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Short Story

Back Nine

The grass looks like green cement, then as we get closer like a shaved old cheek and all I can think of is my dad cutting the backyard lawn, me running alongside the gas mower when a dog’s bone flies out cracking against my eight-year-old wrist; a thud like a shotgun and the dull instant pain of bone on bone, my little Timex glinting shrapnel on the fresh mown lawn, my dad and I staring at each other through a veil of pain.

Thirty years and half a lifetime ago. First half of mine, last of his.

Oh the shoes are essential, Cobb says, leading me into the clubhouse. The shirts and pants hang on spinning racks like cogs in a machine we navigate through. He translates everything to the proshop clerk for me. Size eight, I say. Size eight he tells him. Your dad wore a ten, you’d be swimming in ’em, no purchase on the green. They’ve got little poppy-like designs and leather frills. If I wasn’t so hung over I’d break into a tap dance, just to scare them.

Cobb’s daughter Tammy, friend and flame from my youth, and her fiancé Kent are perched on the front steps when we clop back out. Kent has one hand on his driver, the other around Tammy’s shoulder. The mountains tower in the background, alders at mid focus. It’s a Polo ad waiting for a photographer.

I struggle for a deep breath. Just eighteen holes, go through the motions. I pick up dad’s old golf bag, pull out the putter and try a practice putt. I don’t know the motions, that’s the problem. Holding the grip in the same place he did, maybe it’ll speak to me, tell me what he saw near the end, what I was too bullish to listen to while he was still around. I overshoot the putt by thirty feet.

I’m dad’s shadow again, like yesterday in the hotel lobby, the concierge looking at her screen – Ah, Mr. Griffin, we’re glad you could make it, and so sorry to hear about your father. If there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable …The family deceased deal. Book in for free on your old man’s expired credit. Try to find little pieces of him along the way. In the hotel room, on the course, in the restaurant. Rebuild him from memory. Could you send up some more of that twelve-year-old Glenfiddich please. I think he’s in the bottom of the bottle. Spare no expense for the dead.

The cart rocks a bit when Cobb drives it to the first tee. Kent’s pants are grey and creased. He belongs in a bank, except for the shoes which are strictly ballroom. Whack, it sails impossibly up and forward, lofty. Cobb is next, standing like a sturdy sailor, gnarled and holding fast to the gunwale. Good purchase on the green. His ball crooks up and hooks to the left. Damn it to hell – ’least she’s on. Now Tammy, up at the women’s tee. No equality in golf. She takes her practice swings and I can envision the golf pro’s arms wrapped around her perfect frame. She’s got it. But on her real swing a glider swoops out of nowhere like a valkyrie and drags a shadow over her. The ball bounces off into a pond.

Shit. I’m glad she still swears.

Remember it’s not baseball, Cobb advises me. Think of a pendulum. Pendular motion, I tell myself. One practice swing, that’s all. Don’t waste good motion. Crack. Wonderful, he says. No loft, but not hooking to the left or dribbling into the pond either. It’s a straight low drive that rockets and bounces down the fairway like a bullet train heading downtown. Their relief is as great as mine. But I want the loft. I want it to sail up and never come down.

Too edgy still. Nothing a little Fiddich won’t cure. Dad’s well-worn flask.

Cobb drives the cart like his feet and hands are too big for it. Bounding, jagging the corners, jerking to a stop. Good purchase on the pedals.

I’m glad you’re here, he tells me, striding up to his ball. Your dad loved this annual trip. No wheeling and dealing on the links. Just three good courses, fine restaurants and lots of golf. A little time out of time. I miss him like you, you know.

I see his loss in the involuntary twitch of his cheek. For me it’s different; I’ve already been missing him for years. Practice makes perfect.

I picture dad playing one of his city courses, spinning tales to a client about old casks rolling off the boat, smell of single malt and oak, the clink of bottles crated together like old friends: Glenfiddich, Glen Livet, Laphroaig, Talisker. The love for it in his eye, the taste for it on his lips. Another deal clinched on the course. My brother Tony and I waiting at home with the nanny, seeing him walk in like a blank. No more show to put on. Just an unfillable emptiness. His jack-o’-lantern gaze resting on the walls as though mom might walk out of one of them and return to life.

Cobb whacks the ball onto the edge of the green. Looks over his shoulder at the golfers coming up behind.

There’s a case of cold Heinies in the back of the cart, help yourself. I offer him the flask in kind and he turns it down. Not ’til later. Your dad, now he could drink and play, weave a line between sobriety and drunkenness. Slowest player on the course though, especially on the back nine. You should have joined us sometimes. I know he kept inviting you.

