Vance swung.
It was his swing. I knew it would be, but memory, no matter how vivid or recently rehearsed, could not prepare me for the power that poured from his slender sinewy frame. To the top in perfect balance; the slightest pause and then Schenectady Slim dropped down into the slot; Vance’s legs drove through with impeccable economy and then with mind-shuddering might his hands unleashed their full lashing fury. The sound of the ball exploding off the clubface made Irene gasp. Our necks snapped trying to follow its blurred, blasting fight. “My God,” Michael’s voice uttered numbly behind me. The ball streaked and flew, rising with spectacular power to the point when it must peak and begin its gravity-driven fall. But it didn’t fall. It climbed and rose and rose some more, boring into infinity, to the seething heart of the storm. Lightning flashed in four directions as the ball vanished and the clouds roiled and tossed in fury.
Michael stared dumbstruck as Vance rocked back out of his finish and settled again onto his soles before him. “You have heard Hardy speak of that ancient battle,” he addressed Michael directly, “and you dismissed it as harmless tale or metaphor. It was no metaphor, Michael.” Vance stepped before the young man now and placed a hand on his shoulder. I saw Michael stagger. Irene and I sprung forward to steady him. For a moment I thought Vance would dismiss us. But he seemed somehow to want, and even need, us there. I braced myself on Michael’s left; I could feel Irene do the same on the right.
“The battle,” Vance spoke now, directly to Michael, “marked a day not of glory, but of tragedy. Civilization stood then, as it does now, in the twilight of an aeons-long cycle. Like us, those vanished warriors planted their standards in the sands of their own self-summoned extinction.”
Vance gestured out over the vanished seafront, above the booming ocean.
“The fact of battle, as each man grasped painfully in his heart, was proof of the race’s failure. They knew, warriors and dreamers and magicians, that bright as their comet had shown, it had fallen short through its own failure of nerve and self-compassion. Mankind must now quench in blood and horror the unresolved fury of its soul. I strode among the warriors, filling each with the courage to meet his destiny. Do you remember, Michael? Can you see the field of battle before you now?”
Michael’s glance was wild, tormented, peering straight into the heart of the storm, to ocean that once had been land, to land that had once been battlefield.
“The first I found was Junah,” Vance spoke, “eldest and most keenly conscious, beside his chariot at the forefront of the battle line. He pleaded with me for mercy, for foe as well as friend. I ignored him, spreading before his grasp the weapons of his destiny. His hand seized a bow of burnished ash and arrows of fletched steel, murderous and invincible.”
Michael trembled before the warrior god’s power. His eyes showed white beneath flickering lids; Irene and I held him tight, supporting…
“Next I sought out Hardy, a generation younger than Junah. I found him too, in infantryman’s armor, torn with the grief of his own and his brothers’ failure. He begged me in the name of humanity to forbear. Him too I ignored and again displayed my weapons. In pain he grasped a bronze-bound oak battle spear, its killing point merciless and insuperable.”
Michael reeled and shuddered, without doubt seeing this all with the inner eye. “Then I found you.” Vance stepped now, moving directly before him. “Youngest of the three, last in the line of generations and blessed with the greatest strength and compassion. You too pleaded for the race, and before you too I arrayed the shafts of your destiny. Do you remember?”
Michael stiffened as if blasted by a charge; Irene and I held him firm between us.
“Do you remember what you chose?” Vance repeated, and we could feel Michael shudder yet again.
“I do,” the young man said, and his whole body seemed to convulse from the charge and current of this remembered vision. I could feel the voltage, like a wave, rush from his sole to his crown.
“It was neither bow nor spear,” Vance spoke with his absolute centered quietude, “but a plain wooden staff, the staff of physic. From time immemorial the shaft of mercy, whose power is not to kill but to heal.”
Michael’s knees buckled. Vance’s words had cut through to his heart. His eyes sprung open; he began to weep. He buried his face in Irene’s shoulder, clinging to her with all his strength.
“You I gifted with the most demanding but exalted destiny of all. Yours was to move among the maimed and wounded, bearing comfort and surcease from pain. Your charge was not to slay but to heal, not to rend but to make whole.
“That was the destiny you chose then,” Vance declared, “and the destiny which chooses you now. Stand up.”
Thunder boomed over the ocean. Michael struggled to rise; clinging to Irene, with help from me, he found his feet. “Stand now!” Vance’s voice thundered with necessity. Michael obeyed, trembling. I was struck as if seeing it for the first time by his youth and strength, his beauty. He was like Junah, only stronger and more graceful. Like me, if I may say so, only kinder and with deeper mercy.
Vance held out Junah’s great hickory-shafted driver. “Four is the number of completion. The number of wholeness.”
In his hand he held a fourth ball.
Michael took it and teed it.
His hands were trembling as he set them upon the leather of the driver’s grip. There was vision and power in Junah’s warrior club, and now that charge poured its raw voltage into Michael. Up the living shaft the magic trembled. I saw again the young man’s pure and brilliant grip. It was the grip of his boyhood, the flawless sweet structure of tendon and bone, tissue and fascia and flesh. Vance was right. All of Michael’s swing, all of this life and all his future lives lay compassed already within that pure perfect grip. Michael’s eyes met mine just for an instant, clear and purposeful. He set the clubhead behind the ball and waggled once, the toes inside his shoes gripping firmly into the thick dense turf. The Field settled around him, swallowing him in the vorticed web of authenticity. Michael took one smooth easy inhale, then slowly, effortlessly, impeccably, he started the mighty clubhead back….
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Larry, Jody, Sterling, Rich, Lawrence of the Links and to our own Essex girl, Christy (she knows why), the Cowboy for flying to the rescue, and, for steering me through Sanskrit, Dr. Bruce Cameron Hall.
Praise for
The Legend of Bagger Vance
“The Legend of Bagger Vance is such an entertaining book on the surface you hardly realize you are being taught some of life’s greatest truths. Pressfield has seamlessly brought together that rare combination of fun and enlightenment in a novel that seems destined to take its place alongside some of the great works in golf literature.”
—Links magazine
“Entertaining, well crafted…. One need only have a nodding acquaintance with the game of golf to enjoy and appreciate this book; for the golfer…this is a wonderful story—simply, a must-read.”
—Golfing magazine
“Truly a delight. Even now when I play in professional tournaments I think of the positive effect Bagger Vance had on everyone associated with him. He will be with me for many years to come.”
—Patty Sheehan, member of the LPGA Hall of Fame
“Pure magic! I read it straight through in one sitting. It should be required reading for anyone who loves the game and has a sense of its history and its mystery.”
—Deane Beman, former commissioner of the PGA Tour
“The Field of Dreams of golf…. The only golf novel ever written that earns ‘couldn’t put it down’ accolades. This is a book that will remain with readers for a while, and will certainly emerge every time they step on a golf course.”
—BookPage
Copyright
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THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE. Copyright © 1995 by Steven Pressfield. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyri
ght Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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