The Legend of Bagger Vance (7 page)

I
WOKE UP LYING IN THE BACK SEAT
of the Chalmers with a pillow under my head and a blanket on top of me. Light was in my eyes and Bagger Vance was shaking my shoulder.

“Wake up, young man, it’s almost six. Time to get your breakfast.”

I crawled out, blinking. Spectators’ cars were already arriving; you could see their headlights in the foggy dawn, creeping down the lanes already packed on both sides with parked automobiles.

People had slept in their cars, camped out right on the roadsides. Men were scratching their hindsides and pissing off into the cattails. An enormous kitchen tent had been set up on the rise inland from the hotel; sweet coffee and egg smells climbed from the stove flues that protruded from its bright arcing canvas. Latrine tents rose from the various parking areas; bleary-eyed galleryites were already forming lines.

Vance wiped my face and poured me into a clean shirt and
long trousers, which he had brought along apparently for just this purpose. He gave me a two-quart steel jug and a rucksack-type pack, canvas lined with rubber. “Go to the employees’ kitchen, use this badge if they give you any trouble.” He handed me an official Krewe Island I.D., dove-gray with plum letters:
COMPETITOR
. (Vance wore one too, pinned to his caddie’s cap.) “Fill the jug with hot sweet tea. Put ice in the rubber pack, plenty of it, and nestle five crisp apples among the frozen blocks. Put a couple of bananas in the main pouch pocket and as many raisins and nuts as you can fit in the others.” He straightened my shirt and smoothed the hair out of my eyes. “Make sure you get a good meal in your own belly first. And empty your bowels before you start for the course!”

“Where are
you
going?” I turned back as he scooted me on my way.

“Meet me at the practice tee in an hour. I must wake Junah.”

The carriage-house dorm was bedlam when I got there, looking for Garland. Men were trying to shave, peering over each other, five to each mirror, while the sounds of farting, pissing, coughing, spitting and hacking echoed like a TB ward. Every man was smoking already, and many of the boys. “Thirty-six holes today, lads,” Dougal McDermott was calling, already dressed and shaved, with a steaming mug of coffee in his fist. “Tee-off at eight sharp and no excuses!”

I found Garland out in the tent kitchen. He was with the other forecaddies, dressed in shirt, tie and plus fours with his flags beside him at the table; they were all wolfing down chipped beef on toast and glowing like princes. Garland declared me a fool for
giving up such an opportunity, and vowed he wouldn’t switch back no matter how much I begged him. Then he tugged me aside and swore me to secrecy. “You’ll never guess what I saw, in the locker room not ten minutes ago. Swear to me on your soul, cross your heart Mama ’n’ Daddy never part, or I’ll never tell you.” The other forecaddies protested; Garland had apparently already told them the secret, which they now considered their own private treasure. “He’s my brother, dammit, and I’m gon tell him.” Garland glared. He ordered me to cross my heart and spit. I did. He tugged me closer.

“I was washing up, back yonder in the dormitory, and my bladder was about to bust. The stalls were all full, so I went outside; I was about to let her go right there in the bushes, but ladies kept passing on their way to the dining room. I thought I was about to pee in my brand-new pants. Then I saw an attendant duck through to the players’ locker room; the door was open so I scooted in after and flashed off fast so he didn’t see me.

“My, it was grand in there, Hardy, all carpeted and quiet with only three bags standing by themselves up against the wall, with the heads of their irons all emery-buffed and shiny, the woods all a-gleaming, and two sets of spit-polished shoes beside of each bag and little handwritten cards, all neat and perfect, saying ‘Mr. Jones,’ ‘Mr. Hagen’ and ‘Mr. Junah.’ I thought about swiping them little cards, they must be worth jillions, but just then I heard that attendant or something coming, so I snookered into the back and there I was, in the shiniest damn shithouse you ever saw. You could eat your supper right off the floor, I swear, that’s
how clean she was. There was Kreml hair tonic and Vitalis up there on the shelf, all free, just help yourself, and witch hazel and rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, and even combs and tooth powder, and each commode had a pure mahogany wood seat. Hell, I figured, I ain’t gon waste this by only pissing, I’m gon drop a full load, just for the glory of it.

