The Caddie

by J. Michael Veron

I had no reason in the world to believe those well-intended words of comfort. In fact, for all I knew, the man who stood before me was nothing but an optimistic fool with nothing better to do than play nursemaid to down-and-out golfers. Besides, caddies were notorious vagabonds, loners who traveled around unencumbered by worldly ties to friends, family, or possessions. They popped in and out without so much as a hello or good-bye. For all I knew, this guy could be just another one of those here today, gone tomorrow hippie types.

  Still, there was more than mere charity in Stewart’s voice. His words carried a certainty and a conviction that made me believe in what he was saying without knowing why.

  That wasn’t all there was to it, either. I sensed something else about Stewart that I couldn’t quite describe. I suppose the best way to put it was that there was a kind of magic in the way he talked to me, an otherworldliness. They say that the great leaders throughout history have projected the same spiritual aura, which enabled them to inspire everyone around them.

  Of course, these were all great and powerful men, not some out-of-work caddie. But then, I reminded myself, history was full of instances in which poor and humble men—even a lowly carpenter’s son—changed the world. Why couldn’t this fellow help change the mess that my world had become?

  iii

  I SLEPT BETTER that night than I had in months. In fact, I didn’t wake up until sunlight coming through a tiny gap in the window curtains around midday made the room too bright for sleep.

  When I finally stirred, I looked around the room to get my bearings. That’s when I saw Stewart sitting in a nearby chair. He had a legal pad in his lap and appeared to have been writing something. When he heard me, he looked up and smiled.

  “So, you’ve finally regained consciousness.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “I’d offer you some breakfast, but it’s almost noon. How about a little coffee and then some lunch?”

  I couldn’t remember when I had slept so long. I felt like I was coming out of a coma. I tried to answer, but my vocal cords were still asleep. Finally, I managed a semigrowl that he understood to mean “Yes, I would like some coffee.” Sensing I was having trouble speaking, Stewart made it easy by asking me questions that did not require me to answer out loud.

  “Do you take sugar in your coffee?”

  I nodded yes.

  “Cream, too?”

  Again, I nodded affirmatively.

  He snapped his fingers. “You know, I forgot. I’ve only got that fake powdered cream. Dreadful stuff. Would you like some milk instead?”

  One more nod.

  As I watched him pour a cup, I noticed that he had dripped the coffee the old-fashioned way, by pouring boiling water slowly over the coffee grinds. It’s less convenient to do it that way, but the coffee comes out better. People from Louisiana take their favorite drink seriously, and I was no exception. The stronger, the better. When it’s right, they use whatever’s left over to tar the roads.

  Stewart brought me a steaming cup. It was perfect. As I searched for clues about him, this one suggested that he had a Louisiana connection of some kind.

  I felt my brain responding to the caffeine and knew it was time to initiate some sort of conversation. For one thing, I needed to know more about my new friend.

  I pointed to the legal pad and asked Stewart, as casually as I could, what he was writing.

  He looked over at the pad. “Oh, that. Well, that’s our program. Today is the start of a new life for you, Bobby. If you follow this program religiously,” he intoned, putting special emphasis on the spiritual adverb, “then I can virtually guarantee that you will be successful.”

  I arched an eyebrow to show my skepticism. He smiled as if I had amused him.

  “Don’t make the mistake of ignoring what I’m telling you,” he said as he got up to refill his own coffee cup. Talking through the open kitchen door, he continued, “You’ve been trying it your way for several years now, and it hasn’t really gotten you anywhere, has it?”

  I was too embarrassed and irritated by the truth to answer.

  He shifted in his chair. “The mistakes you’ve been making are not original, you know. What’s happened to you is the same thing that has happened to others who behaved the same way. But, if you change the way you think and act, you can change the results.”

  Stewart spoke evenly but with utter conviction, and I could feel my resistance weakening as he continued to talk. I still had reservations, though, about allowing a virtual stranger to take over my life.

  I leaned forward and looked at him plaintively. “How do I know you’re right? I mean, what you say makes sense, but before we turn my life upside down, how do I know that doing what you tell me will make everything okay?”

  He smiled patiently and raised his hand slightly to acknowledge my reservations. “Well, let me assure you that I’m not a witch doctor. I won’t put a spell on you. And I don’t have a magic pill, either. Changing your life will take time. And it will take total effort and commitment on your part to do what I ask you to do. You’ll see; the program is quite simple to understand but very difficult to master.”

  He showed me his legal pad. There were just two words written on the page: “Let go.”

  I looked up at him in surprise. “That’s it? Just ‘let go’?”

  He laughed. “I told you it was simple to understand.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I broke in rudely, “and very difficult to master.”

  He nodded and grew quiet. I realized it was his way of rebuking me for interrupting him. My father would do the same thing when I was a kid. The silence was much more effective than any lecture.

  “What do you want me to ‘let go’ of?”

  He sat quietly for a few moments before answering. It then dawned on me that we had just started my first lesson.

  Finally, he spoke. “Fear.”

  I wanted something a little more concrete. “Fear of what?”

