Waiting for Augusta (28 page)

“What is it?”

“Read it later. It's the whole truth,” she said. “For luck.”
Noni stepped closer to me, her eyes shining. Her father's shirt moved in and out from her chest with soft breaths. “Benjamin Putter,” she whispered, lifting her hand toward my neck, “tell me what's stuck in your throat.” Her fingers reached and gently pressed against my skin, right over the lump.

I swallowed and felt it move. “A golf ball.”

She let out a long sigh, lowered her hand and head and smiled at the ground. “You have a golf ball in your throat?”

“Yes.”

“Benjamin Putter, when you get it out, can I have it?”

“You believe me? And you actually want the ball?”

“I told you I was looking for a miracle.” She stared out at something beyond the course. “Huh. There it is again. I could swear I heard a train whistle.” She reached out to squeeze my hand. “I believe you. And I believe
in
you. Now, go and set your daddy free.”

I stepped out of the bushes, holding my daddy's urn. The sky was covered with stars that whispered among themselves, saying words that I should have known all along.

Getting onto Augusta National was never the hard part
.

T
he eighteenth hole of Augusta National Golf Club was named Holly. It shared a name with my mama. I must've seen the word a hundred times over the last few days, looking in Daddy's Augusta book and checking the course map, but it hadn't hit me until I was walking to the final green. It hadn't sunk in that those 420 yards could be more than a golf hole to Daddy. Or that a golf course could be far more than just a place where a game was played. I'd heard those words from Daddy time and time again, but they'd always belonged only to him. I felt a shift inside me as I walked, like something moving over to make room so those words could belong to me, too.

There was a clear path to the hole, not a security man in sight to slow me down. I almost wished one would appear, just to take away my chance of doing what I came all the way from Hilltop to do.

“Hey, Daddy, you didn't marry Mama because her name
was part of this golf course, did you?” I was only half-joking. Nervous joking, really.

“No, Ben,” he replied, a coarse, unshaven noise coming from his throat. “Do you know why I named you after Ben Hogan?”

“Because you didn't like the name Byron or Bobby or Sam or Walter?”

He didn't laugh. “I named you after Ben Hogan because when you came into the world, it was like winning my own personal 1951 Masters. You were my miracle. My second chance to do something important. To become something that was bigger than myself, something that would live on.”

Well,
the fairway asked me,
how are you doing?

I wasn't ever going to be a bigger or better version of my father. The things he was good at weren't the things that my heart wanted, and I'd come to realize that there were other ways we weren't the same. It was like we were staring at the same painting, just from a different place in the room, so we each got our own view.

I ran for a tree a hundred yards from the green, his words echoing in my ears.
You were my second chance
.

“You still there, son?”

“Yeah.” I sniffled.

“I know you don't understand, son, but to me, you and this place are connected. Hey, are you crying?”

“No.” I hadn't cried since he died. But wetness was there
now, just behind my eyes. I hunched down and tucked him under my armpit, not wanting his urn to see me weak. Daddy had never seemed weak, not even when he knew he was dying. He'd been strong in ways I'd never known. I thought of the things I'd learned about my father in the past few days, both the good and the troubling. His ability to listen. His feelings about golf, which were deeper and more meaningful than I'd ever realized. His views on the world and its hard parts. The childhood that maybe made him the man he turned out to be. “Daddy, you're Abbott Meyers, aren't you?”

His breath smiled. “I wasn't born and raised in Augusta, but I sure would've loved it if that were the case. And I didn't get to eat those Georgia peaches that Abbott was so fond of. But, yes, I'm pieces of Abbott Meyers. I never shared much about myself with you, Ben. I was never good at that kind of talking. I guess those stories were my way of trying to show you parts of me.”

And now I'd never hear another. “Oh,” I managed to say.

“What's wrong?”

I didn't answer. It was too big of a question.

“Ben, I said before you were born, if I had a child, I would be a real father. Mine ran out on me and my mama and your uncle. I promised myself I would never do that to my child. Ben, you were the most important thing in my life. I've always known that, even if I haven't shown it right.”

