “Shep is a euphemism for the world this protest woman wants to ruin.”

  “ ‘Euphemism,’ ” I said. “Elvis used that word a lot, I remember.”

  “Elvis loved golf,” the impersonator said emphatically.

  “Elvis Presley loved golf?” I said, wanting to make sure we were talking about the same person.

  “Very much so,” another jumpsuit said. “What do you think ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ is all about? It is obviously a song about his relationship with par.”

  Grady Don had heard enough.

  He said, “Elvis loved golf? You people need to go back to the hospital. Elvis was too busy fucking to love golf. After that he was too fat to love golf. Then he was too dope-sick to love golf. That’s all you need to Know about Elvis Presley, other than the fact that he couldn’t sing or play the guitar worth a shit.”

  One of the impersonators politely said, “There are many myths about the King that are patently untrue.”

  Whereupon they launched into a barbershop rendition of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

  We listened for a moment and moved on to mingle with the T-shirt shoppers, media, TV technicians, and police.

  Mildly curious, I led us over to the burned-out hippie with the scruffy beard and gnarled hair. A guy trapped in the Sixties. He wore filthy jeans and a grimy white T-shirt and held a hand-lettered sign that said “Golf Is Vile—It Ruins the Earth.” He stood on a tree stump.

  We were his only audience.

  Grady Don said, “What’s shakin’, dude?”

  The hippie burnout said, “I was going over my notes, like in my head—for the lecture I’ll deliver later on, when the crowd’s bigger.”

  Grady Don said, “Where you from?”

  “I come here from Denny’s—oh, uh, Austin, Texas.”

  He sat down on the tree stump—he did look tired—and said, “The theme of my talk is, like, you Know, how golf destroys our land . . . our homes, farms, forests . . . natural resources. It displaces people, man. It serves no human need. Golf is a game for the privileged few. America needs to wake up to this terror before it’s too late. Before we all get run over by all the rich people in their electric carts.”

  “Go for it,” Grady Don said. “Golf’s fucked me my whole life.”

  The morning paper had said Anne Marie Sprinkle would arrive at noon to speak to her followers. A pregame pep talk. We waited for that event by standing around near the donut-and-coffee stand under the shade trees near the deputy sheriff’s car and the Ku Klux Klan table.

  For a moment, we listened to Deputy Sheriff R. G. Hudgins, whose stomach suggested he hadn’t missed too many breakfasts himself. He was addressing a group of people who were unhappy with the presence of the two men seated at the KKK table.

  Quite possibly they were unhappy with the two men seated at the KKK table because they were wearing white pointed hoods and white bedsheets.

  Also, there was this printed sign on a stake planted in the ground next to the table that said: “Our Team Color Is White.”

  The deputy sheriff was saying, “No, I can’t do nothin’ about them KKKs any more than I can about them giraffes or that hippie over there on the tree stump. That old boy, I don’t Know. The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train ain’t comin’. I hope none of you has smelt him lately. It’s a free country is what I’m sayin’. We’ve got our ground rules here. We established our rules yesterday when I met with the protest groups and made sure we was all singin’ from the same page of the hymn book.”

  A man with a Masters media credential around his neck shouted a question. “How many protestors do you expect today?”

  Deputy Sheriff R. G. Hudgins said, “Well, there’s some here right now. About fifteen or twenty, I’d say. Yesterday they were talkin’ about six thousand. I’m guessin’ it’ll be more like seventy-five or a hundred.”

  “I don’t see them,” the media guy said.

  The deputy sheriff said, “Over at the big platform. Where you see them Apache Indians and Kodiak bears. Pocahontas over there is Ms. Sprinkle’s spokesperson.”

  Everybody looked toward the platform.

  Another media guy said, “Looks like we’re not gonna see a lot of Catherine Zeta-Jones around here today.”

  Deputy Sheriff Hudgins said, “No, you ain’t. Not unless she’s turned into a Kodiak bear.”

  “Here she comes!” somebody shouted, pointing at the white stretch limo on Washington Road as it stopped at the vacant field.

  Gwendolyn showed up at the same time. Carrying a cup of takeout coffee, she stepped out of a group of T-shirt shoppers.

  She said, “Aren’t you guys supposed to be hitting balls?”

  I said, “Your tournament leaders have time on their hands. I don’t go till two-thirty, as you may Know. Grady Don goes a little ahead of me. We wanted to hear what Anne Marie has to say on this historic occasion.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen today,” Gwen said. “She’s postponed the big march until tomorrow. She decided a protest during Sunday’s final round would attract more attention to the cause.”

  “How do you Know that?”

  “I was here earlier. Her spokesperson told me.”

  “Pocahontas told you?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Pocahontas. That’s what the deputy sheriff calls the spokeslady.”

