Golf in the Kingdom

by Michael Murphy

  He lapsed into silence once more. My memory of the conversation blurs at this point but I remember asking him about Seamus’s shillelagh. I wondered if it had taken on the old wizard’s presence, like the seamless robe of Christ in Lloyd Douglas’s book. Of course that was just a story, I said, while this was real, but it was the same idea.

  “It gave ye a good swing there, Ah could see,” he said with a sly smile, “but tha’ is just another kind o’ magic—Seamus’s magic. ’Tis no different from the magic o’ science and steel-shafted clubs, just another kind. Tha’ is why he will na’ let me try it on the links heer. Says it’s just another diversion. O’ coorse, the members might na’ let me use it either.”

  In the midst of these ruminations about Seamus MacDuff and true gravity he suddenly exclaimed (I cannot recall the exact context of the remark), “Or Western science’ll run into a stalemate and then,” he raised a doubled fist for emphasis, “and then thair’ll be no more answers for us until we ken this world from within.”

  As we gazed at the dying fire a small rock-slide started down the fairway side of the ravine. We looked up into the shadows but could see nothing above us, just the rocks receding into utter darkness. “Ye know, Michael,” he said, “I’ve of’en wondered what it’d be like to play the coorse wi’ the baffin’ spoon.” Apparently his earlier remarks were still on his mind. “I’ve of’en been tempted tae do it when he’s na’ around.” He poked a stick into the embers. Then he turned to me. “Why don’t we try it now?” he said with a gleam in his eyes.

  “You mean now—in the dark?” I wasn’t sure if I had heard him right.

  “Right now, wi’ one o’ the featheries.” He stood as he answered and picked up the shillelagh. I asked him what would happen if we lost them.

  “Tha’ is what scairs me about it,” he seemed to lose his zest for the idea as he considered the dire consequences of our losing Seamus’s precious featheries. Research into the structure of the universe would be impeded, I imagined, if they were lost in Lucifer’s Rug. But then to my utter surprise he picked up the two old balls and the club and gestured for me to follow. He walked 20 or 30 yards up the ravine, then started climbing upward toward the fairway. I stumbled along after him. We had come to a precipitous stairway carved into the cliff, with steps about a foot wide and four inches deep. He scrambled up this dangerous path like a sailor going up a rigging, holding the club and balls in one hand, and grasping the tiny ledges with his other. I inched my way after him, expecting to slide back at any moment.

  It was a frightening climb. Near the top I started to look down, but thought better of it and pressed my nose to the cliff. After a five-minute climb I finally came out on level ground, back into the windy night. It was the thirteenth tee. He reached down to help me up the final steps.

  “Do ye think we should do it?” he asked with an edge of doubt. “I wonder if this is a good idea.”

  I said that he wasn’t going to get me to hit one of the balls, seeing that I was almost bound to lose it in the Rug. I could hardly breathe after the strenuous climb. “I think ye’re right,” he said. He was having second thoughts about the whole thing.

  He walked over to the tee and put the balls on the ground. It was pitch black and the wind was still blowing, though not as hard as it had been when we arrived an hour before. You could see the silhouette of the cypress trees on the hill. The flag was lost in the darkness though, so he would have to judge where it was from the position of the trees. “What do ye think?” he asked again.

  We stood there in the windy dark staring up the forbidding hill. “What would Seamus do if you lost his balls?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know. It would be somethin’ awful.” I wondered what was compelling him to try it. “What do ye think?” he asked, almost pathetic now in his indecision.

  “Do you think you could reach it, especially in this wind?” I wondered aloud, surveying what must have been one of the world’s most difficult golf holes. How he ever thought he could hit a ball made of feathers 200 yards on a windy night with an Irish shillelagh was beyond me.

  “Oh, I think I can do that awright,” he answered softly. “It’s hittin’ it straight in the wind that makes me wonder. But wha’ would Seamus do if we lost his balls?”

  “I’m not hitting any,” I made the point again with stronger emphasis.

  Apparently he hadn’t heard me. “Heer,” he said, “you hit first. I’ll get my line from yer shot.”

