Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  "And you?" she said, her voice telegraphing controlled disdain.

  "I've got a small case of the shanks," I said. "Nothing that should affect your appetite, though. Have a good dinner." If I was lucky, my mention of the forbidden s-word would worm its way into Kaitlin's superstitious golfer's psyche.

  Gary patted my back and followed his sister, Walter the hunk, and perky Cindi into the dining room. I dug into the food the bartender deposited in front of me, eager now to clean my plate and return to the solitude of my room. Sooner I could get to sleep, sooner I'd have the chance to put all this out of my mind.

  Three women I thought I recognized from the golf course walked by me on their way into the restaurant. "Are you here for Q-school?" asked the last one through. "You look familiar."

  "Cassie Burdette." I offered her my hand. "I think we met a couple years ago at the NCAA tournament in Alabama."

  "Mary Morrison," the girl said. "And these are Adele Simpson and Eve Darling. We noticed you having a little chat with our favorite golfer."

  "Best thing you can do there is ignore the bitch," said Eve.

  "Sounds like you all know her pretty well," I said, laughing.

  "Futures Tour," said Mary. "She's a legend in her own mind. Come on, bring your plate and your beer and sit with us."

  After ordering their drinks and dinner, the three women began to describe their experiences with Kaitlin.

  "To put it bluntly," began Adele, "she's insufferable."

  "Don't you guys live in the same town?" asked Eve. "You're not distant relations or anything?"

  "Oh, please," I said. "Spare me that. Unfortunately, we do both come from Myrtle Beach. And I wouldn't mind having her talent off the tee, but any similarity stops there."

  Mary laughed. "She hasn't made a lot of friends out on Futures. If she wins, she's unbearable. When she loses, she's worse."

  "The only things she's really interested in talking about are her golf game and this false memory business," said Adele. "We're people, too. Even if you don't want to be best friends, you could at least make a little conversation. How're you doing? Where're you from? Are you married or happy?" I laughed, thinking of Gary insisting that Kait-lin ask about my day.

  "It's worse than that," said Eve. "She's mean. Things don't go her way, she lashes out at whoever's in her path."

  "And don't forget calling people on obscure rules in the USGA book. She's called girls on teeing up ahead of the markers, using tees as ball-markers, the two-ball rule, you name it. She's never heard of giving the benefit of the doubt," added Adele.

  "The low point was a match play tournament when Kaitlin's opponent chipped in for bird and Kaitlin insisted she replay the shot because she was away," said Eve. "By the letter of the law, she was correct, but the spirit was mean. It really took the heart out of the girl she was playing."

  "She's always correct," said Mary. "But what gets to you is the steady drip, drip, drip of her self-righteousness. Most of us avoid her like the plague."

  "Except for Julie," corrected Eve.

  "Who's Julie?" I asked.

  "It's a long story," said Mary. "Short version, Julie At-water seems to be Kaitlin's new best friend. Long version, we think Kaitlin talked her into accusing her own father of incest a couple of months ago."

  "I'm confused," I said. "Kaitlin got Julie involved with this stuff several months ago? I thought she just filed the suit against Coach Rupert last week?"

  "The lawsuit is new," said Eve, "but the accusations against her father are not."

  "Next thing we knew," said Mary, "Julie's wondering if she's a lesbian. You'll probably see her dad this week. He's been picketing every stop we've made for the last couple months. He's got the girls in the Bible study group in a tizzy over this, too. Julie used to hang with the Bible thumpers; now the group doesn't speak to her at all."

  "Is her father that Leviticus guy?" I asked.

  "You know this dude?"

  "I saw him marching outside Kaitlin's shrink's office last week in Myrtle Beach." It occurred to me that these girls might wonder why I was that familiar with a shrink complex. "It was big news in the Myrtle Beach paper," I added quickly. "First Kaitlin filed her lawsuit and then the psychiatrist was murdered. I couldn't figure out why a Bible thumper was picketing there. So he blames that psychiatrist for his daughter's problems?"

  "From what I heard, Kaitlin set Julie up for a consultation with her doctor. That's when the trouble started."

  "What a mess." I sighed, more than ready to change the subject. "Have any of you played the courses yet?"

  "The Panther's a bitch," said Adele. "I really hope I get it over with the first day."

