by Ben Fountain
Sonny could sense a sea change within himself, a difference of depth, perhaps a broadening point of view. He believed that he was starting to understand how successful people made their way in the world, his learning curve pushed along by the rounds he played with Merrill Hayden. Sonny paid close attention to his fellow American, noting his clothes, his physical ease, his slick diplomatic skills. There was, for example, the way he flattered the generals: Hayden never complimented them directly on the job they were doing, which might imply the possibility of a different opinion, but instead he insisted that they worked too hard, sacrificing their leisure for the good of the country. Yes, the generals would gravely agree, yes, it’s true, we live only to serve the people’s desire. The day after these rounds an envelope would arrive for Sonny from the Strand Hotel; inside he would find enough cash to cover his losses from the day before, rounded up to the nearest hundred.
It felt sleazy, but Sonny pocketed the envelopes, composing mental notes of apology to his girls. Late one afternoon he was crossing the clubhouse verandah when Hayden called out.
“Sonny, come have a drink.”
Sonny walked over. Hayden was sitting with another American, a muscular, compact man in his mid-thirties with short dark hair that covered his head like felt. Hayden introduced him as Kel McClure, from the Embassy. McClure added that he was with the political section.
Everyone sat. Sonny signaled the waiter for a beer.
“So you’re the Asian tiger,” McClure said.
Sonny had a duh moment. “Say what?”
“You’re the Tiger Woods of Asia.”
“Bro, the only Tiger Woods of Asia is Tiger Woods.”
“Sonny’s a very fine golfer in his own right,” said Hayden. “And a first-rate teacher—he’s brought General Myint’s handicap down four strokes already.”
“Excellent,” said McClure, grinning at Sonny. He had black co coons for eyebrows and a long, spatulate jaw. The bottom half of his face was blue with five o’clock shadow.
Just then Hayden’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, checking the screen, “I really have to take this. Hello?”
McClure sat back and sipped his drink. He kept drilling Sonny with moronic alpha-male stares.
“You like it here?” he barked.
“Sure,” Sonny answered. “Last time I checked.”
“I hope you know the future of the country is in your hands.”
Sonny laughed.
“You think I’m kidding,” McClure said with a straight face, “I am absolutely not, the fate of the nation depends on you. If a peaceful civil society ever develops here golf is going to play a major role in that. It’s been documented,” McClure paused for a quick, compulsive drink, “a white paper came out of State last year, it’s a remarkable study. It showed the overwhelming bias of golf-culture countries toward democracy, free markets, your classic open society. Golf-culture countries rarely go to war, and when they do they never fight each other. Whereas non-golf countries have a much more belligerent profile.”
“That a fact,” said Sonny, who was pretty sure he was being put on.
“It only makes sense,” McClure continued, “golf’s the ultimate bourgeois sport. And what do the bourgeoisie want? They want peace. They want order. They want security. They want a social structure that’s good for business so they can do what they do best, making tons of dough. That’s the civilizing effect of your bourgeois middle class, and without it democracy’s basically D.O.A. in Myanmar.”
Sonny accepted his beer and took a long drink, grateful for the chance to look away from McClure; with his tense, arcane patter and serial-killer stares, he came across as a marginally presentable member of the Manson family. On Sonny’s other side Hayden was negotiating a deal, some sort of exotic oil swap out of Kazakhstan.
“Think about it,” McClure was saying, “business is all about relationships and trust, am I right? That’s why anywhere you go, if you’re looking to hook into the deals and big money, the first thing you do is head for the course. Take this guy, for instance”—he nodded at Hayden—“the deals he’s done the last few years, I bet he’s added a couple of points to the GNP just by himself. But he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without golf. That’s how he met the generals, how he got their trust. Now he’s the go-to guy in Myanmar—anybody looking to do an oil deal here, Merrill’s the man who can make it happen.”
To Sonny’s relief Hayden clicked off and stowed his phone. “Sorry,” he said, reaching for his drink.
“I was just telling Sonny how vital golf is to Myanmar’s future,” said McClure. “How he’s positioned to make a real contribution here.”
