Toby Olson - Seaview

He had spent the previous year of weekly tournaments padding his handicap. He had done it slowly, shaking his head each tournament day, talking about how hard he was working and how his golf game was going to hell. He had brought his handicap up to a fourteen. Sometimes in the evenings, in winter, he would come out and practice drives. He practiced his short game behind the B.O.Q. at the base. He figured his true handicap at Seaview was about a five or a six. He had set things up with care. He would come back a little this summer, getting himself down to a twelve or so. He would win the First Flight trophy at the end of the summer. He was very sure of the skill with which he had handled his strategy. What he didn’t know was that the enlisted men and most of the officers at the base had no respect for him at all. In the beginning they had simply disliked him, but after the word got around that he was most probably padding his handicap, they began to think of him as a real asshole.

“Well, Fred, a fourteen; hope there’s a better year for you this time around,” Chair said, using his eyebrow-raising expression as he located Wall’s card.

“I hope so,” Wall said, and after he’d paid and nodded to the five or so men around the table who looked his way, and nodded particularly sharply to the two enlisted men from his command who were exercising their privileges at Seaview, he walked back out the door and over to the putting green to hit some.

From almost anywhere on the course the radar domes, like huge golf balls and in strange juxtapostion to the Jenny Lind tower below them, could be seen, and as Wall crossed the road and two teenagers in bathing suits and sandals passed in front of him on their way to the lighthouse and the beach below it, he thought of the difficulties that remained for him before he was free of this place and took up his new command out West.

The environment creeps had been after him for over a year about the supposed dangerous microwave emanations from the domes. In the middle of the previous summer, one of the hangglider enthusiasts who liked to cruise out over the cliff along the sixth fairway had caught a good enough updraft to carry him inland a little. He had circled one of the domes, close into it at about a level with its top, and a couple of days later he had checked into a hospital in Boston, feeling ill. When the doctors had examined him, done a semen test, and found him sterile, the reporters got a hold of it, and in a very short time the environment creeps had started to call and write letters and show up. In the beginning he had stonewalled, but this had only caused them to switch their fire to Wash-ington, and Washington, needing time, had dumped it back in the lap of the Air Force, into his lap. He was to do a friendly public-relations routine until Washington figured the facts and a solid position on the issue.

About the same time as the hangglider incident, the Free the Skin Beach Coalition had pushed their own form of madness into visibility. For as long as anyone could remem-ber, people had been swimming nude, in large groups and small, at selected, secluded spots well down the beaches from the access roads. Two years ago, some national underground magazine had gotten a hold of the fact and had given the name Skin Beach to the stretches along the Cape from the light-house down past the golf course and Air Force Station. The summer the article appeared, people started to come out to the beaches by the hundreds, flaunting nakedness when-ever they felt like it. Things came to a head on a particularly hot August weekend when a motorcycle gang from Boston, the Devil’s Advocates, had raised hell and havoc crossing people’s property to get to the beaches. The towns along the beach and the National Seashore people had come down as hard as they could with local government ordinances, harassing and arresting nude bathers. In reaction, at the end of the previous summer, the Free the Skin Beach Coalition had been formed. While they and their lawyers were hassling with the towns and the Seashore, somebody got the bright idea to “liberate” the beach below the Air Force Station. This beach, one posted and used by the men at the station and their families, was neither part of the towns that flanked it nor part of the National Seashore. It was under the governance of the Air Force, and as such it fell to Wall to administer its use.

In the beginning, he tried to use sentry watches, having his men simply run the nudies off. But his men liked better to perch on the dunes with binoculars and watch the bathers, laughing and poking each other. Once he was so pissed that he went down and ran them off himself.

One day near the middle of August, a strange group had gathered on the beach early, before dawn, and when the morning watch was set, his men reported that it looked like a major confrontation was possible. In addition to Skin Beach people, a good number of Devil’s Advocates were there. And these two groups were joined by hang — glider enthusiasts. Already the gliders were drifting along the cliff. The men reported that it looked like the Advocates had at some previous time made a connection with the hang-glider group. Their relations seemed friendly, and some of the Advocates were gliding in their leathers along the cliff and out over the mild breakers. The nudies sat a little apart from the two other groups, and the situation looked volatile.

Wall had acted quickly, sending his men down with unloaded but very threatening weapons. There had been a confrontation with the Advocates. His men had been rushed, and only after they had gotten their hands on the Advocates’ leader, arrested him and, in their enthusiasm, beaten him soundly in front of his gang, had things come under control. They had dispersed the trespassers and then had brought the leader up the cliff to Wall’s office at the station. To avoid the kind of incident the beating might have precipitated, Wall had released him. That had been the end of it, though Wall had received some very threatening, anonymous mail that he figured came from the outraged Advocates. The threats were grandiose: promises of future war with the Air Force Station. The letters were short and curt; there had been four of them, and then they had stopped, and the difficulties had seemed to cool down over the winter. But he had heard through the grapevine that things were being planned for this summer. There was the possibility of demonstrations of some kind by both the environment creeps and the Free the Skin Beach Coalition.

Wall sighed, then stiffened up when he got to the putting green. He proceeded to practice, finding a spot among the others who were putting there. Chip had finished and gone back to the clubhouse to eat his lunch. Wall made a few putts, missed some, and missed a few on purpose.

The phone kept ringing in the clubhouse, as those who were quitting work at noon called to say they would be there for the tournament so that the Chair would hold the draw. Sammy answered the phone, speaking briefly, and before it was back in the cradle would call out the names: Ed Souza, Gordon Tarvers, Sparkie Hurd … From outside the screen door, names would be called out also as those who were late pulled up. At twelve-twenty-five, the Chair had a stack of thirty-six cards in his hand, and he was tapping the corner of the stack on the table, watching the clock. At twelve-thirty he glanced over at Sammy.

“That looks to be it,” Sammy said, and the Chair rapped the cards one last time and called out a little too loudly into the room.

“Draw! Draw!”

The words got to the door and out it, and as the Chair shuffled the cards and began laying them out in rows on the table, “Draw! Draw!” could be heard as far as the putting green. Those already in the room pressed in around the table, watching the cards come up, checking to see who they were teamed up with. When they saw their cards, they turned and began to look for their partners. The tournament was handled in shotgun fashion, teams starting at one, five, and seven at the same time, and by twelve-thirty-five all the golfers were headed for their assigned tees.