In The Hole
September 15, 2007
Vic is a weather expert. Yesterday was a good day. The weather was nice, not too hot or too cold, not too breezy, and best of all, sunny. “Good working weather”, he surmised as he looked out the window. Today was not nice. The rain was going to be a distraction, a trap, "no pun intended", he thought to himself. It would start him thinking about all the things he came here to escape. He tried to shake the thoughts from his head, along with the hangover, as he washed. He didn’t want to go downstairs because he knew “The Wahey Boys” would be waiting. Loitering about like cattle. They were lost without him and he knew it.
Maybe today someone would step up and offer a different opinion, come up with an alternate plan, but he smiled to himself just thinking about it. There was no way, because he was the “lightning rod” from which all things must pass. He was the point man. He was Vic. So today they would wait out the weather. He knew it would be hard for them. Like caged animals they weren’t used to the “waiting game”. Like him, they yearned to compete. They needed to be let loose in the rough to slash and slam their way through the fairways. “Let’s go bowling”, someone defiantly offered, only to be beaten back by 22 condescending eyeballs. Bowling? There would be no bowling on Wahey Golf Weekend.
The wait was tough; it was always tough waiting for the first strike. Sitting around thinking about their aches and pains. The years had brought them gray, thinning hair, and paunches and no respect. They’d do it though, because, it was for Vic. They followed him here, to the damp, North Woods to flash their irons again. For Vic, life was the competition. He remembered the days down O’Sullivan Park, driving the lane, and Bicknell Field, throwing that semi-sidearm fastball. There were the “Bed-Pan” days in the Park League when “The Outsiders” couldn’t be stopped. “Damn”, he hit himself up side of the head and walked to the door and peered out. He had just caught himself flashing back. He had to remain focused on having fun and not making it a competition. He was a company man now, part of a big corporate giant in the sportswear business. It wasn’t his job to worry about competing anymore. The world was backwards now and he had nothing to do with it. Was it crazy that nobody made sneakers in America anymore? Was it his fault that child labor might have a hand in his company’s profits? Was he supposed to be worried because cheap labor overseas was driving illegal workers to his country? Ah, but there it was again. All about what the competition was doing.
He took a deep breath, looked back at “The Boys” and announced, “it’s time”. So there they were, assembled under clouded skies at Oak Hill. Some of them still grumbling, even as the rain subsided, that Vic had made the wrong call. They worried that the weather would keep them from being their best. They should have packed it in and gone home said a few. It was only the hard core Wahey Boys that knew to follow him. The ones that had been with him from the beginning, like Pablo, knew that Vic never missed the call. Killer too, who fought bears in the Smoky Mountain wilderness with him, and Bender who crossed the Rio Grande with him, they knew, and once they fell in line the others came too.
They battled through the front nine as the clouds welled up overhead. The cold dampness seeped into their weary bones. Mule moaned in pain as he drove one into the trees, Zig sat on his cart and shook his head in disbelief as Cappa sent one into the beach, even the usually reliable Cousin Pat sliced one deep into the woods. They massed at the tenth tee to re-group. They drank and tried to laugh off their dismal existence. And there he was, Vic, standing alone at the tee, looking to the skies as if to ask for redemption. His Reebok jacket drooped over his shoulders, his Reebok sweat pants hung from his hips and the Reebok cleats, soaked from trudging through the fairways, stung his feet. As he still looked toward the heavens, he closed his eyes and felt the day’s last drop of water hit his forehead and thought for a moment that he could feel the sun’s warmth. This was a defining moment and he knew it.
He walked back to his bag and dug deep into its bowels for something specific, fishing around he felt it, as if it had a different feel than the others, and pulled it out. He strode again to the tee and placed this special ball haphazardly on the grass. The Boys thought to tell him to tee it up properly and then refrained, because this was Vic. So they collectively looked down at this special sphere and just before he struck it, they thought they saw something that defied everything Vic stood for, a Swoosh. No way! Why would Vic, of all people, have a golf ball marked with a Swoosh"? Would Yaz where a Yankee cap?
Vic sent the “Swoosh” sailing straight down the fairway, over the pond, over the beach, bounding through the short grasses and slowly rolling across the green to settle for millisecond against the flag; as a shocked witness to history was about to say “Nay”, the sun broke through the clouds and one last cold breeze, casually wisped across the fairways, nudging the flag enough to allow the ball to drop. In one shot, Nike, the Swoosh, was in the hole and Vic, and the Wahey Boys and corporate America was right.
POSTED BY STAN
Stylish Vic 1982