I didn't answer. Couldn't answer.

“That's why I'm still around, I guess. Thank God I didn't leave without you knowing, that you, Ben. . . .” He had tears in his voice now. “You're what's left of me. You're what I'm leaving behind in the world, and I couldn't be prouder of that. You're a good boy.”

I moved him to my chest.

Wind murmured through the leaves and needles and grass of the most beautiful place I'd ever seen, and a fog bank emerged from behind me. Then one from the right. They began a strange dance, gathering at the corners of the dimly lit clubhouse.

Slowly, methodically, a white curtain was forming along the edge of the eighteenth green, creating a gift. A barrier of protection for me.

For Daddy.

All the world's colors were inside me. Shifting. Changing. Purple flames of disappointment. Orange flashes of neglect. Yellow flickers of loneliness. Blue bursts of sadness and longing and love. “I don't want you to leave again,” I said. “I wish you could stay. I can be a barbecue man and a golfer. I can be whatever you want.”

“Ben,” Daddy whispered. “Listen to me, now.”

Listen to him
, the far-off rustling trees told me.
Listen.

“There are about a million things you can choose to do in this world, Ben, and there are only two things that I knew enough about to teach you. So that's what I did. That's what
a father does. I don't know anything about painting or drawing or art. But you say you're good and you love it? Then you go after it. Call that teacher and let her help you. Ben Hogan wasn't great because he wanted to be the greatest golfer in the world. He was great because he wanted to be the greatest golfer he could be. He wouldn't settle for less. I want you to be your own best, that's all. I got you those canvases to paint on, didn't I?”

“What?”

“I went to Mobile. Found an art store, and brought those home. I left them on your bed.”

Those words were like a golf ball to the head. Knocked over, I stood there while the world went spinning sideways and backward in time, making a good part of my past different. Those words unhinged me. Something I'd assumed was true my whole life suddenly felt like a lie. My daddy hadn't hated my art. He'd tried to show me that. I felt dangled upside down in front of a portrait I'd been seeing all wrong.

“That was
you
?” I stared at the urn. At a daddy I hadn't known existed. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought you knew. And when you didn't say anything, I figured you didn't want me busting into something that was yours and yours alone. Ben, I want you to do whatever your heart tells you.”

I shook my head, confused. “You want me to have the heart of a golfer.”

“What?”

“Uncle Luke said that I didn't have the heart of a golfer. That's part of why you kicked him out. Because that's what you want me to have. It's okay, Daddy. I'm not mad.”

“No. Ben,
no
.” I saw Daddy shake his head, and a thin line appeared where his lips pressed together. “That had nothing to do with golf. I kicked him out because you have the biggest heart I've ever seen. It's so big . . . Ben, it's so much bigger than mine that I couldn't understand it all the time, son. I'm sorry for that. But that doesn't mean I didn't know it was there, just waiting for you to find out how to use it. I kicked your uncle out because any man who says my son doesn't have enough heart is a man I don't want to know. Ben, I swear, I was never trying to make you a golfer. Or a barbecue man.”

I kept quiet.

He let out a choked chuckle. “Well, maybe a little. But mostly I was showing you things you can use anywhere. Patience. Hard work. Focus. Not giving up if things don't turn out how you planned. I should've done better, though. I should've just loved you.”

I felt glued to the ground at those words.

The colors inside me softened to a neutral shade, almost clear. They whispered that I was forgetting to say something important. “I missed you,” I told him. “So much.”

“I know. I know you'll miss me.”

“No, Daddy,” I said. “I missed you when you were alive.”

His silence seemed infinite, and when he did speak again, he sounded different. He sounded smaller. He sounded almost like a small boy standing on a golf course somewhere. A small boy who just wanted someone to understand him. But the same way he said he couldn't understand my whole heart, I don't know that I could ever understand all of his.

“What, Daddy? I didn't hear you,” I told him.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “I said that I'd change things if I could, but I can't, Ben. I'm sorry.”

