The Legend of Bagger Vance (20 page)

“Y
EAH SURE, PAL
.” Michael paced angrily along the truck rail. “Sure you own all this.”

The stranger was climbing down from the pickup bed. Irene was already out beside the driver’s door; I was stepping down on the passenger side. Michael had turned away. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “This was a crazy idea, we only did it cause we’re all so punchy from lack of sleep.” He stepped toward Irene, holding his hand out for the keys.

“You came to play this final hole, Michael,” the stranger continued in his cool but emphatic tone. “Don’t you think you should do so?”

I still had not seen the man’s face. The collar was up on his ragged poncho; the storm hood had obscured my view, nor had I really even tried to look at him, behind us in the pickup bed. Now he stepped down. The rain fell, misting my glasses. I blinked and strained through the beading droplets….

“This is nuts.” Michael had turned to Irene, who was gazing curiously, held by something in the strange man’s presence. “Who is this guy? How does he know why we came here…and how does he know my name?”

“I have known you under many names, Michael.”

I tore my glasses off. The man turned. I saw his face.

“Are you all right, sir?” He reached to take my elbow. Apparently I had staggered. I blinked and stared into the stranger’s bottomless eyes….

It was Vance of course.

As part of me had known as early as last night on the road, and surely had known now for the past twenty minutes.

“Let him alone, you!” Michael shouldered the lean stranger aside, moving in to support me. Michael turned to Irene. “I’ve had enough of this business. What are we even doing here? We’re certainly not marching down there in this muck!”

Michael’s angry gesture took in the ragged line of Krewe Island’s long-neglected eighteenth. The hole, what remained of it, was literally a pasture. A field. My gaze stayed riveted on Vance. He had not changed one iota nor aged one degree. His eyes glowed just for a moment with a private light for me. Then he turned to Michael. “The hole looks fine to me,” he said.

We all turned. Someone’s trespassing sheep were just now shambling off to the far right, the bail-out zone of the old fairway. I found myself recalling what Keeler had said, the night he and Vance had stood silently, peering out over the darkened
duneland. Krewe Island despite the years had not reverted to nature; her identity was stamped so strongly upon her, the hole seemed if possible more itself than ever. The grazing beasts had maintained the fairway. The bunkers along the seawall had been gouged deeper by years of storm and disuse, but in an odd Scottish way that only made them more authentic. The hole had matured. Where the duneland grass grew wild, it looked like the raw carries a player faces at Prestwick or Carnoustie. The worn storm-settled undulations contributed a smack of Western Gailes; Nairn and Troon were there in the sharp wind and over all like a bright patina was the wild, scudding-cloud light of Royal Dornoch. In a savage sea-torn way the land had at last become Krewe Island, Invergordon’s dream.

“It doesn’t look half bad.” Irene squinted out over the shore. Her hand held Junah’s rebuilt persimmon. Michael made a face.

“You’re not really going down there?”

“Why not? We came all this way.”

“We don’t have spikes. We’ll be slipping on wet grass; my God, the fairway’s half sheep and cow shit!”

“I don’t know why,” Irene said, “but I want to hit this ball.”

She held her grandfather’s ’31 Spalding Dot.

I held mine in my hand too.

“Here, Michael,” Vance spoke very softly. “I saved the third for you.”

He held out another brilliant 1931 Spalding. Still white, still new. With the pen-marked
J
beneath the numeral.

Michael staggered. Irene fell back too. I thought both their
eyes would start from their sockets. “What the hell is this!” Michael turned to me, furious. “Is this some kind of joke, Doctor? Because I don’t find it funny at all.”

I denied this instantly and profusely. But I felt my own brow flushing with shock and confusion….

“The path looks dry”—Vance took a step forward—“let’s go down to the tee.”

Lightning flashed over the ocean. My whole back was gooseflesh. I saw Michael’s glance seek mine. Vance started forward; Michael caught his arm, hard. “Who are you?” he demanded with a harshness unlike anything I had ever heard in his tone. “I’m not taking a step down this path till you tell me what the hell is going on!”

The warrior god turned to him. He was as tall and lean as Michael was muscular, as poised and centered as Michael was spooked. “You will know me in every age,” he said, “by the way deluded men respond to me. They despise me, as you yourself did when we first met on the road.”

