“Even all,” Stu Finch yelled exultantly.
“Got to have a play-off,” Ed DeRider said. “Looks crowded over on the first. How about the tenth. Suit everybody?”
“Okay by me,” Mike said. Duncan saw the knots of muscle standing out at the corners of Mike’s jaw, the muscle bulge at the temples.
The tenth is a slight dogleg to the left, mostly up hill, 415 yards, par four. Again Duncan drove with the cloob. The ball streaked off, climbing as before, fading toward the left. It cleared the trees nicely, dropped out of sight. Mike drove. His drive was almost a carbon copy of Duncan’s. Ed and Stu batted slow rollers down the fairway. They all walked forward, waiting for Stu’s and Ed’s second shots. Both were surprisingly respectable. Mike walked on ahead. Duncan walked with Stu. They went around the corner. Mike was standing in the middle, scratching his head.
“Here’s mine,” he called, “but I don’t see yours, Dunc.”
They all hunted. It was Mike who found it. The ball was nearly buried in the soft ground, just the top of it showing.
“Tough,” Mike said. “Must have hit a soft spot.”
Duncan looked at the ball and then glanced at Mike. He could almost see the cleat marks around the ball, and he was just as certain that Mike had stepped on it as he was that he couldn’t accuse him. Mike was leaving nothing to chance.
Duncan felt an enormous anger. He took the cloob and braced himself.
“Wait!” Stu said, “Better use an iron on that, partner.”
Duncan merely set his jaw and took a mighty swing. There was a chunking sound and a sharp crack, intermingled. The aged shaft splintered and the club head, with six inches of shaft protruding from it, bounded over and over, coming to rest twenty yards away. Duncan looked down at his feet for the ball. He looked at the others. They were all staring rigidly at the green.
“Six inches from the cup,” Ed DeRider whispered.
Mike took a long time over his. It ended up on the green, at least twenty feet from the cup. Stu and Ed took their second shots. There were four balls on the green.
“We’ll give you that one, Dunc,” Ed DeRider said. “That gives you a three. Pick it up.”
Duncan picked it up. Mike was away. He went back and squatted and examined the line. He fingered the grass. He removed an almost invisible twig in the path of the ball. Then he addressed the ball. Long seconds passed. The trembling started at the head of the putter, went up the shaft. Mike was as tight as a violin’s E string.
Duncan knew that to Mike the hole seemed to be fifty yards away, and the size of a cavity in a molar. At last Mike made a jerky stab at the ball. It stopped six feet beyond the hole. Ed DeRider holed out for a par four, the first, he yelled, that he’d ever gotten on the tenth. Stu missed his putt, took a five. A five and a three made eight. DeRider already had a four. Mike lay three. If he could sink his six footer, the hole would be halved.
Again he addressed the ball. This time it was worse. Mike looked physically ill.
“Thought you thrived on pressure, boy,” Ed DeRider said jovially.
“Shut up!” Mike rasped. DeRider flushed.
Duncan stood holding the parts of the broken club. By tremendous effort, Mike forced himself to loosen up. He stroked the ball. It trundled happily toward the hole, caught the rim, went off at right angles and stopped three inches away.
Slowly Mike stood up. He took a deep breath. He smiled. He stuck his hand out to Duncan. “Congratulations, baby,” he said.
May sat frowning at Duncan. Duncan paced back and forth, waving his arms. “I tell you it wouldn’t stay in the bag. It kept jumping out at me.”
“Now Duncan! Please, darling. A good night’s sleep.”
“And then I couldn’t do anything wrong with it. A magic cloob... I mean club. That’s why Uncle Angus called up.”
“Dear,” she said gently, “you have played a lot of golf, even though you don’t like it, and I’ve heard you say that if a person just relaxes and lets the club head do the work, it—”
“Do anything, May, but please don’t try to humor me.”
“Now honestly, Duncan, don’t you think that if you just happened to imagine that there was something supernatural about the club, you’d play better with it?”
“Maybe. Maybe. All I know is that it kept jumping out of the bag, demanding to be used. Explain that. Go ahead. Explain it.”
“Hey, Mom! Look, Mom!” the eldest said from the doorway.
“Go away,” Duncan said, “Your mother and I are having a discussion.”
“Hey, look! I found my BB rifle spring. I just now remembered I hid it in your golf bag, Dad. I’ve been hunting and hunting for it, all over.”
“Go away, young man. I told you... What did you say about my golf bag?”
“My spring was in there, Dad. I just told you. I didn’t want Betty messing with it while I was at the movies.”
The eldest went away. Duncan sat down and glowered at the face of his wife, contorted with revolting mirth. “It... it kept... jumping out at you,” she gasped.
Finally he found it possible to laugh with her.
On Monday Duncan was preoccupied at breakfast. May went to the doorway as he left. She saw him stick the clubs in the car.
“What are you doing, dear?” she asked.
He answered with enormous casualness. “Thought I might stop at a driving range on the way home tonight.”
She waved at him and went slowly back for her second coffee, thinking deep thoughts about the mysterious ways of man.
