The Pariot GAme Read Free

white golf cart up the eighteenth fairway at Nipmunk. About one hundred and eighty yards from the hole, he stopped the cart and got out. There was a clump of rhododendron bushes behind him, and he swatted flying ants away from his head as he took a three-iron out of the bag in the back of the cart. He looked toward the green and the patio, where Riordan sat, hidden from his view in the shade. He addressed the ball without settling himself into an easy position or wriggling his buttocks. He swung the club through and watched the ball’s flight, using his right hand to provide additional sunshade. The ball landed and rolled to a stop about fifteen yards from the edge of the green. Doherty stuck the club into the bag, climbed into the cart and headed for the green.
    He had a year to go before he turned fifty. His face was drawn under the golfing tan, and he had lost a lot of weight. There were slack folds of skin on his lower jaw. The collar of the golf shirt stood away from his shoulders and neck, exposing his scapula bones. There was a slack roll of flesh at his middle, and his pants were baggy on him. When he reached the ball, he stopped the cart, got out, took a pitching wedgefrom the bag and used it to slap the ball onto the green. The ball rolled well beyond the flag. He climbed back into the cart, stuck the club back into the bag, and drove around the green to the back. He got out of the cart, picked up the ball, dropped that into the bag with the clubs, got back into the cart and drove around the clubhouse to the right, down the hill toward the pro shop. He did not look at the patio. He parked the cart in the row outside the small white-shingled building that was the pro shop and lifted the bag of clubs out of it. The pro was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
    “Good round, Paul?” he said.
    “No,” Doherty said, “lousy round. It’s a good thing a snake didn’t come out of the woods and challenge me. I couldn’t hit anything that was standing still today. I don’t know how the hell I could’ve hit anything that was moving.”
    “They come, they go,” the pro said. “It’s still a nice outing.”
    “I guess so,” Doherty said. “I keep telling myself that, anyway.”
    “You keep telling yourself to keep your head down?” the pro said.
    “Oh,” Doherty said, “sure. That, and lock the elbow. I know all the recipes. I tried to take up skiing about fifteen years ago, and to this very day I remember what the instructor said about bending the knees. I couldn’t ski either.”
    “You’ve had some good rounds,” the pro said.
    “Walter,” Doherty said, “when you’re my age, any round you come back from’s a good round.” The pro began to laugh. “None of your damned hilarity, Walter,” Doherty said. “You’re in your thirties now, and you’re like everybody else in that category. You shoot in the high seventies, the low eighties, and you make an honest dollar telling people how to do something that they’re never going to be able to do becausethey haven’t got your talent. If Nicklaus came along tomorrow afternoon and told you how to win the Masters, you wouldn’t be able to do it even if he was telling you the God’s honest truth. It’s the same with your customers and it’s the same with me. The bones’re getting older and they weren’t that obedient to begin with. You still think that you’re immortal. You’ll learn, my son, you’ll learn. Some day, somebody like me’ll be sprinkling Holy Water on a long metal box on canvas swings over a hole in the ground, and you will be in that box, headed for the hole. And up in Heaven every poor clumsy bastard like me’ll be standing around yelling: ‘Don’t three-putt the hole, Walter, you dumb son of a bitch. Hole out, Walter, like we did. You gotta gimme there, Walter. You blow this one and the fat guys’ll never play Nassau with you again.’ Ashes and ashes, Walter, no matter how good you are at getting out of