The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel Page 4

  Alleene was my sweetheart the two years I was in TCU on a golf scholarship. I dropped out because the professors made college so boring. That should be against the law for professors to do, is what I say. It’s an easy thing to fix. All you have to do is make the professors talk a lot less about socialism and amoeba and a lot more about dinosaurs and Napoleon and the Civil War and Geronimo and Hitler.

  Alleene wasn’t a TCU student. When I met her she was the hostess in a blackeyed-chili-Fridays joint called Bodobber’s. Two giant-screen TVs showed football and other clashes, and the owner, Bodobber Roberts, could play the TCU fight song on his armpit.

  Alleene’s exposed belly button in her hip-hugger jeans and the rack that supported her haltertop were certainly an attraction for most customers, but there was a lot of that going around. Her body was only part of what made me fall in love with her and propose marriage.

  What really did it was, the more Juniors I drank in there every night for a week, the more she started to look like Sigourney Weaver’s long-lost twin sister.

  Alleene married me thinking I wasn’t serious about golf—she hated golf then. The sex was good. She particularly liked to play Warden’s Daughter and Escaped Convict. Matter of fact, when I think back on it, the sex was extraordinary.

  But she thought after I quit school I’d do something responsible, like sell office supplies or carpet or some other foolishness. But I kept playing golf, making a living at $5 Nassaus—press when you get lonesome. So no hard feelings, she said one day, and dumped me.

  I hardly blamed her. I did like hitting golf balls better than being married. We’ve stayed friends. She’s never married again, afraid it would piss off the Pope, but she’s had her share of live-ins, which I guess the Pope overlooks. Her current live-in is Phil Murcer, a pretty good old boy, near as I can tell. He helps her in the catering business I financed.

  The first business I put Alleene in was her pastry shop. She made good cinnamon rolls, no dreaded raisins, and worked hard at it for five years but the health craze killed it. She particularly blamed drugstores for starting to sell those little gadgets you can take your own blood sugar with.

  Her catering business was doing real good, according to the last financial report I received. Good enough to help her buy a nice house over on Hilltop, not far from where I live, and a Toyota delivery van.

  I was skeptical about the catering business because Alleene wanted to cater herb-crusted salmon to people in a place where folks mainly eat barbecue, chicken fried steak, and Tex-Mex.

  But she’s developed a clientele of thin West Side ladies in blue and pink pastel dresses who like to have herb-crusted salmon served when they entertain their friends, who by a strange coincidence happen to be other thin West Side ladies in blue and pink pastel dresses.

  Cheryl Haney says Alleene’s customers keep reminding her of a country song—“New Tits and Old Money.”

  Funny thing. Alleene stopped hating golf a few years ago and took up the game. Then she got fairly decent at it. Then she started working at it even harder and now she wins the occasional tournament.

  Mind-boggling, is what it is. To see somebody take up the game they used to throw cold cream jars at. She’s a member at Mira Vista, where I paid her initiation fee, and she pays her own dues and bills. She and Terri know one another but I don’t believe they have a regular game together.

  Cheryl once asked me what I thought about having two ex-wives who decided to take up golf. “Anything for the betterment of the game” was all I could say about it.

  When I returned Alleene’s phone call I was afraid I might hear that her catering business had suffered a setback and she needed money, but that wasn’t it—she wanted to discuss a serious matter with me in person.

  We met at Herb’s Café, an old restaurant-bar on the South Side where TCU professors like to hunker down over mugs of coffee all day and talk about dead Russians who wrote thick books.

  It was still January in Fort Worth, as it was most everywhere, even as far away as Argentina. I mention this only because I was surprised to find Alleene with a neat tan.

  It turned out she’d just come back from a long week in Florida, down around Boca, where she’d taken a vacation to play golf every day. She still looked plenty okay for a babe right at forty, same age as me. Even with her hair too short for my taste.

  “Your hair is short,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Simple but elegant . . . hip but classic.”

  “Exactly how I was going to describe it,” I said.

