Fast Greens (2 page)

“Be cool, Pops!” Fromholz scolded Roscoe. “Don't get your vowels in an uproar! I'm the man in charge and by my watch, it's two minutes till seven.”

Plop
went another of Beast's putts. Sandy winced at the sound, but his focus was still glued to the brown tobacco stain on the grass.

“Hell, Fromholz!” grumbled Roscoe as he limped over on a bum knee and compared his watch to the ref's. “You don't know shit from shinola! My Rolex says he's got exactly thirty seconds. And that's set to the atomic clock in Switzerland—
noocular
time!”

Like clockwork himself, Beast stroked another ball into the hole. Those balls didn't want to fall into the hard metal cup. No ball
wants
to go in. You've got to coerce them in, sternly but lovingly, the way Beast was doing it.

Again I dug the three balls out for Beast as nearby, Sandy gave a slight retch. For the second time in less than an hour he could taste the truck stop's greasy
huevos rancheros
—undercooked eggs with peppers and hot sauce—which were contemplating a jail break from his stomach. Worse yet, he could taste another bitter defeat at the hands of Beast the golf monster.

Just as Sandy started to gag, we heard a car gunning over the hill to the near-empty parking lot. Sandy swallowed hard and the
huevos
went back down to
huevos
land. Roscoe swallowed too; an eye-opening, belly-aching gulp of liquid chew. On the green, Beast's head jerked up as he hit another putt. The long ash from his cigarette fell softly to the earth as the ball spun off the edge of the hole.

“Shit!” we all said in unison as, wide-eyed, we saw it roaring at us: a shiny new finless and
driverless
'65 Coupe de Ville, its gunning motor racing with the devil. Without slowing, the big car jumped the curb and plowed through the wet turf that was our only miserable defense. I tried to run but my legs refused to obey, leaving me frozen in the path of the out-of-control car. It was already too late to scream.

A vision of road kill flashed into my mind—all the putrefied deer, skunks, and armadillos I'd seen bloated by the side of the Texas roads. The vision vanished when at the last possible moment the car braked hard and slid sideways, skidding smoothly to a halt beside our huddled group.

I checked the front of my pants, then breathed a sigh of relief.

The window was down and Hank Williams was singing indifferently from somewhere inside the empty car. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, a shaggy gray head popped quickly into view from below the dash.

“Dropped my donut!” the man said. “Darn thing started rollin' on me.”

The heavy steel door glided open and out hopped Mr. William March, flashing eyes, smart mouth, and grinning like a fool.

“The years came down, in crawling pain,”
sang March, twisting Hank's song with his own words.
“You lied and lied, I went insane.”

“Morning gents!” he intoned loudly above the music. “Looks like you all got here early.”

The four of us stared openmouthed, dumbfounded, happy to be alive.

I'd met William March only twice, both times at the urging of my grandmother Jewel, and I had yet to come to any understanding of his true nature. There was some mystery behind his tired and smiling eyes, something devious or devilish, or both. It was like he knew what no one else knew, some nugget of knowledge that he could use against the rest of us whenever he chose.

He tossed me a half-dollar.

“Get my sticks, kid.”

Slipping the coin into my pocket, I dragged his monstrosity of a bag from the trunk and strapped it to a gasoline golf cart. March leaned in the open window of the Cadillac, shut up the radio with a yank at the keys, and pulled out a greasy paper bag.

“There's mine,” March sang. “Twenty grand! And what a grand twenty they are!”

March handed the bag to Fromholz, then snatched it back.

“Hold on, cowboy! I almost forgot.”

He reached into the bag and pulled out a partially squished jelly donut with a hundred-dollar bill stuck to it. Peeling them apart, he shoved the bill back into the bag.

“That was close,” he said. “I damn near bet my donut!”

Fromholz peered in at the jelly-covered money. “I don't think it needs counting,” he proclaimed.