Hayden was nodding. “That’s true, Sonny has certainly helped to facilitate some things for me. Which reminds me, Sonny, I’ve been meaning to get you in the loop on this. We’ve got an investor group that’s putting together their plan for a golf resort down on the peninsula, and we’d like the benefit of your expertise. Tour the site, look over the architect’s plans, that sort of thing. I think your name recognition in the golfing world would give the project a real credibility boost.”
Sonny almost laughed—name recognition, right, with various bill collectors? “I’m not sure how much I can do for you, but I’d be glad to help.”
“Super, that’s just great. Does seventy-five thousand sound fair? For your fee, I mean.”
Sonny tried to stay cool. “Sure, that’s fair. More than fair.”
McClure sat back, grinning, spreading his arms wide. “This is outstanding,” he declared, “I’m just so proud of you guys. This is exactly the kind of investment Myanmar needs.”
Hayden gave him a bland look. “You’re more than welcome to go in with us, Kel. We’re still accepting investors.”
McClure laughed; he started backpedaling with his hands. “Unh-unh, you guys are way outta my league. I’m just a poor boy, remember? Just an honest public servant trying to do his job.”
Sonny couldn’t sleep. At night the bungalow closed around him like a coffin, a recurring personal drama that was greatly enhanced by the power grid’s collapse every evening at ten. No lights, no air conditioning, no civilization of any kind; Sonny lay there grazing the coffin lid with every breath and listening to the wildlife beyond his walls, the jet-turbine roar of frogs in heat, the fricative screech of insect group sex. Together with the slurry flow of thoughts in his head it all merged into a riot of nightly delirium, and yet there were times when he could leave his body and float above it, like a dream where he watched himself from outside—from this perspective life seemed more surreal than ever. Burma, he’d whisper, trying to make it real, Burma, Burma, the word so loaded and fraught that it might have been a prayer. How, exactly, had he ended up here? And how was he going to get back home? Thoughts of his daughters half the world away made him want to weep, and then there was all the blown money he had to think about, all the people hurt and friendships wrecked, the chronic sloppiness with booze and food and sex and the obscene squandering of his God-given talent, the past chasing him from his bed like a swarm of killer bees so that the earliest violet-silver blush of dawn often found him out on the putting green in bare feet and boxers, practicing sixty-foot circus putts to clear his mind. This one for the British Open, he’d tell himself—clop. This one for the Masters. This for the PGA. As a kid he’d played this game on his mother’s good carpet, honing his skills for the glory that was sure to come, and now the fantasies came flooding back in spite of himself, filling the good clean space he was trying to make inside. Dear sweet Jesus, would he ever outgrow desire, that grasping inner child? Maybe you broke free only if you actually won—it was hard to imagine that Tiger Woods fantasized about winning the Masters, though maybe after you won you simply obsessed on it in reverse, replayed the triumph over and over in your head and inflated the moment to such orgasmic perfection that you drove yourself crazy from the other side.
God, it just seemed so hopeless sometimes. Sonny knew his mental apparatus
was out of control, but he was becoming aware of a different way, in theory at least. Venturing out from the club on his days off he saw monks everywhere like a visual reproach, monks begging along the roads, milling around the shrines, chanting softly as they walked in single file, offering the world an object lesson in clarity. There was one group in particular, a pod of wispy, older monks who hung around Mahabandoola Park, across from the bank where Sonny wired money home. After his banking was done Sonny would spy on the monks as they went about their business, which did not, truth to tell, look like much. Some meditation, a little begging, the occasional catnap—life for them seemed to be a serene business, and Sonny watched them for clues as to how this was done. Desire, he knew, had ruined the first half of his life, and regret, its obverse, was going to ruin the second half unless he figured out their trick of serenity.