  She congratulated me on my sixth-place finish in the Hope, which in reality meant the $108,000 I won. Nobody in pro golf reads the money list closer than ex-wives.

  We made small talk for a few minutes, then she said, “You have to cure my slice, Bobby Joe.”

  “That’s why I’m here?” I said.

  She shook her head. I smiled.

  “This slice came on me my last three days in Florida,” she moaned. “Out of nowhere. It’s terrible. I went out this morning and hit some balls, chilly as it was, and it’s still there. This contemptible . . . diseased . . . thing. I’m not talking about a fade here, Bobby Joe. I’m talking about a slice. I’m talking about I swing the club like normal, but what happens? Every stinking time? Here comes this godawful banana ball, and I’m like, Hit a house, for Christ sake!”

  “A slice don’t know who’s talking to it,” I said.

  “Deep, Bobby Joe. Thanks.”

  I said, “If it was possible to cure a slice for good, Alleene, all the golf magazines, instruction books, and gurus would be out of business.”

  She said, “Don’t fool around with me, Bobby Joe. This is serious.”

  “Loosen up your grip a little,” I said. “Relax. That ought to do it.”

  “I did,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

  “Aim to the right side of the fairway,” I suggested.

  “That’s idiotic. If I aim to the right on No. 1 at Mira Vista, you know where my drive will wind up? In somebody’s living room.”

  “No it won’t,” I said. “Try aiming more to the right of your target. You’ll mentally correct without realizing it. Probably pull the ball.”

  “You have to do better than that.”

  “Did you try closing your stance, shifting more weight to your left leg when you come through the ball?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And . . . ?”

  “Horror movie.”

  I said, “Okay. Here’s the key to the vault—we’ll cure it at the address. First, make sure your right shoulder is lower than your left . . .”

  She gripped an imaginary club, lowering her shoulder.

  “That’s critical,” I said. “Now . . . make sure your right arm is closer to your body than your left arm before you take it back. Those two things should make you swing inside out, which is what you want to do.”

  “What if that doesn’t do it? I need a fallback position . . . the last desperate measure, before suicide.”

  I thought about it a minute and said, “Try to hit it on the toe.”

  “That’s a golf tip?”

  I said, “You’re obviously coming over the top with the face open. So . . . when you swing at it, try to hit the ball with the toe of the club. You won’t be able to do it, but it’ll automatically force you to square up the face when you come through the ball.”

  “One of these things better work, Bobby Joe. I can’t live like this.”

  “You’re all set,” I said. “Let me know which one does it for you.”

  Two hours later Cheryl and I were watching fat and loud white trash yell at each other on the living room TV. The fat wife was accusing the fat husband of swapping their three-year-old daughter for a beachfront cabin on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, and the fat husband was telling the fat wife to mark her lip or he’d punch her in the gravy tub.

  Alleene’s phone call tore me away from that drama.

  She wanted to tell me how happy she was
with my golf instruction. She’d gone back out and hit more practice balls, and every tip I’d given her worked to some degree, but dropping the right shoulder was the biggie. Slice cured, for now.

  “Happy to be of service,” I said. “I hope I can be as much help to the amateur slug I’ll be paired with at Pebble Beach next week.”

  Soon as I hung up, Cheryl Haney, wiseguy, had a word for me.

  “I think I’ll take up golf,” she said. “We’ll have more time together.”

  6

  WOMEN AND GOLF HAVE ALWAYS been a tight fit for me, but I guess I’d rather see women play golf than, say, go shopping.

  Women don’t shop, they browse. Like dopeheads. Me? Either the store has what I want or I go somewhere else. I know what I want. A 44 long. Maybe socks and underwear. But not your women or your dopeheads. They want to peruse, be intrigued, see something they like, talk it over with their inner selves or their friends. What I say is, you like the lamp, buy the sumbitch, take it to the cabin.

  Also, I’d rather see women play golf than pay for groceries. It seems like every

  woman I stand behind in the checkout line at a supermarket invariably waits until Conchita totals everything up before going one-on-one with her purse.