He didn't say anything else.

Everything in me, everything I'd seen and done the last few days, felt hallowed and haunted, beautiful and disfigured, right and wrong. All of it was dying along with the ashes in my hands, and I could only watch. There was no stopping any of it.

Maybe me and Daddy had been a dying breed from the start of our time together. As much as being a father might have choked him at times, I'd felt the same way. We were two different ropes, facing different hard parts and not knowing the best way to hang on to each other.

And maybe we were both like the Spanish moss hanging off trees all over the South. Maybe there'd never been anything to do except for us to get tangled up during life, not knowing if we were hugging tight or strangling each other's dreams or just trying the best we could to keep living. And maybe golf was in there, too. Me and golf and Daddy, all
struggling together, not knowing how else to grow.

I thought about all that until, without warning, the color in me turned back to blue. The cracks in my seal broke, and then tears were rushing down my face like they were trying to win a race. They just kept coming and coming, like a bunch of crazed runners, jostling for space. I stood there holding my father, crying like no boy has ever cried. All the pain I'd been keeping inside poured out of my body, and the release forced me to my knees.

I knelt there and cried for my father and me. For the time we'd had and for the time that we'd lost forever. I let myself cry until I was done. Then I tried to remember how to breathe again.

It took a small forever to come back to myself and to Augusta.

“Benjamin,” said Daddy. “I don't want to go either.”

“I know, Daddy. I know that.”

“Will you say it?”

“Say what, Daddy?” But I knew what he was asking. It was the same thing that I'd been needing. I think I'd known all along. My neck lump knew it too.

“Please, Ben.”

It wasn't about missing him when he was dead and gone. It wasn't about needing to say goodbye. I'd needed to tell him how I felt for once. Back in the orchard, I'd needed to yell and scream and tell him how much I'd hurt.

And now I needed to do one more thing.

“All right.” I wiped a small dot of my spittle off the urn and brought him close. We were forehead to forehead.

“Please, Ben.”

I concentrated hard until I felt my daddy's arms around me. Only then could I say it. “I forgive you,” I told him.

That's why he'd come back. So he could be forgiven and so I could do the forgiving. My daddy'd come back for
me,
not for himself. To give me that chance. To let me say everything I needed to.

He sighed, and I heard a faraway echoing wind-of-change within the urn. “It's time to go, son. Go ahead, now. Before anyone comes.”

Slowly, sheltering the ashes from the night breeze, I unlocked the lid and cracked it open. I looked at his ashes and took a slow, deep breath. “It's gonna cut me up to do it,” I told him.

“I know. But the hurt'll fade and change. Go on, now. Set your daddy free.”

I stepped to the middle of the perfect grass, not concerned about being seen. The fog wall was still there, a thick layer of mystery-sent camouflage. It was only when I turned around, facing the tee box 420 yards away, that I saw the sky. It was completely clear when I faced away from the fog.

Stars twinkled and blinked in the midnight canvas, and a sliver of moon gave me a lopsided smile of encouragement.
The golf green was smooth beneath my feet, welcoming me to the task ahead. I'd eaten a piece of Augusta's grass. Noni said it was part of me. And Daddy would be part of Augusta. So maybe we wouldn't be as far from each other as it seemed.

It was time.

A strong wind came out of nowhere when I raised Daddy's urn high in the air. I spun fast in circles, seeing him shimmer like foxfire dust in the moonlight. I felt something lift from me. Daddy hung there for a moment, whipping around in the wind, whispering goodbye. Then I watched him vanish into Augusta National's eighteenth green.

“ 'Bye, Daddy,” I whispered.

The wind brushed against me gently, sending a sensation of the unknown into my body. I knew Daddy was home, and for some reason, some prickle or inkling, I found myself walking to the eighteenth hole itself. It was nothing but a dark, round hole where the flag would be put back in the next day. That hole should have been empty, but with every step I took, I felt certain of what I would find inside. When I was close enough, I didn't even look in the hole, just reached in and pulled it out.