“I have to face it,” he said. “I can’t hit fairway woods worth a damn.”
We both laughed. He wasn’t much good at hitting anything else, either. I took a two iron out of my bag and started over to my ball, and when I got there what he’d said finally registered. I glanced over at him. He was standing by the cart, waiting for me to hit. “How’d you know about the floor plan,” I asked, “if Jimmy didn’t tell you?”
He shrugged. “That kind of news travels fast.”
I addressed my ball, took a swing, and made contact; to my surprise it went straight and low again, under the fog. I was doing something right, and of course I had it in the back of my mind that as soon as I tried to repeat the motion, it would fall apart. So I thought about what I always enjoy about playing—the being out there, the fresh air, the smell of the grass, the breezes. But the fact that Daryl knew what he knew was nagging at me.
I didn’t play bad, for me. We weren’t talking much, and Daryl got even quieter than usual. He was having a rough time of it. On the fifth hole, a long par five, he lost his ball in the middle of the fairway. A hundred yards wide, this landing area, and he’d hit it so good, too. “That was maybe the best drive of my life” was his verdict as we watched it sail away into the fog. We rode out there and I topped two shots in a row, and we spent the next ten minutes looking for his drive. Nothing. The dew on the grass was making a false shine, even in the grayness. We just couldn’t find it. I gave him a ball, mostly to get him to stop looking, and he hooked it bad into the woods on the left side. Behind us, back on the tee, they were hooting for us to get moving.
We played on in fog that was only a little less thick, a shelf hanging over us. Sometimes, going uphill, we just went on faith, heading toward where it must’ve ended up by following the line on which it vanished. We didn’t say much. We were all business, tee to green, as you often are when conditions threaten to close you down. He was playing a lot worse than I was.
When he mentioned stopping in the clubhouse for a drink at the turn, I said I didn’t want to. We were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the cart, both of our balls on the green. “Really, Daryl,” I said. “How’d you know about the floor plan?”
“I told you.”
“No, you handed me a cliché.”
He shrugged. “I’m not like you. I’m not all that expressive. I can’t think that fast.”
It came to me that I’d always felt there was something disagreeable about him, so I tried to just let this go. We went straight from the ninth green to the tenth tee, where we had to wait for some guys who were starting their round. Despite the weather, the course had gotten crowded. We hung back and watched them hit, and they were very good. I was glad we weren’t playing with them. Above us the fog kept turning on itself and looking like it might burn off.
The others came up behind us. Jimmy had actually parred the ninth with a sweet little downhill ten-footer. He’d scored a 45 on the front and was happy about it, but I swear his smile and those sad-angled eyebrows made it look like he was crying. Anthony had a 36, without a mulligan. We agreed that the first nine was the real test and Anthony might actually keep it in the seventies. Jimmy said a 90 would make his day, and Harry added that it would make his life. I stopped listening, watching Jimmy and thinking about the business folding up. Daryl went off and bought a Coke, then stood under a big oak to drink it, as if to shelter himself from a relentless, searing sun. I remembered that he believed you’d burn worse on an overcast day. He was always worrying about his health. It was another thing I realized I didn’t much like about him.
Finally we teed off. The foursome in front of us was so good that they were long gone by the time we got to the green, and we never saw them again.
I watched Daryl go from one side of the fairways to the other, hacking away. He was making me feel like a pro.
On the fifteenth hole, an easy par four except for the little pond fronting the green, he hit his second shot into the water. He walked over to where it had gone in, then turned and waved for me to bring the cart over. I’d already hit my shot—my third—over the green, but I was at least getting my shots up a little. And by now, witnessing his round, I felt positively artistic. I drove the cart over and waited, making no eye contact as he rummaged around in his bag and finally brought out a new ball. He held it out at shoulder height and took his drop, then lined up his shot, swung, and topped it into the water; this one skipped a couple times before sinking. He took another out: drop, hit, skip, plunk. And another: drop, hit, plunk—this one went straight down, as if that’s what he was trying to do.