  Then out comes the checkbook, or the coupons, or the coins, and sometimes all three. And there goes ten more minutes. Coins are the real killer.

  About then it’s all I can do to keep from telling the clerk, “Yo, Conchita, just put all that on my bill so I can get the fuck outta here.”

  So here’s my position: women should be able to play all the golf they want to play, and not only on Ladies Day but all through the week, whenever they can get a tee time. But not with me.

  I’ve played my last round of golf with women. At least I have until a gang of feminists pins me down and threatens to stick forks in my eyes. My last round with women was two years ago in the JCPenney Classic.

  This tournament’s been around since the early ’60s. It’s usually played in early December somewhere in Florida after both tours are over. It’s an end of the year thing. Unofficial money. It pairs up a guy from our tour with a lady pro from the LPGA. It’s seventy-two holes of best-ball. The women seek out their male partners, and the lady pros generally take the event more seriously than the guys.

  I’d always avoided playing in the JCPenney, but two years ago they held it at Black Diamond Ranch, over near Ocala, and I wanted to see that Tom Fazio golf course. I’d heard how distinctive it was—the quarry and all that. So I said yeah, sure, when Cora Beth Kenny called up and asked me to be her partner.

  A rogue might suggest that I agreed to play only because I knew from photos in Golf World and Golf Digest that Cora Beth Kenny was one of the cutest young players on the LPGA Tour.

  Cora Beth’s handlers at IMG were energetically marketing her as “the Anna Kournikova of golf.”

  It was Buddy Stark’s opinion that I was only in the JCPenney because Cora Beth was my partner. What he said was “If one of those hags had invited you, you’d have said piss on Black Diamond.”

  This gave me a chance to remind Buddy that if he hadn’t been asked to be partners with Perkie Haskins, he’d have bagged the deal, too. Perkie Haskins, in her late twenties, an older woman compared to Cora Beth, was one of the LPGA’s better lookers.

  Cora Beth and Perkie could both play in the shapely adorable league, sports division. Tan legs, healthy racks. Cora Beth came with a blonde ponytail, Perkie with brunette bangs.

  They were almost as good-looking as Black Diamond. Cora Beth and I played one practice round with Buddy and Perkie, and I was truly impressed with the course.

  The five holes that Tom Fazio designed around the deep dolomite quarry—the thirteenth through the seventeenth—was a stretch of holes you’d want to take pictures of, they’re so original. They’re as unusual and memorable as any stretch of holes anywhere.

  I don’t keep up with the LPGA, in case anybody’s wondering. I’m not steeped in LPGA history. I know their three greatest players were Babe Zaharias, Mickey Wright, and Kathy Whitworth, and I guess I’m aware that they’ve got a bunch of Annikas and Yellow Peril and Australians out there today, but that about covers it for me.

  My lack of knowledge helped me make a big hit with my partner the first day. Cora Beth Kenny and I were on the putting green, and in an effort to instigate a friendly conversation I said to Cora Beth, “I guess you played golf in college, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a strange look.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Where?” she said, looking more strange. “I played at the University of Florida.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Did y’all do any good while you were there?”

  “We won the NCAA twice,” she said coldly.

  “Hey, that’s great,” I said. “Did you do any good individually?”

  She said, “You mean aside from winning the individual title three times and making All-America four years?”

  All I could do was laugh. “I can’t tell you how happy I am I brought it up,” I said.

  I didn’t give it any thought when I noticed that Cora Beth and Perkie Haskins were a little cool toward each other during our practice round. I figured they were just grinding, getting ready for the tournament.

  As luck would have it, then, our teams were paired together in the first round, and that’s when things became a little clearer.

  First of all, they tried to outslow each other. Cora Beth was Queen of the Waggle. Perkie was Princess of the Plumb Bob. Most women golfers are slow to start with. But these ladies wore my ass out doing Slow-Play Fay and Play-Slow Flo.

