Fancy Pants (49 page)
* * *
Afterward Dallie figured that no jury in the world would have convictedhim if he'd strangled the life out of her right there on the spot, but
his playing partners were moving off the tee, he had another shot
coming up, and he couldn't spare the time.
For the next nine holes he made that ball beg for mercy, ordered it to
follow his wishes, punished it with every ounce of his strength and
every morsel of his determination. He willed his putts into the cup on
one sure stroke. One stroke—not two, not three! Each shot was more
awesome than the last, and every time he turned to the gallery, he saw
Holly Grace talking furiously to Francesca, translating the magic of
what he was doing, telling Miss Fancy Pants that she was seeing golf
history being made. But no matter what he did, no matter how astounding
his shot, how breathtaking his putts, how heroically he was
playing—every goddamn time he looked at her, Francesca seemed to be
saying, "Is that the best you
can do?"
He was so caught up in his anger, so immersed in her scorn, that he
couldn't quite comprehend the consequences of the rapidly changing
leader board. Oh, he understood what it said, all right. He saw the
numbers. He knew that the tournament leaders playing behind him had
fallen back; he knew Seve had dropped off. He could read the numbers,
all right, but it wasn't until he'd birdied the fourteenth hole that he
could actually comprehend in his gut the fact that he had pulled ahead,
that his angry, vicious attack
on the course had put him at two under
par for the tournament. With four holes left to play, he was tied for
first place in the United States Classic.
Tied with Jack Nicklaus.
Dallie shook his head, trying to clear it as he walked toward the
fifteenth tee. How could this have happened to him? How had it happened
that Dallas Beaudine from Wynette, Texas, was going one-on-one with
Jack Nicklaus? He couldn't think about it. If he thought about it, the
Bear would start talking to him in his head.
You're going to fail, Beaudine.
You're going to prove everything Jaycee
used to say about you. Everything I've been saying for years. You're
not man enough to pull this off. Not against me.
He turned back toward the gallery and saw that she was watching him. As
he glared at her, she placed one sandaled foot in front of the other
and bent her knee slightly so that ridiculous little polka-dot flounce
at the bottom of her dress rode up higher on her legs. She pressed her
shoulders back, making the soft cotton jersey cling to her breasts,
outlining them in memorable detail.
Here's
your trophy
, that little
body told him quite plainly.
Don't
forget what you're playing for.
He slammed the ball down the fifteenth fairway, promising himself that
when this was all over he would never again let himself near a woman
with a bitch's heart. As soon as the tournament was finished, he was
going to teach Francesca Day the lesson of her life by marrying the
first sweet-voiced country girl who came along.
He scrambled for par on the fifteenth and the sixteenth holes. So did
Nicklaus. Jack's son was with him the whole way, handing him clubs,
helping read the greens. Dallie's own son stood by the ropes wearing
a
Born-to-Raise-Hell T-shirt and a look of furious determination on his
face. Dallie's heart swelled every time he looked at him. Damn, he was
a feisty little kid.
The seventeenth hole was short and nasty. Jack talked a little bit to
the crowd as he walked toward the green. He had cut his teeth on
pressure shots, and there was nothing he loved more than a tight spot.
Dallie had sweat through his golf shirt and through two gloves. He was
famous for joking with the
crowd, but now he maintained an ominous
silence. Nicklaus was playing some of the best golf of his
life,
chomping up the fairways, burning up the greens. Forty-seven was too
old to play like that, but somebody had forgotten to tell
Jack. And now only Dallie Beaudine stood between the greatest player
in
the history of the sport and one more title.
Somehow Dallie pulled off another par, but Jack did, too. They were
still tied going into the final hole.
Cameramen balancing portable video units on their shoulders followed
every movement as the two players headed for the eighteenth tee. The
network announcers heaped one superlative after another on them while
word of the blood contest taking place on the Old Testament spread
throughout the world of sports, sending dials flicking and the
network's Sunday afternoon ratings soaring into the stratosphere. The
crowd around the players had grown to the thousands, their excitement
feverish because they knew that whatever happened, they couldn't lose.