“That’s not true!” Michael shot back, hard and defensive. “I was only upset because…”

He pulled up, tripped by guilt and truth. He knew now, and so did Irene. She moved in beside Michael, reinforcing. “Where did you get that ball?” she queried Vance, barely containing the tremor in her voice. “How did you…?”

“The ball is for you, Michael,” Vance spoke, eyes never leaving the young athlete’s. “You are why I have come. You are why I am here.” He placed it gently into Michael’s palm.

Vance turned and stepped onto the path that led down to the
eighteenth tee. Michael wheeled in disquiet toward Irene; she clutched his free hand. Irene’s glance shot back to me, clearly pleading,
What should we do?

“I don’t know about you two,” I said, “but I’m going to play the hole.”

I started down the path behind Vance. Now I could smell him. How had I missed it before? That raw keen animal smell that was beyond wildness, to humanity in its deepest, most primordial sense. A sudden fear gripped me; that Michael and Irene would freeze…and flee. “Don’t look back”—I heard Vance’s calm voice—“they will follow.”

The tee itself, when we tightroped across the last worn crest of path, was dry and cropped as close as a putting green. The links turf grew dense and tight underfoot; even my loafers found sure, easy purchase. I peered down the fairway. From this new vantage with the surf beneath us and the wild dawn light behind, the hole looked like the greatest of Scottish links do, as if crafted by forces far wiser than man, natural as a riverbed, pure as daybreak. “Does it remind you of anything, Hardy?” Vance asked in his still, gentle voice. I knew of course what he meant.

“Of the thirteenth green,” I answered, “that day you stopped the sun.”

He turned with a smile and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Instantly the rush of warmth that I remembered so well flooded over my bones. His face, which I like Michael had passed over at first without a glance, now shone magnificent in its warriorlike brilliance and beauty. “You’ve earned the honor, Hardy. Please,” he said, “play first.”

Michael and Irene had indeed followed us down; now they stepped tentatively off the path onto the tee. You could see their astonishment at the turf’s pristine condition. Even the ancient tee marker remained readable with its worn letters and numerals carved into the wood.

18
Valor
Par 5 541 yards

I teed my ball and stepped back. “Take no practice”—I heard Vance’s voice behind me—“simply hit.”

I obeyed. It surprised me not at all to flush the ball dead between the screws and watch a hard ripping rocket boom off the clubface, ride the following wind and steam down to land just right of the seawall bunkers, and bound ahead strongly around the neck of the dogleg. Exactly like Jones’ drive, only lacking fifty or so yards of his distance.

Vance’s eyes summoned Irene next. She teed her ball uncertainly, glancing to Michael and me for reassurance, then gripped her grandfather’s long-shafted driver. It was a serious weapon, even for him, and for a moment I feared that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Foolish. She drew the big persimmon back in a strong slot-grooved motion and pounded a beauty, along the same line as mine and every inch as long. She stepped away with a look of wonder, even fear, eyes flicking first to Vance, then back toward Michael, who now stood at the edge of the tee with
the rain beading on his handsome face and the wind sheeting across his eyes.

“Forget it,” he spoke directly to Vance. “I’m not taking part in this freak show, or whatever crazy stunt you think you’re pulling….”

Irene reached for him. “Do it, Michael.”

“I won’t”—he tugged free—“don’t ask me!”

Irene glanced anxiously to me. I had no idea what to say. “It’s all right,” Vance spoke evenly. “I understand the young man’s hesitation. Do I have your permission then,” he asked him, “to hit the shot for you?”

“Do whatever you want, it makes no difference to me,” Michael answered.

Vance stepped before Irene and held out his hand for the driver. “You’re wondering how long this land has belonged to me,” he addressed her as she placed the weapon across his fingers. “There was never a time when it did not.” He held out his palm to Michael, who with a shudder dropped the third ball into it. Vance bent and teed it. But he was not aiming down the fairway.

He was aiming out to sea.

