Free Miracle at Augusta by James Patterson

the center of the green.
    The prospect of delivering Earl his first PGA win has me approximately as worked up as watching Elizabeth be born, and I pull the index card from my back pocket one last time, not for the distances Earl hits all his clubs, which I’ve long since memorized, as much as for the tactile comfort of its softened edges. In the last two weeks that card has been in and out of that pocket and the rain so many times, it’s as faint and frayed as the Shroud of Turin, but the barely legible numbers confirm what I already know—that 158 is a garden-variety 7-iron. If there’s half as much adrenaline coursing through Earl as me, 7 is a little too much club and will put him in the back half of the green, but with water in front, there’s no way I’m pulling less.
    “It’s a generic driving range seven,” I say. “You’re going to be a little pumped, but back of the green is just fine.”
    “I agree,” says Earl. “Got to be the seven. I don’t want to be anywhere near that water.”
    I pull the club and Earl goes through his brisk routine of two practice swings and a waggle. As he slides the club behind the ball, the wind, which has been nowhere to be seen or felt for two hours, picks up, and with it, just as suddenly, comes a light shower. As Earl steps away from the shot, I open the umbrella, hand it to Earl, and toss up a tuft of grass, which blows straight back into my face. After a couple of minutes of discreet stalling, I toss another pinch in the air and it comes back with interest.
    “With the rain and wind I’m thinking six.”
    “I’m with you,” says Earl. “It’s got to be the six.”
    I put back the seven and, still holding the umbrella over his head—now the rain is coming down even harder—I hand him the 6.
    “Nice and smooth. Nothing fancy.”
    After two practice swings and a waggle, Earl turns on the ball and hits it just as pure and solid as he does on the range 365 days a year, except in leap year, when’s its 366, and it’s all over the flag…until it splashes in the back of the pond.
    With a horrible sinking feeling, I drop my eyes to Earl’s bag and confirm what I already know. The 6-iron hasn’t moved. It’s still there. In the wind and the rain and the adrenaline, and whatever other excuses I’ll come up with over the next three or four decades, I handed him the 9 instead of the 6.
    After a drop, a pitch, and two putts, Earl finishes with a double bogey and adds one more top five to a resume already bursting with them.

31
    FOR THE SECOND TIME in a month, Earl feels obliged to take me out and get me hammered. To dilute the misery, he invites Stump to join us, and Stump, a frequent visitor to Birmingham, insists he knows just the spot. Its official name is the Plaza, but to regulars it’s the Upside Down because the sign above the door is flipped over, and as we duck beneath it and descend the stairs, I tell myself it’s got to be a coincidence and not a twisted reference to the upside-down 6 that I handed Earl on 18.
    To be fair, Stump might just as likely have chosen the Plaza because he likes it. As we discovered in Honolulu, the three of us share a weakness for dives, and the Upside Down is certainly a fine example, right up there—or down there—with the Ding Dong, and after grabbing our three-dollar shots and two-dollar beers, we settle into a cozy corner in the blue glow of the jukebox. Beyond the pool tables and the pinball machines is a redbrick wall festooned with graffiti, including the terse posting GET OVER IT.
    Easier said than done.
    To my relief, Earl is taking my screw-up better than me. In fact, he seems unfazed, and after my second shot, I can’t resist the urge to verify that. “Earl, you’re really not mad at me?”
    “Travis, why the hell would I be mad? You busted your ass for me for two weeks, and did a hell of a job.”
    “With one little…I guess not so little…exception,” interjects Stump.
    “When you called, I thought I