by Turk Pipkin
Finding his ball on the putting surface, March picked up a heavy iron roller and, in the dim light of the coming dawn, he smoothed out the sand between his ball and the cup. That’s right, sand! In a futile attempt to find irrigation water for their new nine-hole course, March and Roscoe had drilled nine more holes, bored ’em deep into the earth; but instead of life-giving water, one by one the wells had come in gushing oil. Each one gave up a daily supply of West Texas crude, good for a growing country but hell on growing greens. With no other choice, they installed putting surfaces made of hard-packed sand. And to keep the sand from blowing away in the constant West Texas gales, they watered with a light mist of oil.
March’s ball was one sandy putt from victory, but Roscoe’s ball was nowhere to be found. I had witnessed Roscoe Fowler’s perpetual complaining when I carried for March, and now I could picture Roscoe’s increasing bitterness and panic, picture him stooping close to the ground, groping blindly for the ball, searching with desperation in the right rough, the left rough, short and long. I can almost hear him now, Roscoe the original curmudgeon, cursing the sun for coming so slow, the moon for setting so early, and the fog for staying so long.
“Oh mama!” Roscoe had cried out as he tripped over a root or a rock or a deaf armadillo, and landed on a prickly-pear cactus. “I’m in a world of shit now!”
But it was March who was really in a world of shit, because March was about to win control of Roscoe’s life, and that could not be allowed. The senior partner picks the wells to drill while the junior partner picks his nose.
“Hey March,” cried Roscoe. “Git out the Bird! Let’s have us a drink!”
The Bird: Wild Turkey, Kentucky whiskey. March knew Roscoe was stalling but didn’t mind giving his friend time for the light to dawn.
“I moved to the horses and groped in my daddy’s oiled saddlebag for the bottle,” said March, turning to catch my eye. “Those horses were my pride and joy, a necessity born of Roscoe’s leg and my own invention. They liked to carry golfers, and waited untied while we hit our shots. My Appaloosa was born wild. I found her dying of thirst near a wildcat we were drilling in Big Bend; put out water and hay every day for a week till she’d eat right out of my hand. She never let Roscoe ride her either. When it comes Judgment Day and St. Pete wants to know did I have any friends, I’m gonna tell him about that Appaloosa.
“We huddled together, Roscoe and me, beneath a mesquite tree not much taller than ourselves, and passed the bottle back and forth. The gray-streaked dawn arrived before long, but didn’t reveal Roscoe’s missing ball. He took one last look around, planting his footsteps in the sand of the green in the process, and finally he conceded that the ball was lost.
“Fair enough, I thought as I stepped up to stake my claim. Two putts would have won, even three; but hell, I rammed it right in the cup for a birdie and the only key to the executive washroom of that soon-to-be-renowned ground-poking enterprise, March Oil! Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, hallelujah!
“Kid, I literally waltzed across ten feet of Texas to fetch my ball from the hole and, goddamn! There were two balls in there! We’d never thought to look in the hole, not in the middle of the night, on a dark par three? Who in their wildest imagination would have ever dreamed that Roscoe could’ve knocked his tee shot dead in the cup for a hole-in-one?
“Roscoe Fowler, the luckiest man alive: president and supreme head honcho of my company. Fowler Oil! Even the name was a bad joke.”
* * *
Twenty-seven years after that historic shot, march saw the look of disbelief on my face as Roscoe Fowler, the very same golfing magician who had made a blindfolded hole-in-one, prepared to hit the first shot of their rematch. Roscoe’s quick back-swing was followed by an even quicker forward lunge, and he topped the ball so that it bobbled ignominiously to the ladies’ tee.
“Christ, crud and crapola! I done drilled me a dry hole!” he said, letting loose a mighty gusher of tobacco juice that flew almost as far as his tee shot. “I don’t suppose I get a mulligan?”
Pretending not to have seen, I averted my gaze and stared blankly at the long, untied laces of my high-top tennies. I was lost in a den of thieves. Roscoe could never have made that hole-in-one; it was impossible. Shoot, Roscoe couldn’t even compete in a kids’ competition. In the San Angelo caddies’ tourney, any kid hitting a shot that failed to clear the ladies’ tee was compelled to finish the hole with his fly down and his willy waving in the wind. Not a comforting thought, but a good cure for a jerky swing.
