Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

A gusting moan from the Stearman turning final way over at the field, carried in a sound pocket. A little puff of a breeze, as if from the delicate faraway movement of its wing, carried the odor of honeysuckle from some hidden patch and broke through the lingering acidic exhaust from the station wagon with the woman and the boy.

Finus looked up and blinked in the bright sunlight that allowed no shadow in its merciless position straight overhead, no shadows among the group of schoolchildren huddled into a jittery bunch around the skirts of a young woman about to herd them into the library across the street, same bunch he’d seen that morning, no doubt on some field trip. Their motions as active and contained as ants in glass. His vision blurred with sudden grief and self-lagellation.

There was a sound from the cart groaning against its brake, as if it were impatient, wanting to move on. Finus got in, kicked at the stubborn brake, headed out. Not sure where he was headed.

To Knoll Creek, it seemed, the decrepit course that had thrived in the twenties, when Mercury itself thrived, but which now was as unkempt as a cow pasture, which it had originally been, with knots and whorls of St. Augustine and clumps of Bahia corrupting the Bermuda in the greens, johnson grass wild in the fairway roughs, you might as well drop out of those suckers. It was like playing golf on a farm. There was a par three on the back side Finus had been trying to hole-in-one for years. The cart puttered him to the north end of the town, hugging the curb, cars passing and uttering little honks, whether in hello or watch out or move over he didn’t pursue.

He veered off the road onto the fairway of number 11 and took the path down the hill across the street and sped down the long fairway of par-five number 12, on his way to the par-three water-hazard 13. The long flat fairway quavered in the heat and gave off ripply, otherworldy visions of the pines behind the far green. Passed two men and two women walking pull carts together. They all waved, hailed. Finus passed on. At the 13 tee a twosome had just hit. He’d have time to hit before the party on 12 got there. The course seemed pretty empty. Too hot to play, for most. Too hot for Finus, too, but all he wanted was a good tee shot, one try (with maybe a mulligan) at a one-holer here, to make his day, make his life. Hell he might not ever golf again if he made that shot, and so be it. The twosome, a couple of young fellows he recognized though didn’t recall their names, had knocked respectable shots, one to the green, the other to the fringe. They motored down, chipped and putted, then waved to Finus as they replaced the flag, got into their electric cart, and drove up along the little copse path to the elevated number 14 tee. Out of sight.

Finus drove up the path and stopped beside the 13 tee, jammed on the parking brake. The Cushman sputtered to a halt and died. He took out his five iron and a ball and tee and walked up onto the tee. Used to be he hit an eight iron on this hole, a mere 130-yarder. Then later on a seven. Then he gave in and went on up to the five. He had no backswing to speak of anymore. Hell, if he kept playing, he’d be using a driver here before long. Took his best swing with the five now to green it, and that was rare.

He teed up a new Titleist and straightened up, hand to his lower back to assist the move, and stepped back from the ball. The flag was close today, near the tee side of the green, down from the little rolling rise in the middle. The hazard, a little pond laced with water lilies and a few cattails, stood unrippled by nary a breeze.

He stepped up to the ball, waggled the club, an old Hogan with a sweet spot the size of a dime at best. Squared off. Looked pinward, back down at the ball. Took a breath, hauled back, and hit.

Not a good one, toward the front of the club face. He felt it wobble when he hit. Looked up to see the ball go right of the green and low, roll toward and into the little dry trap there. All right, then, a mulligan.

He reached into his pants pocket and got out a second ball, a fairly new Pinnacle he’d found in the rough on 18 that winter. He looked around, found a tee broken near the point, that’d do. Teed it up and stepped back. Concentrate, he told himself. He took a look at the pin, squared up, and addressed the ball. Said, — Only you, you white and dimpled spherical son of a bitch. You were made for this hole only. He focused all his mind on the ball, on the club face resting perfectly before it. He drew back slowly, his feet planted firmly, and stroked through it, a nice smooth swing. A nice click he hardly felt in the shaft. Looked up then to see the ball arcing high and beautifully straight up into the cerulean blue. He sang in his mind to himself. Down it came, and he lost sight of it in the glare of noon and the backdrop of pale green washed-out summer foliage.

By God. By God, he thought, it might have gone in. Finus’s blood ran hot and thrilling to every little vein end in his body. Like a mild induced electric current to his brain. He wanted to jump in the air with excitement. Held the club up in the air with one hand, a victorious gladiator with his weapon. By God.

He dropped the club where he stood and scurried, or something like that, down the tee slope to the cart and got in, cranked it. He hit the brake with his foot to unlock it. Hit it again. Stubborn brake didn’t want to let go. He gripped the wheel and leaned down to check the brake pedal with his free hand. Wasn’t thinking clearly. When he leaned down he accidentally braced his right foot against the accelerator pedal, which disengaged the brake and the cart shot forward, nearly tossing Finus out onto the path. He yelped and yanked on the steering wheel trying to right himself, and the cart veered, at out-of-the-gate speed, off the path, bumped down the front tee slope, and splashed at around ten miles per hour into the pond at a sharp angle and turned over. Finus, gripping the steering wheel with both iron hands, was trapped there on the muddy bottom of the pond in three feet of water. He’d had a leg out of the cart while trying to free the brake and the side of the cart now held it, not too painfully because of the soft mud, fast to the bottom of the pond.

He’d involuntarily closed his eyes upon impact. But now, in a panic at realizing he was under water and pinned there, he opened them again. He could see nothing for a second or two, with the mud swirled up in a cloud, but then it cleared and he could see his situation. His leg beneath the overturned cart. The dappled surface of the pond just out of reach of the hand he stretched tentatively toward it, as if he could grip the water’s surface and thereby pull himself to air and safety. But before he realized he was suffocating for sure, the knowledge that this or no other miracle would save him settled in and he somehow received it calmly. All right, then. As good a death as any other, better than some. Only a few seconds more in these old lungs. He saw the pale and shadowed undersides of the lilies. The rippled and shimmering blue sky just beyond the still disturbed but settling surface of the pond. The ethereal limits of this beautiful world. A hole in one, by God. He had to believe, in this brief and finite moment, that he had put it in. The little projectile launched from his Ben Hogan five iron in a perfect arc into the realm of what we considered was no longer the firmament but an unfixed and evolving and volatile environment, that followed its planned, theorized journey down to the surface of green 13, to the little red-and-white pin with the yellow flag, and into the little hole with a sweetly satisfying earthly cluck. Birdie never gave a damn about golf, but still he wished he could have had her with him to see that.