Free Death at Charity's Point by William G. Tapply Page B

dropped, huh?”
    I tried again to walk past him. His hand gripped me hard by my arm. His fingers dug unerringly into a spot just above my elbow, sending a shaft of pain to my brain. “Pick it up,” he said more loudly.
    I turned around slowly and put my face up close to his. I reached up and grabbed the strands of hair growing from his chin. “I said,” I repeated softly, “I’m not interested. Take your filth somewhere else, sonny.” I gave his little beard a hard tug and was gratified to see tears come to his eyes.
    “You’ll be sorry,” he muttered.
    “I doubt that,” I said, turning away from him.
    “Asshole!”
    This was a different voice. It belonged to a girl who, at first, I took to be no more than twelve years old. She had the vanilla complexion and naive blue eyes of a pre-adolescent, with a little rosebud mouth and a tangle of blonde curls piled on her head like a fluffy helmet.
    Except those eyes were glowering at me, and that sweet mouth was twisted into a hateful sneer, and beneath her sweatshirt rose a pair of decidedly post-adolescent breasts.
    “You talk that way to your father, young lady?” I said.
    “Fuck him,” she replied.
    “Forget it, Barb,” said one of the other kids. “He’s too old to understand.”
    The bald boy spoke again. “It’s for your own good, man. Prepare yourself. Our civilization is collapsing. This—” and he again thrust one of his pamphlets at me “—explains it.”
    “Why don’t you kids go do your history homework or something?” I said.
    “History’s a lie,” said the kid with the shiny head. “It’s the future that counts.”
    I wondered what George Gresham might have said to this young fanatic. Something more rational than what sprang to my mind, I imagined.
    I shouldered my way through the kids and climbed into my white BMW. As I pulled out of my parking space, I saw that they were all watching me, identical frowns distorting their young faces. For an instant my mind flashed images of Berkeley and Chicago and Kent State in a rapid television kaleidoscope, and the phrase “the future of our nation is our youth” sprang to my lips. I repressed the urge to say it.
    “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” one of them yelled as I backed out of my parking space.
    “God bless free speech,” I whispered as I drove away.

CHAPTER 5
    “F IRM WRISTS, COYNE,” I told myself. “Don’t worry about being long.” I set the blade of the pitching wedge behind the ball, opened up my stance, moved my weight slightly forward, and glanced up at the hole.
    The pin was tucked right behind the big bunker that gaped temptingly in front of me. A devilish little pitch shot.
    “Keep your stupid head down,” I muttered. I looked at the ball, up at the pin again, then down, trying to lock my visual measurement of the distance into my muscles. A little flick, up and over, drop it down beyond the big lip of the trap with enough backspin to stop it near the hole, where Charlie’s ball already rested a birdie putt away. I focused my mind on the imagined flight of the ball. Head down, balance, firm left elbow…
    “Don’t leave it short,” said Charlie pleasantly.
    I stepped away from the ball and looked at him. He grinned at me. He leaned on his putter, his legs crossed jauntily.
    “Goddamn it, Charlie,” I said.
    “Big hole,” he replied. “You need it for the match.”
    “Jesus, I know.”
    I stepped back, took a couple of practice swipes at the grass, then stepped back to the ball. I tried again to visualize the shot I needed to make. Instead, I saw Charlie McDevitt’s cocky grin.
    I gritted my teeth, took the wedge back, shifted my hips, and began my short, compact swing. I knew it was all wrong. I glanced up to see the results of my shot. I glanced up too soon. The club head dug into the turf behind the ball, which popped lazily into the air and splatted into the sand under the overhanging lip of the bunker.
    “Hard lines, old man,”