Rick Moody - Right Livelihoods

4. A Quick Nine Before Lunch

My pace could best be described as a trot. I was taking care not to trip on any of those rocks of South Beach, and though I cannot claim that my aerobic activity met the federal standards for an hour of physical activity per day, I was still capable of vigor, as I have said. Some days I still move around a little bit with my son, Skip, who even though he is in his early forties likes to throw the plastic disk known as the Frisbee. Skip has noted many interesting rhymes for the word Frisbee too: chickpea, scot-free, ennui, DDT, germ-free, squeegee, TV, whoopee, amputee, off-key, deep-sea —and my personal favorite, patisserie. My surmise is that Skip long ago decided, in his unhurried way, that the Frisbee was an important example of athletic prowess among those dazzling and beautiful preparatory school teens who encircled him occasionally, pointing and jeering, here on the island. That particular crop of teens has all grown up now, of course, and they have their own children, children who are themselves nearly teens, but time does not move nearly so quickly for Skip. He is therefore still attempting to perfect his Frisbee skills, in the hopes that those acquaintances of his past will shower him with esteem. It is in these touching moments that I am likely to clap an arm around my son and wipe a food smudge from his cheek. Then I will explain to him that there has never been a thrower of the Frisbee who has exceeded him in dexterity and prowess, and this will satisfy his need for fatherly approval, until he hears the hoarse cry of the northeastern blue jay, a bird he much admires.

My objective was the golf course, where I would begin the process of disseminating the information that Ed Thorne had just passed along to me. No doubt Ed was now awaiting some kind of amphibious vehicle so that he could debrief the authorities on the dark-complected persons, the current ramping-up of antiterrorist activities along the eastern seaboard, and so forth.

I’m not going to lie and claim that I’m a successful golfer. Just the opposite is the case. I am left-handed, like many creative thinkers, and when I was a young man growing up in northern Westchester County, I attempted to learn to golf right-handed. It was very difficult in those dark ages, you see, to get golf clubs for lefties. My golfing was execrable; my backswing was not to be trusted, and my friends and relations were occasionally injured. In fact, I had bad hand-eye coordination. I did not then (and do not now) let these limitations hinder me, because in my view golf is a fine social activity. As long as you can keep yourself from cursing and throwing your clubs, which I am able to do three out of four times, then you might as well get out there and walk around, even if this only involves disembarking from the cart, fishing out the relevant driver, and limping out to the ball.

To reiterate: my plan was to take my message of imminent peril into the community. It is true that I was, at the moment, a man wearing only red poplin shorts, beige socks, and the shoe popularly known as the Docksider. Moreover, I was legally blind, or at least extremely nearsighted, without my spectacles. I had lost my wallet and all my house keys, and I was soaked through. I had, however, managed to hang on to my ocean-spattered copy of Omega Force: Code White by Stuart Hawkes-Mitchell. My style of dress should not have made it impossible for me to carry my message to my townsfolk. I would begin at the golf clubhouse. Accordingly, I crossed the beach parking lot, a mere bald patch, and from there I hiked along the road.

There was an immediate hindrance to my progress, and that was that I espied my wife’s car, her little sports coupe, parked in the lot by the clubhouse. It is not that I viewed my wife as an adversary, of course. My wife is my ally and my best friend, except when she misplaces items that properly belong to me, or purposefully removes items from the house under the misapprehension that this will in some way keep me from practicing bad habits or pursuing lifestyle choices that she considers unhealthful. Were she fully informed, she would not take these drastic steps.

After all, I am a man who has made health issues an important part of his professional life. Did I not report directly to Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare Caspar W. Weinberger during the presidential administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford? Did I not admire the hairstylings of Secretary Weinberger, the way his erotic forelock curl was swept back and tamed with some old-world fixative? I most certainly did! Moreover, I authored a report on the termination of smallpox vaccination among American Indians in 1974, reasoning that the risk of smallpox infection was so small that it was no longer cost-effective for the department to spend its budgetary monies in this way! I spent three years preparing that report! I know enough about health issues and about my own health and the functioning of my physique to make informed decisions about how to enjoy my retirement years! My God!

The first fairway is the long par four, and it’s uneventful, serving as a warm-up for what comes later. Our golf course is a wonder of the world, and many famous golfers have been known to helicopter in to play eighteen holes. The first fairway wants for cover, but if I ran into the one thicket of rough just beyond the sand trap, where the phragmites threatened to overwhelm the fairway, I could easily dash from here to the second hole, which, you’ll recall, ambles along the ocean before curling dangerously toward the bluff on which, several hundred yards distant, sits the US Navy radar station, eyes of the world. It would be easy to attach myself to some foursome, the first of the morning, and in this way I could foil my wife, who would not wait long in the clubhouse. My wife hates golf.

When I saw Ned Roberts improving his lie in the middle of the second fairway, I strolled up as though I had just run into him at the village market, where it often takes me so long to produce my change that Ned ribs me about it.

“Jamie,” he said, using the diminutive that I have never quite managed to avoid, though I am well nigh upon my elderly years and most of my family is deceased. “What the hell is wrong with your lip?”

“Insect venom, Ned. I’m just out for a little bit of a stroll.”

“But you—”

“I really couldn’t. I played the other day, and for once in my life I was unbeatable. Let me go on believing I’m a success for a few more days—”

“What I meant was—”

“Well, if you insist, I could take a whack at one or two.”

At the same moment, Ned Jr. was attempting a chip shot from the lip of the green, and it seemed to me that the second green was some distant paradise where only the most fortunate of island residents would be permitted to tarry. I watched Neddie’s backswing. Ned Jr. had gone into his father’s money-management enterprise and was in the process of making a bundle. I’m sure the budding groves of the island, if you get my meaning, were open to him, and indeed his test swing was a marvel, likewise his backswing, and the ball arced away from us, and we could not see its trajectory, though we could see him subsequently pound the air and hop with joy, and in the consideration of this moment, my own heart seemed to thunder with some tachyarrythmia, and my knees buckled, and I was about to go down. Ned the elder caught me by the arm, swearing briefly, dropping his club, ruining his improved lie.

“Jesus, Jamie,” he said.

“It’s nothing, Ned. Nothing at all. I ate something that didn’t quite agree with me.”

Ned helped me to the cart, and that was the best he could do in the midst of his intergenerational competition. Of course, a pause in the action suited my purposes because it offered me time to collect myself. I became the watcher of sunlight on the water. What can be more beautiful than this melancholy dream of the late summer? When you have lost your spectacles, and the sunlight resembles the pointillist dabs of an Impressionist canvas. In such a moment, the sun is the animator of all that is, of all that could be. It presides over even global politics and religious conflicts.