Seaview (24 page)

The phone kept ringing in the clubhouse, as those who were quitting work at noon called to say they would be there for
the tournament so that the Chair would hold the draw. Sammy answered the phone, speaking briefly, and before it was back in the cradle would call out the names:
Ed Souza, Gordon Tarvers, Sparkie Hurd
… From outside the screen door, names would be called out also as those who were late pulled up. At twelve-twenty-five, the Chair had a stack of thirty-six cards in his hand, and he was tapping the corner of the stack on the table, watching the clock. At twelve-thirty he glanced over at Sammy.

“That looks to be it,” Sammy said, and the Chair rapped the cards one last time and called out a little too loudly into the room.

“Draw! Draw!”

The words got to the door and out it, and as the Chair shuffled the cards and began laying them out in rows on the table, “Draw! Draw!” could be heard as far as the putting green. Those already in the room pressed in around the table, watching the cards come up, checking to see who they were teamed up with. When they saw their cards, they turned and began to look for their partners. The tournament was handled in shotgun fashion, teams starting at one, five, and seven at the same time, and by twelve-thirty-five all the golfers were headed for their assigned tees.

As the clubhouse emptied and Earl came in to take over for Sammy while he played, Sammy reached under the glass counter and got out his fedora with the feather in it. He put the hat on, pulled the brim down to tuck it tight, broke open a cellophane bag of long “Florida” tees from his special stock, and turned and smiled at Earl.

“Look all right, do I?” he asked. “I better, I drew the Chair.”

“Who-ha,” Earl said flatly. “Just the right start to the season.”

“Better believe it,” Sammy said. “See ya,” and he left the clubhouse and headed for the first tee, where the other three members of his foursome—the Chair, Commander Wall, and Eddie Costa, the fisherman—would be waiting. They were going to be third in line to hit off, but the Chair would, for sure, have them up there and ready.

When all the golfers had left, Chief Wingfoot quit his place
at the side of the door and walked down the road toward the light-house. He would turn to the right when he got there, head along the rough of the sixth fairway that ran along the ocean's cliff edge, and when he got down to the sixth tee, he would cut through the rough to the sea perch. He would sit there and watch the ocean a while, his people's golf course behind him. When the foursome that Chair and Sammy were in reached that hole—and that would be awhile from now—he'd have a few things to do. When he got to the tee, he cut through the long weed to the dune's edge. He was high above the sea, the weeds tall behind him, and he sat on a ledge of shale, his feet hanging over the cliff. The tide was low: a few long clean bars, with still pools between them and the beach, were visible above the water, and a few herring gulls drifted out and along the cliff at about the Chief's level. He took a piece of weed and put it in his mouth for the moisture. Below him, a few children, small at this distance, dug in the sand, their mother watching them from under a bright beach umbrella. He began to think of the shellfish on the Cape and the Quahog People.

There was little of the conventional in the way most of the men at Seaview played golf. There had never been a real pro at the course, and Sammy had the job because he was a native, played a respectable game, and was willing to work long hours for little pay. The Golf Commission had renewed his contract each year for the past five. His father, a retired fisherman now doing a little charter-boat sport work in Florida, had been a respected member of the Cape's fishing community, and the Chair's objections each time the contract came up for review were disregarded by the other members of the Commission. They were loyal to the father, and they had a liking for the easy-going nature of the son.

In the old days, before the tourist boom, golf was one of the only recreations available down on the Cape. The shape of the course was such that most of the tourists disdained to play it when they did start coming. Though Earl and Chip had done a lot for the tees and greens, the fairways looked like somebody's backyard that had never been seeded. Earl kept the weeds low as
best he could, but the fairways were mostly tufts of weed, occasional small carpets of wild rye, patches of grass, dandelions, and sand, with bits of stone here and there and shards of broken clamshells up from the beach. The shells were there because when it rained, the gulls, who dropped clams from great heights in order to break them for food, drifted in over the course with their catches and let them fall along the fairways.

