Read Online Fast Greens by Turk Pipkin - Free Book Online

Coach White gave Tommy Story one end of a long tug-of-war rope and sent him to the water meter at the street. Another kid took the other end over to the water cutoff at the side of the school, and they stretched the rope tight to find the run of the school’s main water line. The rope crossed the exact spot indicated by the old man’s doodlebug. He’d found water all right, a pipe full of it. Even the sixth graders were impressed. And with a branch from a beech tree, he told us, he could just as easily find oil.
    Now March was telling me he could find oil with his snoot. He claimed that traces of iron inside our noses act as a compass—like a salmon’s homing device—but due to evolution most people no longer notice.
    â€œI’m just less evolved,” boasted March. “To me the smell of oil is as strong as rhubarb pie.”
    A geologist is a great one for maps. March soon covered the one of West Texas with an old chart of Scotland; then he carefully traced their journey from Edinburgh around to the north side of the Firth of Fife, past the hamlets of Alloa, Dunfermline, Pittenween and Crail.
    They were in the ancient town of St. Andrews when March finally picked up the scent. Triangulating with his nose and the very same map he was showing me, March got a bearing from the south of the ancient town and another from the north. On his last day of searching he planned to find a third and final bearing from within the boundaries of the town itself.
    â€œI was so excited,” March told me, “that Roscoe could hardly keep up.”
    Still waiting at the third tee for the mower to finish, I heard a second, more abbreviated version of the journey and how it led to the building of a golf course. But Roscoe’s recollections were not so pleasant.
    â€œIt was cold as a well-digger’s ass that day,” Roscoe said. “Which was about the warmest it got the whole time we were there. Between my bum knee and three layers of wool I could hardly move, but March just hopped an eight-hundred-year-old stone fence like it was built yesterday. He waded across a road full of puddles and strolled onto a big green meadow that stretched all the way down to the waves. Then March sticks the ol’ sniffer into the air and says he smells oil, lots of it!
    â€œâ€˜How lots’? I ask him, and he says, ‘More than you can even imagine.’ ‘Well, where is it?’ I say. And this joker points straight out at the cold ocean.
    â€œHell, he was pointing at the North Sea, and I knew we couldn’t drill out there! Now here it is twenty-five years later and next week I’m going to the North Sea to drill for that same damn oil. When it makes me rich, I guess I’ll have the last laugh, huh?”
    â€œWell, Roscoe,” March said. “The way I see it, you already got the last laugh. Don’t you remember whiffing the ball?”
    â€œOh, hell, March, don’t tell that again!”
    Suddenly impatient, Roscoe began to yell at the greenskeeper.
    â€œHey, Manuel! Manuel Labor! We’re waiting here like a bunch of hogs for slop. Fore, goddammit, fore!”
    Over the loud roar of the mower, the man could hear nothing and just kept mowing. The course was, after all, closed for the day. The fact that March had slipped the pro a hundred bucks to let us play didn’t mean anything to the guy who did the real work.
    So Roscoe hobbled back to his cart and March told us about the big whiff.
    â€œWe’re standing there staring at the North Sea when suddenly … Yeow ! Roscoe grabs his shoulder and lets out a yelp like you never heard before. I think he’s been shot for trespassing. We look around for our attackers and all we see is this odd white ball laying by us on the ground.
    â€œâ€˜What the hell is that?’ says Roscoe. ‘Some kind of aigg?’ And I swear he turns his gaze straight up, searching for some giant Scottish bird. Hell,