Par for the Course

by Ray Blackston

  Molly smiled and shook her head, as if this method was just a wee bit much. “Well, did it work?”

  “He married the first woman he went out with. They just had twin girls.”

  She mouthed a silent “wow” and returned her gaze to the harbor. After a few more licks of her cone she added, “I’m glad we’re not talking about politics anymore, Mister Chris.”

  “And I’m glad we’re not talking about golf anymore, Miss Molly.”

  She began whittling down the top of her cone with a series of small bites. After she’d chewed and swallowed, she said, “By the way, if you ever blurt out ‘Good golly, Miss Molly’ in a Little Richard-like voice, I will probably never speak to you again.”

  I’m so glad she told me that. I was waiting for just the right moment. . . .

  “So you’ve heard that line many times?”

  She wiped her fingers and frowned in the moonlight. “From many, many men who thought they were very, very original.”

  “Didn’t work for you?”

  She wriggled her left ring finger. “Still single, aren’t I?” She adjusted her posture and scooted an inch closer to me. “By the way, have you whacked any conservatives this week?”

  “Thanks to you, yes. They keep coming back, as do the Democrats.”

  We finished our cones and told each other again how good it all was. But it felt strange to allow this rendezvous to pass without ever talking of anything more substantial, especially with her leaving town soon.

  After another long moment of silence, she shifted her posture on the bench and turned slightly away from me to stare across the harbor. “The moon is pretty tonight.”

  This celestial detour to our chat caught me by surprise. To agree with her moon comment felt obvious, and somewhat dumb. To disagree felt very dumb. And so I said nothing. And so she said nothing.

  We just sat there gazing at the moon and its rippling reflection. I wondered if she wanted to talk on a deeper level, if she was waiting for me to begin. But I was not going to pressure her and mention again my desire to have children, so all I did was keep looking out at the harbor and the moonlight. The one boat that eased by in the distance seemed a kind of buoyant relief, something to cause us to turn in sync and follow it for long minutes.

  Finally Molly tilted her head toward me. “So, Golf Man really wants to be a father, eh?”

  I paused—not to think about my answer but simply not to appear too eager. “Yep, someday.” I let my reply linger in the night air before returning the question. “So, does Miss Political Analyst really want to be a mom?”

  She too waited a moment to answer. “Someday, yes.”

  Sometime later I walked Molly to her rental car. She surprised me when she hugged me good-bye. “I leave for Alabama tomorrow, Chris. But if you’d like to call me some evening, you have my cell number.”

  To summon perfect words of departure seemed a skill I did not possess. So I simply returned her hug. “How about if I call you in three days?”

  “Sounds great.” After she’d unlocked the door, she turned and said, “Thanks for the Thai food and ice cream.”

  “And thank you for the increase in golf ball sales due to political venting.” I reached for her door and swung it wide.

  She smiled and got into the car but left the door open. “If you ever need any more ideas on how to exploit divisiveness, just call me. It’s an outflow of my crazy job.”

  This was unexpected, this double invitation to contact her. “I’ll do that.”

  She stuck her key in the ignition and smiled up at me, both of us still chatty in the way people are when they aren’t sure how to say good-bye. “Well, I gotta go prepare for tomorrow. I’m moving up from state elections to Senate and House campaigns. In ’Bama I might even get to shake hands with the president.”

  I couldn’t think of anything better to say, so I just said the first thing that came to mind. “Well, tell him he can visit my range if he’s in the area. I give free lessons to all presidents, regardless of skill.”

  Molly closed her door and lowered her window. “You’re a good guy, Chris Hackett.”

  The red of her taillights sufficed as a last wave good-bye.

  I walked back around the sidewalk of the Battery, paralleling the harbor on the way to my truck. But I didn’t want to leave just yet, so above the docile waters I leaned against the barrier railing and replayed the end to tonight’s date.

  “You’re a good guy, Chris Hackett”?

  What does that mean in girl-speak?

