Free Train by Pete Dexter

hit the ground. On the way down the fairway, one of the other men came over to make sure of the bets. He had a cigarette in his lips and didn’t take it out to talk. He sounded smooth and low, like the radio, like this was old business to him, but Train saw that he was afraid of Mr. Packard too, just like Pink.
     
     
“So what’s the game?” he said.
     
     
“Whatever you want, I guess.”
     
     
“Pink says it’s two hundred a side, a hundred a press. And it looks like we get two strokes on the front, one on the back.”
     
     
Mr. Packard nodded and moved away, like he preferred to walk with Train. “I thought it might tickle you to see how this comes out,” he said. The other man had gone back to Pink, unsure if Mr. Packard had agreed to anything or not.
     
     

The partner they gave Mr. Packard was a wild man, bigger and younger than Pink, called everything he hit cunt. The kind of player would hit six balls out of bounds in a row, then hit one good one and think the last shot was how he played golf. And every time Pink or his partner fuck something up, it seemed like Mr. Packard’s partner did something twice as bad. Like he did it on purpose.
     
     
Mr. Packard never said a word; three holes went by, then four, just kept on enjoying the sunshine and Mother Nature, never complained when Pink went into the trees again and found his ball laying in the open, or when he hit it into the creek and then made his drop fifty yards closer to the green than where he gone in. It seemed like Mr. Packard was out on the course all alone, and if he knew there was anybody there with him, it was only Train.
     
     
The fat man pulled out his flask and had a drink. He handed it to his partner and then smiled. “Funny fucking game, Miller,” he said to Mr. Packard, “funny fucking game. One day, you can’t find your own willie; the next day, the world’s a hundred-dollar blow job. Of course, it looks like History turned off the water last night, so at least today you can hit the ball off the fairway.”
     
     
“Lose some weight, Pink,” Mr. Packard said. “You’ll be able to find willie easier.” Then he turned and watched his partner hit a shot deep into the trees. “You cunt,” the man said, and then turned to his caddy for another ball. “This is a provisional,” he said, “if I can’t find the other one.”
     
     
Mr. Packard looked off into the trees. “Have the fat man help you,” he said. “He’s good at finding balls.”
     
     
Pink was about to have another pull off the flask when Mr. Packard said that, and he stopped and brought his hand down slowly and screwed on the top. He’d been slapped in public, but everybody act like they didn’t notice.
     
     
They came to the sixth hole, the hole where Florida pitched over on the green, and Mr. Packard moved closer to Train again as they walked down the fairway. Train was afraid he was going to ask about the money for Florida’s widow.
     
     
Instead, he looked at Train’s head and whistled. “That’s a pretty nice knot,” he said.
     
     
Train nodded, caught himself just before he said thank you. Train reached up and felt the spot. It was swollen and ragged. Mr. Packard was walking too close, making him nervous.
     
     
They went another fifty yards in silence, and then stopped to wait while Pink hit his ball. It rolled up about the same spot it was the last time they played. Mr. Packard was admiring the lump again, from a different angle. “Looks like something’s building a nest,” he said.
     
     
They came to Mr. Packard’s ball next, and he took out his four wood and hit it a little fat, favoring his knee, and dropped it into the pond. It was the first bad shot he hit all morning, and Pink could not keep the smile off his face.
     
     
“Shit, I thought that was right there,” he said.
     
     
“No,” Mr. Packard said, “no, it wasn’t.”
     
     
“Yo, Pink,” his partner said. “What do you tell a woman with two black