Train Read Free Page B

Not that it bothered the superintendent any. He started calling himself that lately, in fact, seemed pleased with the idea he had them wanting to fire him.
     
     
It was the custom at Brookline when you got mad enough to throw your sticks, the first thing you did when you come back to your senses was to blame it on History, but these days it was more connected to his romance with Helen Sears than his habit of sitting around on his ass all day reading books while the course went to hell. She was even driving him to work now. Bud Sears was dead since Halloween, but that wasn’t the point. The point— at least the way History explained it— was that you die and then the greenskeeper just walks in the front door and heads to the liquor cabinet, probably wearing your shoes. It was everything wrong with being old and rich, the core of the apple: scavengers was everywhere.
     
     
It tickled History to death.
     
     
Sometimes in the morning when there was extra work out on the course, History called down to the caddy shed for Train and paid him three dollars for the day to run the mowers or fill divots or punch the greens or whatever it was had to be done. He used Train because he was strong— stronger than the rest of the grounds crew could believe, looking at him— and a fast learner, and never complained that he had too much to do. When Train was finished, History was usually back in the storage barn, sitting around on his ass drinking a martini and reading The Great Gatsby. He’d been inside that same book ever since he started up with Helen Sears, seemed like he couldn’t get enough of the story. Sometimes he read parts of it out loud. He kept gin, vermouth, and a bottle of olives on the same shelf with the motor oil, and one afternoon he showed Train how to make a dry martini, and told him that anything further he needed to know about the country club set he would find in the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
     
     

The fat man was drinking gin since the second hole. Train recognized the aroma from his afternoon in the barn with History and F. Scott. The fat man, of course, didn’t appreciate it the way History did. Sniffing and twirling and all that. History become so satisfied with the flossy life at Mrs. Sears’ house and how he looked with a martini in his hand, that he enjoyed to play with a drink these days as much as he did drinking it.
     
     
The fat man took it straight from the thermos and closed his eyes and shook like a dog that run through the sprinkler and said, “Ah, breakfast.” He said that same joke every hole, again and again, the way golfers did. The drinking hadn’t untied him yet, though, where he could just step over the ball and hit it without all that quivering around and waiting.
     
     
Earlier, he’d offered the thermos once to Mr. Packard, who was lost in his thoughts at the time and jumped back like somebody showed him a snake, and then said no, no thank you, it was still a little early in the day for him.
     
     
The fat man had another shooter and returned the thermos to Train, did this in the same fashion he handed back his clubs, or held out his hand for a ball, without admitting the boy was there, but it didn’t matter to Train if he looked at him or not, any more than it mattered if he fell in the pond and drown. He knew Sweet wouldn’t have give him the tote in the first place if he was a tipper. The kind of totes Train got lately were the kind that won two dollars and handed their caddy a quarter, and went home thinking everybody had a wonderful time. And none of them— not even the old ones who had turned kind and sweet when their balls dried up— nobody ever talked to Train like he could do nothing but carry a golf bag, except to be a fireman or a policeman, the sort of thing they thought of themself back when they were children.
     
     
So Train guessed he got on Sweet’s bad side; he didn’t know how. There was always somebody on it, though, and whoever that was