  Now I don’t believe you ought to play golf like you’re double-parked, like it only takes you thirty minutes to watch 60 Minutes, but I do think you ought to move it along.

  Next thing I realized, we’d gone six holes without the girls even speaking to each other. Each one hit some good shots, but the other one acted like she didn’t see it happen.

  Competitors, I wrote it off. Well, wrong.

  It was on the seventh green that Perkie directed her first remark of the day to Cora Beth. This was after Cora Beth sank a ten-foot birdie putt and was taking the ball out of the cup. Perkie said, “Nice putt, bitch.”

  “What did you call me?” Cora Beth said.

  “Just a bitch, that’s all,” said Perkie. “Bitch.”

  “You’re hopeless,” Cora Beth replied.

  Buddy Stark and I exchanged glances, and Roy Mitchell, my caddy, mumbled to me, “We fixin’ to have us a spat.”

  On the eighth tee, a good par four, Cora Beth laced a big drive down the fairway. She admired her tee shot for an instant, and when she walked back to her bag to put her club away, she gave Perkie a nasty look and said:

  “Chase that one, cunt.”

  Buddy and I exchanged glances again.

  They then struck out down the fairway together, saying things to each other we couldn’t hear. Heated. They rushed their second shots onto the green, but before we reached the green, and to our astonishment, we saw Perkie suddenly grab Cora Beth by the arm and pull her over into a thicket of trees and shrubs.

  I might mention that we didn’t have a gallery, luckily. All of the spectators were elsewhere, following the marquee teams—Davis Love III, or Julius Claudius, with Beth Daniel, John Daly with Laura Davies, Knut Thorssun with Helen Alfredson, Rickey Padgett with Juli Inkster.

  We gave the ladies a little time by themselves to settle the issue, whatever it was. But when Perkie slapped Cora Beth in the face and Cora Beth quickly slapped her back and they started pushing and shoving and scratching at each other, Buddy and I rushed over, me hollering, “Hey, hey, whoa!”

  We got there as Perkie was spitting out, “You never cared a thing for me, you devious little shit! I gave you all the love I had and all you did was use me to get close to Phyllis!”

  “Oh, really?” Cora Beth said. “And you and Phyllis didn’t have anything going behind my back? L
ike I don’t know that?”

  They were both in tears.

  “It was over with Phyllis,” Perkie said. “It was over with Phyllis the minute I laid eyes on you—and you know it! God, what a fool I’ve been!”

  I said, “Uh . . . ladies . . .”

  “Fuck you!” Perkie snarled at me.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Cora Beth said in my direction, dabbing at a tear.

  “People are going to be coming along here,” I said, “and I was wondering if . . .”

  They ignored me.

  I looked at Buddy Stark.

  “How ’bout this?” he said. “Is this any good?”

  Perkie was then saying to Cora Beth, “If you think I’m going to spend another minute on this golf course with a deceitful little bitch like you, forget it!”

  Cora Beth said, “You don’t need to worry about that, you fucking whore! I’m outta here quicker than you are!”

  They hurried off in different directions.

  “That’s it?” I called after them. “We’re done here?”

  Neither one looked back.

  That was it. We WD’d, both teams.

  Trudging back to the clubhouse with our caddies, Buddy Stark said, “I don’t know about you, man, but I’ve got to find out who Phyllis is.”

  Phyllis, it turned out, was Phyllis Atkins, a somewhat attractive LPGA player who, the last I heard, was the “companion” of another LPGA player named Sarah Velma Thompson.

  I’ve also heard lately that Cora Beth Kenny and Perkie Haskins are back together—and have been back together for more than a year. Not only that but they’re pretty darn excited about becoming parents. Tell me Perkie is carrying a sperm baby.

  Women’s golf. Hell of a deal.

  7

  SOMEDAY IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE in bad need of an idiot, I’ll give you Knut Thorssun.

  We played a practice round together at Pebble Beach today—me and him and our two amateur slugs—and Knut spent the whole time talking about what a bad course it is.