Waiting for Augusta (21 page)

“I don't understand.”

“Everybody wakes up with something hard, son. Something maybe they're afraid of facing. But people have to get up anyway. I'm sure you'll have enough to deal with, just growing up and being the man of the house for your mama. What goes on with the Talbots is their piece of hard. It's not yours. You just keep your focus at school and things will be all right.”

I stared at the silver on the urn, seeing Daddy leaning over a club, eyes on the ball. “Putters keep their head down,” I said. “You told me that. But you also used to tell me that Putters are men of action. Which is it, Daddy?”

He paused, and I thought he was getting angry. But when he spoke, he just sounded wary, like he was wrestling with something he couldn't see. “In general, I'm a man of action. Men are meant to be active. But you can't play golf in the rain, son, and this business about race and segregation and coloreds and whites is one heck of a thunderstorm. There are times in life when you've just got to duck and cover, keep your head down, and hope those ugly clouds pass by soon. There's nothing you can do to hurry along Mother Nature.”

I knew about keeping my head down. I kept it down when people called me names. I kept it down when they
called May names. And I'd kept my head down with my daddy. Something inside me was getting tired of staring at the ground. Grandpa Clay said that you had to take ownership over messy parts in life, to admit they were there in order to change the way you saw things—to give you a bigger picture of the world.

“But it's not Mother Nature, Daddy. It's people. So why can't you be a man of action with—”

He sucked in a breath, cutting me off. “Life is short, Ben. Sometimes it's just too short to fight other people's battles. It's too short for people to change.”

I stared down at my fisherman's knot. It was nice and tight and would hold a good amount of weight without coming apart. “So you don't agree with colored people getting treated different . . . but it's not your place or my place to do anything. Is that what you mean?”

It took a minute for him to answer. “Yeah. I guess that's what I mean.”

On the train, Noni'd said that the ropes had to be the same thickness for a fisherman's knot to work. If one was different, the knot wouldn't hold together. With the two pieces of rope in my hand, I thought of what Daddy'd just said.

“I think you're wrong,” I told him. “I hope you are.”

“What am I wrong about?” Daddy asked.

I tugged on the rope ends, feeling the knot hold. “I think people can change. And I think if people don't say anything
when someone gets treated bad, they'll just keep getting treated bad.”

Daddy looked at me—I felt his eyes through the urn's walls. “You're young. Sometimes life teaches you hard lessons. Life's hard parts can take away the beliefs you want to hold on to.”

I closed my eyes and looked right at him. “Maybe the hard parts, even the ones that aren't yours, are teaching you that you should believe in something better.”

Daddy paused. “Maybe you're right, Ben.”

But I had a feeling that he wasn't talking about the same things I was. He wasn't talking about May having a hard time at school or Mr. Talbot not being allowed at Pastor Frank's. He was talking about whatever hard parts had been in the life he'd led.

I let my hand curve over the knot in my lap. For the first time, it occurred to me that whatever my daddy thought, whatever beliefs he had held on to or let go of, they were his own. And they weren't the same as mine. And that was okay.

I'd always wanted him to be proud of me. To be the son he wanted. To be close and for us to hold each other together. Was that even possible if we weren't the same kind of rope?

I wanted to think so.

The sound of Noni crashing through the brush distracted me before I could say anything else. She was skipping and whistling, looking like she'd just won a free pass
to an egg and pie festival. With a wide grin and two cookies she'd swiped from a display that was just sitting right in the ACC's clubhouse, she told me that people had been nice. The two of us would be able to walk around the property, wait for a moment when nobody was watching, and quickly sneak over to the spot where we'd jump the fence to Augusta National when night fell.

“Just be polite like me,” Noni said, “and we'll be fine. I was my usual charming self, and they didn't question a thing.”

I didn't doubt it. If there was one thing I'd learned about my secretive partner, it was that despite her inability to stick with a mood for long, she could manage to turn on the charm with adults when need be. “How come you're never your charming self with me?” I asked.

