The days had now gone damp and drizzly, and a fine mist hovered monotonously in the nipping, cutting air. The waters of the Haven ran sooty like lead and the wind blew continually from the west. Great banks of rain emerged from over the horizon, swept across the tall limestone crags of St. Anne's Head and The Stacks, over the sodden farms in Dale and Johnston, pelted the beaches at Marloes, Broad Haven, and Newgale, then bore hard into Milford, drenching schoolchildren waiting miserably for their buses, workmen on the docks, and housewives hurrying home from shopping. It was only tolerable, barely, because the daily downpours were inevitably interrupted at some point by tantalizing breaks in the clouds, glimpses of blue to brighten the spirit - but then thick new walls of rain would lumber ashore and linger and pour and soak us for days, foggy, dreary, endless.
Through it all, of course, we played rugby, and golf in the short respites. Up and down the length of the puddled pitch, we chased and ran and tackled. Into the sopping turf, we tumbled and dove. We rolled in the mud, slid in the mud, stumbled in the mud, were driven into the mud, wiped it from our mouths and hair and eyes, then staggered dripping into the warm and womb-like changing room, to shower and dress, before climbing aboard the big red bus, which delivered us groggily home; only to repeat it all again the following day.
On weekends, if the rain relented, I caddied for my father or his friends, then played golf with Hugh. My father possessed a vicious hook; most likely the product of his violent, ruthless swing. He was, he liked to confide proudly, with a knowing look, completely self-taught; as if self-instruction had opened the door to some esoteric body of layman's wisdom, unavailable to those unfortunate enough to have learned the game at the hand of a professional. It appeared to me, however, that the basic lesson my father had divined was identical to the lesson I, myself, had gleaned from my Gary Player guide as the distilled essence of the game: hit the ball as hard as you possibly can. The difference was that he implemented this edict to a degree and at a level I could never hope to emulate. Thus, my father lashed at every ball with supersonic velocity, every time, then stared with disbelieving consternation at every wild hook, oblivious to the relationship between the savagery with which he wielded the club and its horrible results. And, because patience was not first – nor second nor third - among my father's many virtues, caddying for him was much like watching pressure build inside a volcano, while the volcano endeavored admirably to keep its cap on tight.
In general, most of the time, he succeeded. When he was playing unusually poorly, however, the black clouds would descend upon my father's face, his mouth would tighten into a line, the tendons and ligaments of his neck would grow taut, his eyes would begin to bulge, and the volcanic gasses would seethe and fume, threatening to explode for any niggling, inconsequential, or perhaps even non-existent reason at all. And at these times, were I to find myself caddying for him, I simply hefted the bag and chased the wayward balls – evil, mocking, little devils - tended the pin, and said nothing. For I knew it would eventually pass; that soon enough, he would be enjoying a pint in the bar with his friends, the hot gasses receding, the softening expression upon his face confirming that, as the day reshaped itself in his imagination, he had once again struggled mightily with the course, taken some punishing blows, but, in the end, through endurance, grit, and the wile of a cool and fearless competitor, salvaged another triumph. I have already pointed out that the recurring theme of golf is, after all, delusion.
A caddie sees much of the human personality. I have described the silent, unspoken partnership I enjoyed with Mr. Flynn. Our natures seemed to mesh with perfect ease on the course. But I also caddied for loud, showy men who seemed to fancy themselves on display, eager for notice and applause. I caddied for unprepossessing men bereft of talent, who nonetheless felt it necessary to ponder ponderously and pointlessly over every single shot, before making a mess of it. I caddied for good players who were very serious and took their rounds quite seriously, which made me nervous about losing count of their score or leading them unknowingly into some obscure technical infraction, thereby costing them a precious stroke. I caddied for men more interested in chatting than playing golf, and did the best I could to make engaging palaver. I caddied for men with awful tempers, and men with no tempers at all. While it was illuminating to make this tour of the human temperament, I really had just two essential objectives. The first was to get a good tip. The second was to incline my player to request my services again in the future, so I might then garner another good tip. Observing human nature is interesting – but it doesn’t jingle in your pocket the way a handsome tip does, and the latter remained always of more immediate concern.
I particularly enjoyed caddying for my father's friend, Tom Kellar. Mr. Kellar was a big, friendly Canadian who had himself worked in Texas before oil and the Gulf refinery brought him to Milford. He had a smooth, easy swing, and I liked carrying his bag because he paid well and rarely hit stray shots that required me to blaze trails into the weedy wastes. His easy swing was matched by an easy, comfortable demeanor. Mr. Kellar always strolled genially through his round, not talking a great deal, but making small observations or comments here and there with a deep, slow voice and the beginnings of a smile, evidently simply enjoying playing golf and cool-headed about its results. Of course, he was quite a good golfer, and thus had no cause for agitation concerning his play. My father had also started his career in the oil business in Texas – his first stop in a career that, in retrospect, bore some passing resemblance to a walkabout - and he and Mr. Kellar seemed to have many of the same interests. They often played together, therefore, forming sort of an odd pair with their vastly contrasting sporting dispositions.
