Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  “But you were in Korea later on?” Gwen said to him.

  “I was.”

  “Kill any gooks?” she asked playfully.

  “I shot at some. I hope I hit somebody. What I mainly did was freeze my ass off and wish I was back here having a piece of chocolate ice box pie at the Toddle House. You take politics seriously, young lady?”

  “I vote.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Politics don’t consume me. It would take a politician I have yet to see or hear about to make me work on a campaign for him—or her.”

  “Good. You Know what Kind of people take politics serious enough to work on campaigns?”

  “I’ll bet you’re going to tell me.”

  “People who don’t have a football team to root for.”

  Now Gwen did laugh, and said, “I do believe you’ve hit on a fine direction for our country. Watch football, be happy.”

  George Grooves said, “That’s my domestic agenda. I’d have a damn good foreign policy, too, if I was the boss.”

  “Oh?” she said. “What would that be?”

  He squinted like Lyndon again. “If they give you any back talk, nuke their sorry ass.”

  In general, I thought the evening was a success.

  24

  All of my ex-wives had been Keeping busy at work, or we would have run into at least one of them during Gwen’s visit—over a rib, an enchilada, or a stray Picasso. Terri Adams still worked for the criminal lawyer, Red Taggert, so she was obviously helping him Keep human waste out of prison. She enjoyed it. “Crime pays us pretty well,” she liked to say.

  One of Red’s big cases recently involved the famous rapper, Snot Fishy Poot Stain.

  While he was changing planes at the Dallas–Fort Worth airport one afternoon, Snot Fishy Poot Stain’s next flight was delayed by weather. This prompted him to pass the time by entertaining the other travelers at his gate. One of the other travelers was a Viola Dipwick, an elderly lady with a cane. When the famous rapper put his baseball cap on her head and turned it sideways, she turned it forward. He turned it sideways again, but she turned it forward. He turned it sideways one more time, but she turned it forward—and poked him in the thigh with her cane. That’s when the famous rapper shot Viola Dipwick between the eyes with the .38 he carried.

  Red’s plea in the famous rapper’s behalf was self-defense. Where Terri came in, she was Red’s bag lady. She paid two dopeheads to claim they were eyewitnesses to the shooting. They testified that the elderly lady had violently tried to poke Snot Fishy Poot Stain in the nuts, and he’d only been defending himself. The jury deliberated a little under an hour before reaching a “not guilty” verdict.

  “I was only doing my patriotic duty,” Red said to the press. “Americans don’t want no harm to come to their celebrities.”

  Terri also helped Red in a real estate transaction that centered around many of the felons he had put back on the street to rob and Kill again.

  It happened when the city was asked to relocate more than two hundred criminals from the downtown public housing project where they’d been living. The housing project had been sold to a company and was going to be demolished to make way for a “corporate campus.”

  On the advice of Red, its attorney, the city housing board urged the city to buy the luxurious Shadow Haven apartments in an affluent west side neighborhood and use it for the relocation of the criminals. All of the apartments had two bedrooms, were air-conditioned, and came with TVs, computers, fireplaces, gardens, and use of the swimming pool.

  There were raucous public hearings on the issue. Hundreds of homeowners in the affluent neighborhood expressed fear for their safety, and argued that their property values were bound to nosedive.

  Terri posed as a resident of Shadow Haven. She pleaded for the relocation. Speaking to the homeowners at a hearing, she said if they would only “look into their hearts,” they would Know the city housing board was doing the right thing “for those less fortunate than ourselves”—her description of the felons.

  The homeowners might have Known they were fighting a lost cause since the city housing board consisted of two Al Sharptons, two Barbra Streisands, one Alphonso Bedoya, and the chairman, Emiliano Zapata.

  Shortly after the deal was completed, it came out that Red Taggert was a part owner of the Shadow Haven apartments that the city had purchased for the sum of $58 million.

  For a while the Fort Worth Light & Shopper received letters, faxes, and e-mail whose gist was “I sleep better at night Knowing Red Taggert and everybody on the City Housing Board will die someday.”

