He stopped short of his ball and got out of the cart. Frankie had taken a few clubs and climbed on the back with Steve and Lou. There was a large distance between their three balls and his. He had hit far enough to the left that he knew that though his ball was the longest, he would be away. He walked over behind his ball, checking his lie. When he looked up and sighted around the bend, some things became clear.
He knew he should have seen it when he started the round. The eighteenth green finished near the first tee, at right angles to it, and beyond the green, which he could now see, was the clubhouse. When he began, he had been too intent on getting involved with the three, and he had not looked around much. In the middle of the fairway, about two hundred and fifty yards from where he was and another hundred or so from the green, was a massive, domed mound of earth. It spanned the entire fairway, was pretty close to being circular, and there must have been a distance of at least a hundred feet from the flat of the fairway to its highest point. If it was the same on its far side as it was on this one, its diameter would be a good seventy-five yards.
There was rough growing on it that looked from this distance something like Eastern hog cranberry. The rough looked thick, but it was very even, probably kept that way by a grounds-keeper, and the evenness accentuated the symmetry of the mound. It did not look like any natural upheaval of land; it looked distinctly manmade.
On top of the mound, bright in its colors and at the dead center, was the largest totem pole Allen had ever seen. The pole rose a good thirty feet up in the air. Its painted shaft was three times the size of a telephone pole, and it had six brightly painted faces, with hawknoses, scowls, smiles, and appendages to their sides (ears or wings) that stood out yards away from it. On the very top, and not like any totem pole he had ever seen, was a larger than life-size figure of an Indian, dressed rather simply in a fringed outfit, a band with one feather in it around his head. He was standing very straight and still, arms at his sides, in his left hand what looked from this distance like a small tomahawk.
In the other was a quiver of arrows, and there was a bow hanging from the shoulder.
Allen shifted his eyes to the side of the mound and over it to where he could see part of the green with the clubhouse beyond it. Then he looked back at the stolid figure. Though the mound protected the green, the figure did not seem to be standing there for that purpose. It was as if he were apart from any concern. If he had some interest in events having to do with playing the hole, that interest was directed back to the potential of tee shots reaching the bend. He was high up and as such seemed apart from developing clusters of relationship that might occur below him. In this sense, the figure had a strange and distant austerity about him. He looked, also, extremely funny, like something from a miniature golf course designed for giants. On impulse, Allen yelled across to the others and pointed.
“Look at that!” he said. He saw Frankie nod. Steve just looked over at him. Lou was busy in his bag, and he acted as if he did not hear.
He felt he wanted to just stand there for a while, to just take the thing in, to fit it into the day, but he knew he did not have time for this. He looked over to check the rationale behind Steve’s shot. The three of them had trees to go over, but the trees were lower near the bend than the ones that had obscured them from the tee. There was, in fact, a kind of passage of low trees that one could get a three — or a four-iron over from where they were. A fairly good shot over the trees would fly the right side of the mound, and he judged that such a shot would bring the player to within seventy-five yards of the green, out in the open, with an easy wedge into it. If-and this was about the worst that could happen-the shot came up short, there was sufficient room between the edge of the mound and the right rough that the player could come down there and be left with no more than a hundred or a hundred and twenty yards in, again with an open shot. He, on the other hand, had trouble.
By playing to the left, for what he thought was the clear line in, he had made the hole play very long. He was almost three hundred yards out from the tee, but he had over three hundred left to the green-well over it, he guessed. From his angle, he did not have the play the others had to the right of the mound. He thought he could reach the side, but if he did, the ball could well jump down or roll into the trees. They were thick there, and he could get hung up badly. If he played to the left of the mound, a longer shot, he would surely wind up in the trees on that side of the fairway. He could see the white out-of-bounds stakes, pretty close in on that side, and he could not think to risk that shot either.
He looked over and saw that Steve was getting impatient. He was taking abbreviated practice swings with a three-iron, stopping that every few swings, putting his hands on his hips. Allen decided to prolong it a bit. He took a three-wood out of his bag, took a couple of practice swings, then walked back and sighted his line. Then he shook his head and started to walk over to where the other three were standing. It was a long walk, and he took his time. Steve took a short and vicious little swing with his club as Allen walked up to them.
“About this obstruction out there, what are the rulings?” he asked, looking from Lou to Steve.
“What do you mean?” Steve said, looking down at his club head, chipping at the top of the grass.
“I could mean, what’s gonna happen if I hit it.”
“You’ll probably lose,” Steve said, still chipping away.
“But what I mean is, is it in bounds, and what’s the ruling if I hit that cute pole?” Steve looked up sharply, obviously angered at his use of words.
“Up to the redskin on the top — that’s King Philip; that’s an authentic copy of a Pima pole; that’s a real Indian burial site under there — If you hit the pole, you play it where it drops, as long as it falls in bounds. The mound is a natural obstruction; it’s played as rough. You play the ball where it lands. Rub of the green. You got that?”
“Got it,” Allen said, smiling into Steve’s anger, and walked back across the fairway to his ball. He had made his decision before coming over to them, but he wanted to get everything articulated before he hit. He did not much like hearing that it was a burial site. He did not think the Pimas had been Mound Builders, nor did he think they had used poles. He was not sure, though.
He did think he remembered that King Philip had something to do with events not out here but back East.
He had taken the three-wood out so that Steve would see it and anticipate his shot. When he got back to the cart, he replaced the wood and took out a three-iron. He stepped up and addressed the ball, and he felt the rush coming as he locked in. The ball was a Golden Ram, the highly compressed one. He liked to play it because it felt like a stone when he hit it. It was especially good for chipping. He saw that the ball had come to rest in the grass so that only the Go of the letters on it were showing. He felt his chest begin to hum as he saw the crisp gold lettering on the dimpled white surface of the sphere that sat like a found egg in its grassy nest of green at his feet. He lay the silver of the club head down carefully to the right of the ball, the face with its straight horizontal etched lines and its slight pitch.