Show me! he wanted to scream at the monks. Tell me how! Where do I sign up? But something always held him back, some cultural cue bred deep in the bone: he was American, bad karma was his meat and potatoes. The golf course was where Sonny Grous belonged, out where businessmen plied their billion-dollar deals and dictators played their leisurely rounds, relaxing after a busy day of crushing the masses. And McClure—where did he fit in? He turned up at the club several times a week as the guest of one or another of the National’s seedier clique, the members said to be deep into drug-running or selling peasant girls to Thailand for the sex trade. The upper-echelon bottom-feeders, that was Kel’s crowd; Sonny assumed that McClure was CIA, though why that was he couldn’t exactly say. Late one afternoon he was finishing a lesson with General Tha’s son when McClure trudged up to the practice tee with a bucket of balls.
“Pro,” he wailed, “I’m suffering, man. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“Let’s have a look,” Sonny said. McClure took out his 6-iron and crashed three straight duck-hooks into the trees.
“Your grip’s all wonky,” said Sonny. “Roll your palm a little bit to the right, there. And move the ball a little more forward in your stance.”
McClure’s next shot sailed straight and true. “Holy mother,” he sighed, “that’s better than a blow job. Grous, you’re a genius.”
“Hit some more. Lock it into your muscle memory.”
McClure hit a few shots. “So how you doing these days, Sonny?”
“Sneaking by. Roll that palm, you’re already backsliding on me.”
McClure smiled, adjusted his grip. “You seen Merrill lately?”
“He’s around. We played yesterday, as a matter of fact.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Fine. Merrill is always fine.”
McClure laughed. “That’s our boy.” He settled in and swung; the ball pulled left, its curve deepening as it fell. He squibbed an other out of the pile and raked it toward him. “You know…” He settled in and swung; both men eyed the ball’s warped trajectory. “If he nails down that Tesco deal, it’ll be the biggest thing this place has ever seen. Bigger than Unocal, bigger than the Yetagun field. And our good buddy Merrill will score the mother of all success fees.” McClure selected another ball. “But I’m just wondering, how’s he going to handle the generals’ end?”
“They seem to have a good rapport,” said Sonny, which got a braying laugh from McClure. “Rapport, right, that’s good Sonny. I’m sure they have outstanding rapport.” He paused and swung. “But how’s he planning to get them their five percent, that’s what I want to know.”
Sonny said nothing. That the generals were getting bribes had always been the assumption, a possibility he’d felt no need to explore. He was just the pro; that other stuff had nothing to do with him. McClure smiled and took a lazy practice swing.
“Five percent of this deal, that’s the bomb, man, that’s just a shitload of dough. How’s he going to move that kind of money without the feds jumping his ass? You know, Sonny, there’s all kinds of U.S. laws forbidding that sort of thing. They could probably drag a drug angle into it too.” McClure paused for another shot. “By the way, how’s the golf course development coming?”
“I haven’t heard anything. I guess it’s on hold.”
“Yeah.” McClure was futzing with his grip. “I can’t help thinking that’s a weird place for a golf course, way down there on the peninsula. With the Karens raising all kinds of hell down there…” He swung; suddenly everything was going straight. “Tesco investing in that deal?” he asked lightly.
“I have no idea,” said Sonny.
McClure sighed and gave him a pained smile. Sonny sensed that he’d let his fellow American down, and that it was, sadly, no great surprise.
“Well, it’s just a notion,” McClure said in an easy voice. He hit a few more shots, then reached for his bag. “Thanks for the lesson, pro, I think we got it licked. Man, some days I just love this game.”
The following Monday Hayden walked into the pro shop and handed Sonny a check for seventy-five thousand dollars, drawn on the account of First Asia Golf Development Corporation.
“We’re good to go,” he said. “Dr. Maung’s going to do the design for us, we’re flying down this Thursday to walk the site. General Myint and General Tun are coming too. You free to join us?”
Sonny glanced at the check. Seventy-five thousand dollars—college for Carla and Christie, at least a year or two. “Sure,” he said, “I’m available.”
