into a wall and crashed like a load onto the floor. Golf balls! Half a dozen were scattered across the carpet, with a whiskey glass set on its side like a target.
Someone had been putting. My eyes just had time to spot the blade setting against the wall, a Victor East putter exactly like Junah’s “Safecracker,” and then a sound like a cry came from the room straight across. I peered in and there in the darkness was Junah, half naked on the bed, with two women pawing and grinding all over him.
I don’t believe I had ever beheld a grown woman’s buttocks before. Certainly I had never witnessed that peculiar swiveling, gyrating motion or heard those urgent, throat-catching gasps. Junah was half out of his tux, with the one girl on top of him and the other kissing him from the side, while his hands switched back and forth between both of them. He didn’t see me, none of them did, their eyeballs were rolled back so far into the sockets. There were empty whiskey bottles on the carpet; the whole room stunk of alcohol and cigarettes. I had never witnessed a scene so degrading or so utterly devoid of dignity. Part of me wanted to throw up; another wanted to charge in and give all three of them the thrashing they so richly deserved. I stood there, dumbstruck and paralyzed, when a quiet voice spoke from behind me.
“Don’t think too unkindly of him for this.”
I spun. Bagger Vance stood there. Taller even than I remembered and cold solid sober, with that same poise and gravity radiating from him so powerfully. He put a hand on my shoulder and gave an odd smile. “Think you can handle that big persimmon in there?” His gesture indicated Junah’s oversized deep-faced driver, leaning against a chair just inside the room. “Grab it and the putter, we’ve got work to do.”
Vance said nothing more, simply turned, scooped the balls from the carpet and strode toward the service exit. I grabbed the driver and sprung after him, out the door and across a rear grass parking area. Bagger Vance strode powerfully ahead, past the last parked car and buggy and on out into the dark dripping duneland. I looked back; the lights and music from the ballrooms were dropping farther and farther into the distance, we were out there in the night with nothing but the dunes and the raw black sky. “Where in the world are we going?” I gasped, breathless, when I finally caught up.
Vance turned off the sand, onto a narrow track that led to an open fairway. “To walk the course,” he said.
Ten
I T WAS PAST ONE O’CLOCK and by no means warm. The wind cut sharp and damp off the Atlantic, making me shiver. “You’re cold,” Bagger Vance said. “No, I like it,” I told him. He smiled and again put a hand on my shoulder. Immediately I was glowing like a furnace. Even when he took his hand away, the flush remained, coursing powerfully through the bloodstream, warming me to my toes! “How did you do that?”
“Stop here,” he said, indicating a level spot on the first fairway. “Let me see you take a stride.”
It was becoming clear that Bagger Vance never answered a question directly. He always diverted you, or changed the subject, and yet you felt that he was answering somehow, in some delayed-action elliptical style of his own.
I took a few strides under his critical eye. A little longer, he directed…shorter now, that’s it. One stride equals one yard.
We began pacing off yardage. From the middle of the second tee to carry the fairway bunker on the right: 243 yards. From the hummock fronting the sixth green to the upper level of the green itself: 41 yards. Vance took it all in. As I strode off, earnestly pacing some yardage he had directed, he would linger in a greenside bunker, wriggling his soles down into the sand to sense the firmness; then, as he raked the area flat, nodding to himself as he filed the information away. He kept it all in his head, no notes. On the seventh and ninth greens, he had me putt balls across the
Someone had been putting. My eyes just had time to spot the blade setting against the wall, a Victor East putter exactly like Junah’s “Safecracker,” and then a sound like a cry came from the room straight across. I peered in and there in the darkness was Junah, half naked on the bed, with two women pawing and grinding all over him.
I don’t believe I had ever beheld a grown woman’s buttocks before. Certainly I had never witnessed that peculiar swiveling, gyrating motion or heard those urgent, throat-catching gasps. Junah was half out of his tux, with the one girl on top of him and the other kissing him from the side, while his hands switched back and forth between both of them. He didn’t see me, none of them did, their eyeballs were rolled back so far into the sockets. There were empty whiskey bottles on the carpet; the whole room stunk of alcohol and cigarettes. I had never witnessed a scene so degrading or so utterly devoid of dignity. Part of me wanted to throw up; another wanted to charge in and give all three of them the thrashing they so richly deserved. I stood there, dumbstruck and paralyzed, when a quiet voice spoke from behind me.
“Don’t think too unkindly of him for this.”
I spun. Bagger Vance stood there. Taller even than I remembered and cold solid sober, with that same poise and gravity radiating from him so powerfully. He put a hand on my shoulder and gave an odd smile. “Think you can handle that big persimmon in there?” His gesture indicated Junah’s oversized deep-faced driver, leaning against a chair just inside the room. “Grab it and the putter, we’ve got work to do.”
Vance said nothing more, simply turned, scooped the balls from the carpet and strode toward the service exit. I grabbed the driver and sprung after him, out the door and across a rear grass parking area. Bagger Vance strode powerfully ahead, past the last parked car and buggy and on out into the dark dripping duneland. I looked back; the lights and music from the ballrooms were dropping farther and farther into the distance, we were out there in the night with nothing but the dunes and the raw black sky. “Where in the world are we going?” I gasped, breathless, when I finally caught up.
Vance turned off the sand, onto a narrow track that led to an open fairway. “To walk the course,” he said.
Ten
I T WAS PAST ONE O’CLOCK and by no means warm. The wind cut sharp and damp off the Atlantic, making me shiver. “You’re cold,” Bagger Vance said. “No, I like it,” I told him. He smiled and again put a hand on my shoulder. Immediately I was glowing like a furnace. Even when he took his hand away, the flush remained, coursing powerfully through the bloodstream, warming me to my toes! “How did you do that?”
“Stop here,” he said, indicating a level spot on the first fairway. “Let me see you take a stride.”
It was becoming clear that Bagger Vance never answered a question directly. He always diverted you, or changed the subject, and yet you felt that he was answering somehow, in some delayed-action elliptical style of his own.
I took a few strides under his critical eye. A little longer, he directed…shorter now, that’s it. One stride equals one yard.
We began pacing off yardage. From the middle of the second tee to carry the fairway bunker on the right: 243 yards. From the hummock fronting the sixth green to the upper level of the green itself: 41 yards. Vance took it all in. As I strode off, earnestly pacing some yardage he had directed, he would linger in a greenside bunker, wriggling his soles down into the sand to sense the firmness; then, as he raked the area flat, nodding to himself as he filed the information away. He kept it all in his head, no notes. On the seventh and ninth greens, he had me putt balls across the
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