Now his brilliant hands settled around the leather. A part of me, I confess in candor despite it all, had still held out like Michael in disbelief; this couldn’t be real, couldn’t truly be happening. Now I saw his hands and all doubt vanished. It was his grip. Vance’s perfect, magnificent grip. My glance shot to Michael. “Michael is reluctant,” Vance spoke as he stepped to the ball
and set the driver that he himself had fashioned behind it, “because he is thinking with his head. He knew better as a boy. He knew that here, in the hands, is where true intelligence resides. The swing exists in all its perfection within the grip already, as our lives exist entire in every present moment.”

Vance swung.

It was his swing. I knew it would be, but memory, no matter how vivid or recently rehearsed, could not prepare me for the power that poured from his slender sinewy frame. To the top in perfect balance; the slightest pause and then Schenectady Slim dropped down into the slot; Vance’s legs drove through with impeccable economy and then with mind-shuddering might his hands unleashed their full lashing fury. The sound of the ball exploding off the clubface made Irene gasp. Our necks snapped trying to follow its blurred, blasting fight. “My God,” Michael’s voice uttered numbly behind me. The ball streaked and flew, rising with spectacular power to the point when it must peak and begin its gravity-driven fall. But it didn’t fall. It climbed and rose and rose some more, boring into infinity, to the seething heart of the storm. Lightning flashed in four directions as the ball vanished and the clouds roiled and tossed in fury.

Michael stared dumbstruck as Vance rocked back out of his finish and settled again onto his soles before him. “You have heard Hardy speak of that ancient battle,” he addressed Michael directly, “and you dismissed it as harmless tale or metaphor. It was no metaphor, Michael.” Vance stepped before the young man now and placed a hand on his shoulder. I saw Michael stagger. Irene and I sprung forward to steady him. For a moment I
thought Vance would dismiss us. But he seemed somehow to want, and even need, us there. I braced myself on Michael’s left; I could feel Irene do the same on the right.

“The battle,” Vance spoke now, directly to Michael, “marked a day not of glory, but of tragedy. Civilization stood then, as it does now, in the twilight of an aeons-long cycle. Like us, those vanished warriors planted their standards in the sands of their own self-summoned extinction.”

Vance gestured out over the vanished seafront, above the booming ocean.

“The fact of battle, as each man grasped painfully in his heart, was proof of the race’s failure. They knew, warriors and dreamers and magicians, that bright as their comet had shown, it had fallen short through its own failure of nerve and self-compassion. Mankind must now quench in blood and horror the unresolved fury of its soul. I strode among the warriors, filling each with the courage to meet his destiny. Do you remember, Michael? Can you see the field of battle before you now?”

Michael’s glance was wild, tormented, peering straight into the heart of the storm, to ocean that once had been land, to land that had once been battlefield.

“The first I found was Junah,” Vance spoke, “eldest and most keenly conscious, beside his chariot at the forefront of the battle line. He pleaded with me for mercy, for foe as well as friend. I ignored him, spreading before his grasp the weapons of his destiny. His hand seized a bow of burnished ash and arrows of fletched steel, murderous and invincible.”

Michael trembled before the warrior god’s power. His eyes
showed white beneath flickering lids; Irene and I held him tight, supporting…

“Next I sought out Hardy, a generation younger than Junah. I found him too, in infantryman’s armor, torn with the grief of his own and his brothers’ failure. He begged me in the name of humanity to forbear. Him too I ignored and again displayed my weapons. In pain he grasped a bronze-bound oak battle spear, its killing point merciless and insuperable.”

Michael reeled and shuddered, without doubt seeing this all with the inner eye. “Then I found you.” Vance stepped now, moving directly before him. “Youngest of the three, last in the line of generations and blessed with the greatest strength and compassion. You too pleaded for the race, and before you too I arrayed the shafts of your destiny. Do you remember?”

Michael stiffened as if blasted by a charge; Irene and I held him firm between us.

“Do you remember what you chose?” Vance repeated, and we could feel Michael shudder yet again.

“I do,” the young man said, and his whole body seemed to convulse from the charge and current of this remembered vision. I could feel the voltage, like a wave, rush from his sole to his crown.

“It was neither bow nor spear,” Vance spoke with his absolute centered quietude, “but a plain wooden staff, the staff of physic. From time immemorial the shaft of mercy, whose power is not to kill but to heal.”

Michael’s knees buckled. Vance’s words had cut through to
his heart. His eyes sprung open; he began to weep. He buried his face in Irene’s shoulder, clinging to her with all his strength.