  9

  LESSON FOR TODAY

  Never underestimate the tendency of other players to copy a new fad. Such fads may arise in the realm of new equipment, new lingo, style of dress, even a new method of snubbing rivals.

  In a land obsessed with equality, it was bound to happen. Some other group was bound to hear of the two political parties having a go at each other on my golf range, and of course this new group would request equal time.

  At six p.m. on Thursday, eleven members of the Charleston Atheist Party walked into my pro shop, golf bags over shoulders, faithless grins on their faces. I knew they were members of said party because they all wore gray shirts with Charleston Atheist Party embroidered on the pocket. For people who turned up their noses at organized religion, they seemed quite organized around their own.

  After pleasant but brief introductions, one of them, a tall, slender man in his forties, took over as spokesman. “We’d like to express ourselves on your driving range,” he said, blank-faced.

  I managed a half-smile across my counter. “Express yourselves?”

  “Yes. Like the Democrats and Republicans got to do last week. We have cash for twenty-two buckets of balls. Two for each of us.” He plucked from his pocket a roll of twenties.

  “Who do you want to hit golf balls at . . . liberals or conservatives?”

  He turned to his fellow party members and exchanged knowing smiles.

  “Actually neither,” he said, leaning into the counter now. “We were kind of hoping that you could find a loudmouth religious person—perhaps a Pentecostal or a Southern Baptist or even a Mormon—to drive the golf cart around and taunt us.”

  I raised a finger of reservation. Just a moment, sir. From beneath the counter I grabbed my walkie-talkie and called Cack down in the maintenance shed. “Cack . . . you there?”

  Silence.

  I tried again. “Yo, Cackster! . . . Your services are needed.”

  “What now?” he asked. “The TV went out again?”

  “No, I need you to grab your bullhorn and shout fire an’ brimstone to eleven atheists.”

  Very short pause. “You what?”

  “They just bought twenty-two buckets of balls . . . so dinner is on me if you can pull this off.”

  Very long pause. “Are they charismatic atheists or just normal atheists?”

  “Let me ask.”

  I asked.

  “Cack?” I said into the walkie-talkie.

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re normal atheists.”

  His chuckle preceded my embarrassment. Cack said, “I was only kidding, Chris. Gimme five minutes to ready the cart.”

  I suppose this was to be expected, this business of equal time. Who knew what other polarized groups would show up. Animal Rights versus NRA? Red Sox fans versus Yankees? Union versus Confederacy?

  My theory proved true, though my examples weren’t local enough. Just minutes after the atheists manned the hitting mats, the blond high school girl who’d requested my services on the night of Whack the Liberal sashayed into the pro shop. And I do mean sashayed.

  “Remember me?” she asked, batting eyelashes too young for such battage.

  “Um, yes,” I stammered, “you’re the conservative teenager who refuses to dress conservatively.”

  Giggles. More battage. “Yes, well, I was just wondering . . .”

  Please don’t ask me for private golf lessons . . . please oh please no.

&nb
sp; “Yes?” I inquired.

  She moved closer, pink fingernails stroking the countertop. “I was wondering, since next weekend is the football rivalry between Burke and Hanahan, if some of my high school friends and I could, like, rent out your driving range . . . and maybe, like, dress up the cart as our rival?”

  Visions of teenage chaos competed with visions of increased revenue. “Which team is your rival?”

  “Burke, silly! I’m a Hanahan girl all the way!” She blurted this with all the overenthusiasm of a sixteen-year-old.

  “Of course you are,” I said. “Can you hold on one sec?”

  “Okay.” She tapped her fingernails on my counter while I called Cack on the two-way. “Cack?”

  Five seconds later he answered. “Yeah, boss?”

  “Can you also be a local mascot—perhaps the Burke Bulldog?”

  “Now you want me to impersonate a dog? Whaddaya want me to do, drive around the range with a pooper-scooper and bark?”

