Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“I don’t know. You started off great, but you seem to be having a hard time controlling your shots.”

I stare at him, but he doesn’t acknowledge. He’s looking inside, trying to figure out my swing.

“It’s not like you’re doing one thing. One hole you’re hooking it. One you’re pushing it — like you’re overcompensating for the last. I don’t know.” He does a slow-motion backswing — holding at the top. “You’re good here.” He starts down. His swing looks nothing like mine. It’s closer to his own. He brings it up again, swings half speed, and watches his imaginary ball’s flight. I follow it, too — the sky, the trees, and then the promise of the bay. The marsh, the sea grass and seabirds. The beach. The swells and the beach break seem flat — without power — one roll of water and then another. And the colors are green, blue, gold, but without texture or heft, past or promise. They threaten nothing. They promise nothing and speak of no other time. And I, too, seem forgotten, a fleshy marker on the green. A scarred hand on the old club and the sunlight on it, then on my face as I turn away. And it’s just warm. It stops there.

Marco takes another backswing. He’s still trying to figure it out for me. I’m sorry I snapped at him — glad that I didn’t say more. He’s still talking, teaching me to salvation, but I don’t really hear him. Dan and Buster come back, both chewing on something. Dan tees up and hits quickly. The rest follow suit. They almost walk off, but then remember me. I get out Marco’s old driver, take a half swing, and dink the ball out in the fairway just beyond theirs.

The course opens up, becomes links play — rolling fairways, more wind. Even though Buster’s keeping score, he doesn’t say anything to me when I win the tenth. And I keep dinking the ball out there, punching out into the fairway, letting it roll onto the greens — ugly, near arcless shots with very little carry, but they go straight and they go far enough. No mantras, no internal instruction — two holes and then three. And because of my little streak, Dan seems to have regained his interest in me. It seems to rattle him a bit. He misses short putts on thirteen and fourteen, which would have won them both.

I win the fourteenth, but the black kid beats me to my bag and shoulders it. I wave for him to give it back. He offers me his hand instead.

“Houston.”

“Good to meet you,” I say in a paternal mumble. I point at the bag. “I’ll take that.”

“I’ve got it.”

Dan and I push the next two holes. White kid keeps his smirk and his distance from us, but Houston stays close to me, almost forgetting that he has another bag to carry. I can’t help but be somewhat moved by his attention. And as we walk off the sixteenth green, I find myself striding toward the next tee. The kid keeps with me.

“This hole’s made for you,” he says covertly.

“How so?”

“It’s long. If you hit a full driver — swing like you did on the first hole, it’s yours.”

I slow down and eye him warily from behind. He doesn’t turn, but he feels it.

“Trust me.”

Dan takes an iron from White kid, points ahead, looks at the ground but addresses me. “Number seventeen. Par five — five hundred sixty yards. Into the wind.” He looks over to me and then points to the tee box. Marco slides up to me.

“No one gets on in two. Especially on a day like this. Play irons — get on in three, but just make sure you get on.”

I look at Dan, then Houston. He sneers at Marco behind his back — his first open display of contempt.

“Tell you what,” says Dan. “Five hundred if you carry the water.”

Houston studies the scorecard and speaks directly to me. “Two-eighty to carry. Short you’re in the water. Left you’re in the water. Right you’re in the marsh. Not much room to hit a monster drive in.” He looks out to the small landing area of fairway. “Too long and you’re in the woods.”

“He’s never going to reach the woods,” snaps Dan, reminding the kid of his place. Houston ignores him. He shuts up, but it doesn’t stop him from glaring at the trio of white men. They all look away.

“How much on this hole?” I ask. No one answers. They pretend not to hear, as though I’m pushing on some line of civility and they don’t feel comfortable reprimanding me — or the silence is the reprimand.

I spread my arms. “How much?”

“Twelve,” snaps Dan. Then grins. “Twelve-five for you.”

I turn to Houston. “May I have the driver, please?”

He beams. “Yes, sir!” he answers like a Pullman porter. I wince at the association, but I have to shake it off.

At address I wait for the wind to stop. It’s been blowing in gusts — both hard and soft. Dan won’t look at me, only down the fairway and to whatever he sees beyond. I dismiss him. That little fuckin’ weasel’s gonna owe me a ton of dough. Buster and Marco stand together, Buster smiling, not malevolently, but with a kind of boyish wonder — like he’s suddenly, beside the tee box, found some express route to his childhood. I can see it flicker in his face. He’s happy, home. And Marco, mouth agape, is perplexed by the shapelessness of my plan — the recklessness. But Marco has never had nothing to lose, nor would he ever put himself in a position to lose everything. The sky is blue with creamy clouds, robin’s egg at their soft edges. I put my head down and swing. The ball rips across the inlet and the rocks and marsh and the fairway and into the trees beyond. Nobody says a thing. I can’t imagine that they know what to say.

“Too much,” mumbles Houston while staring at Dan, his face bright with wet light from sweat and sun.

Everyone else lays up. After they hit, I wander blankly down the slope to find my ball. When I make the fairway, I get rolled by an icy wave of sleep and I come out of it with a shudder — awake. The grass seems to buzz a brighter green, as though someone turned up a color dial. I look back up the hill to the others. Buster cracks a joke, and everyone except for the black kid laughs. And then I realize that I just blew it, and I can’t understand how or why. I look up and try to recreate my ball’s flight, but that doesn’t do it, neither does my jog to the edge of the wood, where I stop and ask myself, “Why did you do that?” Nothing comes, so I keep looking from the tee to the wood. Another wave hits, not sleep though, it’s smaller, more like a swell than anything else, but it seems to suggest by the way it goes back out — the quiet left behind, that all the water has been sucked out of the bay and is gathering somewhere out of sight.

I scan the trees. I don’t want to go in there. And they’re not really woods, more like a long, narrow pine grove just before the rocky shore. It’s fortified by thick, twisted lengths of honeysuckle and bittersweet. Inside are ferns, dead needles, moss, and the dappled light of the high sun broken up by the boughs. I hear the scurry of creatures through the soft underbrush, black flies, and the gentle slap of the hidden tide. I step in anyway. It’s cooler inside the trees. I shudder in the middle of a yawn, and my jaw trembles and locks open. I hear something behind me and I startle but don’t turn. A group of gnats gathers and twists in my face. I look through them. There’s a big black wasp flying low, a dog tick waiting on a fern blade. I hear myself sigh but don’t believe it’s really me. I try to dispel the feeling that someone’s behind me. The wind sweeps over the water with a hiss, through the trees with a groan. I say it out loud—“That’s nothing”—but I start to panic a little nonetheless. Then I tell myself that I’m hungry and overtired, but that doesn’t stop me from crying again. Then I remember my lost ball and almost turn my head to look for it, but I don’t think I should move at all. I say it out loud, “You’re just tired.” I don’t believe that. “Not now,” I whine and mouth a quick and empty prayer that even I can’t comprehend. Then it comes.