According to my own pocket watch, no more than five or six minutes had passed since we had first entered the 19th Hole. The rain against the window’s convex and mullioned and glass window came in what now appeared to be vascular or peristaltic ‘pulses’ or ‘waves,’ and during the brief, rhythmic lulls or troughs of these, one could make out the Eighteenth fairway’s ‘dog leg’’s copse of trees being bent and wrung by the storm’s violent winds, as well as tiny and fore-shortened golfing foursomes running hard for their carts or the Pro-shop’s shelter, their shoes’ spikes producing the exaggeratedly high stride of men almost running in place. Those wearing hats held them down with one hand. The 19th Hole’s long, mahogany bar and tables began gradually to fill as more and more men chased in off various parts of the course by the storm came in to get warm and wait out the rain before going home to whatever was left of their families. ‘Father’’s hand trembled as he manipulated the clip, which supposedly required great precision. Much of the more recent entrants’ conversation appeared to concern lightning and inquiring whether anyone had seen or heard lightning on the course, as well as whom among the Raritan Club’s regular members might still be ‘out there.’ Many of the men’s faces appeared unusually smooth and pinkened, their color high from the adrenaline of sudden flight. Actuarially speaking, lightning kills an average of over 300 denizens of Western industrialized nations
per annum, more than the average number of accidental deaths due either to recreational boating or insect stings combined, and a substantial number of these electrocutions occur on the nation’s golf courses.