  “Does he really? God will punish him for that.”

  A woman I judged hefty enough to be Anne Marie Sprinkle now stood on the platform, flanked by two Kodiak bears and two business suits, and was starting to speak. We moved over to join the crowd.

  Anne Marie Sprinkle wasn’t wearing the whole town of S
anta Fe, New Mexico—she left off the pottery. But elsewhere on her two-hundred-pound frame in her fringed buckskin dress there was enough silver and turquoise dangling and clanking that her name could have been Dances With Jewelry.

  Anne Marie was a wide-body protestor. She reminded me of what I once heard a football coach say about an offensive lineman: “Some old boys don’t move too good when their legs touch all the way to their Knees.” Her body got slightly narrower as it rose to the short black bangs on her head. She wore a pair of granny glasses from the Sixties. Grady Don said she looked like Cher’s overfed aunt.

  She preached a while about the Augusta National having all those members who were CEOs of companies that sold products to women, and what a disgrace it was, and what a tragedy it was for America and Western civilization that the club had no women members.

  Among the hordes of media people in attendance, a guy yelled out, “What do you say to the people who call you a champagne socialist?”

  She yelled back. “I say pop the corks and pass the stem glasses!”

  Much laughter, whoops, applause.

  Now she called out, “Who will be with me tomorrow when I march up to the front gate of that backward, bigoted, bonehead club and usher it into the twenty-first century?”

  Cries rang through the oaks: “Me, me! Yeah, yeah! Go, go!”

  I said to Gwen, “Backward, bigoted, and boneheaded?”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. Very much.”

  A guy in front of us in the crowd instigated a dialog with the famed protest leader. I realized right away the guy was Hubbard Gilliam—and Blubber Doss was standing next to him.

  “Make my dinner!” Hubbard shouted at Anne Marie Sprinkle.

  “Wash my dishes!” she shouted back at him.

  “Iron my shirts!” he yelled.

  “Make my bed!” she yelled back.

  “Bake my cake!”

  “Sweep my floor!”

  “Fry my bacon!”

  “Take out my trash!”

  “Do my laundry!”

  “Clean my toilet!”

  “Eat my cock!”

  Deputy Sheriff R. G. Hudgins jumped forward.

  “OK, that’s it. That’ll be enough of that.” He grabbed Hubbard Gilliam and Blubber Doss by the back of their necks. “Ain’t no sign here says ‘Vulgar Language Allowed.’ ”

  Hubbard said, “We’re just having some fun here, sheriff.”

  Then he glanced over at me. “How you doin’, Bobby Joe?”

  Now Blubber Doss looked at me. “Hi, Bobby Joe.”

  I grinned back at them, but I couldn’t help noticing that Gwendolyn and Grady Don were both staring at me with looks that said, “You know these two idiots?”

  14

  Irv Klar of the Washington Post said I’d make a good Sunday column. I was supposed to be flattered by that. After all, Irv Klar at this moment in history was among America’s best-known sportswriters and best-selling authors. Never mind that Irv Klar—Irving on his book jackets—was also one of America’s most irritating writers in his column and his books because he possessed that rare ability to be both arrogant and wrong at the same time, which was of no consequence to Irv.

  He suggested we go upstairs in the clubhouse, sit on the balcony, have a drink, talk about my 69, how it threw me up there among the third-round leaders, but how I still didn’t have a prayer of winning this Masters.

  A little humor there from Irv.

  I agreed to chat with him, having nothing better to do before my regularly scheduled room-service dinner with Gwen.

  Irv had waited for me at the press center while I answered all the intense questions of the print guys. What was my game plan today? What would be my game plan tomorrow? What would I rely on the most—my woods, my irons, or my putter? If it was a two-club wind, which two clubs would I use?

  Certain writers like to collect embarrassing questions asked by some of their lame brethren. I read this in a book by Jim Tom Pinch of The Sports Magazine, a writer who would be Irv Klar’s idol if Irv ever bothered to read anybody else.

  Among Jim Tom’s collectibles:

  Jack Nicklaus was in the interview area after he’d won the British Open at St. Andrews in ’70, and a writer from Tennessee said, “Uh, Jack, we realize Arnold Palmer is your major adversary on the Tour, but golf aside for a moment, don’t you agree with Arnie that we should be bombing Hanoi?”

  At a Super Bowl press conference in ’81 a writer from New Jersey frantically held up his hand to Jim Plunkett, the quarterback for the Oakland Raiders. It was well-Known that Plunkett’s mother had passed away and his father was blind, but that didn’t Keep the writer from saying, “Help me out here, Jim—is it dead father, blind mother, or dead mother, blind father?”

  It was at a press conference for the ’88 Super Bowl that a writer from Ohio asked the Washington Redskins’ Doug Williams how long he’d been a black quarterback.