Not having received any more answer than his request for a mulligan deserved, Roscoe stepped away, happy just to have his fly in the raised position.
“Well sir!” he trumpeted. “That’s why I got me the best partner!”
Roscoe, it seemed, was not wagering on his own game, but on Beast’s. And by wagering on Beast, of course, he was also wagering on me, betting a king’s ransom that I would do my job honestly. And that’s exactly what I intended to do: take the straight and narrow; carry the bag, clean the clubs, and keep my damn mouth shut. The first step of that task was to hand Beast his driver.
Wow! That thing’s heavy, I thought. I’d be a dope to screw around with a guy who could swing that.
Though I had told March that I could not cheat, somehow I got the feeling he was still expecting my help. But it wasn’t like I could simply step on Beast’s ball when he wasn’t looking. Golf balls will land in some pretty weird spots, but they don’t fall into dimpled indentations exactly the shape of the ball. I could give him bad advice about the greens or the yardage, if he ever asked my advice, which he probably wouldn’t. Beyond that I hadn’t a clue, and that was final: I couldn’t cheat; I didn’t want to, and I didn’t know how. March was on his own, and so was Sandy.
That was the best part of it.
4
Way over in one corner of the sky a few clouds still shone soft and pink, but they were just nature’s little joke—the last illusion that the day would be anything but hot. As the rising sun began to show a growing speck of gold at the horizon, only Sandy had yet to hit his opening tee shot. His furrowed eyes showed how badly he wanted to start the match with more than a good drive, more than a great drive. Sandy wanted nothing less than to hit his ball just six little inches past Beast’s tee shot, now cooling its round heels in the middle of the number one fairway, two hundred and seventy-five yards away.
Beast hadn’t gotten it there with finesse. He’d simply flexed his big biceps and bullied the ball almost out of sight. Sandy intended to do it the hard way—with grace and skill. As he brushed by me on the tee, he spoke to me under his breath, like Babe Ruth making a home run promise to little Johnny Sylvester.
“Six inches past him,” Sandy said. “Just six inches.”
Gripping his driver lightly, Sandy squinted at the sloping green a quarter of a mile away. Allowing himself one wasted motion—a dry swallow—he set his mind to the execution of the longest pos-sible shot with the smoothest, purest swing. The first move was contrary to all logic: a slight forward press of the right knee that effortlessly recoiled backwards, initiating the unlikely synchronized movement of the hips and shoulders, arms and hands, grip and shaft so that the clubhead moved straight back from the ball, conducting his turning body in a low-angled arc. His weight shifted imperceptibly to the right foot as the left knee bent toward it. Through it all, his head was still, his left eye fixed in an even glare on the ball.
It was impossible to identify the moment that the clubhead changed direction and the downswing began. Sandy’s left hip had already begun to turn back toward the target, shifting his weight to the left side and accelerating his arms and the club with the potential—so far only the potential—of incredible power.
As the clubhead rushed toward the ball, Sandy instinctively performed one last crucial move: releasing all the wound-up power of his hands, arms and shoulders so that the moment of greatest speed was also the moment of contact with the ball, the moment the ball ceas
ed to rest comfortably on its wooden throne, the moment the flattened-to-oblong sphere was suddenly flying at two hundred miles an hour toward its target.
The ball climbed above the full sun at the horizon while the clubhead continued its arc till it had circled his still-turning body and whapped him rudely on the right cheek of his butt. I knew he liked that little slap on the ass. It meant that he’d hit the ball the way he intended: perfectly.
When the ball began its reentry and descent, it had long resumed its round shape so that it bounced hard, then skidded down the middle of the fairway.