When Sammy reached the first tee, the Chair was looking the other way, busily commenting on the hits of the foursome in front of them. When they had all hit, he turned and saw Sammy's hat and new feather. Fred Wall was looking too, but his mouth didn't drop open the way the Chair's did. He was able to keep his commanding officer's demeanor in the face of such things. The Chair snapped his mouth shut and kept his peace; he would not give Sammy the satisfaction of comment.

When the foursome ahead of them had reached the green, Sammy went to the tee to get ready. Sammy was a two-handicapper, the Chair had six strokes, Wall had his fourteen, and Eddie Costa had nine. Sammy had the honors, and he stuck one of his special long tees in the ground and put a new ball on it, the ball standing a good two inches above the grass. He had a wide stance and a very fluid if abbreviated swing. He cracked the ball off its high perch and curled it a good way out to the right of the fairway, where it rolled up the last rise and quit about fifty yards from the green. The Chair, though his hit was long and straight, caught a tuft of grass, bounced high in the air, and came up about seventy yards short, on a line between the two small traps on the left and right front. The Chair got a lot of hip into his swing, and just before he hit the ball he had the habit of lurching slightly in a little jump in the direction of flight.

Eddie Costa was the loosest hitter of the four. He teed up and took a stance that was very open, his left foot pointing directly down the fairway. He gripped the club like a fishing pole held for a side-style surf cast, and he got ready by turning the head in small circles halfway up into his back-swing. Just before
he hit, he banged the club head hard on the ground behind the ball. When he clouted it, the force of his swing caused him to come off both feet, and he would wind up in a slight crouch, his feet wide apart, his toes pointing down the fairway, his eyes intent on watching the ball. His hit, as usual, was low and straight: it kicked up a puff of sand about a hundred and fifty yards out at the top of a low hill in the fairway and shot in the air for another thirty yards. It got a good bounce and came to rest on the down side of the hill to the right, about eighty-five yards away from the green. Fred Wall had the only conventional shot in the group. His swing was very careful, practiced, and mechanical. He was a little to the left, but he was straight. He finished in a good spot, on the hill to the left of the green, about fifty yards out, with no traps between him and the flagstick.

Eddie Costa played his second shot in a style that was distinctly different from his first. Eighty-five yards away, and with the edge of the trap between him and the pin, he elected to play a pitch-and-run shot. He had nothing above a six-iron in his bag. He never needed the loftier clubs, and for his shot he selected a four-iron. Still using his fishing-pole grip, this time he choked up significantly on the club shaft; his left hand was well down on the grip, and there was a good four inches between it and his right. He planted his feet beside each other, digging in by kicking at the sand and grass tufts. This time he did not bang the club head on the ground but instead took a series of short half-swings, moving the club back and forth from his shoulder to the ground behind the ball. The half-swings got stronger and quicker, and at the end of them he hit. The ball shot off the club face, again very low and straight. It hit about fifteen yards short of the trap, approached it, entered it, and rolled through it, jumping a little when it hit the front lip. It came to rest in the middle of the green, about twenty-five feet from the cup.

“Good shot, Eddie, good shot!” the Chair yelled over from where he stood behind his ball. Sammy took his hat off and waved it. Wall lifted the club in his hand slightly off the ground.

After the Chair and Wall had hit safely to the green, both finishing about the same distance away as Eddie, Sammy kicked his ball around in search of a good lie. Chair was walking up to the green, but he watched Sammy, making sure that he did not move his ball closer than it was. Sammy glanced up and saw Chair watching. He grinned, and the Chair turned away. Then Sammy found a place, a good tuft of grass, and he hit up. His wedge was high and true, and he finished inside of the other three.

“All right, all right!” Eddie Costa said when they all had reached the green. “Off to a good start. Eight points at least.” The Chair scowled at him. He did not like mentioning points until the putts were down; it was inappropriate, and it was bad luck.

“Come on boys, hang tough,” he said. Three of them two-putted for pars. Sammy stuck his in for a birdie. The Chair wanted the team points, but he also wanted to beat Sammy. He was both pissed and pleased when they walked over to the second tee. They had tallied nine on the hole. He was one down to Sammy. It was a good and bad start.

