139 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
139 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil Helvetica;}}
|
|
\f0\fs24 The Pines course was Andy's favorite in the way that a familiar argument is a favorite \u8212? he knew every turn of it, every place it could hurt him, and he respected it for that. He pulled the cart to a stop near the bag drop and watched Ella climb out before he'd fully braked, her bag already off her shoulder and swinging down in one motion, cleats clicking on the path.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby Carpenter was already there. Of course he was.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
The kid was leaning against his own cart with his arms crossed and the particular posture of a seventeen-year-old boy who believes himself to be very cool and has not yet received conclusive evidence to the contrary. He was tall \u8212? taller than Ella, which wasn't nothing \u8212? with the rangy build of someone still assembling himself, and he wore the same kind of expression he always wore around Ella, which was somewhere between amusement and wariness, the expression of a person who has touched a hot stove before.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"You're late," Bobby said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"We have forty minutes before our tee time," Ella said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"I know. I've been here for an hour."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Then you wasted twenty minutes."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby looked at Andy. "She's delightful in the morning," he said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Always has been," Andy said. He shook Bobby's father's hand \u8212? Alex Carpenter, a lean man with a quiet humor about him who repaired cars and played to about a two handicap and never once in Andy's experience complained about a bad shot, which Andy respected. "How long have you been here?"\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Since six," Mark said. "Bobby had me up at five."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Andy looked at his daughter. She had already started walking toward the range and did not look back.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Mine too," Andy said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
They followed at the pace of men who had learned there was no percentage in hurrying.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
---\par
|
|
\par
|
|
On the range, he watched them. That was mostly what he did. He hit his own balls \u8212? a half bucket, loosening up the back, working through the irons in no particular order, the way he'd always done it \u8212? but his attention kept drifting down to where Ella and Bobby had set up six feet apart and were methodically taking the range apart.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby was a beautiful ball striker. Andy could admit that honestly. The boy had a natural athletic grace, the kind that looks effortless and is mostly effortless, and he hit his irons with a flat trajectory and a draw that seemed to bend toward the target at the end like it was being called home. He was going to be good. He already was.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Bobby thinking about where he wants to play in college?" Andy asked. Mark was standing next to him, watching the same thing.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Mark smiled. "Florida," he said. "Wants to be a Gator. You know how it is."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Andy nodded. Gainesville. Good program. He looked at Ella, who was on her seventh iron and clearly counting the reps in her head with the focused expression she got that reminded him of her mother. "Ella's got her eye on Stanford," he said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Mark raised his eyebrows slightly. "That's a long way."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"She's aware."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
They stood watching in silence for a moment. Ella stripped another seven iron, ball position tweaked back, that clean descending strike she'd been working on, and the ball came off low and penetrating and landed in the middle of the range and checked.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"She's really something," Mark said quietly.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"I know it," Andy said, and he let himself feel that for just a second before he went back to hitting balls.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
---\par
|
|
\par
|
|
The first tee on the Pines course sat up slightly from the fairway, a low rise that gave you a look at the opening hole, a four-hundred-and-twelve-yard par four with a slight dogleg right and a fairway that narrowed toward the corner. A good driving hole if you were long enough to take the corner on. From the back tees it asked a real question.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Ella walked past the white markers without looking at them.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby followed her to the black tees and stood there with his driver in his hand. "You sure about this?" he said. "Your legs are shorter. The yardage is going to be punishing."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"My legs are proportional to my height," Ella said. "And you're terrified."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"I'm terrified," Bobby agreed. "Shake on the bet."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Dollar a hole, gross score."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Dollar a hole," he said, and they shook hands with the brisk formality of people who have done this before and take it seriously.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Ella produced a tee from her pocket, held it up, and spun it. When it stopped, the point was aimed at Bobby. She picked it up, held it again, and spun it a second time. The point came back to her.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Ladies first," Bobby said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Don't call me that on a golf course."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
She teed the ball up with precise movements \u8212? same height every time, Andy had noticed, she had a template for it in her hands \u8212? and went through her routine. Feet, club, feet, one look, one waggle, and then she was into the swing and the sound of the driver on that particular morning in that particular air was a sound Andy had heard her make before but that still landed somewhere in his chest when he heard it.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
The ball started left of center, held its line for two hundred yards, and then turned right with a gentle fade, finishing in the middle of the fairway, about two-seventy from the back tee.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Good ball," Andy said, because it was.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Ella stepped back without looking at it. She knew.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby stepped up and went through his routine, which was shorter and looser and had the quality of a natural athlete who trusts himself and doesn't need the ceremony. He swung, and the ball left the face with that flat, boring trajectory and it went where it was going to go, which was past Ella's ball by thirty yards, easily, finishing right in the fairway at about three hundred.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby took his tee out of the ground and looked at Ella. "I could give you a head start," he said. "Like a running start. You'd have a little momentum."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Are you done?" she said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"I could just kick it down there for you. Save you the\u8212?"\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"*Are you done.*"\par
|
|
\par
|
|
He grinned. He was never actually done, Andy knew, but he had the sense to let it rest for a few seconds.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Andy and Mark stepped up to the white tees, which asked a shorter and kinder question of the same fairway. Alex went first and hit a straight, workmanlike drive down the right side. Andy took a little extra with his driver and got all of it, finishing past Alex's ball and feeling his back register its mild objection and ignoring it.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Nice ball," Alex said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Not bad," Andy said, and he meant the morning and the hole and the whole thing.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
---\par
|
|
\par
|
|
The first green was a gentle test \u8212? undulating, sloped back-left to front-right, a couple of benign tiers. Ella was up first from a hundred and forty yards, hit a low spinner that released to twelve feet below the hole, a perfect angle. Bobby's approach from one hundred ten pulled up to eighteen feet above, which was the worse of the two shots and he knew it.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby walked the line of his putt twice, crouched behind it, walked it once more. Ella watched him with her arms folded and her putter resting against her shoulder.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Sometime today," she said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"The read is complicated."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"It breaks left and it's downhill. It's really not complicated."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Thank you, I'm going to stand here for the rest of my natural life."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
He stood up and made his stroke and the ball rolled down the tier and swung left and fell into the center of the cup with a sound that was deeply, infuriatingly conclusive.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Bobby spread his arms.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Don't," Ella said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"I'm just\u8212?"\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Don't."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
She stood over her putt for perhaps four seconds. She stroked it, and the ball tracked the slope and found the edge of the cup and went in, and she pulled it out of the hole without breaking stride and walked to her bag.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Halve the hole," she said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Barely," Bobby said.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"A half is a half."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Andy marked his scorecard and looked at Alex, who was already looking back at him with the specific expression of a man performing arithmetic.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Cart girl does the front nine," Andy said quietly. "What time does she usually come around?"\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"Eighth hole, maybe ninth," Mark said. "If we play fast."\par
|
|
\par
|
|
Andy looked at his daughter, who was already twenty yards down the second fairway with her yardage book open.\par
|
|
\par
|
|
"We'll play fast," he said.
|
|
} |