CHAPTER 4

When I really wanted someone to look at my swing, I always asked a blind guy.

Bob just had this sense of my tempo that nobody else had, including me. He was like that mechanic who closes his eyes and listens to your engine and then goes, “Gungulator. Definitely, the gungulator.” After three or four days playing with Bob, my tempo would be as pure as a metronome’s.

“Too quick,” he’d say. Or “Sounded weak through the zone.” Or, “I could hear you grunting. When you grunt, you tend to pull it. Did you pull it?”

“Yeah, I pulled it,” I’d say.

“Swinging too hard, slob,” he’d say.

He was to golf as Tommy was to pinball. He could tell from the sound of the club whether it was one of the dreaded four dwarves: Toey or Heely or Toppy or Fatty. And he knew my thumps. You know that really nice thump you get when you hit a good iron shot just right? Bob knew mine by heart. “Nah, just didn’t sound right,” he’d say. “Try it again.” I’d try it again. “Little hollow there. Kind of pushy?”

“Yeah, a little pushy,” I’d admit.

“Try it again,” he’d say.

He lost his sight in Gulf War I, not in battle, but when some bonehead commanding officer thought it would be funny to juggle grenades in front of the boys. In the face of that kind of tragic idiocy, I don’t know how he could always be so damn joyful every day, but he was.

I met him while buying a TV at his little electronics shop in Natick. Just a little place, not even a mom-and-pop. A pop, tops. My kind of place. Not a monster Super Colossal Monolith Wal-Mart that puts everybody in town out of business.

I had no idea, when I met him, that he couldn’t see. He was this sturdy guy, maybe thirty-five-ish, dark sunglasses, thick mop of Ronald Reagan hair. “Can you see how crisp the reds and yellows are on the Sony?” he said. “Compare that to the tiny little Hitachi over there. You see? Worth the extra ninety bucks.” So I bought the Sony. I realized he was blind only when I saw him “reading” my Visa with his fingers.

“Did you say you could see the reds and yellows on the Sony?” I asked, pretending to be pissed.

“I didn’t say I could,” he said, smiling. “I asked if you could.”

Smart guy.

“How do you know I’m not holding another TV under my arm?”

“How do you know I’m not going to charge you for two more after you leave?”

“Can I ask you something? How does a blind guy end up selling TVs?”

“Oh, that’s simple,” he said. “There was no profit margin in cameras.”

This guy was good.

“Did you meet my wife?” he said.

“No.”

“See the great-looking blonde over there, talking to those people?” He pointed to a rather dumpy brunette across the store chatting with a customer. I was kind of flummoxed.

“Uh, I don’t know how to tell you this,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Your wife’s not a blonde.”

He looked confused. “You’re messing with me, right?”

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry.”

“The bitch! Tell me something. Does she look like she could’ve been on the SI swimsuit cover in 1998?”

Okay, so I’d been had.

We got to talking and he said he was into golf. I said that was quite surprising.

“Yeah, broke a hundred once,” he said. “But I still think my caddy teed me off from the ladies’ tees.”

Why didn’t he come to Ponky and play with me? I said it was a terrible place if he wanted actual grass under his ball, but paradise if he never once said “Good shot” in his life, unless it was to a bartender.

So he started coming around. His wife brought him the first dozen or so times, then he got used to coming on the 51 bus. They kept his clubs there. The first time I played with him, it took me awhile to get used to helping him, lining up his feet and shoulders and giving him distances. That first day, he was trying to hit a 5-wood, 220 yards, uphill, to a heavily bunkered green. When you play with Bob, you also are his caddy/coach for all his shots. “More to the left, Bob,” I said. “Shoulders more open, Bob. Little more to the left. Good. You got it. Pull the trigger.” He made good contact on this one and the ball rose nicely. “Awww, Bob,” I said. “That was gorgeous. It didn’t quite get over the lake, but you should feel good about it. You really hit it nice.”

And Bob said, “What lake?”

I swallowed hard, looked at my shoes a second, put my hand through my hair, and said, “Okay, that’s my bad, Bob. I should’ve mentioned the lake.”

And it took us forever to play. The guys behind us came roaring up on about the 4th hole. Their leader yelled, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be teaching out here! You want to teach, go do it on the range!”

And I said, patriotically, “This gentleman lost his sight defending our country in Kuwait.” That softened them up. They backed off. But when we were finishing up on 18, Bob came up to my side of the golf cart and said, “Scoot over, I’m driving.”

I laughed.

“No, I’m serious, scoot over.”

“Are you kidding? You’ll get us killed!”

“Not if you give good directions.”

So he got behind the wheel and said, “Okay, I want to go back up 18 fairway.”

“What? Are you nuts?”

“No. Up 18 fairway.”

So I had him turn around and I tried my best to keep us from sideswiping trees. “Uh, left. Left! LEFT!”

“I wanna go right by the guys who were following us,” he said. “Close as I can.”

“Why?” I said.

“Just get me there.”

So I got us heading right past the group that had waited all day. As we passed, with Blind Bob at the wheel, he tipped his cap real friendly and waved at them, hollering, “Thanks again! Thanks a lot!”

You should’ve seen those guys’ faces.

Gotta love Blind Bob.

         

Tuesday morning came and my house was still Ice Station Dannie. I tried everything. I left her notes, flowers, e-mails. I tried everything but quilting her, “I’m sorry. It was a joke.” She never seemed to answer her cell. Girl can be as stubborn as an impacted molar.

I set the Ponky phone back on its hook. Kelly the Edible walked up wearing a T-shirt that read IT AIN’T GONNA LICK ITSELF.

“Need a warm place to bunk down tonight?” Kelly said from behind.

I dared not check out Shock and Awe, not in the state I was in. Instead, I turned away and saw Dom staring a hole at us.

“Why don’t you try Dom?” I whispered. “They say he’d make Dirk Diggler kick a hole in his mirror.”

“Too easy,” she purred. “I like the happily married ones.”

“Too late. I’m not happily married anymore.”

“Even better,” she said.

I shuddered to think what Dannie would do to her if she caught her ear-banging me like this. In her Arkansas days, a girl was hitting on her boyfriend in a pool hall once. “Dannie left her lookin’ uglier ’n a sack a navels,” Dannie’s sister recalled.

Then I shuddered to think what Dannie would to do me if she knew I was playing with the $5,000 we had put away in the college fund for Charlie. So I just tried to put it out of my mind, confident that I could have the $5,000 and then some back in the bank by tomorrow.

“Sorry, Kel,” I said, holding up my ring. “I’m kind of a one-owner kind of car, you know?”

“That’s no problem,” she said, grabbing my thigh. “I just want a test drive.”

I laughed nervously.

“Can I get a favor, though?” I said. “Can I write the pro shop a check and get some cash? I’m tapped out.”

“Nah, they don’t let us do that anymore, sweetie,” she cooed. “But I’ve got cash. You wanna just write it to me?”

So we did a hundred dollars and just then we saw through the window a big Lincoln pull into Ponky’s gravel lot. The gamblers were here.

The guys who piled out of that Lincoln bore no resemblance to us Chops. Chops play in jeans and T-shirts. Chops have a two-dollar fine for every logo over the two-logo national logo limit. Chops do not shave regularly. These three guys had the full Lanny Wadkins going—the slick pants with cuffs and creases, the shiny belts, and the hundred-dollar shiny Bobby Jones shirts. They had hats and shirts and belts and pockets that read AUGUSTA NATIONAL and PINE VALLEY and CASTLE PINES and all the other sweet clubs in this country where the only way to join is not to ask.

They had new golf gloves and pure Callaway clubs and big, huge bags that looked like they couldn’t be carried by Boeing, much less a caddy.

I was ready for them, just not the way Two Down wanted me to be ready for them. He wanted me to melt all the numbers off my clubs and re-engrave new ones, so that my 4 was actually my 6, my 6 was actually my 7, my 7 was my 4, stuff like that. “Stick, these guys are always checking the opponent’s clubs to see what he hit,” Two insisted. “You’ll completely mess them up!”

“Two, guys like this might just be able to know the difference between a 7 and a 4,” I said. “My God, Bob can tell that much.”

He also wanted me to put a bunch of his fake trophies in the trunk of my car. I was supposed to pull up after they got there, get out, pop my trunk, move a bunch of trophies out onto the parking lot, and then pull my clubs out, as though I had so many trophies I was out of room in my house and was now storing them in my trunk. When I told him no, he looked like a guy who’d just had his little toe lopped off.

“Stick, you gotta get aggressive! They slaughter the lambs, you know. When’s the last time you ordered a lion burger?”

I just grinned.

“Mornin’,” I said to the gamblers.

The three guys climbing out of the Lincoln just sort of glared at me. One was a stocky little Japanese guy who didn’t blink. Another was a salt-and-pepper-haired guy with a friendly face, a little potbelly, and a bit of a limp.

“Nice day, huh?” I tried again.

They looked at me like I was speaking Hindi.

“I’m Ray.”

A guy the size of a toll booth got out of the driver’s side. He had a dogleg nose and nuclear-cloud ear hair, a forehead that was annexing his hair, and gin blossoms on his face. You could have cut his forearms in half and made umbrella stands. He looked me in the eye, pulled a huge money clip out, snapped off a twenty, and said, “Have my friendz clubz to put on a cart and have them to range, yez? And alzo, you will tell me pleaz, my friendz and I dezire to have to zomething to eat nearby?”

I had no idea where the hell he was from. He sounded like a Croatian who’d worked as a Paris maitre d’. He set in front of me the biggest fricking bag of clubs I’d ever seen in my life. Had to be, no kidding, forty-two clubs in there.

“Well,” I said. “There’s a deli in there, although I’m not sure you’ll consider it something to eat.”

I put the huge bag on my shoulder and my right knee about buckled. Was this guy going to play or hold a yard sale? I mean, Nevada Bob didn’t have this many clubs. Still, I figured, why not get a look at your enemy’s arsenal if he’s stupid enough to let you?

I took it to the range and started going through it. He had three drivers, all different lengths. He had every wood from 2 to 11. He had two 5-woods, one hooked-face that looked like it had the center worn clean out of it. He had a 1-iron that looked like he’d hit maybe one hundred thousand shots with it. He had every iron from 2 thru 9. He had eight wedges, from what had to be a 64-degree down to 46. I figure he had one for every five yards, so he could hit full wedges whenever he needed. He had three left-handed clubs—a 7-wood, an 8-iron, and a 4-iron, in case he had no right-handed stance, I guess. He had one sawed-off kid’s club, which I figured he used under trees. He had three putters—long, belly, and short. All three were center-shafted. He had two ball pouches and in one of the pouches all the balls were ice-cold. Smart. Ice-cold balls go farther than regular. He had a bunch of Band-Aids, six good Cuban cigars, two Zippos, the Rules of Golf, Decisions on the Rules of Golf, a roll of lead tape, two screwdrivers, some rope, a small hammer, and, curiously, a huge tub of Vaseline.

Where were these guys from, Deliverance?

I heard them coming and turned to see some Chops—Two Down, Cement, Dom, and Hoover—walking with the big fella, who was gobbling a fried-egg sandwich.

“Stick, this is Big Alexi,” Two said. “Big Al, this is Stick, our best guy.”

Big Al gave me a dirty look for having tricked him.

“And, uh, this,” said Two, nervous as a bride at her in-laws’, “is Yoshi.”

Yoshi just stared at me, offering no hand, just a slight bow.

“And this is Dewey. Dewey, this is your opponent for the day.”

I stuck out my hand to the gray-haired guy. “I don’t shake,” he said. “Too many guys try to break your balls.”

“Strange place to keep your balls,” said Hoover.

The gamblers stared at Hoover.

“Comedian, huh, Stringbean?” Dewey said.

“Actually, no, genetic scientist,” Hoover said. “And you, I take it, are an astrophysicist?”

They just stared at him some more.

“Well, Mr. Zcience Person,” said Big Al, “how about it iz that you go back to your home on Zaturn and leave uz alone? You copy?”

Dewey laughed.

“Shows what you know,” Hoover countered. “Saturn has no solid core.”

All the Chops hid their faces in their hands. The gamblers just stared some more.

Big Al sighed. “Let uz now all of uz get immediately to the zet-up of bet. Playing for $12,000 American. We are to play by the well-known gamblerz’ rulez, yez? Eighteen holez—”

“Hold on a second,” I interjected. “What, exactly, are gamblers’ rules?”

Big Al just looked at me like I was chairman of the Dumbshit Party. Then he stared at Two Down. Yoshi and Dewey rolled their eyes and started hitting balls off our sickly-green range mats. “I’m have a hard time thinking of gentlemen like you do not play gamblerz’ rulez?”

We both shook our head sheepishly.

“Okay. I prezent these gamblerz’ rulez. No gimmez. No out of boundz. If you can find ball, you can hit ball. Anywhere. No handicapz, no ztrokez, none of theze thingz. We prefer the give of the zpotz. You know, zpotz?”

“Spots?” I asked.

“Da, spots! Such az, we get to take away your even-numbered ironz. Or you shall allow to ztart every hole at 150 yardz out. Or we must hit from the blackz teez, thingz zuch az theze. No club limit. And for to allow putting any way which iz required that you can to get ball in hole. Match play. You copy?”

We all nodded.

More staring.

“Okay, now iz the time when I require, with no pun intended toward you, to zee the money,” Big Al said.

We all looked at him.

“You know what he means,” Dewey said.

Relishing the role of Titanic Thompson, Two Down smoothly reached down to his shoe, pulled up his pants leg, and rolled down his sock to reveal the $12,000, masking-taped to his skinny, white out-of-bounds-stake leg.

“No, I muzt zee money,” Big Al repeated.

“You can’t see it?” Two Down said nervously.

“No, I muzt count it.”

Two Down had kind of a queasy look on his face. He leaned down begrudgingly and yanked the tape off his leg. “Fffffuck me!!!” he screamed.

“Was that your leg hair?” Cement asked.

Eyes glassy, Two stared at Cement. “No,” he said. “No, that wasn’t my leg hair, Cement. I just hate wasting tape.”

“Dude, I got lots more in the truck,” Cement said.

Two handed the money to Big Al, who counted it and gave it back to him. Then Al reached into the pocket of his silk pants and pulled out five big rolls of hundred-dollar bills tightly and neatly bundled by rubber bands. He handed one to Two Down.

“Thiz much ten,” he said. Then he peeled twenty more Benjis off another roll and showed him. “Thiz twelve.” He put the rest back in his pocket.

The Chops hadn’t been this impressed since the day Dom brought back a video of him screwing Miss Massachusetts with her sash still on.

Each man had his own cart; three guys, three carts. I walked. Two carried my bag. The rest of the Chops walked. Too cheap to rent carts.

“Pigeons, on the tee,” The Voice announced. “Pigeons, please?”

Big Al looked around like he might take out a piece and start blasting, if he could only find where to shoot.

“Funny man, huh?” Dewey said. “Maybe he oughta get a cane and a hat and stand out in front of the circus.”

“I’ll suggest it,” I said.

The Chops couldn’t wait to see how these swanky bastards would react when their eyes first took in the glorious cesspool that is Ponky, which is to fine golf what Ripple is to fine wine. It was particularly awful today because the guy who mows the lawns called in drunk and they were fixing some of the tracks for the “T” that ran through every half hour and some of the Filipino immigrants in the projects were hanging their laundry off 13.

“Looks like maybe there used to be a golf course here,” Dewey said.

“There was,” I said. “Before al-Qaeda bought it.”

“Think of it,” Two Down said, “as Disgusta National.”

“What happened to your nose?” Dewey said.

“A big baby jumped me,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ve run into them kind, too,” he said.

We flipped a tee and I won. I had butterflies the size of U-boats in my stomach, but I managed to kind of thin my little 1-iron out there about 250 into the right wispy rough. Dewey took a three-quarter swing with one of his three drivers and the ball rocketed off like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was straighter than Billy Graham. I mean, it couldn’t have moved one yard off line. When it flew by me, it was still thirty yards above ground. He was a good seventy-five yards by me. The Chops’ jaws fell open like castle drawbridges. They’d never seen me outdriven, to say nothing of by seventy-five yards.

“Damn!” said Two. “Care to pee in a beaker for us?”

Dewey laughed again. “Everybody’s funny at this dump,” he said. Then the three of them got in their carts and took off. We Chops suddenly wondered what kind of mess we’d just stepped into.

“My Winnerbago is so doomed,” said Dom.

Ponky giveth and Ponky taketh away. Dewey, putting like Sam Snead, croquet-style, missed a four-foot birdie putt on the first because he didn’t realize that holes at Ponky are pulled out by a high greenskeeper who yanks them out instead of twisting them, leaving the hole itself a half inch higher than the green around it. His ball actually came up to the hole, looked in, and then rolled back toward him.

“Nice Mount St. Helens job there,” he said.

“It’s home,” Dom said.

I made my four and we were tied after 1. And we went on tying every hole through 9, but only because he didn’t know Ponky. He didn’t know not to hit the fairway at 5 because it was buckled and instead to hit it into 4 fairway, much more grass over there. He didn’t know not to hit it on 6 green, which was harder than Trig 404 and sent every shot flying over it into the fence; much better to miss the green short and try to two-putt. He didn’t know not to hit it long off the tee on 9, because the decomposing landfill underneath that part of the fairway is starting to leak through and the smell is overpowering.

“Oh, my god,” Dewey said, coughing. “What is that smell?”

“Nineteen sixty-three,” said Two.

Every time I thought I had the guy, he made some camel ride with that stupid croquet-style stroke. Plus, I just couldn’t believe he could hit it that freaking long with that Jack Lemmon ninety-mile-per hour swing of his.

There was something weird about his preshot routine, though. Big Al was handing him his club every time, but Big Al would always touch the side of his cart, then grab the club, then clean off the clubface with his thumb, then hand it to him. But who cleans off a clubface with his thumb? And how does a driver hit pure get dirty every hole? So, on 10 tee box, I made a point to get a look at Big Al’s little operation.

And that’s when I saw it. He was greasing the clubfaces with Vaseline! I’d heard guys talk about it but never seen it. The idea is that the Vaseline keeps the grooves from imparting spin on the ball, which means it can’t hook or slice, which means it goes dead straight. And because the grooves can’t put backspin on it, it rockets off the clubface. Big Al had hidden a glob of it on the side of the cart, but it’s clear, so you can’t see it.

This was so damn illegal as to give Arnold Palmer an instant coronary. The Anal-Retentive Banker, aka my father, made me memorize the rule book before he’d let me on the course. I knew every rule.

“You know that’s just slightly more illegal than baby-kidnapping, right?” I asked Dewey.

“Nope. Gamblers’ rules. Perfectly legal.”

And that’s when I decided to do something I’d never done in my life: cheat at golf.

I called Dom over to me. “Hey, man, don’t you keep K-Y jelly in the Porsche glove box?”

He looked at me like I was a pervert. “Yeah, but I’m not up for any weird shit, man. We got to concentrate on this.”

“Just get it for me. Right now.”

“Okay, what flavah?”

“What flavor?”

“Yeah, chocolate, buttahscotch, or chipotle?”

“I don’t care! It’s for my clubs, you freak!”

He was back in five minutes.

The Chops saw me apply a thin layer to my 1-iron. The gamblers looked at each other. Two beckoned me over.

“Are you fuckin’ crazy?” he whispered. “That’s a DQ!”

“Nah,” I said loud. “Gamblers’ rules, right, Dewey?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I use more grease than Jiffy Lube.”

I hit that next one 325 yards, no joke. It was stupid. I could take lines I’d never dreamed of, over trees, over other greens. It was sick. I drove No. 12, a 376-yard dogleg par-4. By 16 tee I was two up. And then Hoover showed up and everything went full-throttle toward shit.

It wasn’t really Hoover, it was the guy with him, a bulbous fat man with a Vandyke, a Hogan cap, a scarf, and a tweed jacket, riding one of those little red electric scooters old people on oxygen ride at Target. He looked like Burl Ives after a weekend trapped in the Sara Lee factory.

“Uh, fellas,” said Hoover, pawing the ground with his foot. “This is my wife’s brother, Dalton. Dalton, these are the fellas. Dalton is going to be hanging around, I guess, with us.”

“Yeah?” said Dom. “Why?”

“Uh—” Hoover started out.

“Well, my good man,” this Dalton guy began, “I’m glad you asked. Our hale fellow Hoover, here, as you apparently call him, has finally worn out the patience of his wife, my sister, the long-suffering Evelyn. Far be it from me to judge, but Evelyn tells me he’s always out here with you gentlemen instead of at home and hearth with her. Now, Evelyn, being a sporting kind, thinks that would be all right if young Hoover were actually the least bit skilled at golf and enjoyed golf, but he plainly doesn’t. Exhibit A, she says, is the many number of putters your Hoover has hanging from nooses in the garage, their punishment for apparently underperforming.”

Hoover turned a little red. None of us had ever been to his house.

“So she has given said Hoover until the day our mother arrives for her monthly visit—that day being July 11—to break 100. If he cannot do that by then, she is taking the somewhat drastic method of cutting him off from any and all golf funding. And since he has quit his job, he will have no choice but to come home and begin extensive involvement in my sister’s book club. It is my duty—being ‘between opportunities’ as we say in the world of dinner theater—to monitor these rounds of young Hoover to make sure they’re properly scored and legitimate. I am—how would you earthier types say it?—Hoover’s golf narc.”

We Chops just looked at each other. I was already sick of this guy and I’d known him only three minutes.

“Hey, Slim,” said Dewey, “could you maybe take your one-man Shakespeare act somewhere else so we can get on with our little game here?”

Dalton looked mortified. “Am I keeping you from your contest, sir? Well, carry on, then. I’ll simply observe the great battle.”

It was my honor. I took a little half practice swing and—

“Missed it!” Dalton said, chuckling obnoxiously. “Hah! Little joke there.”

I gave a look to Hoover as if to say, “If you don’t suffocate him by sticking a headcover down his throat, I will.”

Hoover shushed him. I pulled it back and started down and—

Whirrrr!

It was Dalton goosing the scooter, apparently to get a better view. The ball shanked off the toe and into the lake dead right of the green.

“Goddamnit, Hoover!” I screamed. “If you don’t—”

Two Down put his hand over my mouth. “Dalton, you may stay. No problem.” Then he turned to Dewey. “Dewey, the box is yours.”

I glared at Two Down. What the hell was he doing?

Dewey glanced suspiciously at Dalton, pulled it back, and was right at the top when Dalton said, “Might you gentlemen be—”

Dewey duck-hooked it so far left that it sailed the T-tracks and wound up in the Impenetrable Bog in front of 15.

Yoshi, Big Al, and Dewey came at Dalton from all three sides. Dalton whipped the cart into reverse and was last seen bobbling over Ponky’s buckled fairways with Big Al chasing him and screaming, “You are human ztain you are! A fucking human ztain!”

Beautiful. The Human Stain. You just knew that was going to stick.

I looked at Two and he was grinning. Guy is a gambling genius.

So we both made bogey there, but then I greased a 330-yard drive on 17, hit a sweet little 9 off the mound off the green to the left so that it would hop directly right and onto the par-4 green, which it did, to six feet. Dewey hit a good drive, but he had no chance. He hit a lob wedge to within fourteen feet and then missed the putt when his Pro V flew off the tiniest exposed lip of an old buried Folgers can. I stroked my little six-footer for the eagle and the match. The ball went in like it was allergic to daylight.

The Chops roared and came and dogpiled me.

“Twelve fucking grand!” Two Down kept screaming into one ear.

“Can I fellate you?” Dom was hollering into the other.

When we unpiled, Big Al fingered the $12,000 and said, “No pun intended, but iz it that you had never tried the greaze before, yez, Ray?”

“Well, only on Caligula Night here at Ponky,” I said, eyeing the zops.

“After zuch a dizplay of achievement, certain to me that you shall give uz a chanz to win our moniez back, for tomorrow, yez?”

I looked at the boys.

“What’s he saying? Same game, same place?” I asked Dewey.

“Yeah,” he said. “But let’s make it $24,000 this time.”

I looked at the boys. We huddled for a second.

“Whadda we got to lose?” Two said.

“Twelve grand,” I said.

“You got your foot on this guy’s neck, Ray! You got grease! And he’ll never figure out Ponky! It takes years of double bogeys and obscene amounts of alcohol to figure out Ponky!”

“I think it would be a very astute bet,” said Hoover. “I think you are clearly the superior player.”

I wondered what they could come up with tomorrow to beat me, but I honestly didn’t care. I was flat smoking my ball. Besides, I planned on going into Walgreen’s right after dinner and buying the Anna Nicole Smith–size tube of K-Y for tomorrow’s round.

“Bank,” I said to Big Al. “This means ‘I will happily bet you’ in this country.”

“And I am anxiouz to make zome action for my poor friend Yoshi who is standing here?” he said. “Who among your friendz will not give my poor friend Yoshi a game?”

Well, that wasn’t going to work because we didn’t have any more money to—

“Jump on me, Froggy,” said Two Down, pounding his chest with both hands. “What’s his handicap?”

I tried to glare a hole in Two Down’s thick skull.

I should’ve seen this coming. Two Down was the best gambler among the Chops, but thrown in against guys like this, he was the tallest dwarf in the circus. He was miles in over his head and yet he didn’t know it. It’s like Bob always said, lovingly, of Two Down: “He’s like the mosquito who screws the elephant from behind and hollers, ‘Take it all, bitch!’ ”

And now he was taking us all in with him.

“Although it iz we do not partake of handicapz, my friend Yoshi would be known to be about a zixteen,” Big Al said, gesturing to the ever-silent Yoshi. “For you to call up the Newton Commonwealth Golfing Club and confirm thiz.”

“I’m a twenty,” said Two.

“I’ll check it,” said Dewey.

“And further, we require to play Yoshi ztraight up, becauze of your obviouz advantage of knowledge of courze,” said Big Al.

“No, that would be cr—” I said.

“Okay,” said Two Down, “but I gotta have one thing or it’s no deal.”

“What iz thiz thing?” Big Al said.

“I get one throw.”