J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

Here, if he had come upon a crone crying, “Woe! Woe!” he would not have been more taken aback than he was to see the Reverend Doctor Percy, Hillsop Memorial Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, who, with his wife, had been staying for some time with friends at a near-by lake. At the request of a mutual acquaintance, a benefactor in a small way, the minister and his wife had been invited out to the course by Father Urban. That was how these things happened. For two weeks now, the Percys had been coming out regularly — she, large, soft, playing with clubs out of his bag, which he pulled on a cart, and he, small but limber for his years, going over fences to retrieve their balls. Doctor Percy seemed to regard it as a test of faith to go on searching for lost balls. Father Urban had told him what he could about golf-course management, before he discovered what the minister had in mind. Doctor Percy assumed that another course, run under Christian auspices, would make the world a better place, and that Father Urban would be all for it. Father Urban had been under the impression that he’d said good-bye to Doctor Percy.

“I thought we’d have to go back home if I was ever to get those sermons written, Father,” said Doctor Percy. “But I find I’m able to think here, after all. That’s so seldom happened before, away from my study. Mrs P. and I are simply delighted. She’s not feeling well today, however.”

“Sorry to hear it,” said Father Urban.

Doctor Percy offered to let Father Urban and his party shoot through.

“No, you go right ahead,” Father Urban said firmly. He was wishing that the little man would hit his ball well into outer space and be sucked after it. But he topped it.

“Tough,” said Father Urban, with feeling.

The Bishop, however, appeared to be gratified by what he’d seen. “Father,” he said, “why don’t you ask your friend to join us?”

News of the struggle had reached the novices in residence at the Hill, and after the third hole there was a small gallery following the play, creating another problem for Father Urban. Through his caddy, Father Urban sent word to the gallery that he didn’t want a repetition of what happened on the third and fourth holes. On those, the Bishop was attended only by his caddy and Doctor Percy only by his cart. Afterward, the novices began rotating nicely, three or four of them accompanying the Bishop and Doctor Percy at all times, in fairway, field, and stream.

Father Urban had birdied the second hole and won it. On the third green, though, he had missed a five-footer. No. 4 had been the same thing again, only worse, with Father Urban blowing a putt that should have been conceded to him and would have been if the Bishop hadn’t overruled Father Feld. On the fifth, a dogleg to the left, Father Urban deliberately hooked his drive, but a gust of wind took it into the woods. Father Feld, in trouble, too, on that hole, recovered brilliantly. Coming to No. 6 tee, Father Urban was two down.

As he saw it, he now had a choice of playing his regular game, hoping that Father Feld, whose irons weren’t reliable, and whose powerful drives might suddenly go haywire, would present him with the match. Or he could turn it on — and risk the consequences. This was exactly what Father Urban would have advised somebody else in his position not to do. This, though, he decided to do. He couldn’t afford to wait. There just weren’t enough holes left.

For the next forty minutes Father Urban, inspired by the gallery, preached a great sermon in golf. In the novices, he saw himself as he had been at the start of his career, and remembered Father Placidus. One of Father Urban’s greenest memories was of the great man at games. Be a winner! Never say die! These words would ring out from the sidelines, and that day, forty years later, they were still ringing out for one man. Be a winner! That was why, for the next three holes, Father Urban’s tee shots went off like rifle fire, his approaches soared and dropped like swallows — why even the brass putter turned deadly in his hands.

All this time, the Bishop and Doctor Percy were locked in mortal combat. They halved hole after hole with their sixes, sevens, and eights. Father Urban had never seen anything like it. Doctor Percy appeared to realize that the Bishop dearly wished to do unto him as he dearly wished Father Feld to do unto Father Urban, and boldly the little minister countered the Bishop’s praise for his young champion with some of his own for Father Urban. As the matches waxed hotter and the Bishop grew more and more partisan in his looks, language, and gestures, Father Urban found that he was glad to have the plucky little Presbyterian as an ally, and did not deny him words of encouragement and professional advice.

No. 7 decided the match between the duffers. They drove to within a few feet of each other, the Bishop having the better of it. Doctor Percy then put his second shot up into a dense box-elder tree that stood by the green. After knocking around in the foliage for a while, Doctor Percy’s ball dropped nicely down onto a corner of the green. The Bishop then drove his ball up into the box-elder tree, and there it stayed. Sticks and stones from the rough were tossed up into the tree, Father Urban directing these exercises. The Bishop, standing off by himself, was approached by novices who doubtless saw this as their opportunity to make His Excellency’s acquaintance. Yes, it was certainly odd, the Bishop agreed, and granted them that the ball could be stuck between two branches, and that it could be nesting in a hollow of some kind. When other novices drew near and advanced these same theories, he showed signs of impatience, and did not respond at all when it was suggested to him that a bird or a squirrel had seized upon his ball, mistaking it for an egg or a nut. (“All right, fellas,” called Father Urban.) Two novices offered to go up into the tree, which looked unclimbable, and Father Urban didn’t care to discourage them in the circumstances. When the Bishop saw what they were about, however, he ordered them down. He then went to his bag and threw out another ball. But the heart had gone out of him and his game. He was strangely quiet on the greens. Doctor Percy went ahead in his match. Coming to the ninth tee, the Bishop was down two, beaten, and Father Feld was one down.

“If I tie it up, what do we do?” asked Father Feld. “Maybe we should decide that now.”

“Whatever you say,” said Father Urban.

“The Bishop wants it to be a sudden-death play-off. He’s tired.”

“Sudden death it is, then,” Father Urban said, and slipped over to say a few words to the gallery. He was afraid of a celebration on the ninth green. “Remember, fellas. No matter what happens, these people are our guests.” He thought of asking the novices to cut down on the applause for him, which was increasing, but he let it pass. “The guests of the Order,” he said, and wondered if perhaps there hadn’t been someone like him, some elder tribesman hoping for the best, who had spoken thus to the young braves gathered on the shore a few minutes before the white men landed four hundred years ago.

No. 9, three hundred eighty-five yards, par four, was called “The Volcano” on the score card. The fairway ran gently downhill until interrupted by a broad, shallow creek, once the joy of cattle, and then it ran uphill, for a while gently, then very steeply, to the green. The creek severed the fairway diagonally, so there were three ways to play the hole. If one crossed the creek at its nearest point, the hole could be a dogleg to the left; or it could be a dogleg to the right, if the second shot was the one over water; but the best way was to play the hole straight, and to hit a drive that traveled no less than two hundred yards on the fly.