“So what are we supposed to do here?” the fat man said.
Mr. Packard said, “I think I’ll wait. I think I’ll sit here and wait until somebody comes and takes care of this man’s body.”
The ambulance rolled over the hill with the light flashing but no siren, leaving tire marks in the fairway. The members wouldn’t like it when they found out who it was for. Mr. Packard stood close and watched them load Florida into the back, and then closed the back door himself, making sure it was shut tight. Nobody wanted to see Florida slide back out onto the golf course.
The fat man carried his own bag awhile and then quit at the turn, said he’d lost his timing waiting for the ambulance. “Maybe I can get a couple of players, we can come back out Thursday or Friday,” he said.
Players
meant gamblers. Brookline itself had the oldest membership of any course in Southern California, average seventy-three years old, and the richest, and probably the cheapest. You didn’t commonly see big stakes unless somebody brought in outside money.
Mr. Packard didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He just appear tired of the whole situation. “Whatever you want,” he said.
The fat man went into his pocket and came out with a roll of bills. There were rules against gambling at Brookline, but then, there were rules against everything. Probably against carrying guns, if anybody thought of it yet. The only rules that counted, though, were who could play and what they could wear. And time, of course. Time was important. “What do I owe you?” he said.
Mr. Packard looked away like it didn’t matter. Like after what happened, he didn’t even know.
“I lost the side and four presses, right?” the fat man said, flipping through the bills.
“Five,” Mr. Packard said.
The fat man looked at him a moment, then flipped two more bills off the end of the roll and pulled all the bills he had counted away from the rest of the money. It reminded Train of a card trick, the way he handled his money, and he saw that the fat man did a lot of business out of his pocket. He handed the bills to Mr. Packard, who never even looked to make sure it was right.
“Maybe next time we won’t be sitting around forty-five minutes while somebody dies,” the fat man said.
Mr. Packard said, “He looked like he was dying as fast as he could.” The fat man didn’t look up at that, couldn’t meet his gaze, and Mr. Packard chuckled again and put the money in Train’s hand.
“Give this to the old man’s wife, would you?” he said, still staring at the fat man.
Train looked at the money, felt it sliding out his hand. Twenty-dollar bills everywhere. The fat man was also looking, trying to sort out the exact nature of this new insult. Mr. Packard waited him out, enjoying it again, in no hurry at all.
The fat man shook his head. “Shit,” he said. Like he just saw life’s grand design, as often happened in golf. “Good luck on that.”
“Keep five for yourself,” Mr. Packard said to Train, “and see that she gets the rest.”
Train folded the money over on itself so it would fit in his pocket. It felt as thick as a sandwich. The fat man said “shit” again, and then he laughed in that bitter way they sometimes did after they lost money. Mr. Packard said, “What is that, Pink, three hundred?”
“Three fifty,” the fat man said, as if that was a much different thing than just losing three. “A hundred for the side, fifty a press . . .”
“All right, fat man, I’ll bet you the three fifty back that—” He stopped for a moment and looked at Train. “What was your name?”
“Lionel Walk, Jr.,” Train said.
“I’ll bet you the three fifty back that Mr. Walk here does the right thing.”
The fat man looked at him a minute, trying to figure it out. “Fuck it, Miller,” he said finally, “the old man probably didn’t even have a wife.”
Train cleaned the clubs and set them out on the drop stand near the driveway; then he walked down the path past the machine shed and the storage barn to the tin-roof caddy’s shed and bought himself a grape Nehi out of the machine. He sat down in the corner with the nine iron that he’d found in the reeds near the pond a year ago, on the same hole where Florida just died. It was a Tommy Armour autograph, with a thin blade and a smooth, hard grip. The shaft was spotted with rust, so he knew it already been there awhile when he found it. He played with it on Mondays, but took it to work every day, took it home every night, not wanting to get on the bus anymore without something in his hands. There were people living in cardboard boxes— or garages or tents— all over Darktown and Watts who took what they could.
He held the club about halfway up the shaft and absently began to bouce a ball off the blade. Straight up and down, then spinning it one way, then the other. He left the Nehi on the bench between himself and another caddy named Plural Lincoln, who was referred to as No-Tank by the other caddies when he wasn’t on the premises. Plural had little broke-looking hands hanging at the end of his huge arms. Little bitty feet too. He minded his own business and smelled like fresh laundry, but nobody took his good nature for granted.
Even in the morning, when the room was crowded before anybody went out yet, he had that bench to himself. The only soul would sit down next to him was Train. Plural looked over now and noticed the Nehi, picked it up and had a swallow.
The ball was out of round, and Train could feel the shape of it right through the shaft of the club, as if he was tossing it up and down in his hand. He sensed from bounce to bounce which side of the ball would land on the face of the club when it came back. He hardly had to look.
