The Franchise Babe: A Novel

by Dan Jenkins

  “What’s the name of your chef here?” I said. “Hates Breakfast?”

  Hoyt said the chef, David, wasn’t no Indian.

  I said, “David must be a terrorist, then.”

  “Naw, he’s just one of them hippies from bygone days who liked to shut down college campuses. Life ain’t been fun for him since.”

  “I wish he hadn’t thought of my breakfast this morning as the administration building.”

  Nodding at the newspaper, Hoyt said, “You read all of it yet?”

  I said, “I’m reading it again, trying to decide which parts I like best. It’s a work of art.”

  “I like them diaries,” Hoyt said. “I had some input.”

  I laughed.

  “You think them diaries is funny?”

  “I do.”

  The diaries were to support the story in the Ruidoso Bugle. What made them even funnier to me was that P. W. (Pecan Waffle) Spurlock, who claimed he had obtained the diaries from an “undisclosed source,” wrote that the diaries had been kept by Maj. Marcus Reno and Capt. Frederick Benteen, two members of the Seventh Cavalry who had escaped the slaughter of “Finnegan’s Folly.” And what made this funny was that, if my memory of history was correct, Major Reno and Captain Benteen were the same two famous officers who’d survived the Battle of Little Bighorn.

  I said, “Hoyt, don’t you find it, well, ironic as well as a miracle that Major Reno and Captain Benteen survived both massacres, Little Bighorn and here?”

  “Yeah, ain’t that somethin’?” he said.

  I laughed again.

  Hoyt said, “Son, you don’t want to miss the big picture here.”

  I said, “You can show me the big picture after you tell me what your writer is getting out of it…Mr. P. W. Spurlock. Sorry, but it’s hard for me to refer to a fellow writer as Pecan Waffle.”

  “This ain’t for your magazine, is it?”

  “It’s too good for a magazine. I’ll save it for the memoir.”

  “Now you’re talkin’,” he said. “Mr. P. W. Spurlock has been made a full-fledged member of Mescalero Country Club, only he won’t pay monthly dues. Aside from that, he’ll be receiving a five-thousand-dollar line of credit at the casino.”

  “Nice. I’m glad somebody’s making money out of journalism.”

  Hoyt said, “The story in today’s newspaper saved my golf course and this golf tournament. That’s your big picture, Jack. Sinking Canoe spoke to Limping Turkey and Smells a Possum this morning. He called up to make sure they’d seen the paper. They had. Canoe informed me an hour ago that Limp and Possum ain’t gonna organize a protest Saturday ’cause there ain’t anything to protest no longer, don’t you see? What they’re gonna do instead is organize a celebration around the eighteenth green. It’ll take place when the tournament’s over. They’ll be celebratin’ the fact that there’s cavalry soldiers buried down there underneath the bent grass green—no dead Apaches whatsoever.”

  I said, “Hoyt, do you realize you’re telling me all this news with a straight face?”

  “Straight as a Indian goes to shit,” he said.

  25

  Show me somebody who never has a problem with a computer and I’ll show you a ten-year-old on a skateboard.

  After breakfast there wasn’t much to do but skip the commissioner’s press conference, have lunch, and wait around for the tournament leaders, Ginger Clayton and Debbie Wendell, to tee off in the last group at one thirty. So I went to my room and opened up my trusty laptop. Thought I’d make some notes and go online to see what catastrophes had occurred in the world overnight.

  But when I opened the laptop, it greeted me with something I’d never seen before—a blue screen with peculiar words and numbers on it.

  The worst thing was, I couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what. The mouse was useless and the machine wouldn’t even let me turn it off. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. The screen was still blue.

  I petted it and stroked it and promised it a trip to Europe. I begged it to talk to me. I punched around on the toolbar. I held down keys and clicked on others. I picked it up and shook it.

  Finally, I thought of one last thing to do before I threw it against the wall and called it a motherfucking piece of worthless cocksucking shit.

  I called Thurlene’s room and asked if she or Ginger knew anything about computers.

  Thurlene said, “I know very little, but Ginger knows everything. We travel with her laptop.”

