The Legend of Bagger Vance (15 page)

The reanimated galleries had by now turned again to Junah, in the exact attitude they had held before. In their eyes was the expectation of his continued self-immolation, which expectation was reinforced by the ashen, deeply shaken state in which Junah now resided. The galleries waited, pitiless as wolves. Waited to watch him continue to fall apart.

“Loneliness.” Vance spoke the single word. “This is the scythe of the game, its midnight heart and terror. The utter, excruciating isolation which attacks the player under pressure such as you have struggled with today. Listen to me, Junah, while I deliver to you the supreme and ultimate secret of the game.”

Junah turned to Vance with every fiber of his attention. I stood like granite, transfixed.

“Forget all else, Junah, but remember this:
You are never alone
. You have your caddie. You have me.

“More devoted than a mother, more faithful than a lover, I
stand by your side always. I will never abandon you. No sin, no lapse, no crime however heinous can make me desert you, nor yield up to you any less than my ultimate fidelity and love.

“Therefore, Junah, rest in me. Enter the Field like a warrior. Purged of ego, firm in discipline, seeking no reward save the stroke itself. Give the shot to me. I am your Self, the Ground of your being, your Authentic Swing.”

Vance finished, as softly as he had begun, then tilted the bag, proffering it and its weapons before the champion.

“Now strike, my friend, as I have taught you. Hold nothing back.”

I
N THE DOZENS OF ACCOUNTS
that appeared in the press the following day this next stroke, the one-iron that Junah holed out for an eagle, was cited variously as the “Lazarus shot,” “the Governor’s reprieve,” a “miracle,” a “bolt from the ether.” It was described as “Promethean,” “Euclidian” and “plucked from that place where the sun don’t shine.” Grantland Rice quoted the old Georgia saw:

They spoke of it as raw luck rescuing a man dangling by his fingertips, a fortuitous thunderbolt that had breathed fresh fire into Junah’s lifeless form. There were comments on Junah’s reaction to the shot. How, despite the galleries going berserk around the green as the ball lit, spun left and curled down the slope into the
cup, Junah had remained impassive, unruffled. They marveled that he hadn’t exhibited more emotion or elation. That all he’d done was meet his caddie’s eyes as if to acknowledge his contribution in club selection; then hand the weapon back and stride, deeply and profoundly concentrated, toward the green.

You may imagine the state of mind I was in at this point. Looking back, I credit the resiliency of youth, a boy’s sheer capacity for imagination, with preserving my sanity. In an odd way, I had even somewhat taken it all in stride. I felt the relief at least that Vance would not repeat any of this cosmic drama. What more could he do, after stopping time, freezing the globe, destroying and restoring the planet? My feelings about being near him oscillated between love and terror. I was still half-petrified when he fell into step beside me, striding toward the thirteenth green. “What I said to Junah back there,” he began when I said nothing but kept striding uncertainly forward, “was for your ears too, Hardy. You too are never alone, nor ever will be. Those who seek lesser teachers go unto them. My players come always to me.”

Will it make sense, Michael and Irene, if I tell you how much the phrase “my players” meant to me? I was so proud, and so relieved, that Vance considered me one of “his players.” All fear left me instantly.

“Remember when you saw those gulls in the storm,” Vance asked me, “and you had the sense of them ‘playing’?” How could he know that? I didn’t even question it anymore. “Your instincts were astute,” he said. “Play is the activity most pleasing to me. Can you guess why?”

Of course I couldn’t.

“Because it is authentic.”

But now his voice lowered, became more private.

“Listen to me, young Hardy. A day will come for you when play becomes torment. When you will be drowning, not in water but on dry land. In that hour remember me. I will preserve you.”

With that, he placed his hand on my pocket, the pocket where I had tucked my Spalding Dot.

I still have that ball.

In fact I have brought it with me tonight.

But let me return to Junah.

He had pulled to within three of Jones and Hagen. Five holes now remained.

Let me describe them in detail, this final handful, and, I hope, the emotion that accompanied them. For by now the spectators and the players had been caught up completely in the roller coaster of the afternoon round.

Junah’s eagle had electrified the gallery, which was now swelling by twos and fives and scores. The sun meanwhile had traversed far more of its course than the officials had anticipated; it was dropping with perhaps an hour, an hour and a half at most until it would vanish over the wetlands and close the match out in the dark.

There was no time to dawdle.