Then he removed his bag from the cart, turned, and swung it in a wide motion, like a waltz step, into the pond. He actually seemed composed, almost serene. Stone-cold calm. The bag didn’t go far, just floated away from the edge slowly and started to sink. Daryl walked down the little bank and with no hesitation at all strode into the water up to his knees, and reached forward to haul the bag back out. When he emptied the water that had got into it, some clubs fell out, but he calmly replaced them, and waved for the others to play through. “I’m going back to the clubhouse,” he said.
“Just put it back on the cart,” I said, none too patient with him. “You can use my towel to dry off the shafts.”
“It’s me she’s seeing,” he said.
I didn’t know what he meant for a second.
“I feel awful about it. But I can’t help myself either.”
And then I did know. “God almighty,” I said. “What the hell.”
He got in the cart. “I’ll drop up by the green, and take a three-stroke penalty.”
“Four strokes,” I said to him. “You’ll take four, since you’re sitting at least nine over there, by the pond.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t want him in the cart with me, but his meltdown had taken plenty of time and they weren’t too happy behind us.
Up on the green, after stubbing two wedges, I missed two putts and picked up. I didn’t even feel like playing anymore.
“What the hell did you do that for?” he said. “I said okay about the four strokes.”
“I’m playing the course, not you,” I said to him. “And they’re waiting back there.”
He looked at me, then sized up his putt from where he’d taken his drop, about fifty-five feet from the hole. The ball rolled down the green, through shadows and swells, snaking left and then right at the hole, like a guided robot, nearly died at the lip, and then plopped in. My spine shook, and God only knows what his did. But neither one of us said a word. He walked to the hole and retrieved the ball, then we got in the cart and rode silently to the sixteenth tee.
“How could you do it, Daryl?” I said to him. “This is Jimmy, for God’s sake. What the hell are you thinking?”
“She came to me, man.” He stood at the ball washer and worked it a little, dried off the ball, and teed it up. “I think all the trouble scared her. I don’t think she’s built for it. And she didn’t like being a trophy wife, either. You should hear her on that particular subject.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, so low that I didn’t even know if he heard me.
This was a par three, modeled after that famous blind par three in Scotland. A little white post gave you the line into it. While he addressed his ball and started all his waggling, I stepped to the other side, teed mine up, and hit it. I didn’t care who had honors, him with his fifty-five-foot putt and four balls in the water, or me picking up after taking seven strokes. I managed to get it up in the air. It was short, though, and dropped down halfway to the post.
“Okay,” he said again, then shanked his far right, out of bounds. “Mulligan?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I was staring back at the green we’d just vacated. Somebody, probably Anthony, had hit into the middle of it. Another ball was in the sand. I could see the trail where it had rolled down from the lip. And here came Jimmy, walking with a slight limp, carrying his sand wedge and putter. He always seemed so l
aggard and worn, but God, just then he looked older, too. Maybe it was the light—or just what I now knew. He waved at me, and I waved back. I felt awful.
Daryl hit again, a surprisingly straight shot that dropped down just beyond the marker. He stood back with a stupid little smug smile on his face.
“You’re sitting three,” I said.
He looked at me for what felt like a long time. “Okay,” he said.
I kept my five iron and walked down to my ball and skulled it into the tangled wild grasses on the right. I never wanted a mulligan more in my whole life.
“You’re hitting three, buddy,” he said, rolling away in the cart.
I found my ball in the tall grass and tried again, and it went somewhere toward the marker. When I got there I saw it had sailed over the green, and that Daryl’s was fifteen feet from the hole. He stood there waiting for me to chip, and I fluffed it, chunking it all of four feet. I started to pick it up, but that would’ve been more of a statement than I wanted to make. So I swiped at it again, knocking it to the fringe on the other side. I was seething, and still away.
“Should I holler for them to go ahead and hit?”
