Hole in One Read Free Page A

hole, hordes of giggling onlookers appear on the porch to nudge each other and point. This day, I didn’t care. For some reason, I was full of buck and zip.
    She drove first, one of those straight, sweet, looping drives, maybe 180 yards smack down the middle. A hell of a hit, in point of fact, but I knew I could do better.
    As I moved to address the ball, it fell off the tee, as the pesky things will, but Hanna jumped forward to retrieve it.
    â€œAllow me,” she said, and graciously replaced the Titleist 2 on the tee.
    â€œYou are too kind,” I replied, and doffed my hat, a bilious green thing which some think is a fungoid growth but which is, in fact, a veritable hat and has a label to prove it.
    â€œHey, you know, Hanna,” I went on, as she slipped demurely to one side and I stepped forward to paste the pill into another and finer world, “I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a hell of a drive.”
    â€œI know it will,” she said, with a winsome smile, and it was with the warmest of feelings that I planted my feet and fixed the golf ball with a commanding stare. I gave a preliminary waggle—well, several preliminary waggles—drew back the club until I was almost gnawing on the inside of my left elbow, and uncorked the stroke of a lifetime. The ball took off like a rocket and then, after about fifty feet, dissolved in a shower of white bits which, I swear, began spitting bubbles as they drifted down to settle on the greensward. For my Titleist 2, Hanna had substituted one of those soap balls people stuff in Christmas stockings, with the result that a golf stroke that started out like something by Jack Nicklaus wound up like something by Heloise the Homemaker.
    Ha, Ha, chortled Hanna. Ha, Ha, howled the hordes now swarming all over the clubhouse porch. Well, I can take a joke on myself as well as the next man—which is to say, not at all—but this trifling with the sacred game could not be allowed to pass. I retrieved my tee, rammed my driver back into the parent bag, and left the course. Or, if you want Hanna’s version, stormed away in a sulk. On the drive back to Silver Falls, where Hanna has her apartment, I referred to the fact that no one but a big-city bimbo would pull such a childish stunt; she noted that I took the game too seriously, which was particularly amusing, she said, considering the way I played it.
    Reproaches were uttered on both sides—I believe you can qualify “unsportsmanlike Yahoo” on the one hand and “gold-plated asshole” on the other as reproaches—and diplomatic relations were severed forthwith. While we continued, perforce, to work together, the cold, proud mask of aloofness I wore to hide the hurt within reminded me of some of the best stuff you get out of Thomas Hardy.
    So here we were, together again, but not together, if you follow me, rocketing through the open gates of the Bosky Dell course and skidding to a halt within a few feet of a trio of men who were obviously embroiled in an argument: namely, two Silver Falls policemen and Tommy Macklin. Tommy began to curse and shout as soon as we approached, and tried to cover his face when Hanna came up with the Nikon and started snapping pictures of him. I have seldom seen a more edifying sight than Tommy cringing from the camera.
    â€œWithers, you’re fired!” he shouted. I paid no heed. Extracting the notebook, I addressed the awful majesty of the law.
    â€œThe prisoner Macklin,” I said, “I presume you have him on a murder charge?”
    â€œWell, no, actually,” the perplexed flatfoot replied. “To tell you the truth, things are kind of confused around here.”
    Wouldn’t you know it. A just fate finally catches up to Macklin and he gets off on a technicality. The cop, Constable Ernest White of the Silver Falls squad—not that it matters, but I promised his mother to work in his name—explained that, while Mr.