Skins Game, Part 1

The drive

Author’s note: This story was originally published in ILLUMINATION. I’m re-posting it here as my initial piece in the Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s new writers’ adventure, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters. This is the title story from my book of collected short stories. Written some ten or twelve years ago, I believe it’s my personal favorite. I offer it here for your enjoyment AND judgment.

It’s based on the old golfers joke: Wife: How was your game? Golfer: Terrible, Cletis died on the 2nd hole. Wife: Oh, that must’ve been awful. Golfer: Oh, for sure. It was hit the ball, drag Cletis, hit the ball, drag Cletis.

It’s presented here in 3 parts.

Part One

Charlie Bluehorse, M.D. got most of it to start off the back nine. If it hadn’t had that little tail of a slice that took it behind a clump of arborvitae two hundred yards out, you could have said he got all of it. It shot into the chalky afternoon air like a white Sputnik. That tail helped it find the rough though, just as it had on most of the front nine.

“Whew, you got most uh that ‘un, Blue,” Cletis Worley said. He dabbed sweat from his forehead with a towel as he sat in his golf cart. Cletis had hit first, of course.

While Bluehorse speared his driver into his golf bag and sat heavily in his cart, Duck Miyoshi teed up. He took his cut and topped the ball, sending it limping some seventy yards to the left front of the tee box.

“Y’looked up, Duck. Damn it’s hot,” Cletis said and took a big gulp from his can of Bud.

Whitey Dugan teed up and pounded his clubhead on the ground behind his ball. He looked squinting down the fairway. “Don’t say nothin, Cletis,” he said.

“What?” Worley asked.

“Don’t say nothin after I hit.”

“Why’d I say anything?”

“You always got somethin to say after we hit. I’m just tellin ya, don’t say nothin this time. In fact, don’t say nothin this whole back nine.”

Dugan wound up and smacked the ball long. It bounced twice and rolled to a curving stop on the left part of the fairway two hundred eighty yards out. Whitey Dugan could hit a driver, even angry. He’d won the long drive competition at every golf gathering of insurance agents for the past three years, which was often. This drive lay a good fifty yards ahead of Worley’s usual placement. He retrieved his tee and walked to his seat in the cart beside Bluehorse.

“What the hell’s wrong with him,” Worley asked Duck Miyoshi. Duck shrugged and lurched their cart forward, veering left to head for his ball.

At the green, Worley was away. He crouched behind his ball and held up his putter like a plumbob, closing one eye to check the line.

“You boys know why I won all them skins on the front nine?” he asked.

No one answered.

“I took them holes, and your generous monetary donations I might add, because I have inner strength.”

Bluehorse snorted. “Crap, Cletis, you ain’t got no inner strength. What you got is piss ant luck.”

“You sure got that right, Blue,” Whitey snarled. “Hell, Cletis, in all the years we’ve been playin together you never been good enough to win on skill. You mostly win because of your constant jawjackin, which would drive a magpie to distraction.”

“Well, Blue’s right about the luck,” Worley rose and walked to his ball. Leaned over it. “Yeah, luck knows me. It’s always been that way.” He eyed the hole, swung a practice putt. Straightened and looked again at the hole. “But my luck works for me in two important ways.” He leaned over the ball again, padded his feet in place, up and down. He shook his left gloved hand and re-gripped the putter. “It gives me confidence…” He drew back and gently stroked the ball, his putter giving off a soft ping when it hit. “… And it really pisses off those I compete with, which, of course, works to my advantage.”

The golf ball slid up one swale and broke right, skimmed along the base of another, and broke left. When it got to the hole, it orbited the rim two-and-a-half times and fell in.

Cletis raised his putter and rested it on his shoulder. “Like I said, inner strength.”

Worley won the skin. Whitey Dugan inspected the surface of his Titleist, scraping at a mark with his thumbnail. “Cletis, every time you get on a roll, you start givin us this weirdo Zen crap. You know what I’m thinkin? I’m thinkin if you don’t shut the hell up, I’m gonna shove this putter where the Zen don’t shine.”

Duck Miyoshi giggled nervously. Charlie Bluehorse smiled. Cletis Worley looked at Whitey Dugan and laughed out loud. Whitey stared back at him and only blinked when a drop of sweat rolled into his eye.

At the eleventh tee, Cletis Worley hooked his tee shot badly, but it caught the trunk of a small cedar tree and glanced back to the middle of the fairway rolling to a stop two hundred and thirty yards from the tee.

“Hoo-ey!” Worley sang. “Inner strength, boys. Inner strength.” The others looked at the ground. Said nothing. The air seemed to get hotter around them. Whitey walked up to the tee to take his turn. His ball bounced ahead of Worley’s by forty yards, dead center. Bluehorse sliced again, but this time the hole doglegged right at about the point where his slice kicked in and he stayed in the fairway. Duck shanked his into the irrigation pond near the tee. Cletis Worley sat in his cart looking straight ahead, for once honoring Whitey’s request to keep his trap shut.

Whitey and Bluehorse sat in their cart, which Blue had parked near their lies, in the shade of a great live oak. They waited for Duck to hit his drop and bring Worley to his ball.

“Worley’s a pain in the ass,” Whitey said.

“Unhg,” Bluehorse replied. He watched Duck steer the cart toward them.

“We been putting up with his mouth for too many years. I ain’t gonna put up with it no more.”

“Unhg.”

“If he says one more thing, I’m gonna bust his greedy skinflint Jew nose.”

They both continued to watch the cart bounce in their direction. Duck had a hold of Worley’s neck. Worley looked drunk.

“Jew nose?” Bluehorse asked absently.

“Yeah,” Whitey answered after a thought’s hesitation.

The other cart careened towards them, seventy-five yards away. Duck hit a hole and beer sloshed up from the cans sitting in the drink holders.

“Does my nose look Osage?” Bluehorse asked. The orthopedist and the insurance man looked at each other for a few seconds.

“Yeah, I reckon,” Whitey said.

“Good,” said Charlie Bluehorse.

Duck pulled up to them, sliding his cart almost into Whitey’s side. “Damn, Duck,” Whitey said, raising his right leg reflexively.

Miyoshi looked ashen. “Worley’s dead,” he said. He still gripped the back of Cletis’s neck.

“Dead drunk, you mean.”

“No, Whitey. I mean, he’s dead dead. I think he must’ve had a heart attack or something. I kept waiting for him to tell me what I did wrong, you know, after I hit my second shot — ”

“Third shot,” Bluehorse said.

“What?”

“You were hitting three coming out of the water.”

“Oh yeah. But, anyway, he didn’t say anything like he usually does. When I asked him, he didn’t respond, so I lifted his sunglasses to look into his eyes and… no, he’s dead all right.”

Thanks for taking time to read Part One. Parts Two and Three will follow in a couple days, so stay tuned.

If you’d like to get the full collection of my short stories, please visit my website. Once you join my readers’ group, the e-book is yours for free.

Like to give a special shout-out to a few friends and would encourage you to check out their contributions: Stuart Englander, Tree Langdon, Jeff Herring, Tim Maudlin, Fatim Hemraj, Bebe Nicholson, Randy Rather, Roz Warren, Terry Trueman, Terry Mansfield, T. Mark Mangum, Eric Dockett, Linda Halladay, Mary Chang Story Writer, Amanda Walker, Michael Burg, MD, Lori Lamothe, Karen Madej, Zishanul H. Hussain, Jim McAulay🍁, Jacquelyn Lynn, Genius Turner, Trapper Sherwood, Liam Ireland, Page Barnes, Christine Stevens, Mark Salamon, Nikki Haverstock, Melissa Janisin