There was another Texan of a different sort, however; a slender, lined, and wiry man called Melvin Beeker, a discontented soul who seemed to spend every waking moment complaining about the paucity of hamburgers, the cramped houses, the absence of sunshine and confounded abundance of rain, the ridiculous puny size of the automobiles, Wednesday afternoon shop-closings, again the damnable shortage of hamburgers, the warm beer, the incomprehensible refusal of television and newspapers to cover the Dallas Cowboys, and whatever else struck him as particularly unlike Texas. On top of having a personality like old vinegar, he was also an abominable golfer. Caddying for him consisted of watching him flail murderously at the ball, then cry “Goddamn it!” Whereupon, it became my duty to trek into the wilderness in search of the vagrant shot as Beeker stewed on the fairway hand-on-hips, glaring in fury as if he would gladly walk back to Texas that very moment if only God would grant him the power to traverse the waves, working his jaw as if bearing down mercilessly upon a thick, fresh plug of spleen. My father considered him a dreadfully sour man, and while at one time or another all the other Americans came to our house for dinner, the Beekers never did.
Our little coterie haled from an assortment of places; its members included Texans, my father from Florida, Project Manager Mr. Wendt from California, and others from places like Oklahoma and Colorado, oil places. We also counted the Canadians as part of the American squad, though they may have disagreed. They were all men who knew about oil, who had studied oil, whose careers were built on oil, who bought houses, cars, and paid their bills from oil, intended to send their children to college on oil, and whom oil, and more particularly the construction of facilities for refining oil in colossal quantities, had now brought to the sheltered Haven. Some of them actively disliked Milford; most patiently tolerated it. A few embraced it. The attitudes of the parents were usually manifest in their children, and so my American friends split into two main camps: those who were simply passing their time in the town, counting the days till they could return to America the way an inmate tallies the days till the prison gates swing open; and those who dove headlong into the life of the place and, by the end, by the time the refinery was complete down to the final turn of the final screw, and Queen Elizabeth herself miraculously arrived on the royal train, to celebrate its opening at a gala ceremony in the summer of 1968, never wanted to leave at all.
I was in the latter category. It was a small group; in retrospect, I suspect, just me – and perhaps, upon further reflection, my father too; though I never asked, but wish I had.
The fourth hole is a straightaway par 3, approximately 170 yards in length, climbing gradually uphill so that the green is elevated slightly above the tee-box. It is a tiny green, bunkered left and right and shaped somewhat like an upturned bowl. There is, to the untrained eye, no real danger at hand. Nothing to trouble an equable mind. Par seems a virtual certainty. To my knowledgeable sensibilities, however, arriving now at the tee, danger cried out all about. The terrain drops sharply off to the right past the bunker, inviting a wild slice into oblivion. To the left of the green crouches a dense, gloomy carpet of matted gorse, purgatory to a hook. Beyond the green runs a low stone wall, with a narrow gap which leads to the fifth tee box. A veritable multitude of subtle perils elude the careless eye. In days gone by I had encountered and been undone by each and every one of them, however, and discerned them clearly before me now; only rarely had I enjoyed any success on this sly fourth hole.
I was caddying for Beeker once, when he flared his tee shot into the deep declivity to the right; then yanked his second ball far left into the thick gorse, from where he hacked it over the green into the trap. By which point his face was bright red as if badly wind-burned, the way it might look if he had just returned from a grueling Arctic exploration, or spent a day on a sun-scorched beach, buried in sand up to his neck. Two blasts from the bunker later he was finally on the green, whereupon he four-putted, spun fast around two times like a discus-thrower, then hurled his putter high and far into the blackness of the gulley, accompanied by an extended epistle of the most foul words, while I watched mute and wide-eyed.
For some reason, as I now prepared to hit my tee shot, this calamitous incident oozed to the surface of my mind, in a kind of technicolor, as it might appear in a movie.
I glanced at Hugh, who was lifting his face up slightly into the breeze, his eyes half closed.
“I’ll be glad to wait if you feel like a nap,” I said.
“I’m just not sure I want to watch,” he replied after a brief pause, eyes still half-closed, enjoying the peaceful currents.
The problem was that the fourth hole might as well have been custom-designed for my irritating companion. It required nothing more than a straight shot of middling distance; which, of course, perfectly described his prosaic, uninspiring game. But not mine, not by any stretch of the imagination. I therefore decided this particular hole did not offer the best venue for a penetrating retort on my part; better to tiptoe humbly past the fourth hole, I concluded, and skewer him later on one of the long par fives. I ignored his provocative commentary, therefore, and concentrated on club selection.