After they had hit their drives on the second, the long par-five dog leg, with the elevated tee from which could be seen the Jenny Lind tower with the radar domes very large at the top of the hill above it, they started down the path to the fairway and saw Chip up on the hill in the right rough, picking the few early blueberries he could find and popping them in his mouth. He had parked his cutter at the foot of the rough and hopped up there, giving the foursome quiet so they could concentrate on their second shots. The Chair was walk-ing with Wall, and when he saw Chip he said, “That's a hell of a job Chip is doing on the aprons,” and then he yelled out, “That's a hell of a job you're doing on the aprons, Chip!” Wall jumped away a little as the yell rang in too close to his ear, but the Chair didn't notice. Chip acknowledged the Chair's yell with a bow and a wave. Two men in the foursome ahead of them, over two hundred yards away on the green, looked up and glanced back down the fairway.

It didn't take the Chair long to get even; he birdied the
second hole while Sammy parred it. The other two took bogies. By the time they reached the fifth green, Sammy had pulled ahead again, by three. Chair had a long putt for a par on the fifth, and he made it. Sammy was on the green in regulation, but he misjudged his first putt, went well past the hole, and missed it coming back. At the end of five, Sammy was two up and the team was about even for the round.

 

 

HIGH UP AND OUT OVER THE SEA, A FEW CLOUD PUFFS with plenty of blue between them hung over the distant markers of lobster pots in their ragged lines in the barely swelling and receding water beyond the shore's activity. The few hunting gulls had curled out from the shore and were cruising over the deep water, occasionally folding their wings and falling into the sea for shallow bait fish. There had been a factory boat far out, close to the end of sight, but a fog bank had rolled in, creating a false horizon beyond which the boat was probably still working, though totally obscured. It was still bright and sunny over the sand and surf, and the children were still playing. The Chief had taken his tennis shoes off, and his hanging feet were touched by a light breeze. He had laid his niblick on the cliff's edge to his side, and his golf cap was cocked back on his head. He had heard the talk of three foursomes as they came up to the sixth tee to hit. He was only about fifteen feet from the tee, but the grass and brush were high and dense, and even when one of the men had lumbered into the bushes to take a leak, he had been unaware of the Chief's presence.

There were no golfers on the tee now, and the Chief could hear the fluted songs of some purple finches in the thick growth behind him.

When they had discussed the relatively small issue of choosing a name for their organization, there had been a variety of views on the subject. The boys from around Niagara, the Iroquois advisers, had thought they needed something very direct and understandable, something the white man would remember
because it was in his lingo and not too enigmatic. Frightening names had a strong lobby, mostly among the young fellows. They were very militant, and they wanted this to be apparent “out front,” as they said. His group was not a political group as such but had considerable sway in the matter, because they were the ones whose specific ancestors had lived here (it was their own names that appeared on the land claims). They had from the beginning an agreement of intention. They wanted a name that had specific historical import and at the same time was symbolic. Once he had been elected as chairman of the steering committee, a position which for all practical purposes meant that he was the man in charge, he had suggested the name Quahog People, and he had argued for its selection with good reasons.

Part of the strength of the white man's tradition lay in the early economy of the Cape. Fishing was its backbone, and no small part of the industry was shellfishing. The oysters and clams of the Cape were famous in the Eastern United States, and whenever the locals evoked the power of their past, they would talk of the gone high quality of shellfish, saying it was even better in their grandfathers' time. That would usually get them to speak of the hard life their ancestors had led, suggesting that their own backbones had been formed by these hardy fishermen. Now it was true that the fishermen who still worked the waters off the Cape worked very hard, and it was also true that those who had moved from a fishing tradition into other endeavors were hard workers also. But many of those in power had gotten their money and influence not from a tradition that had to do with hard sea work but from the tourist trade and the sale of land. When they did work, it was during the summertime, when the tourists came, and what work they did then wasn't very hard work, though they often complained about it. In the winter the work consisted, for many of them, of a little light half-day labor and the counting of the money they had made during the summer.