Fast Greens Read Free Page B

quandaries. The first twelve years of my life had been spent in hot dry West Texas, where the only snow was in my crystal jar, so golf was for me the one thing pure.
    â€œWhat would you think of a man who cheated in a golf match?” March wanted to know.
    I didn’t hesitate, not on the one thing in the whole world that I knew to be true.
    â€œA guy that cheats is lower than a skunk or a snake or a scorpion, Sir. I mean I’ve seen lots of people tee it up in the rough or miscount their strokes after a bad hole, but they’re not golfers, they’re just people with bags of clubs.”
    He shifted his weight, leaning closer across the big desk until his face was full in the light.
    â€œI want you to help me cheat in a golf match, son. Would you do that for me?”
    Not wanting to believe my ears, I looked away to the rows and rows of fat leather-bound volumes on the bookshelves.
    â€œNo Sir,” I said, silently counting the books to avoid his gaze. “I couldn’t cheat at golf, not to save my life.”

2
    We moved to Austin, my Grandmother and I, in the spring of 1965, and celebrated my thirteenth birthday on the day of our arrival. I had long hoped to trade the slow and easy small-town life of San Angelo for the excitement of a big city like Austin. My main desire, though, was to escape the memories of my mother Martha, who had gone out for cigarettes six years earlier and never come back.
    Martha was only fifteen herself when I was born, a teenager with bangs and curls. Perhaps if she had sported long hair instead, I might have been able to hold her close. But my arms were too short and my cry too soft for me to grasp her young heart. Instead I turned to Grandmother Jewel, who fed me, changed me, loved me, and scolded me as her own, while Martha assumed the role of disinterested older sister. And since Jewel had been for many years without a man in her life, that was a role I was destined to fill as well. Ignored by a teenage mother and cradled by a grandmother still in her thirties, I was already the man of the family.
    As I grew into my toddler years and beyond, Martha continued her life as before, idling away her time with dating and gossip, and sometimes caring for me while Jewel taught school. Among the few memories of my mother during those years is of Martha constantly yelling for Jewel because I needed something or because I was misbehaving.
    â€œJew-el! The baby won’t quit playing with the tee-veeee!”
    Even when I was six years old, Martha still persisted in calling me “the baby.”
    â€œJew-el! The baby’s messing up my clo-set!”
    Jewel would then come to correct the situation or else she’d yell to Martha to handle it herself. The latter approach generally elicited more protests until Jewel finally did arrive, or until Martha simply left the house, the town or the state, depending on how put-upon she felt.
    â€œStay out of the backseat of those boys’ cars!” Jewel would shout after her as Martha bounded out for an evening of pleasure or work.
    The only job my mother was qualified for was as an underage cocktail waitress in the one real nightspot in town, the Enlisted Men’s Club at Goodfellow Air Force Base. There she continued to grow wild and restless until she eventually flew the nest, leaving her “baby brother” far behind.
    Martha had been gone two years when she wrote from California to say she missed us; and would Jewel mind sending her clothes. That’s when I knew I would never see my mother again.
    Now Jewel and I had also left West Texas, and the only thing I regretted leaving behind was my nickname. While the other kids still wore the stupid crew cuts and greasy butchwax stubbles that their dads demanded, my long hair and dark tan had made the Wild Indian alias seem natural. But it did not follow me to Austin, and I soon discovered it is not an easy matter to rechristen yourself with a heathen name among