He sat in the corner with his Nehi and his golf club, Plural a yard away, and the other caddies played cards or slept. Except for the ball and the nine iron, the caddy room was in slow motion, like it always was until the phone rang, and then Sweet would answer it and look over to see who he had and what shape they were in, and decide who went out to the first tee. For those few seconds it took to make up his mind, everyone sat up like they was posing for a picture.
Sweet had a sign on the wire mesh that said he was superintendent of caddies, and an identical one on his space in the parking lot. He had a hair-trigger temper and fingernails as long as a hairdresser. He knew all the members by name, but not by their faces, and remembered which ones would give a caddy a decent tip and which ones couldn’t bring themself to do it. He had a diamond set in one of his front teeth and drove a three-year-old yellow Cadillac that he parked in his reserved spot next to the superintendent of greens. He had once been incarcerated at the state prison at Vacaville, for the criminally insane. He was light-skinned and handsome, and people whispered that he had a thousand women in his book, that he even slipped in and out the sheets with the members’ wives.
People said he liked the old ones best.
He kept behind his wire cage all day, and padlocked it at night. The lock wasn’t much, but nobody had ever broke in to see what was there. Once you crossed Sweet like that, you might as well look for other work.
Train sat in the corner, thinking. He didn’t know how to find Florida’s wife, or even if he had one. He didn’t know where he lived, and he didn’t know his real name, the one that would be in the telephone book. He looked at Sweet, sitting behind his cage smoking a Lucky Strike, his eyes half-closed. A contented man. Train didn’t want him paying attention to him now, holding all that cash, but he was the only one who would know Florida’s address, or even the family name.
Train put the club down on the bench and walked over to the cage. Sweet raised his eyes, and Train had a distinct, last-minute thought not to let him find out what was in his pocket. That was followed by another thought, just as distinct, that somehow he already knew.
“So, man,” he said, “Florida just up and died.”
“Yes he did,” Train said. “He passed away.”
Sweet smiled at that, a secret smile. “Did he said he done
eviscerated
when he went?”
“He didn’t say nothing,” Train said. He decided not to ask Sweet about Florida’s name, and turned to sit back down.
“What is it y’all wanted?” Sweet said behind him.
Train stopped, didn’t look back there. “Nothing,” he said.
“You just come over here to pass the time.”
Train didn’t answer. He felt the money in his pocket, and wished he’d put it in his sock, where it wouldn’t show.
“Nigger, I ast you what it was.”
Train turned back around. “It was did you had his address,” he said.
“Who?”
“Florida.”
Sweet studied him, putting it together. “What you want that for?”
“I got something for his people,” Train said.
“What’s that?”
Everything he said made Sweet more curious. “Something from the man he was toting,” he said.
Sweet stood up, and that was a sure sign of trouble. He avoided movement, went all day usually without standing up. He wanted something, he sent a caddy for it, usually one named Arthur, a coal black Oklahoma boy about Train’s age, and twice as big. Arthur’s flesh moved like the tides beneath his T-shirt, and he smelled like baby powder and never spoke to nobody but Sweet. Everybody was afraid of Arthur except Plural and Sweet himself.
“Let me see that,” Sweet said.
“It’s for Florida’s people,” he said, “for his wife.”
“Let me see,” Sweet said again, and stood by the opening in the wire cage, waiting. The other caddies were watching, and Train went into his pocket, felt the crumbs in there from some crackers he’d brought to eat that morning and crushed on the run to the clubhouse, and then the ridge of bills. There was nothing for it now but to take them out, and he did that, and cracker crumbs spilled down over his pants legs and shoes.
Train passed the bills through the opening in the cage. Out on the edge of his vision, Train saw Plural stand halfway up, looking at the money, probably trying to remember if some of it was supposed to be his. A long time ago Plural was a knockout artist, twenty-some fights in a row, and then they moved him up to the Hollywood Legion Stadium and he run into a different class of fighter, one that had good legs and wind and took him past six rounds, and that’s how Plural Lincoln found out there wasn’t any seventh round in him. No matter what he did, how far he ran, how long he trained, six was as far as he could go. These days he sometimes sat on the floor and argued with people that wasn’t there over his share of the purse. You naturally knew not to move suddenly when he was like that. Other times he was like an old man who seen everything twice and decided it was all funny. Sweet always checked to see which Plural he had on his hands before he sent him out. However he was, though, when people had to walk by, they always give it enough room that he couldn’t reach out and grab them.
Sweet counted the money with his left hand, moving the bills back one at a time from the roll, keeping track in his head.
“I’ll take care of this,” he said when he’d finished. Plural sat back against the locker, no longer interested. He picked up the Nehi again and had another drink.
“It’s for Florida’s people,” Train said.