“Still not funny.” She wrinkled her nose and handed me a cookie. “Showing you my true self is a testament to our friendship. Consider yourself lucky.”

“But you haven't shown me your true self. You've barely told me a thing.”

She walked toward the road, not turning as she called back to me.

“Come on, Benjamin Putter. Let's go get a few more of these cookies and sneak over a fence.”

L
ooking up at the sky, dark as Noni's bruise, I felt like I was seeing Hilltop's Willy Walter walk down the road, a wicked grin on his face as he considered whether to knock me down and kick me, or punch me in the face first. A long roll of thunder sounded as we stood within striking distance of the nine-foot obstacle to my daddy's salvation. Augusta National Golf Club was right there, less than fifty feet away. The pitter-patter gumdrop rain starting to fall didn't fool me for a second. The sky was just licking its lips, letting drool drop down while it got ready to pounce.

“You hungry, Ben?” Daddy said. “That was a pretty loud growl.” Daddy sounded awake and excited.

“Very funny, Daddy. That's thunder, not my stomach. It's about to start raining hard as horse pee out here.” I wasn't in the mood for humor. He was nice and dry there in his ashy state, tucked away with our clothes for tomorrow, but I'd be getting soaked through.

Sure enough, within minutes, the rain's pressure increased and there was no escaping it, even crouched among bushes. It was biting rain, the kind that feels like a million tiny bees are swarming, and batting them away wouldn't do a thing but make them angrier.

“Hey!” Noni shouted, wiping her face.

“What?” I could barely hear over the pounding bullets of water. The drops stabbed me all over the place, including the eyeballs when I was stupid enough to look up. I was grateful for the tree cover, but it wasn't doing a whole lot of good. The foliage muffled some of the violent storm, but the wind whipping through the world felt like leftovers from somebody's winter up north.

“Flashlight!” she yelled, banging against the pack on my back.

“No!” We'd decided not to risk using it unless it was an emergency, since someone could see the light, and I couldn't see how it would help with all the rain practically blinding us anyway. “Come on!” I screamed at Noni, approaching the barrier and looking for the best place to start climbing.

Just before I made contact with the fence, a crack of lightning came down on the tree next to me, and a huge branch shot right off and headed my way. Hurling myself down, I curled up and ducked, feeling it slam into the ground right beside me. A sharp side branch had torn into the backpack. I moved away from the fallen piece of tree and felt a tear.
It was maybe a hand's length long, and something soft was right inside it. Noni's dress for the next day was probably ruined, but we'd have to deal with that later.

Just as I looked up, another crack landed right on the fence itself, and sparks exploded like Fourth of July come early. A scream sounded through the mess. I jerked up, looking for Noni and seeing nothing but trees, leaves, trunks, bushes, ground, all of it getting thrashed by the worst storm I'd ever seen, let alone gotten stuck in.

“Noni! Where are you?” There was no answer that I could hear over the rain, and I plunged farther into the brush, calling her name. It felt like emergency time, so I stopped and managed to find the flashlight, my cold, panicked fingers slipping off the switch to turn it on. Daddy yelled something, I didn't know what. All I knew was that I had a face full of rain and a girl to find.

The flashlight finally turned on, and shining beams of light were mine to wave in the darkness as another bolt of lightning flashed and crashed. “Noni!”

I thought I saw her and ran forward, light bouncing off leaves and dirt, but when I plunged through the bushes, it was nothing. The same thing happened twice more. “Noni!”

A moan sounded close by.

There.

She was on her knees, head down, huddled under a lightning-struck branch the size of a man's leg. Her arms
were over her head, her right hand tightly clutching her left elbow.

I rushed over and didn't say a word, just turned her over and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her close and hearing her whisper the words
I'm okay
. Then my arms slipped around her and hers did the same to me, and we clutched each other close and didn't let go.

“Somebody talk to me!” Daddy shouted from the pack. “The lightning didn't get you, did it?” he yelled anxiously. “Ben, listen to me! Just get out of here! Forget the Masters!”