  "The good news is you only have to play it once," said Eve.

  "Yeah, but once around the Panther's Claw is plenty."

  As I finished my beer, the girls joked about their practice round earlier in the day. I suddenly felt exhausted. Some girls liked to socialize the whole time they were here at Q-school, distract themselves from what otherwise might feel like unbearable pressure. I was glad to have made the acquaintance of some friendly faces, but at the same time, I felt desperate to get off by myself and regroup. I hoped for an inspirational and sexy phone message from Jack Wolfe. I also wanted to talk to Joe. I just wasn't sure I was quite ready to forgive his defection.

  "I'm going to hit the hay," I said, standing and sliding a twenty-dollar bill onto the table. "I'm beat."

  "Sure you don't want to go clubbing with us?" Eve demonstrated an abbreviated funky chicken.

  "Thanks anyway, big date tomorrow. My first encounter with the Panther."

  I made my way back through the bar, which was now crowded, noisy, and smoky. I caught sight of Gary Rupert sitting at a stool on the far side of the room, but I'd had enough conversation for one night with him as well. It wasn't until I was buckling the seat belt in my rental car that it occurred to me how familiar the man talking with him looked. Something about the broad shoulders and slightly thinning hair.

  I drove back to my motel, wishing I could get Sheriff Pate's warning out of my mind. Even worrying about double bogeys on the four holes that comprised the Panther's Claw would be preferable to imagining the possibility of being stalked for information I did not possess. I thought back over the evening. I decided to put any feelings about Gary, sexual or otherwise, on hold. His sweet defense of Kaitlin reminded me of my own brother, Charlie. Charlie would stick up for me no matter what the circumstances. In this case, Gary had to be off the mark. From all that my dinner companions reported, Kaitlin didn't have much going that could be sincerely defended. In fact, I didn't have to stretch far to picture her, in my place, in the ugly scenario Sheriff Pate had described—a crime of passion gone sour. Disappointment twisted into murder. For what it was worth, I'd run that by Pate tomorrow.

  Chapter 9

  Finally, my turn on the tee had come. I smelled the sharp scent of the newly cut Bermuda grass. A morning mist made visibility zero more than fifty yards down the fairway. Not that it mattered. My three-wood had squirted short and crooked, barely out of sight. Then Kaitlin's drive whistled three hundred yards straight down the middle. The spectators who lined the first hole cheered. "Rupert! Rupert!" Their bloody, pulsing lips mirrored my memory of the dying Dr. Bencher.

  I dragged myself awake and lay breathing hard in a tangle of sweat-dampened sheets. I got up and stumbled halfway to the minifridge before I remembered that yesterday's shopping expedition had yielded only a six-pack of Busch. The beer might dull the shooting anxiety that nightmare had left behind, but I knew it would also blow the rest of the day. I flicked on the TV and did my stretching and calisthenics, waiting for the complimentary continental breakfast buffet to open up downstairs.

  At 6:30, I bought a copy of the Herald-Tribune in the lobby. I planned to shroud myself in the paper and fend off potential chitchat with traveling salesmen about the latest tip from Golf Digest on how to get out of a sand bunker. I loaded my tray with orange juice from co
ncentrate, anemic-looking coffee, corn flakes, and a chocolate-covered donut that had seen fresher days. Becky's mom was probably whipping up a whites-only, veggie omelet and a fresh fruit salad while Becky lounged in bed watching cartoons.

  I skimmed a small article on the front page of the Tribune: LPGA SECTIONAL QUALIFIER RETURNS TO PLANTATION GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB. The writer described how the future stars of the LPGA generally scrapped their way through Q-school and onto the professional golf Tour right here in Venice, Florida. It certainly wasn't news, but the facts in black and white caused my heart to rev up in what had to be an unwholesome way. At the end of the article, the reporter interviewed the club manager about the unusually strong presence of protesting pickets at Futures Tour venues over the last half year.

  "This is a sporting event, not a political debate or a circus. We will absolutely not tolerate any disruption of that kind at this tournament," insisted Manager Jones. "These people have been put on notice."

  Kaitlin's Deikon dude appeared next to me with his tray of breakfast food.

