George Higgins - A change of gravity

He was always onna lookout for company, someone to go with him when he played. He played every chance he got, every day the weather let him.

I was workin' mostly nights then, so he asked me once did I think I'd like to try it, maybe even take it up.

"I said: "Shit, I dunno. How'd I know? I did dun know the first thing about it." And he said: "Well, that's how you find out. Otherwise you never know. You should come with me, some time, and find out how you like it." Well, I didn't really wanna, but his sister, who's my wife, she was always after me, be nice to Billy. "He is dyin' and we have to treat him nice." So we made a date and the next time he was going he came over and he picked me up and I went with him. To the Veterans', like I said; that was where he always played.

"I didn't actually play, myself. What I did was, I just walked around with him. But I didn't think I'd like it. It seemed like it was awful complicated, before you even got so you were learnin' how to go about it. And you hadda have an awful lot of stuff there, that equipment, which I then had to figure… well, Billy, he said you could rent it if you didn't have it yourself and you weren't sure that you wanted to go out and buy it. Special shoes and everything, which I guess you have to wear. Not that I did, just had sneakers, but of course I wasn't playin'.

"I figured even that it'd have to cost a lot of money, and Christina and me, we sure didn't have much of that stuff lying around loose at that time or any other time I can recall, the kid and all. I never came right out and told him that I wasn't gonna do it. We just sort of left it hanging up in the air there, the way you'll do when you don't really want to decide about something but you sort of know you have.

"Then he died. I never did find out what happened to his clubs. They were nice. He told me that they cost four hundred dollars. I don't think I ever saw them after that, when he was dead. Maybe one his buddies must've took 'em. Had to've been that he didn't have no kids to take 'em so it wouldn't've been them. Friend of his must've come and took 'em.

"You two, though, I guess you and Hilhard there, you've belonged up Grey Hills there a pretty long time, right? So you two must've played a lot."

"Over twenty years," Merrion said. "Joined there back in the Seventies. "Way back, turn of the century, it was a big private estate. Belonged to a guy named Jesse Grey. Big mill-owner, Holyoke.

Went to hell in the Depression. Then the bishop bought it, diocese of Springfield. After the war a group of wealthy people from around here got together and bought it from him, from the diocese: Warren Corey, all his pals. They thought they were aristocrats, elite. Very snobby and selective. Had to know who your grandparents were and more'n that, had to've liked 'em; didn't count if they'd been the servants 'fore they'd let your ass in the front door. Not all that keen on Catholics, either, unless they're from 'way out of town hadda be New York, London or Paris. Or Nazareth, maybe; that might've done it."

He hesitated but Whalen's face showed no sign of amusement. "Anyway, hadda be famous places like that. Very picky, back in those days, about who they'd let in. But then after a while, the snobs reached the point where they were beginning to run out of money. Gave them a whole different attitude, new outlook on the Great Unwashed. They decided they needed new blood, or at least new bank accounts. So they announced that they were expanding; that was when me and Danny joined up."

"Pretty expensive, I suppose?" Whalen said.

"Well, it certainly wasn't cheap," Merrion said. "Not by my standards, at least. It's been so long ago I forget what it was, but I know it sure wasn't cheap.

"We thought long and hard about it 'fore we did it, Dan and I did,"

Merrion said, feeling he was talking too much and too nervously, giving away more information than he wanted to, but hoping to create some harmless tangent that would divert Whalen from the topic of Dan Hilliard's finances. "We talked it over quite a bit, thought about it a hell of a lot. Our feeling then was that Yeah, it was too expensive, but this might be the only opening wed ever get. And even if it wasn't, we knew wed never see a better price. Financially, no, it wasn't the best time in the world for us, either one of us, no, but the way we looked at it, we had to move. The chance probably wouldn't come along again. They got enough other new members to get them over the hump, they'd close the membership again. So we said: "What the hell, only go around once," and went ahead and signed up."

"How much did it cost you, don't mind me asking," Whalen said.

"Hell no, I don't mind," Merrion said, minding a great deal indeed and silently cursing the man. "I'd tell you if I knew, but that was a long time ago. It was no small amount, I can tell you that much, but exactly, I don't remember."

"Tell me about, then," Whalen said, 'about how much do you think it was? A thousand or two thousand bucks?"

"Oh no," Merrion said, thinking Fuck, hoping he was still speaking calmly, "I know it was more'n that. I remember saying to Danny back then: "I must be nuts. I could trade in my car on a new one for this, get a brand new Olds for myself." So it must've been two or three grand." Whalen's eyes widened and he looked like he might be going to say something, so Merrion hurried on. "But we went through with it anyway. One way or the other we scraped up the dough. I ended up driving the same car for about nine years, I think it was, and the cars they built then didn't last as long as the ones they're building today.

It was always breaking down on me, really a pain in the ass.

"But now I'm glad I did it. Now I think it was worth it. You need something like that to stay sane."

"Maybe that's why the wife's always saying that I'm nuts," Whalen said mildly, his voice carrying no hint of sarcasm. "I never had nothing like that at all. No way to stay sane. Couldn't afford one. Not if it cost as much as a new Oldsmobile. Heck, I never even had a new Studebaker or something; I never had a new car."

"We always have a good time," Merrion said, beginning to feel some hope that if he could just keep talking, scattering shiny conversational chaff in the air between them until the prisoners started to come out, he would be safe. "Well, Danny usually has a better tim en I do, 'cause he usually beats me. I have fun, he wins the bets. Always gets me on the back nine. We come into the turn, I'm usually doin' all right, you don't know what always happens next. I usually got at least a couple, maybe three or four strokes onna guy. This time comin' outta the turn, I'm up four.

"Okay then, boys and girls, here we go, then, into the vicious back nine. Both of us double-bogey the tenth, as usual. The booby trap. I can never play that hole, but Dan can't play it either. Over twenny years we've been playin' that damned hole, and for alia those years it's been beatin' us silly, poundin' the shit out of us. I dunno why it is. It looks so goddamned easy. Deceptive, is what it is. Looks like you could get your par you played it half-asleep.

"Straightaway, par four, little over four hundred yards, four-oh-five's what the book says: Nothin' tricky, piece of cake. Nice wide fairway, all you gotta do's hit it straight and you'll be havin' candy.

Theoretically you want your second shot to be up onto the green, but for most of us ordinary mortals that's gonna be your third shot you'll be tryin' to lay up there nice and soft. But be reasonable here: I'll take a bogey-five on a four-hundred-yarder any day. Eighteen bogeys and what've I done? I've shot a ninety, is what; I never did that in my life.

"Well, a couple times, yeah, I did, but that was a long time ago. My hand-eye thing was much better then. Bound to slip some, you get older. I didn't think about things so much then; I just went ahead and I did them, and that's always the way to play golf. You get old, you get so you start thinkin' too much."