  I Knew the real story on all this because Terri bragged to me about her part in the scam.

  “Life is about who’s got the fix and who don’t,” she said. “If you haven’t learned that, Bobby Joe, you haven’t learned nothin’.”

  Cheryl Haney was undoubtedly busier these days with her volunteer work and social-climbing duties than she was with selling mansions, new and used. She was a certified Vogue lady now. I imagined her days filled with meetings involving the Jewel Charity Ball, the Van Cliburn piano competition, fund-raising for the symphony, and all things to do with finger sandwiches and white wine.

  She was no longer the saucy lady I’d first Known. The chick in a low-cut blouse who’d loved tooling around town in her top-down Chrysler convertible, zipping in and out of traffic, proud of her bumper sticker that said, “I Date Your Husband.”

  Cheryl did leave me a phone message that Gwen found amusing.

  “Hello, dirt-fuck,” she said. “Hard Reach here. How dare you call me Hard Reach. I was having lunch Wednesday at the Fort Worth Club with Jolene Frederick and she said she’d seen you at Colonial, and you said, ‘How’s Hard Reach doing? Has she washed all the Trinity River off yet?’ Hard Reach, my ass. And when did you get to be a fucking Bass brother? How about in the future you stay on your fucking side of town and I’ll stay on my side, you short-wad shit-pile.”

  Gwen asked, “How long has Cheryl been in the Junior League?”

  Alleene was still the leader of the ex-wife tribe, and my good pal and business partner, and I’d wanted Gwen to meet her. I was sure they’d get along.

  But the day we dropped by the office of Alleene’s Delights on Berry Street over near the TCU campus, we found out she’d left only moments earlier. One of the Gwyneth Paltrows who worked for Alleene said she had gone off to cater a dinner for “rich socialites.”

  “Rich socialites,” I said. “The best Kind. Rare, though.”

  Overall, Gwen got a nice flavor of my city.

  25

  Those weeks when I went back on the Tour—for the Heritage, Colonial, Memphis, Memorial, Houston—I didn’t play well enough to skirt into the win column, but I did manage to grab my share of clip.

  “Clip.” Grady Don’s word for prize money. As in what you stick in your money clip.

  “Gonna scoop me some clip this week,” he’d say, “if my flat stick don’t catch diabetes-meningitis.”

  “Flat stick.” The putter.

  Putters can catch other things, as Grady Don saw it. Heart trouble, flu, ulcers, constipation. He claimed he once owned a mallet-head putter that actually spoke to him one day after it rimmed out a one-foot putt.

  I was aware that the putter is the most independent club in the bag. At times you can hardly talk to it in a civil tone. The best thing you can do with a putter that betrays you is Kill the sumbitch.

  But you have to make sure it’s dead. Drowning may not do it. Grady Don insists that putters can swim, and some can grow into sharks and work their way into oceans where they cruise close to beaches and wait to bite the leg off a vacationing golfer when he goes in for a dip.

  He’s on record as saying the best way to Kill a putter is break it in half and drop the head down a sewage drain. You can Keep the other half, the handle with the jagged edge of the shaft. It can help you open boxes of crackers and cereal.

  Most putters don’t
have a long life.

  Ben Hogan’s center-shaft brass putter, made out of a doorknob, the putter Ky Laffoon gave him, enjoyed a good run. It won him ten majors. But it finally betrayed him. Cost him two more Opens and another Masters.

  You could say Bobby Jones’s blade putter, “Calamity Jane,” has been the most fortunate. After all of its success, fame, and transatlantic travels, it lives on. Mounted in a glass case on the wall in one of the Augusta National’s dining rooms, it can gaze down on the occasional plate of country ham or dish of peach cobbler.

  Grady Don firmly believed that nobody could manufacture a putter that wouldn’t catch syphilis eventually.

  I played mediocre again in front of the home crowd at Colonial—too many distractions. I did finish tied for ninth and couldn’t complain about the hundred and thirty grand I pocketed.

  I started off worrying about whether Gwen’s Kid would enjoy his first visit to the tournament and my city. His first night I took him to dinner at the Railhead, and I discovered he’d never had barbecue before. “Why would you ruin good beef?” he asked.

