Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“On their way to the cemetery,” Hedrick said.

“Evidently. So the one golfer, he immediately shoves his driver back into his bag, whips off his cap, and stands in reverent silence until the very last car has passed them and disappeared into the distance.”

“Why?”

“Just what his partner was wondering. ‘What a respectful thing to do!’ he says. ‘All the times we’ve played together, and it turns out there’s a spiritual side to you I never saw before.’

“The first golfer shrugs and puts his cap back on. ‘I figure it’s the least I can do,’ he says. ‘After all, she was a good wife to me for twenty-seven years.’ ”

Hedrick found his ball, took his second shot, made a good recovery. Nicholson took his own second shot, and they finished the hole in silence. Coming off the green, Hedrick said, “She was his wife.”

“Right.”

“In the hearse. His wife died, and she was being buried, and he was out on the golf course instead of showing up for her funeral.”

“Well, it’s not as though it actually happened,” Nicholson said. “It’s just a joke.”

“Oh, I realize that. I’m just looking at it as a joke. She was his wife and it was a successful marriage, but because golf is the way it is and because golfers are the way they are—”

“The way we are,” Nicholson put in.

“Well, yes. Because of these factors, his idea of showing respect is standing for a couple of minutes with his cap off.”

“When you explain it that way,” Nicholson said, “it’s not terribly funny, is it?”

“Oh, it’s funny,” Hedrick said. “I’m just sort of, oh, deconstructing it, you might say. And I think you said all golf jokes are essentially the same, all based on the same element of humor.”

“I’d say so,” Nicholson said. “Can you think of one that isn’t?”

Hedrick couldn’t, and they played on in relative silence, their conversation limited to compliments on one another’s shots as they played the next two holes. Both men bogeyed the par-three eighth hole. Hedrick scored par on nine, while Nicholson, whose second shot stopped within six feet of the pin, read the green, set himself, and sank the putt for a birdie.

It was, he realized, the first hole he’d won outright.

Approaching the nextgreen, Hedrick said, “But I’m afraid I don’t see where Fred comes into it.”

Nicholson looked at him.

“ ‘Hit the ball, drag Fred.’ Isn’t that what you said? If Fred’s anywhere in the joke about the wife’s funeral, he must have been hiding behind a tree. I have to say I didn’t spot him.”

“It’s another joke,” Nicholson told him, “but in a sense it’s the same joke. Man goes to play a round of golf with his best friend and business partner.”

“Fred, I suppose.”

“Right, Fred. And his wife’s waiting dinner for him, and he’s more than two hours late by the time he walks in the door, and the guy looks terrible. ‘Honey,’ she says, ‘are you all right? Did you have a good afternoon?’

“ ‘I’m not all right,’ he says. ‘And I just had the worst afternoon of my life. I met Fred and we went out together, and everything was fine, it was a beautiful afternoon, and we were both hitting the ball well. And then Fred’s playing his second shot on the sixth hole, he’s set up nicely just to the right of the long fairway bunker, and he goes into his backswing and collapses. He drops dead, right there in the middle of the fairway.’

“ ‘Oh, my God,’ says the wife. ‘Honey, that’s horrible! How awful for poor Fred, and it must have been perfectly terrible for you, too.’

“ ‘I’ll say,’ he says. ‘That was the sixth hole, the long par five. So for twelve more holes it was hit the ball, drag Fred, hit the ball, drag Fred.’ ”

Hedrick didn’t say anything at first. Then he said, “I see what you mean. It’s the same joke. It’s different, but it’s the same.”

“It’s a golf joke,” Nicholson said. “They’re all the same.”

“Are you married?”

“I was,” Hedrick replied. “She died, and the funeral’s this afternoon. I’ll tell you, if the hearse passes us, I’m taking my cap off.”

“You’re not wearing a cap.”

“Well, if I were. No, I’m not married. Why do you ask?”

“Ever been?”

“Briefly, years ago. It didn’t work out, and I’m in no hurry to repeat the experiment.”

“I’m married,” Nicholson said.

“Oh?”

“Happily. Or so I’ve always thought.”

“Oh.”

“There I was,” Nicholson said, “with a beautiful wife. And a best friend. Do you begin to get the picture?”

“I get a picture,” Hedrick said, “but I don’t know whether or not it’s the picture.”

“There’s only one picture,” Nicholson said, “and you got it a lot quicker than I did. It took me a while. The signs were there, but I didn’t see them at first. Then I began to notice things. Facial expressions, eye movements. Something in the air. Nothing concrete, but there came a day when I just knew, and realized I’d known for a while. Known without knowing I knew, if you follow me.”

“Perhaps you were mistaken.”

“Just what I told myself. Then there came the day when my friend backed out of a foursome at the last minute. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, and for once I could guess the reason.”

“So what happened? The three of you played without him?”

“The three of us teed off together,” Nicholson said, “and the three of us played a couple of holes together, and then I pulled a muscle hitting a two iron and I was in agony. Or at least that’s the show I put on for the two fellows I was with.”

“You dropped out?”

“And left them to finish the round. I knew they wouldn’t quit just because I’d torn up my shoulder. I mean, they’re golfers, right? Hit the ball, drag Fred. Except in this instance Fred picked up his golf clubs and went home. Where I was not greatly surprised to find my friend’s car in my driveway.”

“It was definitely his car?”

“I suppose it could have been somebody else’s green Olds Cutlass, and that it just happened to have a dented right rear fender, and a license plate reading UNDRPAR. No, I’m afraid it was his car.”

“Still, there might have been an innocent explanation.”

“There might,” Nicholson agreed. “I pulled into the driveway and parked behind his car. Then I walked around to the rear of the house and looked in the bedroom window. Again, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for what I saw. Perhaps, for instance, my best friend had somehow sprung a leak, and my wife was merely trying to reinflate him.”

“Oh.”

“Quite.”

“What did you do? Burst in the door? Confront them?”

“Of course not.”

“Oh.”

“What I felt like doing,” Nicholson said, “was driving straight back to the country club and catching up with the fellows I’d been playing with. But how could I do that after my imaginary shoulder injury? So what I did was go to a chiropractor and get a deep heat treatment.”

“Even though there was nothing wrong with you?”

“You can always find someone happy to give you a deep heat treatment, and what harm can it do? It’s not as though I was in danger of melting. It enabled me to make a miraculous recovery, and I was out on the course the next day.”

“But not with your friend, I don’t suppose.”

“Why not? We’d been playing together for years.”

“But wasn’t it awkward?”

“Why should it be? He didn’t know that I knew anything.”

“And you could just act as though nothing had happened?”