Waiting for Augusta (4 page)

Ben

People always said how much I looked like my daddy, right down to those unfortunate Putter ears. Maybe a few
days apart would do both me and Mama good. I'd get rid of my neck lump and get Daddy to rest and then everything would be fine.

Daddy coughed. “Ben, you there?”

The pen in my hand scrawled across the table's wood. Hearing a dead man's voice, even if it's related to you, takes some getting used to. “Yes, sir, I'm here.” I licked my finger and tried to spit-scrub out the stain I'd made, but the rubbing just made it worse. I'd throw a tablecloth on before I left.

“Listen, we need to get going. It's Augusta or nothing, Ben. You understand? It's where I belong. Otherwise, I'm never gonna get any peace. Now, I know you aren't the kind of boy—” He stopped himself. “I know that journeys like this aren't your strong suit, son. I'm asking you to be . . . what I need. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir, I can,” I said, wondering what kind of boy I was and what kind of boy I should be and how to color in the empty space between.

He sighed, relieved. “Good boy.”

“I've never ditched school before.” I didn't add that I'd dreamed about ditching nearly every day that year. Having a reputation for being the only boy who tried hard in art class and smelled like pig smoke hadn't made it the friendliest of places. And things with May, the one person who didn't care about all that and who was right there in school with me, weren't the same.

“What, never ditched school?” Daddy let out a phlegmy cough so real that I wondered if he was spraying spit-snot or ash inside his urn. “Well, never mind, I could have guessed that. When I was your age, I was skipping school once a week to caddie or go fishing. Both sometimes. No better feeling than missing class and bringing home money and dinner.”

I picked up the kitchen club, half expecting to get zapped again. When I didn't, I settled my grip and took a light swing. “Daddy, the Masters starts two days from now.”

“The Masters?” I swear, I heard my father smile inside that urn. “Hot
dog
, isn't that a trick? Fate or the Ol' Creator or Mama Nature or Whatever must have waited a month to send me back so I could go to the Masters. And so you could take me.”

I saw him rub his hands together like he was excited to bite into a batch of twelve-hour pork butt. “I'll finally make you fall in love with the greatest game ever played. We'll watch most of the tournament together, and then you shake me outta this can by Sunday morning, so I can be right there on the last day of play. Front and center, eighteenth green. You pull this off and I can't tell you how much it'd mean. That's the plan, okay?”

I couldn't answer. My daddy'd come back from the dead so I could skip school and sneak him into a golf tournament.

Sounds about right
, the club head said.

Maybe you can change his mind about scattering him there—make him want to stick around for a while
, said the golf calendar.

I shook my head at it and let my eyes drift over to the counter, where golden pie crust crumbs lay like sprinkled ashes.
Maybe while he's trying to make you finally love golf, you can finally make him pay you some attention,
said the smallest crumb.

“I don't know about that,” I said.

Fine, then
, the crumb said.
You could make him proud.

“Please, Ben.” Daddy coughed. “I need you.”

I need you
. Those were magic words. Soft, warm, hickory- smoke words that wrapped around me and gathered me close, until I sank inside and belonged only to them. “Okay.”

Today was Tuesday. The Masters tournament lasted four days, starting Thursday and ending on Sunday. If he needed to put his soul to rest by the time the players took the course on the final day, that didn't give me long to go over four hundred miles, sneak onto private property, let my father watch the greatest golf tournament in the world, and commit what I suspected was a crime of some kind. “I'll try. But you know this is impossible, right?”

“Lots of things are, right up until they're not. Now, listen here . . .”

M
y runaway bag was Daddy's old canvas camping pack, the one that still smelled of his cigarette smoke and had Marlboro patches all over it. It was wide as Daddy's shoulders and deep enough to hold a water bottle, a flashlight, a big plastic container packed full of pork, a bag of pretzels, a ball cap, a change of pants, two shirts, three pairs of clean underwear, a framed photo of Mama so she'd be with us, Daddy's Augusta book, our nearly untouched Rand McNally road atlas, my lucky quarter, and my box. The box had my paint pad, drawing pad, color set, brushes, and pencils.

