Read Online Fancy Pants by Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Tags: Contemporary
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Dallie sitting behind the wheel of the '73 Buick
he now drove and wondered how all those years had flown by so quickly.
They'd played a lot of golf courses since the day they'd met at the
Texaco station. He chuckled softly to himself as he remembered the
first golf course.
The two of them hadn't traveled for more than a few hours that first
day when it became evident that they didn't have much more than the
price of a full tank of gas between them. However, fleeing the
wrath of
Jaycee Beaudine hadn't made Dallie forget to toss a few battered clubs
into the trunk before
he hotfooted it out of Houston, so he began
looking around for signs that would lead them to the next country club.
As he turned into a tree-lined drive, Skeet glanced over at him. "Does
it occur to you that we don't
exactly look like country club material,
what with this stolen Studebaker and your busted-up face?"
Dallie's swollen mouth twisted in a cocky grin. "That kind of stuff
don't count for shit when you can hit
a five-iron two hundred twenty
yards into the wind and land the ball on a nickel."
He made Skeet empty out his pockets, took their total assets of twelve
dollars and sixty-four cents, walked up to three charter members, and
suggested they play a friendly little game at ten dollars a hole. The
charter members, Dallie declared magnanimously, could take their
electric carts and their oversize leather bags stuffed full of Wilson
irons and MacGregor woods. Dallie announced that he'd be happy as
a
clam walking along with only his five-iron and his second-best Titleist
ball.
The members looked at the scruffy-handsome kid who had three inches of
bony ankle showing above
his sneaker tops and shook their heads.
Dallie grinned, told them they were yellow-bellied, shit-stompin',
worthless excuses for women and suggested they raise the stakes to
twenty dollars a hole, exactly seven dollars and thirty-six cents more
than he had in his back pocket.
The members pushed him toward the first tee and told him they'd stomp
his smart ass right across the border into Oklahoma.
Dallie and Skeet ate T-bones that night and slept at the Holiday Inn.
* * *
They reached Jacksonville with thirty minutes to spare before Dallie
had to tee off for the qualifying round of the 1974 Orange Blossom
Open. That same afternoon, a Jacksonville sportswriter out to make
a
name for himself unearthed the staggering fact that Dallas Beaudine,
with his country-boy grammar
and redneck politics, held a bachelor's
degree in English literature. Two evenings later the sportswriter
finally managed to track Dallie to Luella's, a dirty concrete structure
with peeling pink paint and plastic flamingos located not far from the
Gator Bowl, and confronted him with the information as if he'd just
uncovered political graft.
Dallie looked up from his glass of Stroh's, shrugged, and said that
since his degree came from Texas A&M, he guessed it didn't really
count for much.
It was exactly this kind of irreverence that had kept sports reporters
coming back for more ever since Dallie had begun to play on the pro
tour two years before. Dallie could keep them entertained for hours
with generally unquotable quotes about the state of the Union, athletes
who sold out to Hollywood, and women's "ass-stompin'" liberation. He
was a new generation of good ol' boy—movie star handsome,
self-deprecating, and a lot smarter than he wanted to let on. Dallie
Beaudine was about as close as you could get to perfect magazine copy,
except for one thing.
He blew the big ones.
After having been declared the pro tour's new golden boy, he had
committed the nearly unpardonable
sin of not winning a single important
tournament. If he played a two-bit tournament on the outskirts
of
Apopka, Florida, or Irving, Texas, he would win it at eighteen under
par, but at the Bob Hope or the Kemper Open, he might not even make the
cut. The
sportswriters kept asking their readers the same question: When was
Dallas Beaudine going to
he now drove and wondered how all those years had flown by so quickly.
They'd played a lot of golf courses since the day they'd met at the
Texaco station. He chuckled softly to himself as he remembered the
first golf course.
The two of them hadn't traveled for more than a few hours that first
day when it became evident that they didn't have much more than the
price of a full tank of gas between them. However, fleeing the
wrath of
Jaycee Beaudine hadn't made Dallie forget to toss a few battered clubs
into the trunk before
he hotfooted it out of Houston, so he began
looking around for signs that would lead them to the next country club.
As he turned into a tree-lined drive, Skeet glanced over at him. "Does
it occur to you that we don't
exactly look like country club material,
what with this stolen Studebaker and your busted-up face?"
Dallie's swollen mouth twisted in a cocky grin. "That kind of stuff
don't count for shit when you can hit
a five-iron two hundred twenty
yards into the wind and land the ball on a nickel."
He made Skeet empty out his pockets, took their total assets of twelve
dollars and sixty-four cents, walked up to three charter members, and
suggested they play a friendly little game at ten dollars a hole. The
charter members, Dallie declared magnanimously, could take their
electric carts and their oversize leather bags stuffed full of Wilson
irons and MacGregor woods. Dallie announced that he'd be happy as
a
clam walking along with only his five-iron and his second-best Titleist
ball.
The members looked at the scruffy-handsome kid who had three inches of
bony ankle showing above
his sneaker tops and shook their heads.
Dallie grinned, told them they were yellow-bellied, shit-stompin',
worthless excuses for women and suggested they raise the stakes to
twenty dollars a hole, exactly seven dollars and thirty-six cents more
than he had in his back pocket.
The members pushed him toward the first tee and told him they'd stomp
his smart ass right across the border into Oklahoma.
Dallie and Skeet ate T-bones that night and slept at the Holiday Inn.
* * *
They reached Jacksonville with thirty minutes to spare before Dallie
had to tee off for the qualifying round of the 1974 Orange Blossom
Open. That same afternoon, a Jacksonville sportswriter out to make
a
name for himself unearthed the staggering fact that Dallas Beaudine,
with his country-boy grammar
and redneck politics, held a bachelor's
degree in English literature. Two evenings later the sportswriter
finally managed to track Dallie to Luella's, a dirty concrete structure
with peeling pink paint and plastic flamingos located not far from the
Gator Bowl, and confronted him with the information as if he'd just
uncovered political graft.
Dallie looked up from his glass of Stroh's, shrugged, and said that
since his degree came from Texas A&M, he guessed it didn't really
count for much.
It was exactly this kind of irreverence that had kept sports reporters
coming back for more ever since Dallie had begun to play on the pro
tour two years before. Dallie could keep them entertained for hours
with generally unquotable quotes about the state of the Union, athletes
who sold out to Hollywood, and women's "ass-stompin'" liberation. He
was a new generation of good ol' boy—movie star handsome,
self-deprecating, and a lot smarter than he wanted to let on. Dallie
Beaudine was about as close as you could get to perfect magazine copy,
except for one thing.
He blew the big ones.
After having been declared the pro tour's new golden boy, he had
committed the nearly unpardonable
sin of not winning a single important
tournament. If he played a two-bit tournament on the outskirts
of
Apopka, Florida, or Irving, Texas, he would win it at eighteen under
par, but at the Bob Hope or the Kemper Open, he might not even make the
cut. The
sportswriters kept asking their readers the same question: When was
Dallas Beaudine going to
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