  A Pittsburgh writer found himself covering World Cup soccer some years ago in Spain, and asked Diego Maradonna what month it was right now in Argentina.

  Irv waited while I did quickie interviews with the local and cable TV personalities. It never takes long. You listen to the interviewer run off at the mouth, loving the sound of his or her own voice, then you get to say, “Sounds good, Lisa—nice chatting with you.”

  We sat at a table on the balcony and I ordered iced tea for us—from Alfred, my favorite clubhouse waiter—as Irv reached in his valise and handed me a copy of his latest bestseller.

  “This is the first time I’ve seen you since the PGA in August,” he said. “You may already have this, but here’s an autographed copy. It came out last December. Good timing for hoops.”

  The book was Murder Above the Rim: How Two Tall Africans, a Tall Croat, a Taller Russian, and the Tallest Egyptian Led the UConn Huskies to the NCAA Basketball Championship.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t have it. I tried to buy it three or four times but it was always sold out.”

  He said, “I have two new ones coming in June and August. Golf and football. That’s all I’ll say. They should do well . . . Let’s talk about the Masters.”

  I said, “Irv, I still have two chances to win this thing, you Know.”

  “You do?”

  “Slim and none.”

  “I can use that.”

  “I’m very pleased.”

  He scribbled on a yellow legal pad. “Somebody said you guys call this ‘moving day.’ Saturday. The day you want to move up on the scoreboard. Is that right? ‘Moving day.’ I like that.”

  “I heard it a long time ago. I’ve never called it moving day. To the best of my memory, I’ve always called it the third round.”

  “I’m using it.”

  “Irv, don’t quote me saying ‘moving day.’ I’ll have to Kill you.”

  “I Know how you shot the sixty-seven,” he said. “You birdied the parfives, holed a long putt on seventeen. That’s it for the play-by-play. I have to file by nine o’clock.”

  “If you really want to Know why it’s impossible for me to win, I’ll give you three reasons. Elvis Woods, Madonna Els, and Britney Mickelson.”

  “Elvis, Madonna, and Britney? Great. I love that.”

  He scribbled hurriedly on his pad.

  I said, “That’s what Grady Don calls them. They’ve got me by two strokes. The FBI might be able to catch one of them, maybe even two, but I doubt they could catch all three.”

  “I like that, too.” Scribbling.

  “I have an idea, Irv. Why don’t I write the column and you play golf tomorrow?”

  “You’re how old now? Forty-three? Forty-four?”

  “Forty-four—and counting.”

  He said, “I Know you’ve been out here seventeen, eighteen years . . . won like twelve times. Your biggest win has to be the Players two years ago, doesn’t it?”

  “The cup wouldn’t get out of my way.”

  “Do yo
u think the Players will ever be a major?”

  “Not now. Not since I’ve won it.”

  “I’m using that. You Keep flirting with the majors. Looks like you’d break through sometime.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? I tied for fifth here once. I’ve been third and fourth in the Open, third in the PGA, top ten in the British twice. I Keep thinking that one of these days everybody else is gonna drop dead.”

  Irv said, “Who do you play bridge with now out here?”

  “Nobody plays bridge anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t Know how or they’re too rich, too busy.”

  “Busy doing what?”

  “Oh, talking to their psychologists, their agents, their tax accountants. Sending their wives off sight-seeing so they can fuck the baby-sitters. You probably can’t use that.”

  “Probably not. Your best friends are . . . ?”

  “Mostly vagrants back home . . . from high school, college. Out here, Grady Don, Jerry Grimes . . . Buddy Stark, before he bailed.”

  “How’s Buddy doing?”

  “Buddy’s in ecstasy. He’s down on the farm in Ocala with Cynthia and her money. I say farm; it’s more of a resort. She has an eight-bedroom lodge, a river, lake, horses, two tennis courts, swimming pool, regulation croquet court. They’ve even put in a nine-hole golf course—with bent greens and different sets of tees.”

  “I didn’t Know Cynthia did that good in her divorce from Knut.”

  “She won the Powerball lottery, is all.”

  “Cool,” he said. “What’s up with you and Knut Thorssun? You guys still speak?”

  “We speak. We’re friendly in public. He’s finally graduated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s gone from being a studious asshole to just being silly.”

  “That’s a hot chick he goes with. I read where they may get married. Have you met her?”

  “I’ve met her. Her real name is Vashtine Ulberg. Her showbiz name is Snapper. Only Knut could fall in love with a Swedish rap star.”

  I’d have bet my stack against the existence of a Swedish rap star, but it lives. Grady Don bought some of her tapes so we could marvel at the artistry of her lyrics. The one we like the best is from her new hit single, “Horny Bitchy”: