Thumps got to Al’s the next morning in good order. Just in time for the Wutty Youngbeaver rally. The place was crowded, and Thumps had to lean up against the plywood booths, wait for a stool to come free.
“Hey, Thumps. What size you wear?”
Jimmy held up a red T-shirt with “Wutty’s Warriors” in gold lettering.
“Get the extra-large,” said Russell. “They tend to shrink.”
Al had a T-shirt. Chintak Rawat had a T-shirt. Stas Black Weasel had a T-shirt. Big Fish Patek and Lorraine Chubby had T-shirts. So did Fred and Della Blueford, who ran the local Salvation Army store, as well as Dolores Cardoza of Chinook Insurance.
Wutty slipped off his stool. “Okay, guys, let’s give it a try.”
Russell and Jimmy threw their hands over their heads, and the café exploded into a chant.
“Wutty, Wuuttyy, Wuuuttyyy, Wuuuuuttyyyy . . . Warriors!”
Thumps kept the smile at bay. There was no profit in trying to discourage the man and his fantasies. Then again, maybe he was just jealous. Wutty had the handicap to play in a qualifying round of the U.S. Open, something that Thumps had never done, had never dreamed of doing. It was, he had to admit, a notable accomplishment and worthy of support.
THUMPS LEARNED GOLF as a kid growing up in central California. He and his mother lived in a trailer park that butted up against the Sierra Springs Golf Course. It was a private club with a cyclone fence that ran the perimeter to keep the privileged safe from the undesirables and the curious.
Still, you could walk the outside of the wire and, from a distance, enjoy the panorama of the course, follow it, as it cut its way through the live oaks and the undulating landscape. Watch the men at play, as they roamed the fairways and the greens.
But exclusivity is a transient condition, and like all good fences, this one had a flaw. Several, in fact. There was an opening in the wire at the fourteenth hole, just below a large No Trespassing sign, and another where a steep gully cut into the course. Here the fence stopped at the edge of a rather treacherous drop and then resumed again on the far side, allowing the adventurous to swing out and around the last metal post and onto the club property.
Thumps preferred crawling through the fence. It was safer than risking the ravine, and here the woods were thicker, so there was little chance of being seen. From there, he could search the edges of the fairways for lost golf balls. Thumps didn’t play golf, but he could sell balls at the farmers’ market on Saturdays, make enough on a good day for a burger and a movie at the Tower theatre in town.
One summer Saturday, as Thumps was getting ready to take his weekly haul of golf balls to the market, an old pickup pulled into the park, dragging an even older trailer, its sides painted to look like the Grand Canyon.
The man who got out of the truck was ancient, with scruffy grey hair, scruffy grey beard. Skin darkened and cured by the sun. Short and powerful with a limp that made him rock from side to side.
Gabriel Garcia.
“This a good place, kid?”
“You paint your trailer?”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Golf balls,” said Thumps. “There’s a golf course on the other side of the fence.”
“Private or public?”
“Private.”
“These the balls you found?”
“Didn’t steal them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You play golf ?”
“Nope.”
“The balls for sale?”
“Sure.”
Garcia stuck his hand in his pocket, came up with a wad of bills. “I’ll take them all.”
THE CHANTING WENT on longer than necessary. Jimmy and Russell shuffled back and forth through the café like a pair of cheerleaders, waving their arms and turning circles between the stools and the plywood booths.
“We are to go to the tournament,” Rawat shouted. “Wait on the fifteenth tee for the conquering hero.”
“Yes,” said Stas. “And when Mr. Wutty steps to the tee, we are all to do the chant and wave our arms.”
“And if he makes a hole-in-one, we are to rush onto the green and lift him high on our shoulders.”
“I’m good with the T-shirt and the chanting,” said Dolores, “but I’m passing on any heavy lifting.”
“Come on,” said Fred. “It’ll be fun. Sort of like Woodstock.”
“Got a reputation to uphold.” Dolores pushed her plate to one side. “And now I have to get back to the office.”
Dolores slid off her stool. Thumps waited a beat before he slid into place. Home at last. Safe and sound.
Al came by with the coffee pot. “You know how you can tell when the circus is in town?”
“All the monkeys?”
“I was thinking clowns,” said Al. “The usual?”
“Please.”
“You know, you’re going to have to buy a T-shirt.”
“I know.”
“Longer you put it off,” said Al, “the more painful it’s going to be.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Thumps could see Jimmy coming down the stools.
“Here you go.”
“I don’t wear T-shirts,” said Thumps.
“You can’t be on Team Wutty if you don’t have a T-shirt.”
Al filled Thumps’s cup. “Remember what Thumper said to Bambi.”
Thumps let his sigh roll out, long and gentle, reached into his pocket for his money clip. “All right.”
“Twenty-five dollars.”
“You’re kidding.”
“And Duke,” said Jimmy. “You have to get one for Duke.”
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, when Thumps stepped out of the trailer, Garcia was waiting for him, a bag of balls in one hand, a set of clubs slung over his shoulder.
“You want to show me what you got?” “Sure.”
Thumps had watched golfers. Sometimes, when he had nothing better to do, he would stand in the shadows of the trees and watch the men whack their way up the fairway. So he had a general sense of how to hit a ball.
Garcia pushed a tee all the way into the ground, set a ball on top of it, handed Thumps a club.
“This is 9-iron.”
“Okay.”
“Nice thing about golf is the ball doesn’t move. Not like baseball or football, basketball or tennis. Ball just sits there waiting for you to hit it.”
The first two swings found nothing but air. The third topped the ball, sent it skittering into the thick brush. The fourth slammed into the cyclone fence and stuck in the wire.
“Here’s the thing,” said Garcia. “You don’t hit the ball. You make the swing. You make a good swing in rhythm, and the ball gets in the way. That make sense?”
“Okay.”
For the rest of the morning, Thumps practised his swing. Every time a foursome would come up the fairway, Thumps and Garcia would step back into the trees and wait for them to clear the green.
Thumps was astounded at the variety of shots that were possible. Shots that snapped off to the right. Shots that hooked to the left. High shots, low shots. Until there were no more balls left in the bag.
Garcia picked up the tee, put the club back in the bag. “You see any balls on the green?”
“No.”
“That’s my fault,” said Garcia. “I forgot to tell you to hit the balls on the green.”
TEAM WUTTY EMPTIED the café en masse. Like bats fleeing a belfry. Al stood in her tracks at the grill, cocked her head.
“You hear that?” she called out.
Thumps listened for a moment. “Hear what?”
“Exactly,” said Al.
Thumps guessed that living alone made you take silence for granted. He tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a normal household. Spouse, children, pets. The sounds of domesticity filling the home, rattling the walls, shaking the foundation.
Claire would tell him that, when it came to human interaction, there was no such thing as normal, but Thumps was pretty sure that there was a distinct line between living alone and living with someone, anyone, any number of someones.
Al came by with the coffee pot. “When does this little whoop-de-do come to pass?”
“This weekend.”
“Unless Wutty wins.”
“He wins,” said Thumps, “he moves on.”
“Out of town?”
“Out of sight and sound.”
Al set the pot on the counter. “But if he loses, we’re going to have to listen to a blow-by-blow recitation of what should have happened but didn’t and all the reasons therein.”
“Actually,” said Thumps, “it’ll be shot by shot.”
“Along with the licking of the wounds to the male ego.”
Thumps pushed his cup toward the pot. “So, we pray he wins.”
“Almost as bad,” said Al. “He wins, we’ll never hear the end of it.” “Chances of Wutty getting to play in the Open itself are negligible. He has to win three qualifying rounds, and he’ll be up against an army of professionals at each stage.”
“The worst of both worlds,” said Al. “He wins the local qualifying round and loses the next, we’ll have to listen to victory and defeat in the same narrative.”
“In the meantime,” said Thumps, “how about we listen to the sizzle of my breakfast on the grill?”
“You going to wear the T-shirt?”
THUMPS SETTLED on the stool, let his eyes droop and his shoulders sag. He was tired. For no good reason. Yes, the diabetes played havoc with his energies, especially if he allowed his blood sugars to drop too low.
But the exhaustion was more than that. Almost as if life itself had weight and the older you got, the more weight was piled on. Each year another ten pounds.
Ten pounds, ten pounds, ten pounds. Until you were squished flat.
It was a particularly cheerless metaphor for existence and probably inaccurate. Maybe it wasn’t gradual and cumulative. Maybe it was sudden. A mouse in a spring trap. A bug on the windshield of a transport truck.
Maybe it was a little of both.
Al appeared with a plate of food. “You know, we’re all going to have to go to this golf thingy.”
Thumps peppered his eggs.
“If we don’t show up, and he loses, he’ll blame us for not supporting him.” Al put her hands on her hips and waited. “But if we are there and he flubs up, he only has himself to blame.”
“Can I get extra salsa?”
“And in spite of his dumpster load of annoying ideas, the man’s our friend.”
Thumps took a bite of the toast.
Al put the jar of salsa next to Thumps’s plate. “And that’s why you have to wear the shirt.”