Daddy'd told me to take my dress pants and my one golf shirt for walking around the tournament, so I grabbed those. Then I picked up a year-old picture of him and me from my dresser.

In the photo, we're standing side by side at the municipal golf course and he has his arm around me right at the first
hole's tee box, both of us smiling. It was taken just before the last round we shot together. Two rounds, actually. We played thirty-six holes that day, since the first eighteen hadn't gone well for me. There hadn't been many times when Daddy'd asked me to come along, and I was excited and fidgety enough to miss the ball the first two times I swung that day.

He'd handed over his lucky quarter to be my ball marker, my placeholder in case I needed to pick up my ball on the green so that the golfers could putt in the right order, farthest away from the hole to closest. That's how it went in golf. Once you got on the green, it was the people who had the longest distance to putt who got to go first. Didn't quite seem fair to me that the closer you were, the longer you had to wait.

Daddy'd dug that quarter out of a low pocket on his golf bag and told me to keep it. It was dated the year I was born, he said, which had been a good year. He looked so happy in the picture, and I closed my eyes for a second, inhaling the memory of the sweetgum trees and holly bushes that dotted the course.

The last thing I put in the backpack, right around midnight, was Daddy's urn. I carved out a spot between the pork and my paint box, cushioning it with the golf shirt. Just before I placed the urn inside, I had the sudden sensation that I was putting my daddy to bed, tucking him into a safe spot, about to scoot a chair right beside him and stay there until he fell asleep.

“Don't worry, Daddy,” I whispered, folding the golf shirt over the top of the urn and closing the backpack. “I'll keep you safe.”

Quietly, I crept to the kitchen and sifted through the cupboard until I found an old flour canister at the back. I stood it in the exact spot where Daddy's urn had been perched, thinking maybe it would buy me some time.

I checked on Mama, who looked awful, but out cold. She'd been crying in her sleep again. Leaving through the back door, I walked between picnic tables and stepped outside the front gate, feeling like the entire world had put its wonder inside me. I felt filled up, but not squeezed. I felt like right after I'd set a watery brush on a color plate and was about to touch it to paper, not knowing what would happen.

When Daddy told me where to get some traveling money, I'd flinched for sure, but there was no way I'd take what little Mama had and this was Daddy talking. I couldn't say no when somebody had given me one last chance to be the boy he wanted me to be. So I was about to do like he said and see how it turned out.

I was about to go to the local bar to steal travel money from its mascot, Mrs. Clucksy, the most famous chicken in Hilltop, Alabama.

T
he bar's real name was the Alabama Moon, but everyone called it Pastor Frank's on account of the owner dropping out of the preaching world to take up barkeeping. An old cabin had been expanded and connected to a barn that got loud every weekend. On nights when Mama and Daddy went dancing, I used to sneak over and watch the windows glow with strung-up lights and with the heat from men and women stomping and twirling by in swatches of color and silhouette. Some things you can paint and they turn out better than they really are, but not that sight. I'd tried, but it didn't want to be stuck on paper.

While I walked, I looked up at the sky, which was clear and star-filled as anything. That storm had never hit, though the world still felt full of something brewing. I was grateful it wasn't pouring, but it made me uneasy, too. Like whatever had been pushing and pushing at the clouds might return when I least expected it.

Pastor Frank's was at the far end of Main Street. I lay low and took Cricket Road all the way to where it dead-ended and nearly dipped into Hilltop's favorite fishing creek, then crossed over to Main.
I'll be somewhere along the creek
, that Noni girl had said. I glanced along the water quick, wondering where that girl had come from, but didn't see a sign of her. Maybe she was nothing but a big liar. Or maybe she thought I was one.

Get the money first; think about that girl second
, the creek told me.