  I said, “Mine’s been invaded by evil little people who want to chase me to a rubber room. I hate to bother Ginger on a game day, but do you think she’d mind taking a look at it? Maybe she knows the secret words to whisper to it.”

  “She’ll be happy to look at it. She’s selecting her outfit for the day. I’ll send her around as soon as she’s dressed. Please don’t keep her long. She needs to hit balls and putt for an hour before she plays.”

  “I won’t waste her time,” I said. “If she thinks the disease is irreversible, that’s good enough for me. I’ll fire a jump shot at the recycle bin and head for Office Depot.”

  Ginger brought her own laptop to my room. She was dressed for what she expected to be a chilly day in the mountains. She nicely filled out a pair of tan corduroy pants and wore a gray V-neck cashmere sweater over a red cotton turtleneck.

  “I appreciate you coming,” I said. “It’s either something simple or it’s going to die screaming. All I know about computers is I can turn it on and off…I can e-mail…I can attach…I can go to Drudge and read stuff. I’ve recently mastered the art of cut and paste, and I can Google.”

  She said, “Good, Jack. You’re way ahead of most grown-ups.”

  She placed her laptop on a table beside mine and did numerous things with plugs in the two machines and in the wall.

  When she sat down and opened up my laptop and saw the screen, she actually laughed.

  “Ah-ha!” she said. “The blue screen of death!”

  The Blue Screen of Death? Harry Potter and the Blue Screen of Death? Indiana Jones and the Blue Screen of Death?

  “You’re familiar with the problem?” I said. “This blue screen of death thing?”

  “Yep,” she said.

  Her fingers danced over the keys, her machine and my machine.

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s great. That’s beyond great.”

  “Want me to tell it not to do this again?”

  “By all means—if it wants to live.”

  Her fingers danced again. One minute. Two minutes.

  “Done!” she said. “You’re all set.”

  I had rarely been as impressed with anything, and told her so.

  She closed her own laptop and said, “I don’t have to rush off. You got a Coke in the minibar, Jack?”

  “I’m sure I do,” I said. I got the minibar open after putting the key in the wrong way twice, threatening it, and kicking it. Gave her the Coke.

  Ginger said, “My mom likes you a lot, Jack. A lot…if you know what I mean.”

  I said, “Your mom is a dynamite lady. I like her a lot too. But how do you know she likes me a lot—if you know what I mean?”

  “I can tell.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Lots of ways.”

  “Give me one.”

  “She’s smoking more.”

  “Give me another one.”

  “She won’t talk about you.”

  I said, “Boy, I can see where that would be a dead giveaway. She won’t talk about me.”

  “It is! I say, ‘How’s Jack?’ She says ‘Fine.’ I say, ‘He’s a neat guy.’ She says, ‘I suppose.’ I say, ‘He’s a good-looking guy.’ She hums and says, ‘Do you think so?’ I say, ‘What do you two talk about when you’re together?’ She says, ‘Nothing.’ I say, ‘That’s all?’ She says, ‘Whatever.’ I ask if she’s not interested in you, why does it take her so long to pick out something to wear before she goes to meet you?
She says, ‘Don’t be silly.’”

  “Has she gone out with many guys since the divorce?”

  “Losers.”

  “Losers?”

  “She comes home and says now she knows everything there is to know about building strip malls.”

  I smiled. “Tell me about your dad.”

  She gave me a long look.

  I said, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “Is this for your story?”

  “Nope, Just for me. The guy your mom likes a lot.”

  “My dad is a loser jerk.”

  I only looked at her.

  “He’s a liar and a thief too,” she said.

  I said, “It sounds like he’s moving up on the grand slam. Is this you talking or with your mother’s input?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Your mom told me about him taking the money that was supposed to belong to you.”

  “He was a loser jerk before that. I hate to say it since he’s, like, my own father, but I think there are people in the world who are just no damn good. He’s one of them. My mom is gorgeous, intelligent, witty…like, really quick, energetic, a hard worker…Well, you know…And he let her get away. How smart is that?”