“There I was, a-perched on this brand-new commode that probably nobody’s ass hadn’t never sat down on, when I heard fast footsteps, spikes a-clattering, coming in to the sinks. The stall door banged open two down from me and I heard this godawful retching, puking, disgusting sound. I zipped up and peered under the stalls. There was a man down there on his knees, with his hands on the rim of the bowl; the poor bastard was just heaving his guts up right into the commode! I froze right there on my bowl, with my feet tucked up so he wouldn’t see me. I could hear him finish and flush and then wash his mouth out in the sink and spit and heave some more, splashing Listerine around to kill the smell and even swallowing it. I raised up, tiptoe on the commode seat, so I could just peek over the top rim of the stall. The man’s hair was all hanging down in his face, I couldn’t make out who it was. Then he combed it back and leaned forward into the mirror and you know who it was?” Garland paused dramatically, peering around to make sure no one could overhear. “It was Walter Hagen, bigger’n shit!”

“You’re a damn liar!” I shot at once.

“If I’m lying I’m dying!” Garland grabbed me by the shirtfront and pulled me tight to him, shook me hard so I’d know he meant it. “Hagen was so cat-nervous he couldn’t even hold down
his breakfast. I know cause I looked after he left, and there was eggs and toast bits in that stall, sprayed over on the seat and the floor too.”

This was more than I could endure. “Now I
know
you’re lying, Garland. The Haig never eats nothing for breakfast but oysters and French champagne!”

Garland’s lip curled, he released me. “Believe what you want, son, but these eyes know what they seen. It was Walter Hagen and he was puking his damn guts up.”

I staggered back, reeling. Tawdry Jones, one of the other forecaddies, caught me by the shirtback. “Breathe a word of this ever and your ass is sweet green grass.”

The sun was full up now; already you could feel the heat steaming from the earth. It was nearly seven. The grounds before the hotel were packed with spectators emerging from the dining room and others arriving from the main drive. I filled my jug with hot tea as Bagger Vance had instructed me, and collected the apples and bananas and nuts.

Out by the press tent a bunch of reporters and spectators were clustered around a ruggedly handsome older man they called Grant. It was Grantland Rice, I learned later, and he was answering a question, holding forth like royalty.

“The seduction of golf? I’ll tell you its root. It goes back to the time before we were born, when we orbited in the ether, bodiless and without form. Don’t write this down, boys, I’m using it for my own column, maybe even for a book!”

The reporters laughed and kept scribbling.

“In those precarnate days, our consciousness existed much as
it does now in dreams. That which we willed or imagined, our minds created instantaneously. A city. A shoe. A solar system. We had only to think and it appeared, complete to the tiniest detail.

“Then, alas,” Rice continued, “we took upon ourselves the travail and torment of physical existence. We were born. We acquired a body. All memory was lost of that perfect bliss in the prenatal firmament. Or was it? Nay, we sought now, without suspecting its mystical source, to recapture if only for a moment the sensation we had known in the womb of the stars. We sought to think
and to make our thoughts so!

“I’ve lived and breathed sports my whole life and, mark me, this is the power by which they hold us spellbound. They remind us, when we perform an athletic feat aright or even vicariously, when we witness others doing so, of our days before birth. Our days in the ether. To throw a blistering fastball and watch the leathern pellet streak swift as thought precisely where we willed it: we feel like gods! We have willed, and our will has made it happen. To rifle a perfect pass. To fire the perfect punch. To pound a perfect serve. All these recall that idyllic existence, traces of which still linger in memory below the surface of consciousness.

“But tell me, gentlemen, and I will yield to any man who can gainsay me: is there another field of athletic endeavor upon which man can work his will that is grander or of greater scale than a golfing links?

“The distances alone! Out here we may visualize a drive of 300 yards, by God nearly three times as far as the mightiest
home run, and then we execute it! And not just distance but accuracy as well. Consider a screaming long iron that rises and banks, fading or drawing exactly as we imagined, 210 yards to land precisely on target and stop within inches of the hole. From an eighth of a mile away!
That
is godlike! It makes us feel our will triumphant, we return to that paradise in which we dwelt before our natal hour.

“Why quibble that this taste of perfection comes only once in a hundred shots, or once in a thousand? We taste the nectar once and must ever after continue to seek it.

“That glimpse, gentlemen. That glimpse the goddess of golf grants us when she will, and that is all she requires to render us abject before her forever!”