Sonny was trying to recall the last time he’d been on a helicopter. Was it ’93? ’94? The Buick Open in ’94, he decided, though that chopper had been a bucket compared to this one, a sleek teal-and-purple corporate job stocked with Cokes and Evian water and fresh bei moq cakes. Each seat came equipped with a headset and intercom jack, along with instructions in seven different languages; no explanation, however, was given for the pilots, who wore the combat fatigues of the Tatmadaw—they’d simply climbed aboard with everyone else and powered out. Within minutes Rangoon’s scrap-heap jumble had given way to the mudflats of the Sittoung River, and then to the gulf, the sludgy discharge from the river gradually shading into paisley swirls of electric green and blue. If Sonny leaned forward he could spot their military escort, three olive-drab helicop ters raked across the sky in a taut diagonal. Helmeted gunners hunkered down in the open side doors, bucking the wind like bugs on a windshield.
Hayden’s voice crackled over his headset. “We’ll cross the Gulf of Mottama here,” he said, holding a map over his shoulder for Sonny to see. “Then we’ll follow the coastline almost to Dawei. The property’s just north of there.”
Sonny nodded and tried to look as useful as possible. He was sitting in back with Dr. Maung, a tiny, intense Thai of advanced age whom Hayden had introduced as the dean of Asian golf course architects. At the moment Dr. Maung was drawing furiously on a pad, sketching a par-three hole with a wraparound pond.
“Sucker pin,” Sonny said, pointing to a bulge on the green. “You’re luring them in.”
Maung grinned maniacally. “Bogey theah, unless you veddy veddy lucky.”
“For this course?”
Maung nodded.
“Lots of water out there?”
Maung shrugged and tapped the end of his pencil. “Good erasah.”
The headset muffled the engine to a hurricane roar. The sky was cloudless, suffused with a dull, milky film like an eye obscured by cataracts. They made landfall over Kyaikkami and tracked the peninsula due south, following the coastline with its ragged trailing edge of islands. To their right the sea unspooled in fine-grained sheets of blue; to their left the highlands rose in an abrupt green wall, the ridgelines overlapping in sinuous folds.
“What do you think?” Hayden asked, twisting to catch Sonny’s eye.
“Real nice!”
“It’s paradise,” Hayden corrected. “And we’re going to be the first.”
Sonny drank a Coke. Maung kept sketching fantasy holes. Staring out the window put Sonny in a mild trance, a low-level fugue in which blocks of minutes passed without solid content. Presen
tly the Unocal pipeline scrolled into view, a jigsaw puzzle of tanks and pumping stations and industrial outbuildings. A ruler-straight gash marked its route into the highlands.
“Almost there,” Hayden said, checking his watch. “We’re making good time.”
They turned inland and crossed a series of brilliant green hills, the foliage breathing out light in a phosphorous haze. A small flash caught Sonny’s eye, then another, yellow pinpricks winking amid the green. He watched fondly, brain simmering with sleepy fascination.
Hayden’s voice fizzed through the intercom, laconic, mildly amused: “Don’t look now, gentlemen, but I think we’re under fire.”
Without warning the helicopter pitched hard left, then seemed to freefall a couple of hundred feet. Dr. Maung started babbling in frenzied blips and chortles as if his internal circuits were shorting out. Puffs of smoke rose off the hills like dandelion heads; one of the pilots was shouting at Hayden, who’d swiveled his headset off one ear. After a minute he nodded and swung the headset into place.
“Looks like we’ve flown into a little jungle rumble up here,” he told Sonny and Maung. “The army’s flushed out some rebels from their rabbit hole. Anyway,” Hayden tapped his window, “there’s our golf course. We ought to be good to land in a couple of minutes.”
Sonny heard himself laughing. “We’re going to land down there?”
Hayden was brisk. “That’s what we came for.”
Minutes later they were clambering from the helicopter onto a broad, grassy hilltop with a view of the sea. The area was pocked with craters and chuckholes from a recent bombardment, the grass scorched in jagged starburst patterns. One of the military helicopters had already set down; General Myint, General Tun, and their entourage were gathered at the crest of the hill, surveying the jungle to the east with binoculars. The other two helicopters were skimming a distant ridge, engines keening with a high-pitched weed-eater whine.
