Fast Greens

by Turk Pipkin

  “That’s right,” said Fromholz. “But Roscoe, neither do you.”

  “Whadaya mean?” Roscoe demanded to know. “I got everything: the money, the land.”

  “You didn’t get Jewel,” I told him.

  “Forget that bitch!” he told me right back.

  Gun or no gun, there were some things I was not prepared to tolerate. March may have been my grandfather, but Jewel was my life, my family, my friend, my teacher, and my chef; I had no intention of letting Roscoe talk that way. I ran full bore at him, my arms flailing like a windmill. I didn’t need Fromholz. The gun meant nothing. Roscoe was an old man. I was young. If I couldn’t kill him with my hands, I’d kill him with one of his own golf clubs. Two steps from him I felt a yank on my neck, my feet ran right out from under my body, and I was on the ground flat on my back.

  Beast again, I thought. He’s got me now.

  Leaning my head back for an upside-down view of my attacker, I discovered not Beast but Fromholz. He was holding me by my shirt, now ripped halfway down the back. They were all against me, everyone. I fought to hold back my tears.

  “Sorry, kid,” Fromholz told me. “That was a distinctly bad plan you had there. Besides, Roscoe’s going to apologize for insulting your grandmother.”

  “The hell I am!” said Roscoe, thrusting the gun into Fromholz’s face.

  “Oh, you’re gonna apologize all right, Pops.”

  “Why should I?” Roscoe asked.

  “’Cause if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

  Roscoe laughed. “You got balls, Ref, but if there’s gonna be any killing done, looks like I’m the one to do it.”

  “Go ahead,” Fromholz told him, slowly raising his gun back to level. “Pull the trigger. Kill me! Kill me while you got the chance.”

  “You’re bluffing!” said Roscoe.

  “Pull the trigger, Roscoe. It’s empty anyway.”

  A panicked look crossed Roscoe’s face. As Fromholz leveled the .357, Roscoe squeezed on his trigger and it snapped down loudly on an empty chamber.

  My entire body jerked at the loud click. There was a frozen pause all around, then Fromholz shoved the barrel of his big pistol into Roscoe’s gut. The older man let out a painful groan.

  “Sorry, Doc. I tossed your bullets into the pond at number three. Somebody mighta got hurt.”

  “You mighta got hurt!” Sandy said to Fromholz. “He just tried to kill you.”

  “Nah! He didn’t pull the trigger till I told him it was empty. Ol’ Roscoe’s not a killer. He’s just a bad loser.”

  “He killed March,” I heard myself say.

  “That’s crazy talk!” said Roscoe.

  Sandy came over and put his arm on my shoulders. “March had a heart attack, Billy. You were there.”

  “Roscoe stole his medicine!” I told them. “I put it back in the bag, but Roscoe took it out.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Roscoe pleaded. “He’s just a kid.”

  Sandy went over to Roscoe’s bag and began to dig around. After a few moments he pulled out the missing prescription bottle with March’s name on it.

  “Shit!” said Sandy. “I’ll settle this. Give me the gun.”

  Roscoe began stuttering excuses, which turned to confessions, and finally to a long list of apologies for which it was just too late.

  “You got ten seconds,” said Fromholz. “Noocular time, to get in that car and disappear forever.”

  “Wait for me!” begged Beast, pulling out his wallet and thrusting some bills at Fromholz.

  “There’s the fifty I won from March, and two hundred more. It’s all I got, but take it. Tell Binion I’ll pay the rest. I promise! He knows I’m good for it.”

  “Five seconds,” said Fromholz.

  Beast was still climbing head first in the window when the Lincoln roared off, the heat of the exhaust shimmering off the pavement as Roscoe’s car disappeared beyond the hill that March’s Cadillac had flown over at dawn.

  Sandy and I were in shock. How could Fromholz have let a killer just drive away?

  And that’s when it happened. The trumpets sounded, the birds sang angelic symphonies, the gates of heaven swung open, and out popped the miracle of familiar speech.

  “Morning, gents,” came the voice. “Looks like you all got here early.”

  We wheeled around, and just behind us, standing arm in arm with Jewel, was William March: reprobate, poet, dreamer, and friend.

  41

  I certainly never knew I was a part of anything so grand or so well orchestrated. It was a con worthy of, and who knows, perhaps inspired by Titanic Thompson himself. I was not surprised to find that Fromholz was a part of the scheme, but Jewel’s participation was almost more than I could fathom. Sandy, of course, knew even less about it than myself, and demanded to know why March had scared the shit out of us with that dying stunt.

  “It was all your fault,” said Fromholz. “After you shit-canned your drive on number nine, March was afraid you’d lose and he’d have to sign the deed for Roscoe.”

  “You’re not a hit man?” I asked Fromholz.

  Fromholz and March both had a good laugh over that one.

  “Billy, the only thing I hit,” Fromholz told me, “is golf balls. I’m the assistant pro at the Las Vegas Country Club. You’ll have to come visit me sometime.”

  “Neat!” I told him. “Can you teach me to shoot craps?”