She's nothing like May
, a tree chimed in.
I really don't know what you're thinking
.

“
Shh
,” I whispered. “I know she's not May. And I never said she was coming with me.”

The sign hanging over Pastor Frank's porch had been flipped from a blue
OPEN
to a red
GO HOME
. Beer bottles littered the wooden floor near several rocking chairs at the entrance, looking empty and lonesome. I picked up a few bottles and turned them upright.
Thank you, Ben
, one said.
Thank you for noticing us
.

Shifting the backpack on my shoulders, I looked at the dark windows. “You didn't go here much in the last year,” I said to Daddy.

“Yeah. The doctors didn't think it was good for me, I guess. Told me to cut back.”

Maybe you should've cut back on other stuff, too
, I wanted to
say, but didn't. I also wanted to point out that it was strange how Daddy had died from smoking too much, and now he was a pile of ashes. I must've had that thought a million times over the last month.

I didn't know my daddy's cancer had come back so bad. On the day he died, he told me to stay home from the hospital, saying, “See you in a little bit,” on his way out the door. He told me it was nothing at all, just a little tiny scrape of a tumor. Then he'd said something else, probably quoted a golfer, and I didn't even listen because I'd been sick of golf being better company than me.

He knew
, a still-fallen bottle told me in an accusing voice.
He knew he was gonna die and you didn't see it
.
It was in his last words to you and you shut your ears.

Yep,
the porch said.
Same way he shuts his ears when people talk about May at school.

I looked away from them both. “May Talbot told me that her daddy never goes drinking here.”

“Coloreds aren't overly welcome at Pastor Frank's. I'm sure they've got their own places for drinking and dancing.”

I crept past the porch and around the side of the cabin. “Could he have come if you'd brought him with you?”

“I wouldn't. I have a heckuva lot of respect for Mr. Talbot, especially carrying on after his place got burned down. And I think that folks who get a stink eye about me buying my pigs from Mr. Talbot should be boiled in their own stupidity.
But buying a man a beer won't change anything. When it comes to that kind of thing, Putters keep their heads down. Can't hit a solid golf drive off life's tee without keeping your eye on the ball.”

Shifting gravel and a low scratching noise came from around the cabin's corner, and I slammed myself against a wall. A tail flicked into sight, and I relaxed. Barn cat, nothing more. Probably smelled the meat in my backpack. A window clicked open in the bedroom over the bar, and a grizzled and grumpy Frank stuck his naked torso into the evening air. “Someone there?” I heard another click. It was the safety being released on a loaded shotgun.

I held my breath.

“We're closed, goshdarnit! Get outta here!” Frank slammed the window shut.

A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Daddy?” I whispered. “Even if he quit being a pastor, stealing Frank's money can't be too good for getting you into heaven, can it?” And it wouldn't be too good for me either, if I got caught.

Daddy huffed and seemed to consider the situation, and I could picture one finger going to his lip. That was his Considering look. “It's not stealing,” he said finally. “When Frank opened his bar and caught hell from the town for leaving the church, I let him eat free whenever he came to the café. Felt sorry for him at first, and then when I said he'd need to start paying, he always said he'd pay his tab
with me when everyone else settled their tabs with him.

“That's at least five sandwiches a week for going on ten years now. That man owes me thousands of dollars in free pig. And Frank used to be a man of God, so I'm sure he'll understand that I need to get myself out of whatever purgatory I'm floating in. Believe me,” he added, “he owed me much more money than you'll take. We aren't doing any harm at all.”

Doing harm
. What made something bad enough that it was harmful? Hard to say. Folks from up north thought Spanish moss was nothing but pretty, but Mrs. Grady wasn't the only one taking a rake to her trees. People got scared, thinking the moss could take over their healthy trees and kill them. Nobody could seem to agree on whether it was a thing of beauty or a tree strangler, but I had a feeling that the moss didn't mean anything. It just didn't know how else to grow.