I crack a beer. Golf’s not my game.

Looks like you inherited his talent for drinking though.

Did you see him much the last few months?

Couple of times, he seemed fine. I’m no doctor mind.

I thought he was better than ever. Then the heart attack, no lead-up. Doctor said his heart just couldn’t pump the blood anymore. Even after three bypasses and the thinner. Said our blood likes to linger.

Tough year for you eh? I heard about your divorce. Messy?

It’s hard to imagine a clean one.

Cobb drives alongside my four approach shots to the green. Then I hop in and we bolt to his ball. He looks nervously back up the fairway, then down the glinting shaft of his putter. The wall of mountains pushes in close. A wind hushes the chickadees in the poplars. Cobb doesn’t notice. Christ! He misses by an inch. I’m in with three putts.

Listen, Colin. There’s a couple coming up fast behind. I’ll go ahead with Kent, get to know the future son-in-law. Why don’t you and Tammy let them play through, go at your own speed. Catch up on old times, and help yourself to the Heinies.

Do I get to use the women’s tee?

No.

The couple strides past, curt smiles of thanks, all business.

Guess we’re the B team, Tammy says. We sit in the cart, wait for the couple to play through. I could let them all play through. A stream of humanity rushing forward.

B is for beer. I open two Heinies. When’s the big day?

Next May.

Same month my divorce went through.

Guess we’re on opposite ends of it.

It’s liberating having nothing.

We drive to the women’s tee. Don’t tell your dad, I say.

I won’t. She has the same smile from fourteen, even more poise, and the smouldering blue green eyes that nail me to the cart.

Remember that summer at Cultus Lake? she says, Dire Straights on the ghetto blaster?

I was madly in love with you.

You were madly in love with everybody.

But mostly you.

Tammy hits her best drive yet. You’re good luck.

I try the seven iron. Don’t trust the driver anymore. It’s like a chunk of firewood on the end of an axe. Dad must have liked the seven too. The grip is indented by his hands. I look at the ball, then down the fairway. The world won’t stay out anymore. The sky and mountains lean in, the trees rush up. Keep focused on the task. Good loft, but I’m fifty yards short of Tammy’s drive. Only twelve holes to go. The seven is my friend.

I drive like a reckless teenager to my ball, Tammy giggling. Hit with the seven again. She passes me the rest of her Heinie when I’m done mine.

Should I call for a stretcher on the back nine?

No, I’ll be fine.

Tammy drives the cart past the clubhouse to the tenth hole. We’re the Beer team, I yell hanging out the side.

Tammy takes a nip of the Scotch. That’s more my style, she says.

Is it the liquor or has the course narrowed in, gathered around us? It’s more of a jungle back here. No more sprawling fairways. Berry bushes, waterways, birds and a pregnant cumulus cloud overhead.

My dad started to know things last year, I tell her. He dreamed them.

Like what?

My brother’s drug habit. Told us these elaborate dreams about rocks of crack and carving up lines. Stuff he’d never heard about in his life. Tony and I would laugh it off and exchange frightened looks. Then he told me about Mary and some priest she was off with. I thought he had it backwards. I was the one having an affair with a nurse. When you’re guilty you never suspect the supposed innocent. He was right. It was the owner of the New Age bookstore. Same as a priest.

That’s amazing – I always liked your dad.

He never had an intuitive bone in his body, but suddenly he could see things. It’s like he was looking from the other side already, through a thin gauze between worlds.

They’re coming up behind us again. Another couple with purpose in their stride and laboured pleasant smiles. The man swings his driver like the grim reaper while he waits. The course marshal pulls up in his cart to tell us our other twosome are already on the fifteenth. We should step it up. I crack another Heinie and grab my seven iron.

It’s bred in the bone, I tell him. My blood likes to linger.

We finish the hole in a hurry, whacking the balls like we’re at the driving range. Then we find a narrow track through the bush that emerges at the thirteenth tee. Tammy makes up scores for the eleventh and twelfth holes. Dad’ll forgive me; there’s etiquette to keep up. The thirteenth is surrounded by foliage, a kidney-shaped pond, ducks oblivious to the crack of wood on nylon. I could linger here for hours.

I take off my shoes and socks and throw them in the back of the cart. Fuck the etiquette. Through my tickling toes I can feel the vibration of the earth. I know what the problem was, I say. Not enough purchase on the grass.