Perhaps my greatest asset as a caddie was my vision: I could see my employer’s ball under almost any circumstance, a talent that never ceased to amaze me, since I did nothing to cultivate it such as eating great fields of leaf-topped carrots. Whatever confounded the vision of the other golfers and caddies—a background of white clouds, the blinding glare of the sun, a sky thick as soup with minuscule particles of Texas dust—they only made me look more closely and let me see more clearly. All of which meant that I was the only one to see Sandy’s ball skid through the dew on the fairway and come to a rest just six inches behind Beast’s shot.
But why should this contest have been any different from the hundred matches he’d already played against Beast? Since he was ten years old, Sandy had been competing head to head with his own personal golf demon, Carl “Beast” Larsen, and other than a few unimportant pro-ams or practice rounds, Sandy had been cruelly vanquished every single time. If it wasn’t Beast’s long drives, it was the crisp irons that landed ten feet past the pin and clawed backwards toward the hole. If it wasn’t the snake putts from forty feet, then it was the smart-ass demeanor, that twisted sneer or the constant dangling cigarette. Sandy hated it all; the whole overwrapped package that mocked his own weaknesses, that made him look small, that exposed him for what he was to anyone who cared to see. Here he comes down the fairway, tail between his legs: Sandy Bates, loser!
Sandy badly needed to win this match; if not for the self-esteem, for the cash. The Professional Golfers’ Association had announced that in August 1965—less than two months away—they’d be holding the first ever PGA qualifying school. The winners of this grueling 108-hole marathon would be given the dubious privilege of competing on Mondays for the available spots in that week’s Tour event. Sandy intended to succeed at this tortuous rite, and to do so he needed cash. Ten thousand dollars—his potential share of the day’s winnings—would do nicely indeed. But his dreams of the tour must have vanished abruptly as he arrived at his ball and was brought back to harsh reality by his opponent.
“Just six more inches, Sand!” trumpeted Beast as they stood over the two balls. “Six more inches and you’da had me. Shit!” he laughed. “Might as well’ve been six miles!”
Sandy sighed; it was going to be a long nine holes.
Six inches was nothing on a practical level, but to their egos it seemed all-important. Besides, Sandy would now hit first and Beast would gather valuable information from watching Sandy’s approach shot.
Pulling his seven-iron from the bag, Sandy tried to muster his concentration, then failing that, he put his swing on automatic pilot. Once you’ve hit it sweet a few hundred thousand times, it’s not that hard for muscle memory to hit a good shot. Sure enough, Sandy’s muscles made a nice move at the ball, which sailed onto the green about thirty feet from the pin.
“Dumb-butt!” he cussed himself softly. “You gotta do better than that!”
I handed Beast the eight-iron he requested, and without so much as an apparent second thought, he smote the ball a burning blow that cut a hole in the air. The ball landed fifteen feet long, then spun back furiously toward the hole.
“Wow!” I blurted out. “How’d you do that?”
“Well Skinny,” Beast replied, “you just got to keep the grooves clean.”
He handed me the new Wilson iron and a small metal file from his pocket.
“Every time I hit a shot with my irons, you’re gonna clean out the grooves with this doodad.”
The file had a square tip on it that fit neatly into the groundout grooves of the clubface. I began to run it back and forth.
“Always perpendicular, Skinny; not at an angle, got it?”
“Billy,” I said. “I got it.”
March and Roscoe, in the meantime, were zooming back and forth in their carts, bouncing up and down across the rocky right rough in search of their balls. Roscoe had already sacrificed any chance of bettering his partner’s score on the hole by chili-dipping his second shot and shanking his third. It was a pitiful display.
When March finally found his errant tee shot behind a stubby live oak tree, Sandy yelled to him, asking if he had a shot.
“No problema!” March hollered back. “All I got to do is catch this five-iron clean and get the ball up quick to clear that little tree.”
Doing none of that, March jerked fast and hard at the ball, blading it on the sole of the club so that it rocketed straight at the tree trunk and ricocheted right back at him. With shortstop reflexes betraying a natural talent for the wrong game, he quickly dodged, leaping into the air and coming down splayed on one leg and one hand.
Hiding in a crouch behind his own cart, Roscoe burst out laughing.
“Ha! You almost shot yourself in the foot, old Poot! Lucky we got us a couple of sharks to help us out.”
