Toby Olson - Seaview

“I’ll walk!” said the old man standing beside the Chief’s contraption. Wall came up to the Chair’s elbow out of the fog.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re going in for a while,” the Chair said.

When they got to the clubhouse, the men were straggling in from various directions. The touring bus, with most of the senior citizens in it, was parked across the road, and the driver, in his slightly wilted gray uniform, was moving around, reasurring and taking count. Chip stepped off the bus, where he had been distributing styrofoam cups of coffee.

“Hey, hey; hey, hey,” he said to no one in particular. “The Chipper becomes a help to the aged, Captain of Relief, Fog Savior. Wow! look at that lighthouse in the mist! Seaview happenings.”

A couple of the women were in the clubhouse drinking coffee, talking with the golfers coquettishly. The driver came in and caught them at it, and he hustled them out and into the bus. The woman with Chair’s slicker got on still wearing it. In a few minutes, the bus was fully loaded. The last one to board was the old man. He patted Chief Wingfoot on his golf cap before he left him.

“Take good care of that leg, Son,” he said as he turned to go.

“Thank you, Father, I will,” the Chief said, and in a few minutes the bus pulled out.

By the time all of the men had gathered in the clubhouse, were sitting and standing around, drinking coffee and soda, the fog had already begun to thin out. The Chair had taken charge again, and he was walking among the men, talking about the fog but trying to avoid saying too much about what had happened on the sixth fairway. This got plenty of play from the others though, and it took all that the Chair had to laugh heartily with the rest when the story of him and the two women came up. The minute the bus pulled out, he knew that his slicker had gone away with the woman, and for a moment he had a strong urge to chase after the bus in his car. This would have added fuel to the joke, and though he really hated to lose his slicker — a new one, with the same emblem he wore on his glove, that airy sphere carefully sewn into it above the pocket-he could not face extending the joke, and he let it go.

In twenty minutes it was totally clear again, the fog had crossed the narrow Cape and sat down on the beach on the bay side. Already there were bathers walking along the road and driving up toward the lighthouse. Some had left the bay when the fog came and would now use the beach on the sunny ocean side. The Chair called for attention and told the men the same things Sammy had told them out on the sixth. When he was finished, they all shuffled out of the clubhouse and went off in their clusters to resume play. When everyone had left, the Chair walked out. Chief Wingfoot was sitting on the park bench with the grip of his niblick on the ground, his hand resting on the club head. Sammy and Eddie were finishing the last stages of disconnecting the pull-carts.

“Okay, let’s go,” the Chair said, and he jerked at the handle of his cart and started across the road. In a couple of minutes, Sammy and Eddie caught up with him.

“Where the hell is Wall?” the Chair said. “Do you know where he is?”

“He set out ahead of us; he’ll be over there,” Eddie answered.

When they got to the sixth tee again, Wall was indeed there, waiting. He had come out early to look for the hangglider and its flyer. He wondered what had happened when the man had drifted away from him, trying to pull the glider down in the fog. There was no evidence of the glider when Wall got back. The flyer had been a little scruffy and mean-looking, and Wall had suspected some motive other than pleasure in his cruising along the cliff side.

Without any talk, the foursome hit off, resuming their play. The rest of the day went smoothly, but things were subdued. The Chair had little to say, and none of them played particularly well. They finished the eighteen holes at five-fifteen, a little later than usual. Two teams were in the clubhouse ahead of them, and one of these had ended with a plus five; they were the leaders, and when all the teams were in, at six o’clock, the plus five held for first place. Sammy and the Chair’s team came in with a minus four, out of the money. Sammy had played poorly, shooting an eighty. Chair finished with an eighty-two, losing his private contest with Sammy. Wall and Eddie Costa had pretty much played to their handicaps. It was their play that had kept the team close to even.

When the tournament was over, most of the men left quickly. It was later than usual, and they wanted to get home and ready for dinner. Sammy had some clean-up work to do, and before the last man was out, he began to get to it. The Chair didn’t linger. What little talk there was as the teams came in had more to do with the fog and the events prior to the break in play than with the golfing, and he didn’t care to listen to this or participate in it; so before the last team was in, when he saw that already his foursome was out of the money, he made it known to anyone who was within earshot that he was leaving, and he left.

That evening, after he had finished dinner and it was getting dark, the Chair got his clubs out of the trunk of his car and took them down in the basement to clean them up. Fog had come in again. It had begun to rain, and the rain hit against the hubcap of his car into the small rectangle of the window high in the basement wall to the left of the workbench. He could hardly see out at all, and the light over the workbench seemed a little dimmer than usual. He was cleaning the grooves in the head of his five-wood with a small penknife, being careful not to cut into the wood itself, when it began to flood in on him. He had flashes of himself throwing his driver down the fairway, of his embarrassment and the silence of the others. He saw the huge white corset covering the breast of the woman whose dress he had ripped half off. He saw the Chief in the sling, his benign stare, and he shook his head, his rage rising. He saw the woman going away in the bus wearing his slicker. He heard the men laughing in the clubhouse, and he slumped. He heard Sammy giving instructions while he, the Chairman of the Golf Commission, stood by in ineffectual silence. He gripped the vise, his fingers hitting against the head of his five-wood, and he squeezed the unyielding steel. He looked down through the foggy haze in the darkening room and saw the drops of moisture on the waxed head of the club floating on the three white letters stamped above the face. VIP the club said. He began to shake and to weep in a high choking voice. The drops on the club head were joined by others in a small flood. He was addressing his ball on a fairway in a sudden rain. He was a boy, and they were laughing at him, and he had lost his jacket.

SOMETIMES IN THE EARLY EVENINGS, ON DAYS WHEN IT was slow, Sammy and Chip liked to get out and play a little Hit and Throw Ball, one of the games they had invented, Chip giving the names. On this particular day, one following four days of heavy rain and a week after what Chip had named Fog Day, the sky was bell-clear, the temperature warm and dry, and most everyone on the Cape had headed for the beaches, staying there for hours, a little glassy-eyed in wonder at the weather. In the later afternoon, as if by some plan, a lightly cool breeze had come up, very soft and just a little bracing, and most of the beachgoers, in sweet wonder exhaustion, had headed home for drinks, and evening cook-outs. A couple of foursomes, husbands and wives, had started out around four o’clock, but when they got to the sixth tee and saw the ocean from the high dune cliff, they could not help themselves. The second foursome joined the first one when they got there. They left their clubs standing like a strange committee in their hand carts around the tee and went through the brush to the sea perch and sat down, talking in low tones about the weather and the sea, counting the buoys on the lobster pots, making friends with each other.