The reporters laughed and surrounded Rice, kidding him good-naturedly. “That may be the reason on the ethereal plane,” one spoke up loud, “but down here what brings ’em out is a plain old head-knocking. They come to see battle. To see a man spill another man’s blood.”

Jones and Keeler were already there on the practice tee when I hurried up at five minutes before seven. There must have been two hundred spectators already, held back by ropes and swelling three and four deep just to watch Jones hit his warm-up shots. I had the apples and ice now and resettled them so the pack wouldn’t leak.

Behind the crowd I could see the Chalmers pull in, with two police cycles rumbling ahead as escorts. The spectators stirred and jostled and there came Junah, stepping forth tall and handsome as the gallery parted before him. Bagger Vance emerged
behind, carrying Junah’s bag. Photographers set up for photos. Junah obliged graciously but without pleasure. I saw Jones wink over and Junah smile back.

On the practice tee, which was clipped as short and flawless as a putting surface, waited three pyramids of golf balls, brand-new high-compression Spalding balatas that were so white in the sun you couldn’t look at them without squinting. Jones could see that Junah was shy about approaching him, so he came over on his own, smiling, with O. B. Keeler, and they shook hands and wished each other luck. I was fetching the shag bag from the Chalmers and couldn’t get back quickly enough in the swell to hear what they were saying. I could just see them talking, two knights of the fairway, both tanned and athletic and handsome in their immaculate linen shirts and perfectly creased plus fours. Apparently Keeler had told Jones about last night on the course, and about Bagger Vance’s theories. Keeler beside Jones was gesturing to Vance, motioning him to join their group. Vance declined with a diffident motion of his hand, apparently thinking it unseemly for a caddie to fraternize with his golfing superiors. Keeler insisted, and reluctantly Vance came over. I got there just after the introductions to find Jones regarding the tall and still self-effacing caddie thoughtfully. “Are you sure we’ve met?” he asked, studying Bagger Vance’s features. “I’m certain I would recall a face as striking as yours.”

“It was a long time ago, sir,” Vance answered softly. There was a pause. Something about the way Vance said it. You could see Jones puzzling, studying Vance as if for a meaning beneath the surface.

“It’s all I can do to remember yesterday.” Junah stepped in, dispelling the tension in laughter. Vance seized the chance and withdrew subtly, easing Junah to the fore. The group crossed to Jones’ pile of practice balls; photographers clustered; Jones began lobbing easy pitches down to his shag boy. He chatted with Junah and Keeler in between shots, nipping each pitch perfectly with his flawless languid rhythm, nudging each successive ball from the clutch with his clubhead, positioning it precisely at the back edge of the previous divot. “Every warm-up session is a new adventure, isn’t it, Mr. Junah?” he remarked in his soft Georgia drawl. “One never knows which swing he’ll find that morning, or if he’ll find one at all.”

Junah chuckled. “I haven’t found mine in five years.” You could see he and Jones were both battling nervousness, each seeking to establish a solid controllable rhythm for themselves for the day.

“I’m certain your caddie can help you,” Keeler put in with a smile, trying to draw Bagger Vance closer into the circle. “If anyone knows how the swing is learned, I’ll wager it’s he.”

There was a pause. “The swing is never learned,” Bagger Vance said softly. “It’s remembered.”

Jones’ clubhead was just positioning a fresh ball. He stopped abruptly. The Grand Slam champion looked up, studying Vance’s face with a deep thoughtfulness.

“You were right, O.B.,” he said with a grin to Keeler. “This mysterious gentleman is a master of the subtleties of the game. We’d better stop fraternizing before he seduces us into contemplation of its mysteries and we forget we have a match to play.”

“Forgive me, sir,” Vance said softly, “I’ve spoken too much already.” Again he withdrew, a subtle touch to Junah steering him toward his own practice lane.

Keeler’s eyes followed as they withdrew. “Sir, tell me,” he called after Junah, “was your caddie ever a professional somewhere?”

Junah laughed. “He’s been that and a lot more.”

Keeler absorbed this thoughtfully. “May I ask where, sir?” he called, this time directly to Bagger Vance. “Where were you a professional?”

Photographers and spectators had overheard the exchange. There was a stir; a dozen pairs of eyes, including Junah’s, turned to Bagger Vance to see if he would answer. The caddie squinted back toward Keeler. His voice was low, barely audible. “Here,” he said. “I was a professional here.”