  “Oh, no, not me.” I backed away from the proffered club, as if it were a dangerous snake.

  “Now, Michael lad”—he was suddenly composed and reassuring—“it’ll do ye a world o’ good. Come try. Just one shot.”

  I was dumfounded at his insistence. I began to wonder if something had gone wrong with him. He must have seen that I was not going to play the hole, however. He turned abruptly and put a featherie on the tee. Then he lined up toward the invisible flag and waggled the ancient shillelagh. He waggled it slowly, and then he swung. There was a hissing sound as the ball took flight. I could not follow it, but then, above the hill, we could see where it was. It was gleaming against the sky, a luminous white point hanging like a tiny moon before it dropped toward the green.

  “Aha, aha,” he cried. “The old spoon did it, it did it!” He did a little jig around the tee. I hadn’t seen him so excited all day. “The old spoon did it!” he cried as he jumped and clicked his heels.

  He started up the incline to the green, deciding apparently that one shot was enough, and I ran after him. Our anticipation was high as we approached the top, for we knew the ball might be lost. I had seen MacIver put a good shot into the Rug that afternoon, and there were drop-offs on all sides. We also knew that it might be very close to the pin.

  But when we reached the crest of the hill there was an awful sight. Though the green was visible enough, no ball was there to be seen. Moreover, there was no pin, no flag.

  “Where is the flag?” I asked. I was afraid to ask about the ball.

  “Hiven knows,” was the only answer he gave, in a barely audible voice. He went to the back edge of the green and peered into the darkness below. There was no ball there. I looked over the edge of the green on the ravine side.

  “Maybe it fell in the gorse,” I said with growing anxiety. I started back down the hill and began running my foot through the grass between the green and Lucifer’s Rug.

  “It’s na’ there,” he said impatiently. “I hit it over the green if I hit it anywhere. I’ll be damned,” he said as if he could not believe his eyes. “I’ll be damned.” He whistled between his teeth, as if he could feel the impending wrath of Seamus MacDuff.

  “Well, what’ll we do?” I asked.

  “Hiven knows,” was his only answer.

  I was crossing again toward the back edge of the little hill when I had a sudden idea. Then, as if I were drawn by the first flash of the premonition, I looked down as I crossed the middle of the green. There in a dark declivity, in the hidden cave of the pinless hole, lay Seamus’s featherie. It was faintly luminescent as it peered at me from its dark resting place, an eye peering out of the deep.

  “Shivas, here it is!” I cried and picked it up. “It’s here in the hole!”

  ‘I’ll be damned,” he said, his eyes more cross-eyed than ever. “ ’Tis the first time I e’er shot a hole-in-one on the thirteenth.” He looked at the shillelagh, and kissed its mean-looking burl. “Ye saved my life, ol’ spoon,” he said with enormous relief. “Thank ye kindly.”

  We Are All Kites in That Wind

  WE CRAWLED BACK DOWN the rocky stairway, both of us relieved that we had come through unscathed. God knows what might have happened if that ball had been lost.

  When we got to the bottom of the ravine we threw some last sticks on the fire and resumed our conversation. I think we talked mainly about English and American football, seeking respite from the strenuous adventure we had embarked upon.

  The sk
y was turning gray now along the edge of the canyon. Summer dawn comes early in Scotland, it must have been around 2:30 or 3:00. Our fire had burned itself out and I was beginning to realize that Seamus was not to make an appearance. We both stood and stretched. Birds were singing in the cliff wall above us; they too were getting ready for the day. As the contours of the ravine gradually appeared, I could see that this was a redoubtable fortress indeed from which to conduct research subversive to the Western world. Shivas put the featherie balls and shillelagh back in their hiding place and said no to my final request to see Seamus’s cave. “ ’Tis as cursed to strangers as King Tut’s toomb,” he said. “Ye might na’ survive it.” He gave that abrupt decisive gesture for me to follow which he had given several times that night and we started back along the ravine floor. When we got to the rock-slide down which we had originally come he turned and looked me straight in the eye. “Michael,” he said, “I want ye to do one more thing, since I’ve let ye in on all these mysteries, Will ye do it?” I asked him what it was. “I want ye tae yell lik’ I do, like this . . .” and he let out that bloodcurdling scream. I started back.