This crowd had been charmed by Dallie when he was still a rookie, and
they had been waiting for years for him to win a major title. But the
thought of being on the spot when Jack won again was irresistible, too.
It was the 1986 Masters all over again, with Jack charging like a bull
toward the finish, as unstoppable as the force of nature.
Dallie and Jack both hit solid drives off the eighteenth tee. The hole
was a long par five with a lake placed diabolically in front of all but
the left corner of the green. They called it Hogan's Lake, because it
had cost the great Ben Hogan the U.S. Classic championship in 1951 when
he'd tried to hit over it instead of around it. They could just as
easily have called it Arnie's Lake or Watson's Lake or Snead's Lake
because at one time or other all of them had fallen victim to its
treachery.
Jack didn't mind gambling, but he hadn't won every important
championship in the world by taking foolhardy chances, and he had no
intention of going directly for the flag by making a suicide shot over
that lake. He lined up his second shot safely to the left of Hogan's
Lake and hit a beautiful fade that landed just short of the green. The
crowd let out a roar and then held its collective breath as the ball
bounced up in the air and came to a stop on the edge of the green,
sixty feet from the pin. The noise
was deafening.
Nicklaus had made a spectacular shot, a magic shot, a shot for a
possible birdie on the hole—a shot that even gave him an outside chance
at an eagle.
Dallie felt panic, as insidious as poison, creeping through his veins.
In order to keep up with Nicklaus he had to make that same shot—hit to
the left of the lake and then bounce the ball up on the green. It was
a
difficult shot in the best of circumstances, but with thousands of
people watching from the gallery, millions more watching at home on
their televisions, with a tournament title at stake and hands that
wouldn't stop shaking, he knew he couldn't pull it off.
Seve hit to the left of the lake on his second shot, but the ball fell
well short of the green. Panic rose up
in Dallie's throat until it
seemed to be choking him. He couldn't do this—he just couldn't! He spun
around, instinctively searching out Francesca. Sure enough, her chin
shot up in the air, her snooty little nose lifted higher—daring him,
challenging him—
And then, as he watched, it all fell apart for her. She couldn't pull
it off any longer. Her chin dropped,
her expression softened, and she
gazed at him with eyes that saw straight through into his soul, eyes
that understood his panic and begged him to set it aside. For her. For
Teddy. For all of them.
You're going to disappoint her,
Beaudine,
the Bear taunted.
You've
disappointed everybody you've
ever loved in your life, and you're
getting ready to do it again.
Francesca's lips moved, forming a single word.
Please.
Dallie looked down at the grass, thinking about everything Francie had
said to him, and then he walked over to Skeet. "I'm going straight for
the flag," he said. "I'm going to hit across the lake."
He waited for Skeet to yell at him, to tell him he was all kinds of a
fool. But Skeet merely looked thoughtful. "You're going to have to
carry that ball two hundred and sixty yards and make it stop on a
nickel."
"I know that," Dallie replied quietly.
"If you make the safe shot—go around the lake—you've got a good chance
at tying Nicklaus."
"I'm tired of safe shots," Dallie said. "I'm going for the flag."
Jaycee had been dead for years, and
Dallie didn't have a damned thing left to prove to that bastard.
Francie was right. Not
trying at all was a bigger sin than failing. He took a last look over
toward Francesca, wanting her respect more than he'd ever wanted
anything. She and Holly Grace were clutching each other's hands as if
they were getting ready to fall off the edge of the world. Teddy's legs
had gotten tired and he was sitting on the grass, but the look of
determination hadn't faded from his face.
Dallie focused all his attention on what he had to do, trying to
control the rush of adrenaline that would harm him more than it would
help.
Hogan couldn't carry the lake,
the
Bear whispered.
What makes you think
you can?
Because I want it more than Hogan
ever did,
Dallie answered back.
I
just plain want it more.
When he lined up for the ball and the spectators realized what he was
going to do, they emitted a
murmur of disbelief. Nicklaus's face was as
expressionless as ever. If he thought Dallie was making a mistake, he
kept it to himself.