But the sharks, now strolling toward the green, were too perplexed by this inept display to even circle the bait, much less each other. In a partner’s best ball, the team uses the lowest of their two scores on each hole. The higher score is disregarded. If Beast made three, it didn’t matter if Roscoe shot nine or sixteen or withdrew, just as March needn’t even tee one up if he was certain Sandy could make an eagle. The chances of Roscoe or March bettering their partners on just one hole seemed about as likely as snow on the Fourth of July. So as far as we could tell, it was just one more head-to-head match between the two young guns; only this one was worth ten thousand bucks to the winner.
For me, it was worth something less. But even with the usually crummy pay, caddying was a job I took with great seriousness, even when it was not entirely pleasant.
Jesus! I thought, trudging along like a pack mule. This bag must weigh sixty, seventy pounds. I bet Beast has got a hundred balls and ten jillion tees in here.
To make matters worse, in the excitement on the first tee I had neglected to shorten the bag’s strap and it was all I could do to keep it from dragging the ground. Beast, Sandy and Fromholz all moved quickly toward the green, and though my legs were long, their strides were longer. I slogged along as best I could, despite the heavy morning dew that coated the grass and soaked through my high-top sneakers and my socks. Both Beast and Sandy wore leather Foot-Joys, a fine waterproof golf shoe that could be taken off your foot and floated on a pond like a Volkswagen bug. Foot-Joys shed water like alligator skin. Roscoe’s boots, by the way, were alligator skin.
The sun was just high enough for the long shadows of the trees to stretch across the fairway like giant fingers that clutched at my wet feet. I hefted the bag higher onto my shoulder, tried to speed up, and wondered if I’d ever dry out, or catch up, or understand any of this mess. I was a fool for participating at all: caddying against the only golfer I truly admired, caddying for the only golfer I truly feared, and perhaps still expected to cheat by an old man I hardly knew.
Near the green, when the others slowed for March to hit again, I caught up in time to hear Beast—who seemed anything but a philosopher—pondering the true meaning of the day.
“Why in hell would these geezers offer me a sure shot at one half of twenty grand just to replay some dumb-ass match from thirty years ago?”
“Mayhaps…” said Fromholz, “they figgered you needed some fast green, Slick.”
The locker-room scuttlebutt had it that Beast had recently lost a fortune in personal markers on Benny Binion’s craps tables at the Horseshoe Lounge in Las Vegas. March had men
tioned that Fromholz was from Vegas, and I wondered if our ref might also be Binion’s bill collector. Then I wondered if Beast, suddenly silent, was thinking the same thing.
“Maybe it’s not that much money to old March and Roscoe,” said Sandy.
Beast positively cackled. “Who are you kidding? The word is out their company’s in the shitter.”
Handing Beast his putter at the green, I took a chance with my own guess.
“Maybe it’s not about the money.”
Fromholz, the one-eyed laughing bear, had words for that opinion. “Kid, don’t ever forget this: When a guy says ‘it’s not about the money’—it’s always about the money. But keep up the clean living there, Boy Scout.”
I was a Boy Scout. I liked being a Boy Scout. But I hated being called one.
5
I was seven years old when I first saw someone strike a golf ball. At the time I was knee deep in the muck of Sulphur Draw, a pleasant but smelly creek that trickled and splashed over small rock dams and harbored a never-ending bounty of red ear perch, box turtles, and crawdads. From its bubbling springs near the elementary school where my grandmother Jewel had long taught classes, the creek meandered twenty blocks through the oldest residential area of San Angelo and dumped into the North Concho River directly across from the Santa Fe Municipal Golf Course.
On the day of recollection, each of my slender hands had a careful grip on a fat crawdad, their four pincers reaching desperately but hopelessly over their heads to lock onto their captor. The struggle was futile. Like bare-handing bumblebees off of flowers and jamming them into a jar, or snaring horny toads without being struck by the blood spit from their eyes, holding crawdads was a skill I had fully mastered.
Looking up, I saw a man on the opposite riverbank swing a skinny bat at a skimpy ball that ricocheted off a concrete park bench and bounced into the water with a splash.