  “Now just try it once,” he said. I looked around the canyon, as if someone might be watching, cleared my throat and gave a choked little yell. It was a pathetic attempt, a constipated bleat after his bellowing warrior cry. “Try again,” he urged. The second one was better, but I realized how deficient I was at yelling. He wagged his head at me with a sly smile, and we started up the rocky path.

  Birds were singing in the growing light as we walked through the damp and deserted golf links. I followed the trail of footprints Shivas left in the grass, kicking up drops of water and pondering these strange events. We found his car and drove back into town. Neither of us felt like sleeping. “Since ye dinna’ have anythin’ fit to drink, come to my place,” he said and I jumped at the invitation. I was curious to see how he lived and it would be good to get a drink of something warm or warming.

  He parked where we had found his car near The Druids’ Inn and led me to the gray stone house in which he had an apartment. We went up through a narrow staircase that was separate from the main entrance and ducked through a tiny door into his sitting room. It was not the kind of place I had expected, but I could see at once that it was all his. The wooden ceiling was no more than eight feet high, maybe less, and latticed windows stood two feet off the floor. Shelves of books lined two of the walls and another was covered with long sheets of brown wrapping paper, hanging from wooden cornices near the ceiling. These paper tapestries were covered with lists and odd diagrams. A wood-burning stove stood in a corner near a roll-top desk; old bags of golf clubs were stacked in another. A threadbare rug covered most of the floor; it had a faded blue line sewn into it which he apparently used to practice his putting alignment. It was a small place for so large a spirit, I thought; no wonder he spent so much time roaming the streets of Burningbush and the spaces of his inner life.

  He built a fire in the iron stove and put a kettle of water on to boil. “Sit,” he said, pointing to a battered leather couch that had stuffing coming out of it at some of the seams. He made a pot of powerful tea, a recipe he had learned from an officer of the Black Watch who had been a student of his, a recipe they had discovered in Afghanistan or some such place that was supposed to light up the mind. The bittersweet taste of it sent a shiver up my back. He settled into a big stuffed armchair (he called it his “meditation chair”), and turned on a creaky-looking reading lamp against the gray morning light. We sipped our mind-warming tea in silence. We were awkward with each other again, as we had been at the Inn. The compression of the little room perhaps took an edge off his freedom; it occurred to me that he always seemed more subdued indoors. As we sipped our tea he leaned back against the armchair to gaze at the ceiling. Cupping my hands for warmth around the cup, I studied the paper hanging against the wall behind me. It had lists of philosophers neatly printed in a vertical column down one side and a list of inventions printed in a column down the other. Lines connected some of the philosophers with some of the inventions. At the very top of one chart there was printed in large block letters the title DANGEROUS CONNECTIONS. Scanning the lists again, I saw that some of the connecting lines were red and some were green.

  The room was getting warmer as the stove gave forth its heat. I took off my jacket and we sat sipping our tea in silence. His eyes were closed now, he seemed to be dozing or resting. I got up and tiptoed over to the bookshelves. He had gathered an impressive library, several hundred books at least. The first one my eyes settled on was a copy of Sartor Resartus in a long row of leather-and-gold volumes by Thomas Carlyle. Max Müller’s entire Sacred Books of the East was there and the complete works of Coleridge. An extraordinary collection for an obscure golf professional. On one shelf a large book of photographs depicting Sam Snead’s swing in all its phases was sandwiched between the Enneads of Plotinus and a musty old copy of the Koran.