  I said, “Just try a rib, if you don’t mind.”

  He did, and with a surprised look, he said, “This is good!”

  And went about eating two dozen more.

  I shouldn’t have bothered to worry about a big good-looking celebrity like Scott Pritchard having a good time in my city.

  He was snapped up the next night by “Do It All Delia” Williams, the paralegal, and then for the rest of the week he was entertained in succession by “Audible Amy” Walters, the dental assistant, “Slam Dunk Shirley” Cotton, the receptionist, “Motel Marilyn” Boyd, the happily married mother of two, and “Dirty Talk Dottie” Martin, the bank officer, who was Known for serving all your needs, even banking.

  “I love Texas,” Scott gasped to me between adventures.

  This was before he finished shooting the 261 that tied the seventy-two-hole Colonial record. He won by six strokes in the tournament Ben Hogan and halter tops had made famous.

  Gwen thanked me over long distance for helping Scott play well and have a good time in Fort Worth.

  “I had very little to do with it,” I said, leaving out the part about introducing him to some of our local all-stars.

  “I’m surprised he shot so low. He looked tired on TV.”

  “He may have been,” I said. “Colonial’s a different Kind of Tour event. Lot of social functions connected to the golf.”

  Someday, if Gwen ever attended the Colonial, the fully loaded halter tops, miniskirts, and spike heels would speak for themselves.

  I nabbed a nineteenth at Memphis and a twelfth at Memorial, and Grady Don did some top twenties himself, but the big moment for both of us was a visit in Memphis from Smokey Barwood, our agent. Smokey showed up at the Peabody Hotel downtown where we were staying. Us and the ducks.

  The three of us walked over to the Rendezvouz for a plate of ribs and pull. At dinner, after Grady Don said, “It ain’t Texas, but it ain’t bad,” Smokey presented us with a business proposal.

  There was this new company called Miracle Golf, Inc., headquartered in Fat Chance, Louisiana, and the product it was most proud of was the Flip Me container featuring a pull-the-trigger top to prevent insects from flying into your drink as it sat in the cup holder in your golf cart. We would own one third of Miracle Golf if we agreed to be the “spokespeople” for its golf products. Many more exciting products were in the works.

  Smokey produced a Flip Me container from his briefcase.

  “What do you think?” Smokey asked at the table, demonstrating the trigger-top. Flip up, flip down. Two times. Three.

  Grady Don looked at me. “Some people get millions from Nike.”

  “When you win your first major, we’ll have more bargaining power,” Smokey said.

  “Thanks for the reminder,” I said.

  Speaking for both of us, Grady Don said, “Smokey, when I get through with this pulled pork and these beans, I’ll show you what else you can do with that container.”

  Grady Don and I drove to the Houston tournament in his Lincoln gun-boat. We’d taken to doing it since 9/11 had caused all the inconvenient bullshit at airports. Me and Grady Don and the little gray-haired ladies are always the only ones who ever get strip-searched while the diaper-heads, turbans, and bedsheets go straight on board. We actually liked driving to tournaments if it wasn’t so far it gave you a limp.

  We’d take the scenic routes, the back roads. Like going down to Houston—only four hours—you could stop for lunch at the Burton Café near Brenham. Enjoy the lush, rolling countryside that isn’t beautiful by Lake Tahoe standards but looks plenty beautiful to most Texans.

  The Burton Café is a place that makes you want to eat the whole menu, even things that aren’t fried, then lick the grease off the wrists of everybody in the joint.

  Taking the back roads from Fort Worth to Houston also means you can avoid I-45. Leave it to the speeding, cell-talking wizards who lose control of their Chevrolet pickups, leap over the median, and become Texas State Highway Department statistics. Not to mention the overturned eighteen-wheeler that spills shit everywhere, blows up in flames, and causes a six-hour delay, by which time the driver may be awake from his nap.

  The reason I played in the Houston Open this time was because they played it in Houston for a change. Houston proper. Instead of some farflung residential development that seems closer to Saturn.