  “Over my dead body,” said Jewel. “One dishonest golf game is bad enough. We won’t be visiting any casinos, thank you.”

  I glanced at March and he winked at me. I knew then that someday we’d have some fun together in Vegas.

  After all these years, I still wonder how March could have known that I would do my part to help carry the day. I suppose he relied upon the fact that Jewel told him when the chips were down I’d do the right thing. I hope I did. There was a time when I thought I’d failed, but that was when I learned that the sky sometimes looks bluest from the bottom of a well.

  I suppose the reason I’ve set all of this down is to testify that occasionally more saints are saved than sinners lost. That there are moments of salvation and redemption and, yes, sweet revenge, moments when despair turns to hope, and darkness dawns to gold, when absolutely all of life comes down to one final roll on a fast green, and the player with the steadiest hands gets to make himself a big fat sandwich with two thick slices of hot homemade bread and not one single iota of shit.

  For once, when all of the settling of scores was done, despite the fact that I abandoned my employer to find Sandy’s ball in a crucial moment, the caddie walked away well paid. For in his haste, Beast had left behind his square-groove clubs. And even though I learned to spin the ball backwards with them, I never enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed the thrill of handing Beast an eight-iron when he’d asked for a nine.

  But I was a little wheel in a big machine. It had been Jewel’s idea to bring Roscoe a bottle, Fromholz’s four-wood had helped make an eagle, and of course the most important piece of the puzzle was our ace in the hole: Sandy Bates.

  “I would have let you in on the con,” March apologized to Sandy. “But I wasn’t sure you could play golf and act at the same time.”

  “Play he did!” said Fromholz, adding the numbers on his scorecard. “Sandy was five under par for the nine: total of thirty-one.”

  “Thirty-one!” said Sandy. “Shoot, that’s my lowest nine holes ever. I’d like to finish eighteen.”

  “The course record is sixty-three,” I said. “You could beat that easy.”

  “Well,” said March. “We’ve still got four sets of clubs.”

  “Me and Sandy against Fromholz and Grandpa!” I said, pulling off my torn shirt.

  “Look out!” said Sandy. “It’s the Wild Indian!”

  The four of us were walking toward the number one tee, then March remembered Jewel and turned to her with his most beguiling smile.

  “Jewel honey,” he asked her. “Would you drive down to Mona’s Re
staurant to pick up some cheeseburgers for everyone?”

  “Cheeseburgers?” she said in disbelief. “Cheeseburgers!”

  I think for the first time in my life, my grandmother was totally flabbergasted.

  Victorious, our foursome headed back onto the playing field with jewel calling after.

  “Bill March!” she said. “You get back here this minute!”

  Bill March, I thought. What a grand name!

  I turned to March. “Is she talking to you or me?”

  March put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Both of us,” he said.

  We walked on, together.

  EPILOGUE

  A lot of hooks and slices have come and gone since that memorable match, and knowing that I’d never be able to forget its participants, I’ve done my best to keep up with them.

  Fromholz, who I first thought was a bad man, turned out to be a good man to have around, and despite his lack of peripheral vision, quite handy with his six-shooter against snakes of all kinds.

  “Just call me Dead Eye!” he told me.

  Now he runs a private poker game in Vegas, where he personally deals the high-dollar games to rich suckers. The last time I visited him there I took in a few hands of cards and quit when I noticed that his longtime lady friend was winning most of the money.

  In an ideal situation, I suppose Roscoe and Beast would have gone away wiser or more understanding, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing is ideal. Roscoe went on to the North Sea as head of the Glomar Explorer team and found a massive oil and gas field just where March’s nose had indicated it would be. The last I heard of him, though, Roscoe had abandoned the cold and wet of Scotland for the sun and sand of Iraq. Soon after, war engulfed the country. Despite that, I can’t help but think the old curmudgeon hasn’t chewed—or swallowed—his last.

  Carl “Beast” Larsen, I’m sorry to say, runs a driving range.

  Sandy won the Texas State Amateur the year after our big match, and went on to qualify at the PGA school. Though he had toppled the giant and found the confidence his game was lacking, much to his disappointment, and my own, Sandy didn’t make it when he went out on the Tour. He has, however, done just fine as a club pro these past twenty-some-odd years, and around the dinner table, carrots still become clubs and peas become balls as he tells his gaggle of blond-haired kids about his glory days competing against Arnie, Fat Jack, and Beast, the golf monster.

  As always, he still has a breathtaking swing. His greatest claim to fame is a remarkable accuracy on par threes. Thus far Sandy has recorded twenty-seven holes-in-one.

  March, Jewel and I, after moving to the Devil’s Sanctuary, reclaimed the Dry Devil’s Golf Club and operated it as a public course until—as Roscoe had predicted—the federal government sliced it in half with four silver ribbons of asphalt. It was just as well. The town of Sonora built a more civilized course, and I didn’t have to mow the grass greens March was planning.

  And March? A dead man, it seemed, before the game began (and even more so before it concluded), I saw him reborn or rejuvenated or reinvented of himself, and it was only the ghosts that had haunted him that went to an early grave.