  “Your mom is blessed, Ginger. It’s against the rules for teenage girls to like their mothers. You’re a refreshing exception.”

  “They don’t have a mom like mine. My dad never appeciated her. He always put her down…always acted like she was lucky to be married to him. For as long as I can remember. I’m sure he hit her sometimes. I know he batted her around. She’ll never admit it. She should have dumped him a long time ago. Jesus.”

  “But he got you interested in golf, didn’t he?”

  “That’s a myth.”

  “It is?”

  “My mom did it. When I was like eight or nine. She saw me out in the backyard swinging her seven-iron. I’d watched golf tournaments on TV. I had a natural swing, Mom said. So she started working with me. We’d play together on this public course. Mom has a good swing too. She can still break eighty. She’d read instruction books and articles and give me swing tips. She always encouraged anything I was interested in. I know she would rather have had me on the golf course than sticking pins in my body and experimenting with drugs…which I really can’t understand anybody doing. We played so much golf together. I loved it.”

  “What did your dad think about it?”

  “He was embarrassed. He’d rather have had a cheerleader in the family. He was the golfer. Yeah, sure. Like he ever beat anybody. But when I started to win juniors, he took credit for it.”

  “Do you talk to him much?”

  “Now and then. He calls. He says, ‘Way to go.’ He says I should have laid up instead of going for it. Stuff like that. I don’t really hate him. I just…feel sorry for him. He’s not a bad person or anything. He’s just kind of, you know, good for nothing.”

  I glanced at my watch. “You still have time to practice. I want to ask you about something else.”

  “The Debbie thing, right?”

  “You’re as quick as your mom. Yeah, the Debbie thing. I’m intrigued. I’m curious.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know what to think about it, honestly.”

  “What do you think you think?”

  “It’s hard for me to believe Debbie wants to hurt me. We’ve known each other forever. We’re friends, you know? The only reason it might be true—the poison thing—is my mom believes it.”

  “And your mom is usually right about things, huh?”

  “She is. Definitely.”

  “What about the Chinese girl?”

  “I don’t know anything about Tang. She’s from, like, China, right? She’s a terrible player. She can’t keep it on the world. I don’t know why she keeps trying. Man, if she’s the best they’ve got in China…I guess I have to say she’s a little flip-o too. She wants to learn how to speak Apache? Where do you go with that?”

  “Debbie’s mother,” I said. “How do you feel about Ann Wendell?”

  Ginger shrugged. “She acts nice and friendly, but…look out, man. She’s Cruella de Vil.”

  “You should get going,” I said.

  “Yeah, I should.”

  We high-fived.

  “Play good,” I said. “Make us proud.”

  “You got it!”

  26

  Although Debbie Wendell shot a 68 in the first round of the Speedy Arrow Energy Bar Classic, her lowest LPGA score to date, it was a given that she’d pay dearly for the tattoo on her tummy. Friday morning, looking at her face you’d think she’d wised off to Joan Crawford.

  The dark glasses didn’t completely cover up the purple around her left eye, and her swollen jaw was turning the color of red beans and rice.

  Her golf swing looked slightly restricted as well. Probably the result of three or four body blows.

  Thurlene had agreed to ride in the cart with me if she could drive, and we caught up with Ann Wendell walking in the Ginger-Debbie gallery on the front nine. We both were eager to hear the mother’s version of what happened to her daughter’s face.

  She pulled up next to Ann Wendell along the gallery ropes and asked the question.

  Ann Wendell said, “The poor child. There are times when she simply seems to be unlucky. Last night she came out of the bathroom and tripped over the coffee table in our living room and fell down hard on the entrance hall tile. I almost had a heart attack.”

  “I can imagine,” Thurlene said.

  “What a lousy thing to happen,” I said, going for sincerity.

  Ann Wendell said, “It didn’t appear that we needed to bring in a doctor. I treated her with ice packs…and of course we always travel with painkillers. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  We let it go at that.

  Steering us back onto the cart path, Thurlene said, “Ann Wendell needs to be confined.”

  “How does her husband put up with her?”

  “Ed, the hardware king? He’d better.”

  “Or else?”

  “Start with whip dog.”