  He just smiled. “Of whatever is pulling you down.” He leaned forward. “Bobby, that’s something you’ll have to discover for yourself. I know the answer, but it won’t mean anything to hear it from me.”

  I was tempted to dismiss our little dialogue as a silly mind game he was playing with me, but some instinct told me not to. For one thing, I had no place to go, both literally and figuratively. Besides, Stewart was about the only man alive who seemed to believe in me. Over the last couple of years, I had managed to alienate my brother, my best friend, and my wife. (I had even been dropped by the guru of positive thinking in golf, Bob Rotella, after one session because of my bad attitude.) Maybe it was finally time to stop rejecting help when it was offered.

  Which brought me to a logical if not obvious question. I asked him, “Why are you doing this for me?”

  He rubbed his chin. “A good question.” He put down his empty cup. “I came here to save you, Bobby. Lord knows, you’ve certainly given me a challenge.”

  I thought he would say more, but he was finished.

  “What do you mean, ‘save me’? Save me from what?” I probably sounded impudent, but it was really only frustration.

  Stewart was unruffled by my questions. “From yourself,” he said quietly. “It’s what all of us need saving from.”

  Although I now understand what he was saying, at the time I felt like we were talking in circles. “And you can help me do that?”

  He nodded his head slowly. “I’ve helped others who needed it as badly as you. Some, in fact, worse. And I’ve done it for a long time. Anyone who accepts what I have to offer will find a better life.”

  This was getting a little heavy for me, but I plowed on. “You say you’ve done this with others. Who else have you helped?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. It’s their story, not mine.”

  I was becoming lightheaded from Stewart’s circular conversation. Still, I began to get the feeling that he was someone I couldn’t—or shouldn’t—easily dismiss.

  I decided to lighten th
e mood by making a joke. “So I guess you’re my guardian angel, huh?”

  He didn’t laugh but instead wrinkled his brow and raised his shoulders a bit. “You could say that,” he said seriously.

  I shivered at his answer. That was about as serious as I was prepared to be on the first day after getting out of jail. I figured it was an opportune time to end our question-and-answer session, so I said brightly, “Well, for the time being, I’ll settle for a caddie who can resurrect my golf game.”

  He sensed my unease, stood up, and said, “It’s all part of the program. Now, let’s makes few phone calls and see if we can retrieve your truck and your belongings.”

  iv

  IT’S A LONG drive from Baton Rouge to Pensacola, especially when you have to turn right around and drive back the same day. As usual, Stewart was evasive when I asked him how he managed to arrange for the return of my stuff.

  “Oh, it really wasn’t all that difficult,” he said in that matter-of-fact tone I sometimes hated. “You just have to be persistent and find the right person to talk to.”

  Whomever he talked to had the juice to get things done. Within an hour after we crossed the Florida State line, I was holding the keys to my Explorer. Everything was where I had left it, so we signed off on the receipt and began to drive our two-car caravan back to Louisiana.

  It was a frustrating drive. Stewart was one of those rare drivers who obeyed the speed limit to the letter of the law. I was continually losing him in my rearview mirror and would have to slow down until he reappeared. I complained about it when we stopped for gas in Theodore, Alabama.

  He just sniffed at me. “I would have hoped you learned your lesson when that trooper let you off on the Atchafalaya Freeway.”

  That one caught me by surprise. He was talking about the time I got stopped after I had won the Louisiana State Amateur at Oakbourne in Lafayette. To save money, I was driving back and forth from my apartment in Baton Rouge during the tournament rather than staying in a hotel near the club. The drive was only fifty miles or so, or just about the time it took for me to down a six-pack. Anyway, I had gotten stopped for doing about 85 and had failed the sobriety test. The trooper was about to cuff me when he saw my LSU golf bag through the rear window of my Explorer. When he found out I was on the golf team, he let me off with a stern lecture.

  My question to Stewart was obvious. “How’d you know about that?”

  He just shook his head slowly. “Did you think it was a secret?”

  I couldn’t recall ever having told anyone about my near DWI, but maybe I had. I suddenly felt very exposed, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how much Stewart knew about me.

  As we started back onto the highway, each of us riding in his separate car, I reminded myself how little I knew about Stewart. Despite my best effort, he was remarkably adroit at deflecting my questions. As I drove along, I became a little nervous again at the prospect of committing my life—even in its present state of disarray—to this Good Samaritan who, for all I knew, believed he had been the Pope in a past life.

  I had been through this over a dozen times in the two days I had known Stewart and reached the same conclusion each time. The internal dialogue was wearing thin and growing tiresome. Hoping to find something to distract me, I turned on the radio. If nothing else, I could listen to the afternoon talk shows on WWL in New Orleans. One of the last clear-channel AM stations allowed by the FCC, WWL could be heard in over forty states. No matter where I traveled, I could always get a taste of Louisiana by tuning my radio to 870.

  It worked. Soon I was listening to a discussion of the jazz funeral, a truly original New Orleans phenomenon. That was followed by news and then early-evening sports talk shows. Before I knew it, we had passed Hammond and were on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. Within minutes we were pulling into the Tiger Town Apartments.