In the meantime, Roscoe Fowler was fumbling through the pockets of his own bag, which I'd already strapped to another cart. Without disturbing the little blue-steel automatic that I had glimpsed in the side pocket, Roscoe pulled out two fat bundles of bills and flipped them one at a time to Fromholz, who snatched them from the air: two lateral completions; crippled quarterback to one-eyed juggler.

I had caddied before for what I thought were big money matches, hundred-dollar Nassaus with automatic presses, and Bingo Bango Bongo where pink slips for pickups passed from hand to hand and losers went home on foot. But the moulah in this match seemed more like Monopoly money than the real thing.

“Hold it!” said Roscoe. “How do I know our ref is honest?”

“Hell, you can shoot craps with him over the phone,” said March. “Let's play.”

Gathering round, the golfers assembled in natural affinity; March and Sandy standing tall at one side, Fromholz in the middle, and the blackhats Roscoe and Beast on the other. Unable to take sides beyond reluctantly carrying Beast's bag, I stood to myself.

“Nine holes. Best ball. Winners take all,” said Fromholz.

Then he pulled out a yellowed scorecard that looked a hundred years old. Squinting his good eye at the faded nine holes of figures scrawled on it, he came to a decision.

“Roscoe, you won the last hole, so I do believe, after twenty-seven years, you still got the honors.”

Subtracting quickly, twenty-seven from 1965, I came up with the year of the last hole: 1938. Unfortunately, I was not as strong in history as I was in math, and I was unable to place any particular event with the year in question. Likewise I had no conception of the clothes, the music, even the cars. With regards to 1938, I was nearly blank. The only image that would form was one I had first seen just one week earlier, an image that I could not get out of my head.

*   *   *

William March's secretary tilted her head down, peered over the top of her small wire-rim glasses, and looked me over from head to toe. Apparently I passed her inspection, for she told me to wait in the hall, then she turned and disappeared through a heavy wooden door.

The walls of the hallway were covered in framed photographs, all of people standing near drilling rigs and oil wells, all except one. Raising on my toes to the level of that faded photo, I saw two men dressed in dusty cowboy clothes: wide-brimmed hats, leather chaps, bandanas around their necks. One of them was holding the flag from a golf hole while the other putted. In the background stood two horses with worn leather saddles, and hanging from each of the saddle horns was a golf bag.

“Golf on horseback?” I whispered to no one. I'd never thought of that.

My grandmother Jewel had let me off here on her way to the beauty parlor—though for the life of me I could never figure out why Jewel needed to be made more beautiful. We'd moved to Austin less than a month before, and already she had her choice of several suitors. Despite that, her only interest seemed to be in Roscoe Fowler and William March, two men she had not seen in almost thirty years.

Shortly after arriving in Austin, Jewel told me she'd run into an old friend who'd asked if I would caddie for him. She assured me that William March would make me laugh, and was a big tipper to boot, an important point because I was saving every penny to buy myself a new set of irons.

I had already carried for March at the Austin Country Club on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Jewel had been right; he did make me laugh, at least until he and Roscoe Fowler began to bicker and quarrel, exchanging deadly verbal darts the way I imagined desperate men might fight with knives. The round had started pleasantly enough, but on the back nine, with March three holes up, things started to get ugly.

“This friggin' heat makes my goddamn knee hurt!” Roscoe complained as he knelt awkwardly for a better look at a do-or-die two-foot putt.

“I thought your knee hurt in the cold,” March answered.

“It hurts in the heat
and
the cold!” Roscoe shot back. “And it's your goddamned fault. It's all your fault!”

“My fault?” March protested. “You sorry bastard! After the way you screwed up our company, you ain't laying the blame on me!”

“Up yours!” said Roscoe, giving March the old one-finger salute.

I was beginning to think they'd go at it this way all day long, but Roscoe lost the match then and there by jabbing the two-foot putt about four feet past the hole.

True to Jewel's word, March was a big tipper. He even gave me a ride home and bought me a chocolate milkshake at Dinty's Hamburgers on the way. We pulled up to our little rented house in South Austin, and March seemed pretty disheartened when I pointed out that Jewel's car wasn't in the driveway. I got out, thanked him for the tip and the milkshake, and went inside. A half hour later, I peeked out the window and March was still sitting there in his big Cadillac, just staring up at the house.