  After I ended the call to Cack with a “ten-four,” the blond teenager told me she could fill the mats to full capacity, that she and her pep rally friends would number between eighty and one hundred—not including alumni.

  “How much would two hundred buckets of range balls cost?” she asked, adding two more bouts of batting lashes, which I took as her request for a discount.

  I reminded myself that I was thirty-one and calmly reached for my calculator. “Seven dollars per bucket . . . times two hundred . . . is fourteen hundred dollars,” I said, stunned that I was quoting such figures to a high schooler. Perhaps she had rich parents. “But I can give you a discount. How about five-fifty per bucket?”

  She pulled out a credit card. “Oh, thank you soooo much! My dad said to rent out the entire range if you would let us and for me to pay in advance. All my friends will pay me back next week.”

  She swiped her father’s Visa in my card machine, and just like that, Hack’s Golf Learning Center gained eleven hundred dollars in sales.

  Word had spread among the Charleston golfing community—and even outside the golfing community—that Hack’s was the most entertaining golf range in the city and that it was a great place to vent frustrations at our polarized world. This momentum was largely fueled by Cack, who promoted our business at every restaurant he frequented, sharing with total strangers his opinions on the world and its many corners of bias.

  Together we had no problem exploiting those biases for the sake of revenue. This was America, where bias, like most everything else, was a commodity to be bought or sold—or milked for personal advantage.

  My growing fear, however, was that soon I’d have no more normal students—only liberals who despised conservatives, conservatives who despised liberals, atheists who despised Christians, and Christians who wouldn’t fire back because they were convinced that Jesus would never hit golf balls at pagans. This point was rammed home to me by both Benny and Pauly Three Seeds, who a week earlier had tried to get their Sunday school class to sign up for “Whack the Heathen” night, but got only one signee and thus cancelled the event.

  Out on the range, Cack weaved in front of the atheists and raised the bullhorn to his lips. “Okay, you godless bunch of hackers, this cart is my rolling bully pulpit, and I’m about to start preachin’. . . .”

  And all the people did not say “Amen.”

  Saturday morning at Hack’s I hosted a “Couple’s Special” for beginners. For the past week I’d advertised an opportunity for husband and wife to learn the game together, and this for only twenty-five bucks per couple.

  Out on the hitting mats, seven couples—young and old, coordinated and uncoordinated—swatted away as I moved behind each and instructed them on stance, grip, and alignment. A morning fog had lifted from the Charleston coastline, and now the sun shone bright and warm, an ideal day to be outdoors.

  Minutes into the lesson a pattern emerged: The women accepted instruction eagerly, though most of the men thought they could figure things out for themselves. Fortunately, corrective comments from the wives helped bring the men back to reality. From the line of mats came everything from, “Listen to Mr. Hackett, dear, he’s a professional,” to the more blunt and shrill, “Pay attention, Herb! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  I was doing my best to use marital metaphors—“Marry your arm swing to your hip rotation” seemed to work wonders for all—when an eighth couple, this one thirtyish and energetic, rushed through my pro shop and out to the range to join us.

  “Sorry we’re a few minutes late,” the man said. He introduced himself as Steve. His wife—a tall blond who introduced herself as Darcy—shook my hand and asked if I had any rental clubs.

  “Included with the lessons,” I said and pointed to a bag full of clubs I’d set out behind the group.

  They selected their weapons, and I pointed them to the ninth and tenth hitting mats, where Steve shook his head at the fake turf and announced that he wanted to learn on real grass. “I’ve never seen a pro hit off mats,” he boasted to his wife.

  She rolled her eyes as if she’d heard it all before. “Just do as the instructor advises, honey.”

  He stood on the tenth mat and stretched his back. She did the same on the ninth.

  To this day those two remain the worst golfers I have ever seen. Anywhere. At any time. Throughout my history of owning a golf range and giving lessons, they are hands down the most uncoordinated pair to ever dent the Bermuda. After the rest of the group had completed their lessons and departed, I worked with each of them for an extra fifteen minutes. I covered and recovered the basics of proper stance, grip, and backswing—and yet Steve still missed the ball completely. For eight straight swings he whiffed.

