Fast Greens

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Preface: Just Playing Through

  Introduction

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Book Two

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Praise for Fast Greens

  Copyright

  Preface

  JUST PLAYING THROUGH

  A decade after the publication of my debut novel, it occurs to me that there are now two key stories to Fast Greens. The first is the tale of young caddy Billy Hemphill and his search for the secret of golf and life, and perhaps for a father to help him with both. You’ll find all of that and a good deal more about old-school Texas golf in this new edition of Fast Greens, and I don’t think Billy, Beast, Jewel, March, and Roscoe need any more help from me with their tale.

  The second story of Fast Greens, on the contrary, has never been told. That is the saga of a much bigger kid—six feet, seven inches tall and forty years old to be precise—who laid all his cash on the line in the wild hopes that his modest novel would reach out and touch the hearts of golfers and nongolfers alike.

  My wife and I were told over and over that we were crazy to self-publish any novel—much less a coming-of-age story about golf—but I believed in Fast Greens and decided to roll the dice. For an underemployed writer with a three-year-old daughter, this was quite a leap of faith, but with a little help from family and friends, the book eventually made its way to a printer who started to crank out a ridiculously large order for twenty thousand books.

  The first bound copy was soon shipped for my approval, and I promptly sent copy number one to David Earl, the editor of the USGA’s monthly magazine Golf Journal. I’d never met David, but was a fan of his magazine, plus he’d read an early version of the manuscript and had encouraged me to press on.

  Not long after receiving the book, David called me from a pay phone just before boarding a plane to France for the World Amateur Team Championship. He was calling to tell me to look for his review of Fast Greens in the new issue of Golf Journal. I thanked him profusely, and we promised to talk again as soon as he returned to the States.

  The review was all I could have hoped for and more. In addition to saying I’d done a great job with plot, characters, and pace, David called Fast Greens “a compelling, emotional story of a golf match among some motley characters, so rich that—pardon the cliché—we couldn’t put it down.”

  These complimentary words were accompanied by the cover in full color, plus an address for ordering the book, which was not yet available in stores. Curious to see if we had any orders, I promptly drove to the post office and found nearly a hundred envelopes, each with a check for one or more copies of the book, with many of the checks wrapped in David Earl’s review. (A high percentage of these first readers would later reorder copies as gifts, including one gentleman who had me sign nearly a hundred copies, one for each of his golf buddies.)

  David Earl’s review was just one of many good notices that would follow in Golf magazine, Golf Digest, and The New York Times, but David’s was first, and I knew that the love we shared for the game of golf had changed my life in ways that I could so far only imagine.

  A decade later, as I prepared to write this preface, while looking through my files, I found my copy of a letter of thanks I’d mailed to David—a letter that he never had the opportunity to read. Walking through the airport in France, David Earl had a sudden and massive heart attack. Dead at the age of forty-eight, he left behind a wife and a young son.

  There are many things I could say about the evolution and further developments of Fast Greens—that the name of the hit man Fromholz was stolen from Texas songwriter Steve Fromholz; that a large percentage of readers make the assumption that young Billy’s story is actually my own; or that the novel began as a movie for Willie Nelson (a movie that may ultimately be made by someone reading this preface).

  But the trivia of Fast Greens pales in comparison to the story of how one person can so dramatically change the life of another, even if they’ve never met. That ability is truly an awesome power, one each of us should strive to remember. In part because of David Earl, Fast Greens was soon hailed as one of the great success stories of self-publishing, and was later reprinted in numerous editions by publishers around the world. Because of David Earl, I’ve been able to spend a good part of the past decade writing all over the world about a game that I love. Not bad for a skinny caddy from West Texas.

  Two years ago, my life was again changed by another person’s words, this time by my father, Pip (and how great to go through life with a name from Dickens). In what would turn out to be our last conversation, Pip told me that he wished we’d played a round of golf together at Pebble Beach, from where I’d just rushed back to see him.

  After Pip’s funeral—filled with regret at not having spent more time with him—I dedicated a year of my life to playing golf in his memory (a year chronicled in my book The Old Man and the Tee). Amazing things happened to me in that year; not only did I become a better golfer, but I believe I became a better person and a better father as well. More important, I learned that I had not lost my father at all, that Pip would always be with me, in my heart and in my mind.

  As Fast Greens circles back into the world, I cannot help but reflect in awe at how, from beyond the grave, two amazing men were able to reach out and work miracles in my life. For that reason, I’d like to dedicate this reissue of Fast Greens to David Earl and to my father, Raymond Pipkin, the ever-smiling Pip.

  To both of you, I wish endless fairways and fast greens.

  INTRODUCTION

  It was the summer I turned thirteen, and it had been a fat year in Texas. The mild winter was followed by a succession of tall booming thunderstorms, black with sweet-tasting rain, and the country, lush and green, smelled like the gardens of paradise.

