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we were just a couple of hillbillies, but even I knew what a golf ball was. I knew St. Andrews was the spiritual home to the oddball game that had swept the States during the twenties. I just thought the game was a waste of time, but hell, so is life.”
    â€œThat’s the first damn thing you said was true,” hollered Beast, who was pissing loudly into a growing puddle just off the tee.
    March ignored him. “But Jesus, to hear Roscoe howl, to see that purple bruise, I was impressed. The ball must have been struck with an incredible force. And sure enough, out of the mist came four Scotsmen dressed like they were heading to church. And tagging along behind them were four little tykes with bags on their shoulders.”
    â€œCaddies!” I blurted out like some damn fool.
    March gave me a look, then he continued.
    â€œRoscoe, doing a little St. Vitus’ dance with the pellet in his hand, is about to spew some vile Mescalero curse on the Scotsmen when they beat him to the punch. ‘Ha’e you no sense, lad? Ye mooved me ball froom its prooper place. Are ye trying to spoeyl me game, or are ye merely daft, eh?’”
    It was a fair to middling Scottish accent that March affected, but Roscoe wanted to get to the point.
    â€œI threatened to turn his hide bass-ackwards, that’s what I did!”
    â€œYeah, Roscoe, you were always quite a scrapper. So when the Scotsman figures out Roscoe wants to fight, he starts in with the brogue about how he don’t ‘ken the coostoms’ of our own land, but there in Links Land gentlemen settle their differences with a match of ‘gowf.’ But of course, the fella says it wouldn’t be fair for a seasoned ‘gowfer’ to complete against a ‘rank rookie’ like Roscoe!”
    Just telling the story is beginning to make March snicker.
    â€œâ€˜Rookie!’ shouts Roscoe. ‘Give me one of them sticks! How hard can the damned game be?’
    â€œSo they show him the basics of the overlapping grip, and we watch the Scotsman hit a shot that bounces onto what I figure must be the target, a big green area adorned by two waving flags.”
    â€œ Two flags?” I ask.
    â€œAt the Old Course,” Sandy had to explain to me, “some of the holes going out share big double greens with holes coming in.”
    I shrugged; how was I supposed to know?
    â€œSo Roscoe takes a mighty swing at the ball, almost drilling himself into the ground. He looks toward the green, then at the sky, and finally at his feet. Ignominies of callous fate, curses of obdurate execration, O scourging plagues of malediction-and goddammit too! He’d missed it.”
    â€œBig deal,” says Roscoe from the cart. “So I missed it.”
    â€œYeah, Roscoe, but you swung harder when you missed it the second time. I lost count about fifteen swings later when I fell on the ground laughing with the Scotsmen. Finally Roscoe hits the ball for the first time, a little top that sends it maybe twenty feet ahead. ‘There!’ he says. ‘I told you I could do it.’”
    â€œTell ’em the rest of it!” Roscoe demanded. “I learned to hit it. I learned in one day.”
    â€œWell, you stayed up all night to do it,” countered March.
    Even Fromholz took an interest in the story. “Sounds like you were hooked solid Pops, hooked through the gills.”
    â€œWe were both hooked,” said March. “And that’s how we came back from Scotland more interested in golf than oil. Since there wasn’t a course within a hundred miles of home, we built one ourselves. Which brings us back to the deed. Whadaya say, Roscoe?” March pushed again. “Do we bet the course?”
    â€œNot a chance. There’s still oil under that land.”
    â€œRoscoe, it’s all played out,” insisted March. “Drained! Sucked dry! ¡Perdido! ¡Ya no hay más! All that’s left is my