  Stewart had a little hibachi on the balcony of his apartment, and he grilled hamburgers for dinner. Afterward, I volunteered to clear the table and wash the dishes. Stewart disappeared for a minute and came back with my golf bag over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  He was holding one of my wedges. “Just checking out your equipment.” After pulling out a couple more clubs, he said, “Your grips are a bit worn, but a little soap and water will make them like new. We’ll regrip later.”

  Though he didn’t say it, I read between the lines. Stewart was pointing out that I hadn’t been taking care of the tools of my trade. Those who play golf for a living are usually careful about the condition of their equipment. It was not a good sign that I had been neglecting my clubs. It reminded me that I had become more focused on barhopping and other distractions than on golf.

  True to his word, Stewart filled a small tray with dishwashing soap and water, got a towel from the kitchen, and began to clean each club with meticulous care. I sat down across from him to watch. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps I should be doing it instead of him. He seemed happy to provide the service, even to the point of enjoying the restored look of each club when he was done.

  “They almost look brand new,” I said admiringly.

  He didn’t even look up. “There’s nothing prettier than a shiny golf club.” Handing me the five-iron, which he had just finished, he said, “There. See how that feels to you now.”

  The grip felt warm and tacky, quite comfortable in my hands. And the club head gleamed like it did the day I pulled it out of the box. Somehow Stewart had made all the nicks and scratches that had accrued over the past couple of years disappear.

  I whistled. “Boy, you’re good.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing any good caddie couldn’t do.” He turned the head of my seven-iron in his hands, buffing it with the towel. “Tomorrow we’ll hit a few balls and start working on the program.”

  It seemed like a good time to ask Stewart about himself. “You seem to know everything there is to know about me. But I really don’t know anything about you.”

  He barely looked up. “What do you need to know?”

  “Well, for one thing,” I said, “where are you from?”

  He was looking carefully at a spot on the back of the club head. Without taking his eyes off of it, he said, “I moved here a couple of years ago.”

  Another evasive answer. I wasn’t going to be so easily deterred this time. “No, I mean where are you from originally?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “I grew up in Atlanta, but that was a long time ago.”

  He made it sound like the distant past, but he didn’t look old enough to have a distant past. I was determined to keep him talking.

  “Atlanta is a great golf town, isn’t it?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Always has been. It produced the greatest player ever.”

  “I assume you mean Bobby Jones.”

  He grunted. “Who else could I mean?” He replaced the club he had been polishing and pulled out another. “And there were lots of others besides him. Charlie Yates, Alexa Stirling, Watts Gunn, they all started out there, mostly at East Lake Country Club.”

  I was vaguely familiar with those names but couldn’t have told you much about them or anyone else from that era. “That was a long time ago.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Seems like yesterday, in a way.”

  I thought it was a curious comment. “What do you mean?”

  He still didn’t look up from his work. “I guess you could say I’m a bit of a history buff. That was a wonderful time for golf. Jones winning the Grand Slam. Hagen taking four PGAs in a row. Sarazen in his prime, becoming the first man to win all four modern majors. Then Nelson, Snead, and Hogan, all born the same year, picking up where the others left off.”

  He finally fixed his eyes on me directly. “We owe it all to them as well as people like Chick Evans, Horton Smith, Ralph Guldahl, and the Turnesa brothers. There are so many of them, and they all made golf what it is today in this country.”

  I whistled at his little recitation. “
You are a history buff. You make it almost sound like you were there.”

  “Maybe I was,” he murmured. Suddenly, he became more animated. “I could tell you lots of stories about that golden age, Bobby. It’s important to keep it alive. The soul of golf is its traditions. That’s where its integrity comes from.” He frowned slightly. “A lot of players these days don’t know much about that.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Is that part of what you’re doing with me? Are you going to teach me about golf’s traditions and history?”

  He snickered. “You can’t play the game if you don’t understand what it means. Like I told you before, it’s not just about that little scorecard. It’s about integrity, among other things.” He paused for a moment and then looked straight at me. “It’s about calling a penalty when your ball moves after address, even though you know no one saw it move but you.”

  “Well, everyone knows that you should do that.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps you can explain to me why you didn’t call that penalty on yourself at Sea Island.”

  The comment staggered me, like someone had punched me in the chest. I could feel my face turning red.

  In my sophomore year, during the conference championship, my ball had moved in the rough when I addressed it. No one else saw it, so I said nothing. I had always regretted not taking the two-stroke penalty imposed by the Rules of Golf. There was no nice way to put it: I had cheated.

  Once again, Stewart was letting me know that I had no secrets from him. I had no idea how he could have known about the incident at Sea Island, unless I had confessed it to a bartender one night when I was in my cups.

  Given some of my late-night habits, that was certainly possible. In the places I played, caddies and players hung around in some of the same places at night. If I had spilled my guts while under the influence of alcohol, Stewart (or one of his compatriots) might have overheard. That kind of story makes the rounds pretty quickly.

  Regardless of all that, there was no defending what I had done. All I could manage was a sheepish “I’m not very proud of that.”