George Higgins - A change of gravity

In the same way, Heck at first took considerable pleasure as well not only in having a son good enough to play on the PGA tour but in financing him while he assaulted it. When asked, Heck said happily it had been worth the money. "I'm glad he's got that talent. Kid's got absolutely no head for business. Don't want him around it. Golf keeps him off the street." He confided to Rob Lewis the funeral director in Amherst preferred by Protestants; a member of the state Republican committee who'd become Heck's 'best friend in the whole wide world, now that Carl Kuiper's dead' that he'd bragged a little about Julian elsewhere that year he'd been married to Lisha. He said he'd mentioned his 'son on the pro tour' to other couples they'd met playing Indian Wells in Southern California and Dorado in Puerto Rico. Heck said he thought they'd envied him; at least the men did, anyway. When Rob said he thought they probably did, Heck repeated the story to Hilliard and Merrion the next time the four of them played, and they agreed with Rob.

After Heck and Rob had gone home Hilliard and Merrion had lingered over their beers and looked at each other, and finally Hilliard shook his head and snickered, saying: "What a couple old whores we've become. "A little light hookin'? No problem." Get so you can do it th out thinkin' about it. Someone says "bitch," and you pucker up." Merrion said heavily: "Sure they did, Heck; they really envied you. Anything you say." Easy for them; they never met the kid."

For six years Julian had been one of two assistant pros at Grey Hills, an independent contractor's slot that paid him $8,500 for part-time duties that were not clearly defined. It wasn't that he didn't have the credentials. He'd passed the playing and the membership interview, attended the PGA business schools and passed the written tests. His four years at Syracuse 'majoring in pussy, best I can figure," Heck'd said resentfully one night, after seeing some of the kid's grades had given him eight of the thirty-six working credits that the PGA required. The senior pro at Grey Hills, Bolo Cormier, obliging as always, had signed off on the other twenty-eight for the work done around the club. Julian was qualified, but it was hard to see what he did.

He was supposed to be on duty in the pro shop between 7:30 and 10:30 A.M. Monday through Thursday, but often he closed the shop just before 9:30, hanging a sign in the door promising it would reopen at 11 which it did unless the other assistant, Claire Hoxey, came in late for some reason or other. According to Hilliard, wearily serving out his third rotation of three years on the executive committee, Cormier had been repeatedly invited to explain exactly why it was Julian was worth his pay and what he did to earn it.

"Bolo has a little trouble with that," Hilliard told Merrion. "He says he's "real good" coaching juniors, on the ladders. Even though they generally lose. And even though most of us, every time we see the kids out practicing, it's usually Claire teaching them.

"Bolo says that Julian's also "real good" about teaching new members and members' spouses who're taking up the game," Hilliard said. "He can't actually name any duffers Julian's transformed into eight- or nine-handicappers, but he's sure it must've happened. Some time. Some day. To someone.

"I think Bolo's memory may be going. We may want to keep an eye on him. He could get lost out there in the bushes, one of those fenny dells out on the back nine where Bobby Clark always hooks a shot when he wants to get out of sight for a few minutes and have himself a drink from that flask of Bombay eighty-proof snakebite medicine none of us know he's got in the ball-pocket of his bag. Bolo ever got confused out there around nightfall, he could wander around until morning, die of exposure, hypothermia, we got a sudden cold snap or he fell into the pool, or one of the creeks. Wild animals out there too, you know; don't believe all this stuff they're always telling you about how all the catamounts an' pumas're extinct. They're still out there, watt tn for Bolo, getting' ready to pounce on him, WOOF, turn him into quick nourishing snacks.

"Then again, of course, it could be all's the matter with Bolo is that he's got trouble remembering things that never happened. Could even be that's the cause of his trouble. I think a lot of us would have trouble, someone was to put us under a lot of pressure, situation it began to look like it could be important to remember several things, all at once, in detail, never happened at all. Test a fella's memory, you know?

"And I think just throwing this out, not really saying it happened but I think maybe that's what Bolo might be trying to do here, where Julian's performance is concerned. Remember things that never happened. That would be a very hard job. I'm not even sure I could do it.

"Because Bolo likes Heck, as we all do. He knows Heck's always been a bulwark for him when it's come to backing Bolo, like giving him more money. Naturally he's grateful, thinks highly of Heck. I myself personally remember several times that Bolo's gone after a salary increase, and a number of rude people on the board've gone so far as to suggest that maybe he isn't worth half what we're paying him now, let alone a nice raise on top of it. Heck's always stood up for Bolo, said: "No-no, no-no, no, how can you say such a thing? Bolo's salt of the earth, a gem of rare price; he deserves a big raise in pay."

"So Bolo how would you put it here, huh? Bolo's "reluctant"? He certainly is; Bolo doesn't want to say anything mean about Heck's kid that might get back to Heck and hurt his feelings, maybe make him madder'n a hornet at Bolo. Who he's always taken such good care of around here with other people's money. So he sells him down the river, next time someone tries to tie the can to Bolo. That might explain this trouble Bolo has, every time we ask him what the fuck it is that Julian does."

Dan Hilliard came up behind Merrion's chair and clasped his hands on Merrion's shoulders as Julian finished tinkering with the swings of each of his three pupils and one by one began to settle them into their stances on the tee. The first hole at Grey Hills is a par 4, 412 yards, nearly straightaway down an undulating fairway. The breeze was from the southwest, left to right, tending to push the ball toward the rough bordering the southerly bank of the Wolf River. Three bunkers surround the shaded, slightly elevated green. Julian stepped back.

After a good deal of clubhead-waggling his first client hit a low drive that stayed under the breeze but hooked a little toward the low rough about 165 yards out. He stepped back and sighed theatrically, as though he had expected at least 210. Julian said: "That'll play, Pete, that'll play. That's the worst shot you hit today, you'll go home a happy man."

"Whatcha doin', Pilgrim?" Hilliard growled in his John Wayne imitation. "Plottin' revenge on your friend for bein' late?"

"Contemplating what has to be one of the more baffling ideas of western man," Merrion said in a low voice, so that it would not carry to the tee, "Julian Sanderson in his colorful native garb. I spent the morning, good chunk of it, anyway, with a woman who's a borderline defective. Her I understand, why she may be needed in this universe of ours. Julian I don't."

Between the beginning of 1967 and the middle of 1968, Merrion would not have told Hilliard about his morning chat with Janet LeClerc, not because Hilliard would not have been interested in what had happened to her, and what had brought it about, but because during that period he and Mercy had been coming sometimes violently to terms with the fact of Donna's severe mental retardation, and there had been no way to mention the subject around either one of them that was neutral enough so that it wouldn't freshen their pain. In July of 1968 the fear of hurting them had started slowly to subside.