  "Yo. Mind if I join you? It's Lassie, isn't it?"

  "Cassie," I said. I knew I needed a haircut, but really, a collie? Jesus, this guy was a dope. And I did mind if he joined me, but with his buns already hitting the wrought-iron cafe chair across from me, I saw no gracious way out. So I folded up the paper and pulled my tray back to make room for him at the table. "And you're Wally."

  "Walter," he corrected me. "Wally makes me sound too much like a pet walrus."

  I laughed politely. "And you must get all the bad jokes about Where's Waldo."

  "That I do." We chewed for several minutes in silence.

  "So, who've you landed for equipment sponsors?" he said.

  "No one yet," I said, perking up a bit. Could he be feeling me out to make an offer? Maybe some good would come out of this intrusion after all. "So far, there's not been an awful lot worth representing." Damn, that sounded too negative. "The best is yet to come," I added quickly. "I'm on the comeback trail."

  "It's a dog-eat-dog world," he said. "At this level, you have to have something really special going for you—like Kaitlin does—to get yourself noticed." I nodded, trying not to take too much offense. After all, I hadn't been playing on the Futures Tour, and he would have had no opportunity to see my talents otherwise. "But lots of my competitors are here this week, looking for just the right future star to show off their up-and-coming-gear. You girls aren't the only ones having to fight for a living." He grinned. "So don't be discouraged. You could get discovered."

  "We'll see." I wiped my chin with my napkin. "Tell me about the Tee Warrior-slash-Ball Hog."

  His face crinkled up in an expression of horrified disbelief. "How do you know about that?"

  "I was on the next tee at the Grandpappy range when you were showing the club to Kaitlin," I said. "She sure did make it sing." I tried to rein in my mocking tone.

  The tension in his face relaxed. "She's really something, isn't she? I want to get her down to headquarters so the technical guys can measure her club head speed and the torque she puts on the shaft. As far as I'm concerned, she's got the template for a nearly perfect swing." He laughed. "Perfect body, too, but don't tell her I said that. She'll get the PC police after me." I waited for him to comment about how he'd like to measure the torque she put on his shaft, too.

  He grinned as if reading my mind. Peculiar twitching movements had begun to march up the side of his neck and into his jawline. This guy seemed clearly head-over-heels in love, but laced with an Oil Can Boyd kind of just-about-tipped-over-the-edge intensity.

  "But, hey, listen, that club, the Ball Hog or whatever we end up calling it, it's not out yet," Walter said, dropping his voice to a low rumble. "I'm not supposed to be using it for demo. My ass would be grass. So do me a favor and keep it under your hat, okay?" I nodded. "Hey, have a fantastic day," he said, cramming the last half of a bran muffin into his mouth. "I got places to do and things to be."

  "Catch you later then, dude," I said. I watched him lunge out of the delicate chair and jam the contents of his tray into the trash. Hunk was the only way to describe him—muscles that made every Deikon logo on his clothing quiver. But Lord, what a moron.

  Back in the motel room, I dialed into my cell phone voice mail. Joe had left the first message the night before. "I hope you're not still ticked off. I'm at Sawgrass. Mike's a mess. I'm trying to hold him together, but it may take every bottle of Elmer's glue and roll of Scotch tape they have in Ponte Vedra. His new caddie doesn't have your magic touch. I'll get over as soon as I can, but it could be Thursday. Call me tonight. By the way, before he was killed, Bencher was up to his eyebrows fighting the False Memory outfit. They had him targeted for harassment. He had hired a big-name lawyer and was set to testify against one of their founders next month. Turns out the guy lives in Sarasota—Will Turner. I'll look him up when I get over there. Stay cool. I'm thinking of you."

  Mike could eat his heart out. I didn't want to wish him ill, but I had to admit a small measure of satisfaction that the new caddie wasn't doing the job I had for nine months. I deleted Joe's words and moved on to Sheriff Pate.

  "We need to talk. If I don't catch you on the course, call this afternoon." He didn't even bother to leave his name. Another moron, as far as I was concerned. Only this one I couldn't afford to alienate.

  I warmed up briefly at the driving range, then drove my cart toward the first tee of the Panther course. The club grounds seemed a lot busier than yesterday, the practice areas bursting with lady golfers and their caddies. I noted an astonishing array of body types: tall and willowy, short and chunky, narrow shoulders, Atlas shoulders, flat butts, huge asses that spread across more than one zip code.