That night at the dinner table, I hadn't even said grace before Jewel started pestering me for details about the game.

“It was okay,” I told her. “But I didn't understand what they were always arguing about.”

“Well, they're probably just being pigheaded,” Jewel told me. “But if you really want to know, ask March. You might find it … interesting.”

The pause as she considered that final word, combined with the slightest hint of mystery in her voice, suddenly seemed proof positive that March would allow me a glimpse of some secret of the adult world that lay beyond my imagination. And that was all it took for me to find myself staring at old photos in the hallway of an oil company.

The tall door of March's office swept aside and the secretary led me in. I'd never been in a real office before and it was different than I expected, darker, a little scary. The curtains were drawn tight and the room was lit only by a desk lamp that threw tall shadows onto the bookcases and walls.

Only half in the light, March was barely discernible from his big leather chair. Approaching slowly, I rested a hand on the big desk; it felt solid and heavy, and compared to the stuffy room it was cold as chiseled marble. The way it grew out of the floor reminded me of a tombstone. There was an odd odor in the room that reminded me of science class formaldehyde and dissected frogs, and I wanted to run away.

Looking older than his years, March produced a quart of Scotch from the desk drawer, opened it, and poured a glass halffull. Then he scooped in two heaping teaspoons of bicarbonate, stirred the concoction into a murky cloud, and drank it down.

“Scotch and soda, kid. That's what it comes to sooner or later. A man spends a lifetime washin' down greasy chicken-frieds and jalapeño pinto beans with a hundred dry wells and it all comes down to Scotch and soda.”

He held the bottle out toward me.

“You want a taste?”

I shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Have a sit.”

Releasing his death grip on the bottle, March's focus swung involuntarily toward the cloudy dregs in his glass. I couldn't imagine what he saw in there, but his gaze reminded me of the snow scene in a crystal that Jewel had given me. When I shook it and stared through the swirling snow, I liked to think I could see through the windows of the tiny house to a happy family gathered around a dinner table, the father saying grace before he carved a big golden turkey.

“Tell me, kid,” March finally said. “A good caddie can really make a difference, can't he?”

I looked up at his eyes and noticed he was smiling now. It was as if the very mention of golf had lifted the pall from the room.

“Yes Sir!” I told him. “A good caddie can read the greens like a book, and he knows the grain and the yardages, lots of stuff.”

March leaned forward.

“You like golf, don't you kid?”

“More than anything,” I answered.

“And for you—tell me if I'm right—for you golf is a pure game: physical and mental, joined together without any questions of right and wrong?”

I wasn't sure I understood but I nodded yes anyway. Golf is a noble game, a combination of uncertain skill and specific laws, untainted by ethical dilemmas or moral quandaries. The first twelve years of my life had been spent in hot dry West Texas, where the only snow was in my crystal jar, so golf was for me the one thing pure.

“What would you think of a man who cheated in a golf match?” March wanted to know.

I didn't hesitate, not on the one thing in the whole world that I knew to be true.

“A guy that cheats is lower than a skunk or a snake or a scorpion, Sir. I mean I've seen lots of people tee it up in the rough or miscount their strokes after a bad hole, but they're not golfers, they're just people with bags of clubs.”

He shifted his weight, leaning closer across the big desk until his face was full in the light.

“I want you to help me cheat in a golf match, son. Would you do that for me?”

Not wanting to believe my ears, I looked away to the rows and rows of fat leather-bound volumes on the bookshelves.

“No Sir,” I said, silently counting the books to avoid his gaze. “I couldn't cheat at golf, not to save my life.”

2

We moved to Austin, my Grandmother and I, in the spring of 1965, and celebrated my thirteenth birthday on the day of our arrival. I had long hoped to trade the slow and easy small-town life of San Angelo for the excitement of a big city like Austin. My main desire, though, was to escape the memories of my mother Martha, who had gone out for cigarettes six years earlier and never come back.