Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

There’s a splash in the pool, but it doesn’t sound heavy enough to be a body. I sit down on the padded bench and exhale. I could lie down here on the carpet, in a corner, and just close my eyes for a moment. There’s another splash, and then someone curses sharply. This is the camp where Marco’s kid goes, the one C has come home talking about— “They have things to do there. .,” he chided his mother once, not being able to appreciate the time and space he had at the beach. We played bombardment in our camp — prison ball, some called it. The rules were simple: Whip a rough maroon rubber ball at someone else’s bare arms and legs. Catch the ones thrown at you.

I stand and take out my new shirt. It’s an extra large. It seems enormous, and when I put it on, it is huge — all except the arms, which are too tight. I check my proportions in the mirror, but I can’t tell if it’s me or the shirt that’s wrong. It hangs off me like a dress, so I tuck it in, a good eight inches of shirt, uncomfortably into my shorts. I hope Marco knows what he’s doing. I need to hit the ball right. A poor mantra, but one that will have to do, and it’s done well already — gotten me to focus on the job at hand.

The door opens and a man with the same shirt walks in. He’s whistling something— “Ain’t She Sweet,” I think. He stops when he sees me or, rather, quietly holds the note until he passes. I cinch up my belt, bag my old shirt, and start out.

“You hit a long way?”

I mumble-grunt something at him. He straightens — somewhat surprised by my incoherence. I try to redeem myself.

“Going out or coming in?”

“Coming in. Played nine,” he says, not looking up. Comforted or offended, I don’t know. “It’s a bear. Really playing hard today.”

“It’s always hard, for me.”

He doesn’t laugh. He pulls off his polo, then straightens his undershirt.

“Best of luck.”

“Good day.”

Our clubs are waiting for us at the first tee. They’ve been scrubbed shiny — even mine. The boys are there, too, chatting with Dan and Buster, who gesture out toward the flag. They both have clubs and swing them slowly. They look like they know what they’re doing. I can tell that they’ve had lessons — perhaps from the same pro. Marco stands on the path by the sign for the hole, a good five feet lower than the tee box— 345 yard par four, it reads in script. Marco examines the sign closely, checks his scorecard, and then joins in the ritual of stretching, flexing, posing, and swinging. I’m still somewhat awed by how clean my clubs are and I don’t know whether I should show my wonder or act like I’ve been to a place like this before, which, I’m sure, everyone knows I haven’t. I pull out a club, a no-name five iron, and I think I hear the white kid snicker, but when I look up, he’s looking down the fairway with Buster. They look almost like family in profile — perhaps involved in strategy or discussing club lore.

Marco calls out to me, “How’s the short game?”

I shake my head and they laugh, except for the black kid, who looks as though he’s checked into an alternate reality in his head.

“Gentlemen, 7:18 on the tee, please.”

I’m the farthest away, but they all turn to me. I shake my head and extend my hand back.

“Well,” says Dan. “I’m here.” He places his ball and steps back. He has the same club as Marco. The shaft is too long for him, though. He takes two slow practice swings. His face goes blank — all that boyish goodwill erased. He takes a wide path around and behind the ball. He looks at it, then the flag, then back to the ball. He takes another slow swing and then one sharp step to address. One more look, then into his stance. He seems ready to swing, but inexplicably he opens up his stance to the point where he seems to be aiming at the row of oaks that line the fairway. His swing is quick and short — pinched. The ball heads straight for the trees, then slices back to the fairway, just short of the one-hundred-and-fifty-yard marker.

“Nice ball, Dan,” says Buster as Dan, still surveying his work, picks up his tee.

“Well,” he replies, “it’s in the fairway.” He walks off the mound. Both caddies nod their approval. He ignores them. “I didn’t get all of it,” he says back to Buster. He stops and fusses with a contact lens.

“No,” Marco calls out. “It’s fine, Dan. Nice one.”

I’m not sure if I envy Marco’s ability to lie straight-faced like that, or disdain it. I do, however, want him to turn to me and wink — give me some sign that he is in fact, lying.

Buster is already over his ball. He’s a large man — much taller than I’d thought earlier — like a pro-sized tight end. But he, unlike Tom Buchanan, isn’t very athletic. He looks awkward in his stance, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with all his height. His legs and arms are splayed horridly, like he’s some arachnid partial amputee, his spider eyes looking in too many directions, seeing too many things for the humanoid brain to process. He swings jerkily. The ball goes up, disappears into the cloud bank above the fairway, then drops out of the sky about twenty yards ahead of Dan’s, just to the right.

Dan claps. “If you could just translate some of that height into length — man!”

“It’ll do,” says Buster quietly and holds his club out for the black kid.

Marco looks at me, and I point to the tee. He pulls an iron out of his bag, then shoves it back and gets out his enormous driver.

“Oh, the big dog,” coos Dan.

Marco walks up the mound, places his ball, and stands behind it. I wonder what his fingerless father thinks of his son — if he would come to such a place. He must be proud of his boy. Marco looks the part in his beige pleatless slacks and his navy polo. He stretches his hamstrings and I think, while watching his head down there, that if Marco was the least bit vulnerable to perceiving the absurd, it would explode. He straightens, and at address, he looks tense. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I’m right. He rushes what would otherwise have been a good swing and hits a duck hook — two hundred yards straight and sixty yards left.

“Fuck!” he growls, and almost throws his club down, but he checks himself — keeps his back to us, cools off, and bends to pick up his tee, which, when he finds it split to pieces, he throws away into the thick grass in front of him. “Quack,” he mutters, coming down the mound. No one laughs.

“You’re up.”

I take the five iron I’ve been fondling and climb up to the tee. They try not to stare, but they do. It must look ridiculous — at least unusual. I place my ball — Marco’s reject ball — and I know I can’t hit it. I wonder if I’m the youngest or the first, the largest, Black Irish Indian to play at The Country Club. I wonder if they’re considering it, as well — perhaps not. Perhaps they only see me in my wrinkled shorts, my hairless legs, and my shirt, identical to Marco’s, only two sizes larger — sleeves like a muscle shirt, body like a muumuu. The shiny no-name club with the cracked vinyl grip.

“Playing it safe?” calls Buster, with just enough humor and politeness so as not to be considered an egregious breech of etiquette by anyone but me. And although Marco is my friend, I still haven’t dismissed the notion that this is all a setup. And I haven’t really swung a club in a year. And I wonder if they can see my legs shaking. Even the black kid is watching, and I can’t help but think that he has something invested in this moment, too — from a perverse claim to caddy shack bragging rights to the complete emancipation of himself and his people. And I know, as I look down the fairway one last time, that to them, if it is bad, my first swing will be my last— the one —no matter how well I play after. There can be no redemption, not for him, not for me, nor for those to whom — because of some treacherous failure or triumph of synapse or courage (whichever you believe in) the many thousands gone, here and yet to be — we are linked. And I hear them, be it by spirit, madness, or some ventriloquist’s trick. I hear them pleading, exhorting me to hit the ball straight and long, just as I hear the founder rasping from his canvas on the great oak wall— “Swing, nigger, swing!” —and his brothers hissing in unison, “Amen.” It’s too much. It’s always been too much, even divested of all I love. I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t take it. I try my mantra— I need to hit the ball right. Head down. Go slow. I swing. Up then down. I hear nothing, but I’m standing erect at follow-through and the ball is like a supersonic missile, ripping the air. Silent, then the sounds: the whoosh of the club past my ear, the sharp click of metal on hard plastic, then the ball flying with a high turbine wail in its wake. It carries the ridge and drops out of sight.