  Darcy outwhiffed him by a nearly two-to-one ratio. She missed the ball fifteen times before finally making unsolid contact, a low dribbler that nearly hit her hubbie in the ankle.

  “This is not as much fun as I thought,” she said after six more misses.

  After ten more she said they’d had enough. He paid me twenty-five bucks, and they walked in front of me to the pro shop and toward the exit and the pea gravel. At the door she said something about how she’d rather try surfing, that they had a friend who’d give them free lessons.

  “Surfing is so much more subjective than golf,” she said to her husband. “Plus I won’t sweat as much.”

  He nodded his agreement and pushed open my glass door. “Anything you say, honey.”

  Part of my job was to accept that some people are naturally coordinated for the sport of golf, and some not. Some people try it once and give it up out of frustration. Some try it twice before doing the same.

  I took no offense from Darcy and Steve. Rather, as I watched them stroll across the parking lot hand-in-hand, I grew envious of their relationship; they were simply two uncoordinated people in love. I wondered if Molly and I would ever get to their level. What I wasn’t envious of was their car. Some kind of old Cadillac, painted a hideous shade of green. To each his own. South Carolina had long been known for its eccentric citizens.

  At closing time, Cack and I gathered again at the pro shop counter, going through our end-of-day routine and counting the money. In midcount he paused to turn on our TV. Amused at the emotional banter blaring overhead, we occasionally glanced up to watch the politicians have a go at each other. The elections were only six weeks away, and the debates had become heated.

  What I did not expect was to see my favorite sport exploited on the local campaign trail. It had even become fashionable to use golf lingo.

  One guy running for state senator worked a crowd on the campus of the College of Charleston. As TV cameras moved in for close-up shots, he even made a slow motion golf swing. Then he shouted into the mic, “My opponent consistently triple bogeys the issue of school vouchers, and his stance on immigration is a water hazard in itself. My opponent will gamble with your tax dollars, so swing for the green with Senator Schilling.”

  Cack stared up at the TV and mutt
ered the obvious. “Man, that is so cheesy.”

  10

  LESSON FOR TODAY

  While competing in the game, the only person who can offer advice to the player is his or her caddie. Off the course, however, advice may be sought from anyone—and if this person happens to be an expert in a crucial area of the game, the wise player listens with great attentiveness.

  Pauly Three Seeds was as exacting with his golf clubs as he was with his accounting profession. Today on his lunch hour he came into the shop to pay for the putter he’d asked me to alter. I supposed that some men just obsess over their possessions, and Pauly was no exception. In July he’d paid me to regrip his irons—“They’re too thin,” he’d insisted—and then in August he’d had me change the shafts in his woods. “They’re too flexible.” The putter issue was even more precise: “Add two degrees of loft,” he’d requested. “It’ll make my putts roll smoother.”

  “When do you even have time to play?” I asked and set his club on the counter. “You have three little kids to raise.”

  “That’s just it, Hack. I hardly ever play anymore. But when I do, I want my clubs to fit, like a good tux.”

  Pauly handed me a MasterCard, and I swiped it and handed him a receipt to sign. A tall man, he stooped and leaned over my counter to pen his name. “Whatever happened with that Molly woman you told us about the other night?” he asked in midsignature.

  “She left town yesterday.”

  He plucked his copy of the receipt from the counter and tucked it into his shirt pocket. The way he stood there, looking down at me and nodding, told me that he had picked today to try to gather a few more facts about my personal life. “Mind if I ask you something?”

  I handed him his club and frowned. “We’re in an accountability group together, Pauly. You’re free to ask anything.”

  He stood erect and stepped back from the counter. “Yes, I suppose I am. So, did you make it clear to her before she left town that you find her attractive and would enjoy an opportunity to get to know her further?”