Tammy breaks into her smile again, but it’s reserved on one side, holding back. Her turquoise shorts hug her slim hips. I can see her in her fourteen-year-old bikini, that triangle of temptation pointing to bliss. I need to know the colour of her panties. Are they white or matching turquoise? I want to be fourteen again. Have a hard-on for anything and everything. I want to roll off into the weeds with her, mate among the ducks. But Tammy loves Mr. Tweed now. Not me anymore. Maybe she never did. And the grim reaper is coming up behind. Swinging his practice swings, looking for my head. He wants to release my lingering blood. There’s no time. Never enough time.

I speed to the fifteenth. Are you seeing anyone new? Tammy asks.

No. Fresh wounds I guess. Need to figure things out. What the hell did my dad see in this game?

I don’t know, I hate golf, she says and takes another nip of the Fiddich.

So did he, but he played it all his life. I focus on the tee-off. Clear vision on the ball. The outer world disappears, the sponge beneath my feet, the whirring leaves, the tickle of water. It’s all gone, instantly. I know where I’m going and whack! Brilliant. It’s all about the forward motion. Don’t indulge in the seductions of the world. Only flirt with nature. Let it know who’s boss. It’s just a passing entertainment, a sideshow. That’s the secret. Focus. Forward.

We drop back in the cart and I gun it for the seventeenth. Who built the bloody hairpin in the cart track? I crank left and we lurch right and clang horizontal onto the grass, cart and all. Lucky it’s wet and slippery. Tammy’s okay except for the green skid mark down her white shirt. I put my arm around her on the grass. Nothing’s changed since we were fourteen. My hip is touching hers, my hand barely gracing her shoulder. Where’s the photographer now? She holds me with those unbelievable eyes again and I lean in and dare the lightest kiss on her lips.

We’re not fourteen anymore, she says.

We hoist the cart back up and play the seventeenth. At the end of the fairway I hear a whiz and feel a whipping breeze pass my head. I look back and the grim reaper is standing stone still on the tee. Bastard. We finish the hole. Only one left.

As we set up on the women’s tee, the reaper arrives in his golf cart, fuming. What the hell are you doing? You took my ball.

I hold my seven iron tight. Sorry, I must have gotten confused when it whizzed past my ear. I pass it back to him.

Never lose sight of your ball, pal, never.

We let them play through. Their steam fuels them on toward the clubhouse where Cobb and Kent wait for us. But there’s more behind them. The swinging stream of humanity won’t stop. Tammy hits a beautiful drive again. She’s a trooper. My trusty seven lands me in the pond.

Whack, fuck. That’s what they call this game, she says.

We drive up to my pond and I get out with the remaining Heinie and my seven iron. I tromp into the rushes, and where I think my ball tore through some lily pads I slosh right in. My seven iron is a crutch. My beer a flotation device. I down the beer, throw the can up to the bank and feel around for the ball with my toes in the muck.

Tammy looks back at me and laughs from the bottom of her beautiful torso. She waves and walks off toward the clubhouse. She’s got a wedding to go to.

The mud between my toes feels like heaven, billowing up clouds of darkening murk. Everything’s silky soft until my foot lands on something hard and painful. Could it be my ball? I bend down to pick it up, my head plunging under water like a duck searching for food. It’s not my ball after all, but a sharp rock that’s cut into my foot and pushed up against the bone. I gulp a deep breath, dislodge the rock and throw it to the bank. The blood is already releasing a rusty blemish in the water, the pain is clear, anaesthetised by the icy mountain runoff. I’ve lost sight of my ball.

What’s a bit of pain, a bit of loss? It’s the thought of it that hurts more than anything. I take a last swig of Scotch and offer the remaining spirits to the pond, flask and all. To my dad. It helped ease his pain in life; why not in the afterlife? I can feel him in here with me – a little blood, a little Scotch. The holy trinity of the swamp.

Cobb, Tammy and Kent are looking on from the deck of the clubhouse, shielding their eyes from the emerging sun. The course marshal is standing beside the dented golf cart, his disbelieving gaze following to the scene of the crime.

My head is dripping the icy runoff and I’m threading that line between sobriety and drunkenness. I’ve got good purchase in the mud and I can feel the world 360 degrees around me. Time out of time. No more need to keep score. That’s the game.

Stephen Vogler

has contributed his writing to national magazines as well as various CBC Radio programs including DNTO, Outfront and Ideas. He is the author of Whistler Features, described by B.C. Bookworld as "a collection of essayish discussions on mountain culture, real estate prices, champagne powder and irritating little dogs in sweaters." In May of 2002, Stephen was invited to attend the Otherwords literary festival for his short fiction. He is currently working on a film project based on one of his short stories.