  “That would be a beginning.”

  Giggling at a thought, she said, “Ginger calls her the Thermostat Queen. Not to her face. It’s our own little joke.”

  “The Thermostat Queen?”

  “Gin noticed it first…and imitates her, Ann never lets Ed be comfortable. At home or anywhere else. We would visit them in their cabin at the golf academy. If Ann saw Ed relaxing in a chair with a book or a newspaper, she would say, ‘Ed, turn the thermostat up a little.’ Fifteen minutes later, when he’d look comfortable again, she would say, ‘Ed, go turn the thermostat down a little.’ Ed would shuffle back to the wall. I’m sure she does it in private too. We started watching for it. If it wasn’t the thermostat, it was ‘Ed, empty the wastebasket,’ or ‘Ed, move that chair over here,’ or ‘Ed, close those blinds,’ or ‘Ed, open those blinds,’ or ‘Ed, sit here, don’t sit over there,’ or ‘Ed, go see what that noise is in the bathroom.’ Then it would be back to the thermostat again.”

  “The Thermostat Queen,” I said. “I can’t believe I was never married to Ann Wendell.”

  “But you had the elegant Renata Schielder.”

  Debbie was a gamer, you had to admit. Bruises and all. Through the first nine holes she was even par for the round and only four strokes behind Ginger, who turned two under. Debbie was still in second place in the tournament.

  Further back were Linda Merle Draper and Jan Dunn and one or two South Korean Americans. They were the only other serious challengers to Ginger. Everybody was battling the gusty winds and cold weather that made Mescalero a tougher golf course. The Lore-nas and Paulas hated the place, one heard.

  On the back nine we noticed Tang Chen strolling along in the Ginger-Debbie gallery. She had shot an 82 in the first round and had struggled so much on the front nine Friday, she had WD’d.

  Tang Chen saw us in the cart and came over.

  “You quit?�
� Thurlene said to her. “What happened?”

  “I have injury,” Tang said. “I shoot forty-three on first nine.”

  “Those forty-threes will give your scorecard a bruise,” I said.

  Tang Chen looked like she was trying to get her mind around my comment.

  “I go follow friends now,” Tang said. “Hana ogi, ha-na-ta okee!”

  Thurlene muttered something obscene as she sped the cart up a hill.

  Ginger threw down a 69, the only subpar round on Friday, and it put her five under for the tournament. It gave her a four-stroke lead over Debbie Wendell going into Saturday’s final eighteen. Debbie had dug out a 71 in Friday’s tough conditions. Ran the table on the greens.

  We were parked in the cart behind the eighteenth green to watch Ginger and Debbie finish their rounds. As Ginger tapped in for a par, another cart pulled up next to us. It was Hoyt Newkirk and a lady.

  Hoyt was wearing a large black Stetson today and a Western-cut suit and string tie. He introduced the lady by saying, “This here’s Fay.”

  I said, “Hi, This Here’s Fay. I’m Jack. This here’s Thurlene.”

  The lady said, “Hoyt says you’re a good sport, Jack…and honey, he’s moved you ahead of Babe Ruth on the all-time homer list.”

  “Why, thank you, Hoyt,” Thurlene said.

  Fay said, “Don’t wet your panties. He’s still got Sophia Loren ahead of everybody.”

  Hoyt said, “Fay runs my bidness. She’s been with me for twenty years.”

  “Longer than any of his wives. You can book that.”

  “I saved her life,” Hoyt said. “I pulled her out of a piano bar on Clark Street in Chicago. I don’t rightly remember what I was doin’ in Chicago at the time.”

  “I know what I was doing,” Fay said. “I was singing ‘On a Clear Day’ and fightin’ off them Notre Dame drunks.”

  Fay was a thin lady in slacks and a sweater. Her big hair had yet to escape the Sixties. It was dark blond and plastered with so much hairspray, the brisk wind was no match for it.

  Hoyt reported that the Frenchman and the LPGA commissioner had left town together. They’d gone to Palm Springs in the Frenchman’s airplane. Hoyt said he wished the Frenchman had stayed around longer.