Free Fast Greens by Turk Pipkin Page B

always, dancing into my stubby fingers, which squeezed tightly in an effort to keep her close.
    Then another tender memory of Jewel rushed back upon me like a perfect dream. She had taken me on a picnic in the Hill Country one fine April day—April I know, because in Texas that is the month of bluebonnets. I was a little boatman surrounded by a sea of wildflowers: bluebonnets salted in patches of yellow and black Mexican hats, deep red Indian blankets, and stalks of purple coreopsis, all wavering like a painted canvas drying in the breeze. From my ship of quilted cotton, transfixed, I watched Jewel atop an island hill, a trick of the eye making her appear waist deep in flowers so that she seemed to grow out of the blossoms, her own floral-print dress floating among them like the living sail of a prairie schooner.
    And ten years later I looked at Jewel beside the third green, still wearing one of her silken floral dresses, and the smell of those flowers and the sleepy hum of the bees came back upon me in such a flood that I almost began to cry.
    God knows what visions rushed back upon March and Roscoe, but they were powerful enough for March to decline his shot and climb in his cart, leaving behind the ball he’d worked so hard to retrieve from the pond. He intended to get a closer look at the dream, but Roscoe cut him off.
    â€œMarch, you prick! I still ain’t hit.”
    â€œWho cares?” March shot back.
    But Sandy had not hit his shot either. March snorted like a bull penned next to a pasture full of cows, but he managed to stuff his hands in his pockets while Sandy knocked his ball onto the green not ten yards from where Jewel stood, applauding softly as the ball landed.
    Then Roscoe, no doubt inspired by the new gallery, hit his best shot thus far, a four-iron that sent the ball flying to the banked front edge of the putting surface. Though the ball appeared to be farther away than Sandy’s, Jewel applauded more enthusiastically.
    After rounding the pond with their carts, both March and Roscoe had to wait impatiently as Beast, his mighty drive resting a half wedge from the green, checked his alignment at least three times and flew the ball straight at the hole. A nanosecond after the ball left his clubface, both carts were racing toward the green.
    â€œChrist! Give a guy a chance to follow through!” Beast called after them.
    Whatever was about to happen at the green, neither Fromholz, Sandy, nor I wished to miss it. I quickly shouldered Beast’s bag and the three of us hurried up the hill, leaving only the big man behind.
    â€œHey, kid!” Beast yelled at my backside. “How about my divot?”
    Thirty feet in front of him I bent over as I passed the big clump of dirt and grass and tossed it back at him.
    â€œLet him replace his own dang divot,” I mumbled, opening perhaps the first crack in the floodgates holding back my dislike of the caddie’s subservience. Those heavy tournament bags would never feel the same again.

12
    Both rushing to reach Jewel, March and Roscoe skidded to a halt just below the green, jumped out of their carts, and started up the little slope. It was both childlike and wonderfully funny; one moment Roscoe ahead, only to be tripped up by March surging past, merely to be dragged back himself by Roscoe. Because of my long arms, one of my favorite kids’ games had always been King of the Mountain. Coming off the starting line in the fifty-yard dash, I might have looked like a slow giraffe, and playing tackle football I was nothing more than a target for some overgrown linebacker who had failed a couple of grades. But once ensconced on top of a big boulder or sandpile I could not be easily dislodged. So it was with great merriment that I observed this adult version of the game between these two old rivals. I had heard country songs about playing the fool for love, but until that moment I’d never known the meaning of the phrase.
    The