Around the head of the figure standing off the green, a small feathered headdress had been carefully inked in, and beside the arrow pointing to the figure were the words, Chief Wingfoot’s Revenge! and then, in very small parentheses, Chip. A white card had been tacked below the photograph, and typed on it were the words Seaview Links, One of the oldest courses in America. Continuous play since 1892. Above photograph, 1920.
Sammy winked at the photograph and the blueprint, as he did most mornings when he came in to open up. Barefoot, in old jeans and a worn madras shirt, he moved behind the glass counter to the old cash register, pushed the “No Sale” button, and gave the handle a crank. The bell rang and the door slid open. He saw that there was plenty of change, enough for the traffic of the first major tournament of the summer. He closed the door and went around the counter to the stove in the kitchen area. The clubhouse was small and L-shaped. Where the two rectangles joined, and across from the door, was the glass case, about four feet long, containing balls, tees, and gloves. To the left of the case, at the end of the building, was the kitchen: a large refrigerator, formica counter and stove, a sink, and a card table. Behind the glass counter, filling the shorter rectangle, was Sammy’s golf gear concession: a few windbreakers, a couple of sets of clubs, various hats and other golf equipment. Windows in the back wall of the concession overlooked the short ninth fairway and beyond that the longer, par-four eighth. Sammy fiddled with the percolator, got it loaded and on the fire, and then went to the concession room to get his hat, a large crumpled fedora he liked to wear because it kept his long hair from getting in his eyes and because it kept the sun out, but most of all be-cause he liked the way he looked in it. He put it on and scratched the wispy hairs of his untrimmed beard.
“Right on time,” he said aloud. He could see across the eighth fairway, about a hundred yards from the clubhouse, big Chief Wingfoot walking stiffly toward him. The Chief moved very methodically, and such was the monotony of his gait that he was almost upon the terns pecking in the fairway before they were aware of him and rose up in little flashes of white (it seemed from this distance), right in the Chief’s face. Sammy saw the Chief stop, pick something up and study it for a moment, and then get back into his gait. He was walking the trail of the underground river, Tashmuit, that cut across and under the fairway, turning near the clubhouse and heading for the sea. The grass was greener where the river ran, and when it swelled up in winter, it was visible as a slight ridge. Even in summer, its strength was notable. The ground was soft-er above it, and the attentive could feel it pulsing under foot. He called it People’s River when he had occasion to speak of it, keeping its ancestral name to himself. It was where the people had come for their water. They could walk to it when they had need. It was out of the way for him, but he used its path when he entered the golf course at most times. It gave him strength in its place as evidence and a time for thought to renew his purpose. When it turned seaward he quit its path and headed toward the clubhouse.
Though it was early July, the morning air was crisp and cool; there was plenty of dew on the spare grass of the eighth and ninth, and the white brick of the lighthouse shone like a new dime in the morning sun. Sammy poured the hot coffee into two stoneware mugs marked Seaview Air Force Station, with a little emblem on each, and went out to where the Chief was sitting on the transplanted park bench overlooking the ninth green.
“Good morning, Chief. Coffee,” Sammy said, and handed him one of the mugs.
“Hey,” the Chief grunted. “Feather,” and he handed Sammy the clean white tern feather he had picked up.
“That’s a fine feather,” Sammy said, holding it up in the sun. He took his fedora off and plugged the root of the feather into the band so that it stood up straight along the crown.
“What a fine day!” Sammy said. And he and the Chief sat on the bench together, sipping at their coffee and looking out across the fairways and into the rough grass beyond.
The road that ran in front of the clubhouse separated the seventh fairway and the rest of the course behind it from the eighth and ninth. It ended in a cul-de-sac parking lot right in front of the lighthouse. The lighthouse perched on the edge of the high dunes, a hundred feet or so above the narrow beach, with the Atlantic Ocean beyond it. Earl Sawgus chugged his pickup truck along the road, saw as he usually did the backs of Sammy and the Chief on the park bench, went the hundred yards to the parking lot, turned in a slow circle, enjoying the condition of the seventh green and the eighth tee, came around and back down the road, and parked along the side of the clubhouse.
“Now where the hell is that Chip?” he said to himself as he got out of the truck.
“Yo, Sam. Yo, Chief. Morning,” he called as he walked toward them. “Now where the hell is that Chip, you think?”
“Chip here,” the Chief said.
“Oh yeah? Where?” said Earl.
“I’m here, ma man, I’m here!” came a voice from over by Earl’s truck. “Here I come.” And a young man of about eighteen, very scrawny and tan with close-cropped dark hair, started a slow and crooked walk toward the threesome at the park bench.
“That was somethin’, I mean, that was some action Earl! I mean, that was definitely not on my agenda. I wonder can you dig it? Came right up to my leg then; stopped on a dime. Too much! ‘Student crushed by pickup at Seaview Links.’ What a routine that was …”
“Fucked up,” Sammy murmured.
“Made the turn — the avenging angel — spacy day — whose thoughts were elsewhere — young boy asnooze watching the eyelid light show — mysterious tires crunching in gravel — stopped on a dime. What a scenario! — Hey, Chiefie! what’s happening? Hey Sam! What’s up for today, Earl? Do we plant trees? Do a little, you know, green care?” He danced a little jig. “I can dig it! — reprieve from death!”
“Most definitely fucked up again,” Sammy said. And Earl, with Chip loping behind him, walked toward the parked machines on the far side of the clubhouse. Earl was the greens keeper at Seaview. Chip, a horticulture student at Cape Tech, was his helper. Sammy was the club manager and pro. Chief Wingfoot believed he owned the golf course.
BY THE TIME IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK, CHAIR FREDRICKS had showered and shaved, carefully cleaned, cut, and filed his fingernails, shined his golf shoes, laid his golf clothes across his bed, broken open a three-pack of Top Flights and put them in the zipper compartment of his plaid bag, put up the coffee to perk on the Sears workbench in the basement, and was now standing in front of a hot cup of it, looking out at the wheel cover of his new Oldsmobile, framed in the basement window. The cup and saucer were bone china, with blue flowers on them; the coffee was black and hot; the wheel cover was clean and shining, because he kept it that way. It was a beautiful morning in town, and in the yard of his accounting office in the front of the house, a couple of mockingbirds were showing off. The Chair was dressed in a short blue robe. His woods rested beside the coffee cup on the workbench, and as he lifted the driver up and began to clean the head’s grooves with a small silver pick, he was thinking about the difficulties with the Quahog People and what he hoped the day would bring to him. When he finished picking the flecks of dirt out of the grooves, he put the shaft of the driver in the small vise attached to the bench, sprayed a little polish on the head, and began buffing it with a clean white rag.