“Yeah,” I said. I could barely look at him.
Over the crest of the hill, I saw Jimmy take a club from his bag, then he moved out of sight to the tee. I heard him hit, and his ball came sailing in high, right at the pin. Daryl was watching it, too. “Looking good,” he yelled.
It hit, bounced once, and began to roll, missing the pin by an inch, but it was going to roll all the way over, and since I was already standing there, I just stopped it with my shoe—you know, lifted my foot at the toe, let it come in, and then clamped down on it. Stopped it dead. Hardly even thinking about it, I used my putter to edge the ball along to the hole. Daryl just gaped at me, which played into things because it was like he was watching Jimmy’s shot. I pushed the ball to the lip of the cup and in, then yelled, jumped, and ran over to where Daryl was just staring at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d go through with this. “Wave and yell,” I muttered, “you son of a bitch.”
He turned and held his hands up and walked to where they could see him clearly from the tee, acting like a man who couldn’t believe what he’d just seen—which must have been pretty easy for him, since that was indeed the situation. I kept waving and yelling, glancing over to make sure he wasn’t going to blow it. Now his face seemed frozen: These are your cards, so play them. In those few seconds I really hated him.
There was a lot of celebrating back on the tee, and finally the other two hit—Anthony’s ball only twenty or so feet from the hole, Harry’s a good deal farther away, on the left fringe. Waiting for them to come up, I picked up again and Daryl marked his ball.
“Take a four and pick it up,” I told him. “Or so help me I’ll tell him.”
“You’ll tell him what?” he said.
And there we were, both in a Mexican standoff of guilty knowledge.
“Pick it up,” I said.
“You know what you can do with it,” he said.
We saw Jimmy come over the rise, those sad eyes wide with wonder. He was like a little boy. He hurried over to the hole and looked in.
“Man,” he said. “Oh, man. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
Daryl was staring at me, and I gave it right back.
He bent down, picked up his ball, then looked at me again. Everybody else was yelling and clapping Jimmy on the back.
“God almighty,” Jimmy said, shaking his head.
“You should’ve seen it,” Daryl said. And given his expression, you would’ve sworn he believed it, too.
I hadn’t even known I would do it. There was nothing at all premeditated about it. And I felt suddenly very strange—guilt way down, but mixed with happiness, or something more like exhilaration. Daryl kept congratulating Jimmy and he was really getting into it, talking to him about the flight of the ball, how it hit and rolled toward the cup, like the most delicate putt.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“How far did it roll?” Anthony wanted to know.
“Thirty feet?” Daryl said, looking at me.
“At least,” I got out.
From the look on Jimmy’s face, you could almost believe it had happened exactly like he was imagining it.
“Jimmy,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You deserve this,” I told him. “Congratulations, man.”
Later that afternoon, Daryl and I went out to buy some good wine, since we meant to celebrate the ace in style. We got to the liquor store without speaking a single word. I bought five bottles of Brunello, at forty-nine bucks a pop, and wouldn’t let Daryl put in a dime. As we drove back, he said, “She’s just a young kid who wasn’t ready for the kind of trouble Jimmy’s been in.”
“You can tell yourself that,” I said. “Don’t tell it to me.”
I carried the wine into the clubhouse, where other players had gathered round, and Chris was taking down the details for the plaque they’d make. The wine was wonderful and we all sat around feeling glad. In the middle of this I caught Jimmy staring off. It was only for a couple of seconds, but he was deep in thought, and knowing everything I knew, I felt that strange stirring of guilt again. Maybe no one should have even that small portion of the power of fate. I glanced in Daryl’s direction, but he was drunk already and telling somebody I didn’t recognize about how he’d thrown his clubs in the pond on fifteen. By this time, I guess I was a little drunk myself.