  He was still leaning back against his comfortable armchair. I took a volume that was familiar to me, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and sat down again on the decrepit leather couch. So many of the books he had gathered around him were familiar; it was almost the library I would like to have. I leafed through the Ramakrishna volume, a large, handsome edition containing the conversations of India’s greatest nineteenth-century mystic lovingly recorded by his disciple “M.” Thinking that I would visit Dakshineswar, where Ramakrishna had undergone his incredible search for God, I found some pictures of the famous temple there. As I leafed through the photographs, my head began to nod—I jerked up with a start and reached down for my cup of tea. I sipped it slowly, feeling the warmth spread out in my chest. Shivas was sitting erect now, facing away from me at an angle, I could see that his eyes were open. He stared straight ahead as if he were concentrating on something across the room. I put the cup down on the floor and continued leafing through the book. I read a page or two of Ramakrishna’s sayings, marvelous passages I had read before, and looked at the pictures. I reached down for the tea and looked at Shivas again; he was still sitting erect as he stared across the room. He was absolutely motionless. I cleared my throat to catch his attention but he did not respond. There was something odd about his posture; I could feel it, something had happened. I stood up and tiptoed around in front of him—and suddenly felt faint. His eyeballs were rolled back leaving nothing but white. He was totally unconscious. I felt his pulse, my heart pounding, and bent over to smell his breath. He was still alive. Epilepsy? Heart attack? Stroke? I looked wildly around the room fighting off the first sense of panic, my mind a complete blank. Then, as if by reflex, I stumbled down the narrow staircase and knocked at the main entrance to the house. No one answered. I knocked again more insistently, but there was still no answer. The street in front of the house was deserted. It was still early, probably around four o’clock, every window on the block was shuttered. I ran back up the stairs and fumbled around the apartment looking for a telephone book—under the desk, on the shelves, apparently he didn’t have one. I picked up the phone and dialed 0, and got a buzzing sound, then remembered that 999 was the emergency number. A voice answered as soon as I dialed, a man’s voice. I remember how eerie it seemed having a man answer. I told him someone was dying, glancing back at Shivas. “I know someone who might come down,” the voice said calmly, then I could hear a clicking as connections were made. A long moment passed while the clicking continued. Shivas sat rigid as a corpse, his eyes rolled back, without moving or falling forward as well he might have from his sitting position. He couldn’t have been drunk, I thought, after everything we had been through. Still no answer on the other end of the line. “We’re having a little trouble, but hold on,” the man’s voice reassured me. Finally someone answered, an irritable rasping old voice, “Yes, what is it?” I told him that someone was dying. “What’s he dyin’ of?” the old voice asked, intoning the word “dyin” in a kind of sing-song. I said that I didn’t know. He asked if there was some way
I could describe what was happening, some symptom, anything. “Tell me how he’s dyin’,” the old voice rasped. I began fumbling for words, but as I did Shivas spoke quietly behind me. “I’m all right, Michael. Tell him I’m all right.” There he sat fixing me with those crystal blue eyes.

  “Good God, you scared me,” I said, then turned and apologized to the voice on the other end of the line and hung up the receiver. At that moment I could have sworn I saw an aura around him. For a moment he was sitting in a pool of turquoise light—just for a second—then I could feel some quick shutter close in my brain. He looked slowly around the room and flexed his hands. “Have I been gone long?” he asked quietly.

  “Around fifteen minutes maybe.”

  “I almost disappeared,” he said softly. “Almost disappeared.”

  “Shit, you scared me to death.”

  A smile began to form on his face, spreading slowly as if the muscles around his mouth had grown stiff. His eyes looked straight into mine, they were not crossed at all. “Do ye na’ ken ye’re flyin’ heer like a kite—wi’ nae mair than a threid holdin’ ye?” He raised his muscular hands and snapped an imaginary string between them. “We’re all kites in that wind,” he said. And off he went into trance again.

  For another half hour or so he sat there erect, looking like a corpse more than anything else but soaring within to regions I could only guess at. I was frightened, angry, and spellbound by turns. In the Ramakrishna book there is a picture of the saint’s disciples staring up at him with bulging eyes as he stands in ecstatic trance. I must have looked like that as I watched the incredible corpse in front of me.

  I closed a banging shutter and huddled at one end of the couch with my knees drawn up. I finally roused myself, stoked the fire, and made another cup of tea, circling carefully around the corpse which had grown enormous now with its mysterious presence. I sat watching him, wondering if I could ever brave the skies he was exploring. After all, that was what I was going to India for. The lamp shade glowed like an ember against the cold winds of those inner spaces, winds that could snap the thread that held me there.