  In my previous life on the PGA Tour, I had been a rare woman in a man's world. There were advantages to that-— like the absence of cat-scratching, back-biting, hormon-ally driven emotional roller coasters, such as the ride Kait-lin Rupert appeared to be on. On the other hand, the guys tended to skate on the surface of their feelings, relying on communal beer drinking, dirty jokes, and stories about the largesse of golf groupies to carry their friendships. I had orbited the outside perimeter, peering in—not a man, not a player, and certainly not included in the caddies' inner circle.

  "Interesting career selection," Dr. Baxter had said after I described my life on the Tour. "You felt quite isolated, but at the same time, special. We should explore what went into your choice." According to him, you couldn't just stumble into something—everything you did or said had some deeper meaning. Hah!

  Two Asian women introduced themselves to me on the path to the tee. Sachiko was blocky and masculine. Hiroko was so delicate I couldn't imagine she had the strength to swing a full-length driver. Neither one spoke much English. I was able to make out that they were Japanese, had spent the last year competing on the Asian Tour but had not met Jack Wolfe, and not much else. Hiroko introduced me to her mother, who was even smaller than her daughter. She carried an enormous silver umbrella to shade herself from the Florida August sun. She was dressed in exquisite golf clothing, down to white anklets with pink pom-poms and spiked Lady Fairway silver saddle shoes. Perhaps she was poised to take her daughter's place in the event of an emergency.

  Divot, one of the volunteer Munchkins I'd met yesterday, greeted us on the first tee.

  "How are you girls doing?" she asked.

  "Great," I said. "We haven't hit a single ball yet, so no chance to get into trouble." The Japanese women laughed.

  "You may find the greens a bit fast," said Divot. "An underground water pipe burst two days ago. Our irrigation system is out of commission until they get the replacement part from Miami. We're dreadfully sorry for any inconvenience."

  As we set off down the first fairway, there was little sign of the tension that I knew would dominate the first round of the tournament. Like the other girls, I could repeat any shot that didn't meet my standards. Today I was under no obligation to accept balls hooked out
of bounds, putts missed on either side of a hole, skulled chips, balls in the water, or any other missteps with ugly consequences. I added my own descriptive notes to the LPGA yardage book, hoping Laura would be able to decipher my scrawl. I was pretty confident their measurements and drawings would be accurate. But the difference between pretty confident and dead sure could mean the difference between a career on the Tour and one teaching the basics of the golf swing to ungrateful preadolescents.

  In my humble opinion, other than putting, the Panther's Claw presented hurdles more psychological than physical. In fact, the whole course was straightforward. Under the best of circumstances, it suited my game just fine. All I had to do was drive the ball straight, hit consistent medium and short irons, and drop the putts. Hah!

  Other than four three-putts, I limited my damages to one brush with disaster, a triple bogey on the par-four twelfth hole. The hole required a straight drive, then a blind shot over trees and marsh to the green. Under ordinary conditions, this would present no great challenge. But after I'd blocked my tee shot right, my attempt at a miracle wedge buried the ball so deep in the woods a trained bird dog couldn't have found it. I told myself I'd learned some things. And that's what practice rounds were for.

  We finished the round and headed back to the clubhouse. If anything, Divot had understated the speed of the greens. As we passed the pit dug alongside the seventeenth hole that contained the broken water pipe, I prayed the missing part would arrive soon. Mastering greens that ran like billiard tables during this already difficult week seemed too much to ask.

  Protesters with placards, a confusion of players and volunteers, and a handful of police officers crowded the area outside the LPGA office. Sheriff Pate and several of his cohorts barked out orders instructing the individuals with picket signs to clear the premises. I recognized Leviticus, who carried the same Bible verse I'd seen in Myrtle Beach. He probably hadn't seen a shower stall or laundromat since then either. The other protesters were strangers. This time the signs read; "Whatever Happened to 'Honor Thy Father'?" and "Mythical Memories Cause Real Pain." I had to assume their presence was related to Kaitlin's suit. It was hard to see how she could concentrate on golf with that much ruckus around her.