As we were all leaving, Jimmy took my arm above the elbow and said, “You know about Elaine leaving and all that, but now they’re pulling the floor plan on me. I’m gonna have to sell the dealership. It’s something I’ve been dreading for months. But I feel good anyway. It’s almost like defiance. This thing today’s going to change my luck around somehow. I can feel it.”
He hadn’t had more than a couple glasses of wine.
I said, “Me, too,” but it wouldn’t come out, quite. I choked on the words.
That was twelve years ago. I left Virginia before the summer was out; my wife got a really good job offer in New Orleans, and we took it. After all, the dealership was gone, and a guy can sell cars anywhere, right? Except that now we live in Oxford, Mississippi, and I’m selling mortgages. Before that I taught school for a couple years—English, or Anguish, as I liked to call it.
I never saw or heard anything about Daryl again, but I hope he’s being cuckolded somewhere. Harry and Anthony, as far as I know, are still fixing cars. Jimmy’s in his sixties now and has two houses, the one I saw in Virginia, and another in Florida, plus a hunting cabin in Montana where he and his third wife spend some time. Every year or so I hear from him. And it’s true that he dates his life’s turnaround from that hole in one. The plaque Chris made for him sits on his mantel, right next to the ball itself, which Jimmy had gold-plated, for his own trophy.
Maybe something like that can change everything, I don’t know. But I do believe Jimmy’s the type who can survive and come out all right no matter what he has to go through.
Still, it is so if you think it is so, right? And he does.
Last Christmas, I got a card with a picture of the two of them, Jimmy and the wife. She’s not as young as Elaine was, but nice-looking, with soft, kindly eyes. I liked her right away, and still do, though I saw her only that one time. Jimmy? Well, the truth is, no amount of success can change those particular features, that particular face. Happy and smiling from the heart of well-being, he still looks like he’s carrying the weight of the world.
SOMETHING IS OUT THERE
By the time they got back to the house, the snow had started, coming fast in the swirling wind over the mountains to the west. Paula drove, with her elder son, Luke, in the front seat, and the younger one, Virgil, with Aunt Dora in the back. Aunt Dora spoke about the roads, how fast they became impassible in this part of Virginia, worrying aloud about her stepson Ch
ristopher’s journey down the valley from Winchester, where he had been in college. No one answered her. After what they had been through today, she would of course be worrying about Christopher. But Christopher might even beat the full force of the storm, and even if he didn’t, he was driving a Jeep, and he had driven in snow before. He would pull in, safe, and Aunt Dora would fall apart, telling him about the harrowing hours of the afternoon.
At the house, Luke got out, hooked up the hose, and washed away the blood on the ground at the far end of the porch. The snow was already covering it. When that was done, he and Virgil got a shovel and broom from the shed and commenced clearing a path on the sidewalk. The snow was sticking. The boys worked well together, but a little frantically. They were such good boys, and Paula knew it would be some time before they could be truly careless again.
Aunt Dora sat in the front seat of the car and watched them, refusing, for the moment, to come inside. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still terrified.”
Paula nearly lost patience with her. After all, it was Paula’s husband who had been shot, and who lay in the hospital with a bullet wound in his leg and a badly bruised lower back from the fall off the roof of the house. An hour of surgery, but Kent was all right; Kent would be fine. The doctors said so. Kent would be good as new in a few days. The bullet could easily have severed an artery, but it hadn’t, and Brice Collins was in custody, after an afternoon of evading the state troopers. But they had him now, and it was over.
“Please, Dora.”
“I know.”
Paula turned and made her way along the path her sons had cleared, and stepped up onto the porch. There were pine boughs arranged on the railing, and Christmas lights drooping from the eves of the roof. Brice had driven up, stopped, got out, aimed the pistol, and fired, and then driven off. Kent had fallen from the far end of the porch, onto the stones of the little garden. He lay there with open eyes, and Paula knew that as long as she lived, she would remember the look in them as she approached—the desperate, almost childlike searching for some clue in her face as to how bad it all was.
Something Is Out There Page 10