Junah, Jones and Hagen all nailed solid mid-irons to the par-three fourteenth and found their balls stacked one behind the other on the identical line to the cup—Jones eighteen feet out, Hagen inside him by a foot and Junah six inches closer. There
was a bit of uneasy jostling as each repaired his ball mark, Hagen and Junah positioning their dimes at right angles to the side, one and two putter-heads out, being almost comically overcareful not to tread in each other’s or Jones’ line. Time was passing. Daylight wasting. “Hell,” the Haig cracked, “let’s be men and play stymies.” I think Jones would have risked it, master of that shot that he was, had the contest’s medal-play setup not precluded it.

Bobby lined up his putt and stroked it. It curled off, a whisker on the low side. Hagen, overcompensating perhaps from the roll he had just seen, rapped his a fraction too hard; it scooted past on the high side. Junah stepped up, still glowing from his eagle, and split the difference. The ball dove straight into the heart.

Something marvelous began to happen.

All conversation ceased among the players. A dialogue of wit and brilliance began to be played out in their shots. Junah was deep in the Field. The gallery knew. Hagen knew. Jones knew. On fifteen when Junah, swinging it seemed utterly without effort, bombed a drive beyond any of the monsters he had yet launched, the sense solidified among all watching that this man would not crumble any further. He was rolling. That was it. No one would get off the hook.

Jones and Hagen rose to it. It has been said of both that, when called for, they could crank their swings open another notch and add twenty or thirty yards. This they now did. Jones driving off the par-five fifteenth seemed to move through the ball in slow motion. The shot rocketed skyward as if it would never come down. Hagen followed with an attempted home run that
turned over, caught the wrong side of a fairway bunker and careened wildly into jungle grass. Tawdry Jones raced after it, planting his flag in cabbage up to the knees of his plus fours. When we got to the ball, it was sitting up like a plover’s egg on the single tuft of marsh grass in a radius of a dozen feet. It couldn’t have been more impeccably teed if Sir Walter’s own valet had done it. Hagen slashed a driver out of the muck that flew and bounded all the way to a greenside bunker, 260 away. The gallery surged to the green in joyous hysteria, just shy of out-and-out bedlam.

Here Jones and Junah, both on in two, faced probably the most impossible putts I have ever seen. Let me attempt a picture of them. Jones was outside, about fifty feet away; Junah perhaps three feet closer. Both balls sat on the upper tier of a two-level green, with the flag on the lower and a dizzyingly slick slope in between. The putt ran fiercely downgrain all the way, and worse, it was dry. The elevated green had drained exceptionally well and been dewatered even further by the hard coastal wind. It was greased lightning. To stop the ball anywhere near the hole, the putt had to be ghosted to the absolute edge of the slope top, so that it was barely creeping when it started over. And, if these difficulties weren’t enough, the slope also bore a wicked right-to-left break following the grain.

Jones looked it over from all four quadrants. This was ample testament to the dauntingness of the shot, as Jones invariably stepped to his putts briskly and without over-rumination. It was riveting to watch his face now, deep in concentration, oblivious of the gallery, of his opponents, of everything except the slope, the
grain and the ball. His eyes blinked as he thought; he absently chewed his lip pacing back to behind the ball. He was sensing the green through his spikes, through his soles. I was directly behind his ball and the downgrain was shining like a wet slicker. He was ready. He set Calamity Jane before the ball as he always did, checked the line once, then lifted the putter blade and set it behind the ball; another glance to the cup and then he stroked it.

The ball crept forward toward the top of the ski jump. I was sure he had mishit it, even scuffed it, it was going so slowly. It would stop five feet short of the downslope for sure. But Jones had not moved. There was no indication in his posture that he had erred; he was frozen, watching the ball inch forward exactly as he had intended. By God, he was right! The ball kept crawling and creeping…to the very brink of the downslope, hovering, almost stopping, it seemed it actually
did
stop, still twenty-five feet above the hole, and then, with an infinitesimal move, it nudged clear of the last blade of grass and the downslope caught it. Here it came. Slow at first, then faster, faster, picking up speed and breaking down that wicked slippery grain, burning the edge of the cup and sliding remorselessly onward, six feet by, eight feet, ten, and still creeping resistlessly onward till it finally wobbled to a stop twelve feet past.

The gallery groaned and then applauded. A better putt could not have been stroked. A thousand further tries would produce nothing superior. The putt was just damn impossible!

Now the spectators turned and watched Junah study it. Here, theoretically at least, was an opening. If Jones could not get his twelve-footer in, he would par, not birdie. If Junah could some
how get this putt down in two, he would pick up a shot. But how could he, or anyone including Harry Houdini, stop the ball near the hole on that ice-slick downhill?