  It was played at graceful old River Oaks Country Club. The clubhouse looms like the White House at one end of River Oaks Boulevard in one of the prettiest neighborhoods in America. The original Donald Ross design has been toughened up by others through the years, but it still weaves through willows, Spanish moss, stately oaks, and money.

  Jimmy Demaret won the Western Open at River Oaks in 1940. The first Houston Open was played at River Oaks in 1946. Which was the last time Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead finished one-two-three in a golf tournament.

  I’d once captured a college trophy at River Oaks, and liking a place often helps your game. My 275 landed me in seventh place and was worth $150,000. If it hadn’t been for the 17th hole, where I made a double in the last round, I’d have been fourth.

  The 17th at River Oaks requires a big drive over a lake, and offers a shot to an upraised green with a blind pin. You can cut across as much of the water as you wish on the tee ball, then you have to take it up top and spin it. Try to land a wedge on top of Yul Brynner’s head and Keep it there. Your poor old average River Oaks member has to fire a long iron at the green. Makes you wonder why rich people want to live like that.

  Grady Don didn’t fare so good in the tournament. He wasn’t too enthralled with the River Oaks history I laid on him. He said, “Lord, Bantam, and Slammer finished one-two-three here, did they?”

  “You can look it up.”

  “Well, you can add to your lore that Grady Don Maples finished thirty-fucking-fifth here.”

  The subject of Gwen didn’t come up until we were on the way back home and stopped for lunch again at the Burton Café. This time, we ordered the cheeseburger for an appetizer and the chicken-fried steak for the main course—with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, pintos, corn on the cob, and black-eyed peas.

  “Where you going with the shapely mom?” Grady Don said. “Y’all thinking about marrying yourselves to one another? Or maybe that thought ain’t got here yet—excuse me for asking.”

  I said honestly, “We haven’t talked about where we’re headed. She seems to be happy with where we’re at. I Know I am. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time with a female woman-type lady.”

  “She’s a female woman-type lady, all right. My money says you’re gonna make her number four, the way you’re acting.”

  “I don’t have any idea if she’s interested in being married again. We’ve only been jacking around together two months.”

  Grady Don leaned back and said, “Gwen’s a dandy, I’ll say that. If I’ve ever see
n one that don’t need her teeth cleaned and coat brushed, it’s Gwendolyn Pritchard. She’d make a bulldog break his chain.”

  “I won’t pass that along to her as one of your compliments, if you don’t mind.”

  “I hope you don’t get your heart broke one day, that’s all—when she goes chasing after a Frisbee.”

  “I won’t pass that along either.”

  “It’s not like you haven’t been down this road before, B.J. You’re a big-time scholarship donor. You’ve recruited some serious debutantes in your time, son. But this one . . . man, she could go to Egypt and give the mummies a hard-on.”

  “She has a lot of pluses.”

  “I’m just saying you better think about it careful before you make her number four.”

  “If we do marry, she wouldn’t be number four.”

  “How you figure?”

  “Alleene counts. So does Cheryl, although her cussing and bitching took up most of our time. But Terri Adams was a walk-on. I’m not counting Terri Adams.”

  “You married the walk-on.”

  “OK, she gave good audibles. But we weren’t together long enough for me to unpack. Let the guys who screwed her while I was out of town count the walk-on.”

  “Babes as good-looking as Gwendolyn aren’t trustworthy, B.J. It’s not only a city ordinance, it’s an international law. You Know that. Shapelies bring you to your Knees, make you give up sweets. But one day you go out to run an errand, and they’re off doing the quarterback, the drummer, and the dope dealer.”

  “You left out the deckhand and the tennis pro.”

  “Them too.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Grade. Gwen’s not that Kind of chick. She’s mature, she’s a mom, a businesswoman, and she has a great sense of humor. We laugh a lot. We talk about things.”

  “Talk about things. Now I’m gettin’ a hard-on.”

  “We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on most things. Like music. We both grew up on James Taylor, Carole King, Carly. I say Kris and Willie and Billy Joe Shaver never wrote anything but anthems. She agrees with me.”