  We took our trips on horseback and our long drives to Mexico and Montana, but we were always happy to get back to Jewel and her little adobe house overlooking the Dry Devil’s River. I still see him there, that wink, that smile, both indicating that he knew something the rest of the world had missed out on. He was my grandfather, he became my father; and in his last bedridden months, I suppose he became my son.

  There’s no doubt in my mind that March really is playing matches on that big golf course in the sky. My guess is he’s managed to team up with Francis Ouimet, Bobby Jones, or Ti Thompson himself. Spotted one stroke too many, at the end of the round he collects the other team’s halos or wings or golden putters, keeping them only long enough to polish them for another round tomorrow. Now that the Old Course at St. Andrews is open on Sundays, my guess is they sneak on for a little night golf.

  Since March passed on a few years ago, my grandmother Jewel—whose unconditional love and patient wisdom held court over all—has assumed a respectable role in Sonora society where she continues to weave her charming magic to this very day. I drove out for the annual Wing Ding last summer, and there was a long line of wrinkled, leather-skinned old men waiting patiently to dance with her. Every one of them called her “Miss Jewel.”

  And me? With my hair already long, I became a part of the youth revolution of the sixties and abandoned golf for free love and Frisbees, both of which were a lot of fun. But the game of golf always knew that one day I’d come back. After an absence of almost ten years, one sunny afternoon I found myself parked by the side of a road, watching the foursomes come into the eighteenth green, and I knew it was time.

  I’ve thought a lot about what’s magic in the years since that fateful day: undying love, raising babies, playing eighteen holes without a three-putt. Now more than ever I wish that my lack of faith hadn’t caused me to toss March’s magic moon rock so deep into the woods. We could all use a little magic, even now, even those of us who are still able to count our friends as friends and our family as final.

  As for my own son, Squirt—William March III—already he’s surpassed me in getting out of sandtraps. I can only hope that my small fount of knowledge can keep up with his West Texas thirst for the unknown.

  Sometimes we watch old westerns on TV, but we’ve yet to come across the one with the scene about what the white man and the red man know. Still, I’ve told him the story, and he has taken it to heart. We took a drive out into the Hill Country not long ago. I pulled over to enjoy the view, and he swept his hand across the horizon.

  “See, Popi,” he told me. “That’s what neither of us know.”

  I haven’t found him any moon rocks, but I am saving another even more important possession that March gave me. The inscription on the back of the photo is in the careful hand of a man who put his faith in salvation and sanctuary and the fact that no matter how far you wander, sooner or later, you will go home.

  “Don’t ever forget,” it reads, “what an incredible journey we’re on.”

  The photo may be old and worn, but it still shows two friends playing golf on horseback. March’s was the Appaloosa.

  Praise for Fast Greens

  “Endowed with a vivid sense of time and place … the characters are wonderfully drawn and the dialogue is sharp and colorful. At the heart of Fast Greens is the game itself, whose lore and wisdom are lovingly imparted.”

  —The New York Times

  “A compelling, emotional story of a golf match among some motley characters, so rich that—pardon the cliché—we couldn’t put it down. Do yourself a favor and order one or more.… It may be golf’s best buy.”

  —David Earl, Golf Journal

  “A must-read for every golfer or anyone who just likes a great Texas story.”

  —Austin Chronicle

  “Turk Pipkin’s hilariously poignant novel … is an absorbing, very funny book, told with skill and insight. Golfers will be particularly delighted by it, but you do not have to know much about golf to enjoy it.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Turk Pipkin proves that something very close to perfection on the golf course may be achieved in fleeting moments of grace and glory.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Enough Lone Star golf talk to satisfy those of us whose libraries include the collected works of Dan Jenkins and Harvey Penick.”

  —Golf Digest

  “Great! If he’d learn to putt, he’d really have something.”

  —Lee Trevino

  “This funny, fast-paced, picaresque romp features plenty of heroic shot-making, world-class hustling, some impressive creative cheating, a classic high-noon shootout on the finishing hole, and even a flashback cameo appearance by the immortal Titanic Thompson.”

  —Golf magazine

  �
�A dead-on ear for Lone Star State dialogue.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A joyful romp through the weird and wondrous world of Texas golf.”

  —Bud Shrake (coauthor of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book)

  “Fast Greens is a funny, sentimental story of golf and love and life, not necessarily in that order.”

  —San Angelo Standard-Times

  “To the engaging characters of Fast Greens, golf transcends the task of getting the ball into the cup. Honor, courage, and money are at stake, not to mention salvation itself. Anyone who has ever invoked divine intervention on the green will understand and enjoy the plot’s entertaining undulations.”

  —The Austin American Statesman

  FAST GREENS. Copyright © 1994 by Turk Pipkin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  ISBN 0-312-34268-3

  EAN 978-0312-34268-5

  First published in the United States by Softshoe Publishing

  First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: May 2005

  eISBN 9781466872202

  First eBook edition: April 2014