  It was a funny time: Not long after man entered space, a Texan entered the White House, and though my pals stayed up late listening to the Beatles, they still wore their hair in flat-tops and spent envious hours in the company of their fathers.

  Having no part in that, my days were spent in toil and grace on playing fields of green, hallowed grounds where one man, seeking his own salvation, would reach out his hand and change my life forever. Almost thirty years later, both the perils and the miracles that befell me on that incredible day shine as brightly i
n my mind as the Texas sun of my youth.

  Tanned to the bone and sporting long, unruly hair, they called me the Wild Indian, but it was really just a joke. I didn’t know about the world around me the way an Indian would; about the meaning of the stars, or how to follow forgotten trails and unravel the truth of hidden signs.

  In actuality I didn’t know much of anything but the game of golf; neither love nor hate, envy or pride, jealousy or revenge. I didn’t know, but I was about to learn.

  BOOK ONE

  Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

  Man never is, but always to be blest.

  —Alexander Pope

  1

  For the third time in five minutes, the big guy called me Skinny.

  “Hey Skinny! Your foot’s in my line!”

  He had ten years and a hundred-pound advantage, plus one thick eyebrow that stretched all the way across his bony forehead. I moved the foot.

  Beast drew back his putter smoothly, impossibly straight, like he was pulling a sword from a scabbard without the blade touching the sides. The putter face was square to his line at the back of the stroke and still square as it accelerated the ball toward the hole some eighteen feet away. His head remained perfectly still as the ball rolled a showering arc through the early morning dew, cutting a track that led to the edge of the hole, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

  The ball plinked solidly in the metal cup. Without looking up, Beast dragged a second ball onto the same spot directly beneath his right eye. A long ash dangled precariously from the cigarette in his mouth as he repeated the putt perfectly, the ball rolling through the same damp track as the one before, and the one before that.

  “Toss ’em back, Skinny! Before they get cold.”

  The words crawled out of the side of his mouth without disturbing the cigarette ash.

  “My name is Billy,” I told him.

  Hoping to screw up his concentration, I scooped the three balls out of the hole and rolled them back at angles slashing through the single line in the dew.

  Over on the first tee at the Pedernales Golf Club (pronounced Purd-n-Alice, because that’s the way LBJ said it), my friend Sandy Bates cleaned his golf ball, paced, then cleaned the ball again. Sandy was a top-notch golfer, likely to play on the professional tour against Arnie and Fat Jack, and oh how I wished I were carrying for him instead of for this ugly putting machine. For once in his life, Sandy really needed my help. When he’d driven me to the course in the predawn darkness, for the first time I’d seen that he was afraid of a game of golf. Now to make matters worse, his partner March was only minutes shy of forfeiting this big match for both of them.

  “He welshed, I tell you! Chickened out!” spat Beast’s partner, Roscoe Fowler.

  Roscoe was a snub-nosed, potbellied, sixty-year-old parody of all things Texan. His khaki pants were worn so far under his gut that you expected them to fall to the ground at any moment. And in the hazy morning light, his pockmarked face reminded me of NASA’s lunar landscape photos taken from orbit around the earth.

  “I know March; known him since nineteen and twenty-nine,” said Roscoe. “Hell! He’s probably halfway to Méjico right this minute.”

  Roscoe spit a big glob of brown tobacco juice—mostly on the green grass and partly on his handmade Charlie Dunn cowboy boots with golf spikes and little side pockets for tees. Unable to look away, Sandy gazed at the dark stain on the grass. With his stomach already tied into sailor’s rosettes and other obscure knots, his blond face began sinking to a ghastly green.

  Another man, known only as Fromholz, was there to referee this big match. Fromholz was not a man that you would mess with, and though I was afraid to stare, I found it hard to look away. His face was chiseled and tough, with one eye partially but permanently shut. His rattlesnake-skin boots and embroidered Western jacket probably cost a thousand dollars, but the New York Yankees cap on his head and the rolled bandana tied loosely around his neck were faded and worn. Turning his head to give his good eye a fair opinion, he glanced once around the deserted golf course.

  “Be cool, Pops!” Fromholz scolded Roscoe. “Don’t get your vowels in an uproar! I’m the man in charge and by my watch, it’s two minutes till seven.”

  Plop went another of Beast’s putts. Sandy winced at the sound, but his focus was still glued to the brown tobacco stain on the grass.

  “Hell, Fromholz!” grumbled Roscoe as he limped over on a bum knee and compared his watch to the ref’s. “You don’t know shit from shinola! My Rolex says he’s got exactly thirty seconds. And that’s set to the atomic clock in Switzerland—noocular time!”

  Like clockwork himself, Beast stroked another ball into the hole. Those balls didn’t want to fall into the hard metal cup. No ball wants to go in. You’ve got to coerce them in, sternly but lovingly, the way Beast was doing it.