“Any closer and I would've been ashes just like you,” I yelled through the downpour, pulling away from Noni. “And we're not going anywhere.”

The storm was a test, I knew it. Augusta was testing me, to see if I was worthy. It wasn't enough that Augusta was going to take my daddy from me now that we were actually talking—now the course was questioning me. Whether I was a good enough messenger.

It was Augusta who'd laid the trap for me.

I stood to face the fence. “That the best you can do?” I shouted to the golf course. “We're coming in, whether you like it or not!”

“Ben, don't—”

But I didn't let him finish. I had switched to full-on soldier mode. “Quiet, Daddy!” I ordered, wishing I had camouflage paint on. “I'm trying to save your soul. Come on, Noni.”

Wiping a couple of leaves from my wet face, I spit on my hands and rubbed them together because it seemed like the right thing to do. Taking a deep breath, I ignored Augusta's attempts at intimidation and launched myself at the fence, climbing up with speed I didn't know was in me. I felt a shake beside me as Noni followed. She slipped at the top, her foot coming around to smack me in the face.

“Sorry!” she yelled.

Instead of saying it was okay, I grabbed the foot, and we both tumbled over in a repeat of the fall I'd taken back at Pastor Frank's chicken yard, except this time I had a girl's body to cushion me. “Sorry!” I shouted back at her.

“What's going on? Who's sorry for what?” Daddy was yelling so loud that he forced himself into a coughing fit.

“We're in,” I told him. “Just sit tight.”

“What else am I gonna do in here?” he called back.

The minute we were over the fence, within sight of the twelfth green and the tee box for the thirteenth hole, the storm grew to a furious climax, beating us mercilessly until we found cover. Even as the world raged around us, the smells, the smells, the
smells
of freshly soaked Augusta grass and azaleas were overpowering, almost choking me. Feeling smothered by the very shelter that protected us from the storm, I took off the backpack and set it beside a tree. I had to find air.

I found myself stumbling toward the open space. Toward
a golf green. Noni shouted something through the squall and ran after me. I bent on the edge of the twelfth green, my soaked hands reaching out to feel the perfect grass.

Noni bent beside me with the flashlight and started to yell something. Then she looked at my face and I looked at hers. We both had rain pouring down our cheeks like we were crying our eyes out. She plucked a piece of grass, a longer piece from just off the green. She handed it to me, lifting it near my lips. “So it's part of you!” she shouted in my ear. “Go on!”

I ate it and handed her one, watching as she chewed, amazed as the deluge turned back into a softer rain that slowed to a complete halt.

It was like magic.

We both laughed and shouted and hugged, and when we parted, Noni's expression switched from joy to panic.

I didn't have to wonder why. The strong grip on my shoulder and the sight of a meaty hand reaching over me to grip Noni told me all I needed to know.

I froze, like the Prisoner Of War I was, then slowly turned to face a very large head, belonging to a very large man. With a twist of his hands, he turned us around, our flashlight catching him dead in the face.

Security.

With a gun strapped to his waist and a long, club-looking object on the ground beside him.

The man didn't have a name tag, but if he had, it would have said
BUTCH
,
BRUNO
, or something intimidating like
GRIDLOCK
. Bald head, bulging muscles, and a handlebar mustache big enough to make a fur coat for a baby pig.

“Nice evening for a walk,” he said, dripping sarcasm.

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying to sound innocent. Lord knows why I even tried. There was zero possible explanation for our whereabouts.

“You two going somewhere?” he asked.

Noni had clammed up and was staring at the man like he'd broken her heart.

“Um . . . We were thinking we'd go get some autographs?” I squeaked like a cornered squirrel. I was feeling about as twitchy as one too. “Thought we'd see if any of the boys in the Crow's Nest were still awake. That's the room in the clubhouse where amateurs get to stay during the tournament.”

“I know what the Crow's Nest is. It's not open to visitors, especially the late-night-kiddie-fan variety.”