Junah took his sand iron. The gallery oohhed in surprise and puzzlement. The man was on the green; what in the world was he doing with a wedge? I saw Hagen nod and chuckle. Junah stepped to the ball, then turned, facing not at the hole but at 90 degrees, more, 110 degrees. He was going to chip it
off
the green, up the slope at right angles to the hole, and let it drift down across the grain instead of down. Jones turned to Keeler with a crooked grin. He had thought of this too, it was clear, but judged it too risky. Junah settled over the shot. Checked the line once, twice. There was no way to plot this by azimuth; it was all feel and instinct.

He swung.

A crisp little half-chip that nipped the ball, scuffing the perfect grass of the green, taking a divot the size of a tablespoon, and lofted the spinning sphere up off the green onto the steep sloping collar above. For a second terror struck me; I was sure he had hit it too hard. Then I realized, he intended this! Junah wasn’t coming in from the side, but from the rear!

The ball struck the upper bank five or six feet past the collar, kicked laterally another three, then began trickling rearward, losing some of its speed as it bobbled through the taller grass of the fringe, then dribbled out onto the green forty feet above the hole and directly behind it. Down it came. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, down, down on the much less severe slope from the rear…incredibly, on line, but still gathering pace just as Jones’
ball had. Oh no. Would it rocket past? Would it squirt by like his? Here it came, missing the cup by half an inch and scooting beyond, in the opposite direction. Two feet…four…six! But wait, it was on the same grain that had confounded Jones’ putt. Only Junah’s ball was going up, not down. Against the grain, not with it. The grass grabbed it like a mountain brake on a truck. The ball slowed, trembled, stopped; then started in reverse! Drifting, crawling, creeping, with infinite slowness, half a turn at a time it meandered back down, down, finally ghosting to a stop a foot and a half below the hole.

It was one of those shots whose brilliance evokes not cheers, but laughter. Tension-release laughter. The galleryites whistled and shook their heads and just howled.

Birdie for Junah. Pars for Hagen and Jones. Junah was now one shot back.

“Someone wake this kid up,” Hagen joked as they climbed the rise to the sixteenth tee. Junah never heard, so deep was his concentration, though Hagen said it for him and to him from only an arm’s length away.

Now fresh spectators were arriving in half dozens and dozens. The press too, smelling the story. Daylight was failing; already on the tee the chief marshals were dispatching their minions two holes ahead, circling cars around the eighteenth green so the headlights could illuminate it.

Let me describe a shot Jones played on sixteen as it, like Junah’s driver on six, was one of the half-dozen most courageous I have ever seen.

It was a three-foot putt.

Sixteen was a short par four, 360 off the tee we played in the morning but now only 310 with the afternoon markers pushed all the way forward. The wind had shifted to quartering from behind; the green was reachable, though spooky with the light failing and a ring of lethal bunkers protecting all approaches save one lane no more than 15 feet wide. Junah and Hagen both played prudent one-irons, leaving themselves in the fairway 80 or 90 yards out. Jones went to Jeannie Deans, his driver. What was he thinking? Possibly he was aiming deliberately for the greenside bunkers, figuring he had as good a chance of getting down in two from there as from the fairway, and without fear of dumping a pitch into the sand from 90 yards out. Whatever his strategy, it succeeded brilliantly. He unleashed a bomb off the tee, dead on line all the way, striking the 15-foot gap smack in the center and scooting nimbly onto the green, curling to a stop inside the shadow of the flag.

This was not one of those shots whose effect is appreciated only on later reflection. Hagen and Junah felt the full impact right now. This was Jones declaring for all that he was the Man, invincible, waiting only till the ninth inning to pack his opponents away. Fun and games were over. Bobby was taking charge.

Hagen and Junah rained valiant pitches in to ten and twelve feet respectively. Junah made and Hagen missed. The gallery seemed to press in, if it were possible, even more tightly around the green. Jones stepped to the uphill six-footer for his eagle. Against Hagen’s par, Bobby would pick up two here. Even
Junah’s birdie would do him no more service than to cut his loss to a single stroke. The gallery had it figured; Keeler had it figured; without doubt Bobby did too.

Jones missed.

Maybe spooked by the quickness of his putt on the previous hole, he misjudged this one. Left it a foot short. The gallery groaned. Still it was no problem; Jones would tap in for his birdie and stride to seventeen no worse than when he began the hole.

He missed the tap-in.

Didn’t just miss, but rammed it three and a half feet past!

Now he was staring down the gut of a left-to-right downhill slider not for an eagle or a birdie but a par, a par that would after all his heroics
lose
him a stroke, to Junah anyway, and yawning like the maw of doom before him was the very real possibility that he would miss this too! Would he four-putt? Would this go on all day? Would his ball keep scooting back and forth past this hole interminably? The gallery’s golfing terrors intuited all this; you could see them holding their breath, averting their eyes as the debacle loomed in the failing light.