You'll never do it,
the Bear
whispered.
You just watch me,
Dallie
replied.
His club lashed through the ball. It shot into the sky on a high,
strong trajectory and then faded to the right so that it hung over the
water—over the center of the lake that had claimed Ben Hogan and Arnold
Palmer and so many other legends. It sailed through the sky for an
eternity, but it still hadn't cleared the lake when it began to come
down. The spectators held their breath, their bodies frozen into
position like extras in an old science-fiction movie. Dallie stood like
a statue watching the slow, ominous descent. In the background, a flag
with the number 18 printed on it caught a puff of breeze and lifted
ever so slightly, so that in all the universe only that flag and the
ball were moving.
Screams went up from the crowd, and then an ear-splitting wall of sound
struck Dallie as his ball cleared the edge of the lake and hit the
green, bouncing slightly before it came to a dead stop ten feet from
the flag.
Seve put his ball on the green and two-putted, then shook his head
dejectedly as he walked off onto the fringe. Jack's heroic sixty-foot
putt lipped the cup, but didn't drop. Dallie stood alone. He only had a
ten-foot putt, but he was mentally and physically exhausted. He knew
that if he made the putt he
would win the tournament, but if he missed it he would be tied with
Jack.
He turned to Francesca, and once again her pretty lips formed that one
word: please.
As tired as he was, Dallie didn't have the heart to disappoint her.
Chapter
33
Dallie's arms shot up in the air, one fist holding his putter aloft33
like a medieval standard of victory. Skeet was crying like a baby, so
overcome with joy that he couldn't move. As a result, the first person
who reached Dallie was Jack Nicklaus.
"Great game, Dallie," Nicklaus said, putting his arm over Dallie's
shoulders. "You're a real champion."
Then Skeet was hugging him and pounding him on the back, and Dallie was
hugging back, except his
eyes were moving the whole time, searching the
crowd until he found what he was looking for.
Holly Grace broke through first; then Francesca, with Teddy in tow.
Holly Grace rushed toward Dallie
on her long-stemmed legs—legs that had
first won fame as they ran the bases at Wynette High, legs that had
been American-designed for both speed and beauty. Holly Grace ran
toward the man she had loved just about all her life, and then she
stopped cold as she saw those blue eyes of his slip right past her and
come to rest on Francesca. A spasm of pain went through her chest, a
moment of heartbreak, and then the pain eased as she felt herself let
him go.
Teddy nudged up next to her, not quite ready to join in such
extravagant emotion. Holly Grace slipped
her arm around his shoulders,
and they both watched as Dallie lifted Francesca high off the ground,
hoisting her by the waist so that her
head was higher than his. For a fraction of a moment, she hung there,
tilting her face into the sun and laughing at the sky. And then she
kissed him, brushing his face with her hair, battering his cheeks with
the joyous swaying of her silly silver earrings. Her little red sandals
slid from her toes, one of them balancing itself on top of his golf
shoe.
Francesca turned away first, searching for Holly Grace in the crowd,
holding out her arm. Dallie set Francesca down without letting go of
her and held out his arm, too, so that Holly Grace could join them. He
hugged them both—these two women who meant everything to him—one the
love of his boyhood, the other the love of his manhood; one tall and
strong, the other tiny and frivolous, with a marshmallow heart and a
spine of tempered steel. Dallie's eyes sought out Teddy, but even in
his moment of victory,
he saw the boy wasn't ready and he didn't press
him. For now it was enough that they could exchange smiles.
A UPI photographer caught the picture that was to grace the front pages
of the nation's sports sections
the next day—a jubilant Dallie Beaudine
lifting Francesca Day up off the ground while Holly Grace Beaudine
stood to one side.
Francesca had to be back in New York the next morning, and Dallie
needed to perform all the duties that fell to the winner immediately
following a major championship. As a result, their time together after
the tournament was much too short and all too public. "I'll call you,"
he mouthed as he was swept away.
She smiled in answer, and then the press engulfed him.
* * *
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