  Again I dug the three balls out for Beast as nearby, Sandy gave a slight retch. For the second time in less than an hour he could taste the truck stop’s greasy huevos rancheros—undercooked eggs with peppers and hot sauce—which were contemplating a jail break from his stomach. Worse yet, he could taste another bitter defeat at the hands of Beast the golf monster.

  Just as Sandy started to gag, we heard a car gunning over the hill to the near-empty parking lot. Sandy swallowed hard and the huevos went back down to huevos land. Roscoe swallowed too; an eye-opening, belly-aching gulp of liquid chew. On the green, Beast’s head jerked up as he hit another putt. The long ash from his cigarette fell softly to the earth as the ball spun off the edge of the hole.

  “Shit!” we all said in unison as, wide-eyed, we saw it roaring at us: a shiny new finless and driverless ’65 Coupe de Ville, its gunning motor racing with the devil. Without slowing, the big car jumped the curb and plowed through the wet turf that was our only miserable defense. I tried to run but my legs refused to obey, leaving me frozen in the path of the out-of-control car. It was already too late to scream.

  A vision of road kill flashed into my mind—all the putrefied deer, skunks, and armadillos I’d seen bloated by the side of the Texas roads. The vision vanished when at the last possible moment the car braked hard and slid sideways, skidding smoothly to a halt beside our huddled group.

  I checked the front of my pants, then breathed a sigh of relief.

  The window was down and Hank Williams was singing indifferently from somewhere inside the empty car. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, a shaggy gray head popped quickly into view from below the dash.

  “Dropped my donut!” the man said. “Darn thing started rollin’ on me.”

  The heavy steel door glided open and out hopped Mr. William March, flashing eyes, smart mouth, and grinning like a fool.

  “The years came down, in crawling pain,” sang March, twisting Hank’s song with his own words. “You lied and lied, I went insane.”

  “Morning gents!” he intoned loudly above the music. “Looks like you all got here early.”

  The four of us stared openmouthed, dumbfounded, happy to be alive.

  I’d met William March only twice, both times at the urging of my grandmother Jewel, and I had yet to come to any understanding of his true nature. There was some mystery behind his tired and smiling eyes, something devious or devilish, or both. It was like he knew what no one else knew, some nugget of knowledge that he could use against the rest of us whenever he chose.

  He tossed me a half-dollar.

  “Get my sticks, kid.”

  Slipping the coin into my pocket, I dragged his monstrosity of a bag from the trunk and strapped it to a gasoline golf cart. March leaned in the open window of the Cadillac, shut up the radio with a yank at the keys, and pulled out a greasy paper bag.

  “There’s mine,” March sang. “Twenty grand! And what a grand twenty they are!”

  March handed the bag to Fromholz, then snatched it back.

  “Hold on, cowboy! I almost forgot.”

  He reached into the bag and pulled out a partially squished jelly
donut with a hundred-dollar bill stuck to it. Peeling them apart, he shoved the bill back into the bag.

  “That was close,” he said. “I damn near bet my donut!”

  Fromholz peered in at the jelly-covered money. “I don’t think it needs counting,” he proclaimed.

  In the meantime, Roscoe Fowler was fumbling through the pockets of his own bag, which I’d already strapped to another cart. Without disturbing the little blue-steel automatic that I had glimpsed in the side pocket, Roscoe pulled out two fat bundles of bills and flipped them one at a time to Fromholz, who snatched them from the air: two lateral completions; crippled quarterback to one-eyed juggler.

  I had caddied before for what I thought were big money matches, hundred-dollar Nassaus with automatic presses, and Bingo Bango Bongo where pink slips for pickups passed from hand to hand and losers went home on foot. But the moulah in this match seemed more like Monopoly money than the real thing.

  “Hold it!” said Roscoe. “How do I know our ref is honest?”

  “Hell, you can shoot craps with him over the phone,” said March. “Let’s play.”

  Gathering round, the golfers assembled in natural affinity; March and Sandy standing tall at one side, Fromholz in the middle, and the blackhats Roscoe and Beast on the other. Unable to take sides beyond reluctantly carrying Beast’s bag, I stood to myself.

  “Nine holes. Best ball. Winners take all,” said Fromholz.

  Then he pulled out a yellowed scorecard that looked a hundred years old. Squinting his good eye at the faded nine holes of figures scrawled on it, he came to a decision.

  “Roscoe, you won the last hole, so I do believe, after twenty-seven years, you still got the honors.”

  Subtracting quickly, twenty-seven from 1965, I came up with the year of the last hole: 1938. Unfortunately, I was not as strong in history as I was in math, and I was unable to place any particular event with the year in question. Likewise I had no conception of the clothes, the music, even the cars. With regards to 1938, I was nearly blank. The only image that would form was one I had first seen just one week earlier, an image that I could not get out of my head.