Walter Hagen, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, and Ben Hogan. I didnât hear my name come up when they were drinking to things. Thatâs around the time I started noticing that something was stuck in my throat, though I didnât realize that it was a golf ball until after Daddy died.
âHey, Daddy? How come you havenât said anything about Uncle Luke? Heâs in Georgia. Maybe he could help.â The last day Uncle Luke was with us, he and Daddy had a terrible fight. Woke me up in the middle of the night with the yelling and pounding and breaking of things. The next morning Mama drove Uncle Luke to the bus station, and I hadnât heard his name mentioned since. But it didnât make much sense to hold a grudge in purgatory.
âHeâs right in Augusta. You know that. And weâre not getting help from him. You hear me? You stay away from Luke.â
âYes, sir.â I knew that voice. That was his shut-down voice. It had an edge and a warning in it not to push him. I wondered where heâd gotten that voice from and if Iâd inherit that from him along with his looks.
âHey, donât you get quiet on me, son,â Daddy said. âI know that tone in your voice. Thatâs your âIâm giving up on youâ voice. Youâve got more fight in you than that, donât you? Donât go getting upset when people talk hard to you, your father included. You curl up like a flower at night the second you get told something you donât want to hear, boy.â
Heâs right , said a crow flying overhead. Thatâs just what you do .
âWhy donât you tell me something about yourself,â Daddy said. âIt takes an awful lot out of me to talk.â
I stopped walking. The golf ball in my throat got real heavy. Who has a father who says something like âTell me about yourself,â like they were strangers instead of part of each other? Then again, I couldnât recall my daddy ever asking me to tell him anything other than what heâd already taught me.
âOkay.â
My childhood was flooded with names of golfer people I didnât give a flip about, so I figured Iâd do him a favor and skip over names. I didnât think heâd want to hear about nice Miss Stone and mean Mr. Underwood and pretty Erin Courtney. I didnât tell him how my best friend was MayTalbot, or at least she had been, or how there was an unofficial Negro lunch table at our school, or how May had spoken little since she started coming to Hilltop Primary and even less since Mr. Talbotâs barbecue business burned to the ground around the time Bobby Jones died last December. I didnât tell him that Iâd been mourning someone important, too, or how part of me knew it was my fault that Iâd lost her.
I didnât think heâd noticed that I never hung around with Bill Sweeney or Davey Burr or John Conner anymore, since they were all at the private school now. Their parents didnât want them mixing with me anymore. I stopped by to play when I saw them all over at Daveyâs house one day, but Bill shook his head and pointed at me to go home. I might have colored germs on me from staying at the integrated school, heâd said.
And I knew for a fact Daddy wouldnât want to know the names Iâd been called for talking to myself and drawing pictures of trees outside school windows.
So I told him about how some boy had brought a salamander to school and put it right on a teacherâs head, and the teacher didnât even notice because she had so much hairspray on. I told him how the halls and classrooms were less crowded this year, how the girlsâ bathroom toilet overflowed one day and flooded the hallway, and how the principal, Mr. Bottom, had come in one day to find his office covered in toilet paper.
He chuckled a few times and didnât once interrupt to tell me how the legendary golfer Bobby Jones had said that some
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