Skins Game, Part 3

The final shot

Author’s note: After taking over for the deceased Cletis Worley to finish this macabre round, Duck Miyoshi started playing inspired golf. That is until the course marshal showed up. That shook Duck’s confidence and brought him back to reality. We pick up the story on the 17th tee.

Part 3

“Hot ‘un ain’t it,” the course marshal said, replacing his sunglasses and cap. He looked over at Cletis. Duck had secured him in the cart with the seat belt and tied his left wrist to the canopy post behind the driver’s seat to keep him upright. They’d wedged his driver along his right side, folding his right hand around its shaft for added stability. His head drooped as if he slept… or prayed.

“Cletis, you givin these boys another lessen t’day?”

The deceased remained silent.

“Clete?” The marshal cocked his head and leaned forward, trying to get in Worley’s line of sight. “Clete? What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.”

“Uh, don’t mind Cletis, Posey.” Dugan moved around to get between the marshal and Worley. “He’s off in another world right now. If he don’t play these next two holes exactly right, he’ll be dead. He’s screwin up his inner strength or somethin. You know how he is.”

Posey leaned back to see around Whitey. He studied the side of Cletis’s face for a few seconds. “Yeah, I s’pose,” he said. He looked at Bluehorse, then at Duck who was leaning against the front of the cart looking ill. The marshal squinted at Worley once again.

“How much he into you boys fer?”

“About a hundred apiece,” Whitey said.

“Uh huh,” the marshal said. He spat again and toweled the back of his neck.

“Well, you fellas keep them carts to the paths. Ya he-ah?” he said. Wheeled his cart in a U and whined off in the direction from which he’d come.

Duck lost his ball on his second shot. He topped his next two fairway shots and took a triple bogie. He did pretty much the same on the seventeenth. Duck had lost his edge. Whitey won the two skins.

At the eighteenth tee they sat in the carts waiting for the group ahead of them to clear.

“This is stupid,” Whitey said.

“It’s the only decent thing to do, Whitey,” Blue said. “Besides, a hundred and fifty bucks ain’t gonna break you.”

“It ain’t the money, Blue. Hell, Cletis beat me out of two hundred and seventy-five thou in life insurance back there on the eleventh tee. Naw, it ain’t the money. It’s just, well, I been losin to Worley for ten years, and now he checks out before I get a chance to get even. Now we’re lettin Duck play in Worley’s place. This whole thing just pisses me off. And it’s spooky.”

Duck got out of his cart and took his driver out of his bag. “Tell you what, Dugan,” he said. “Let’s play this last hole double or nothing for the whole round.”

“What?”

“Yeah. See, it’ll give you a chance to clear the slate. If you win, you get even with Cletis. But if you lose, you and Blue fork over three hundred bucks apiece. We’ll donate it to the Golfers’ Widows and Orphans Fund.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Well, suit yourself. It just seems like a good way to wind this thing up. And the way I’ve been shooting most of the day, odds look to be in your favor.”

“What the boy says, makes sense,” Bluehorse said.

Whitey looked at Duck, then over at his late nemesis. He laughed a quick, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I guess it does. Okay, Duck, double or nothin.”

Whitey hit his tee shot three hundred yards. It rolled to a stop, needing only a clear wedge shot to the pin eighty-five yards away. Bluehorse got most of it, but put a slight tail on it as usual. Still, he stayed in the short rough and could reach the green with an easy eight or nine iron. Duck burned a low liner a hundred and fifty yards down the middle.

Whitey put his second shot on the fringe of the green, then chipped it to within two feet of the hole. Blue hit the knoll on the back of the green with his nine iron shot. His chip left him a three-footer. Duck topped his second shot, and it stopped fifty feet in front of the green.

He slammed his club into the turf and shouted swear words loud enough and profane enough for the women on the adjacent fairway to turn and look at him, mouths agape in wonder. Whitey and Blue waited at the edge of the green suppressing grins.

Duck drove the cart up to the left back of the green and swung it around so the clubhouse stood at his back. From there, Cletis appeared to watch the green, looking down at it. Duck exited the cart, grabbed his pitching wedge and putter, and walked the short distance back down the fairway to his ball. He looked grim.

Just outside the cart shop door, Posey O’Reilly drained his Diet Coke can and crushed it in his hand. He threw its carcass into the trash barrel next to him and belched, watching the threesome stand in the long shadows and gold shards of lowering sunlight that splintered the green. He looked at the motionless form of Cletis Worley sitting in his cart, the reflection from the green glinting from his shades. The course marshal belched again and started walking toward them.

“Think past all that chokin sensation, Duck,” Whitey shouted. “Remember, inner strength. Inner strength.”

He laughed and looked at Blue across the green, then back at Cletis. Neither returned his mirth.

Duck dropped his putter to one side when he reached his lie. He looked at the pin and took a practice swing. He moved over the ball. He closed his eyes and swung. He hit it solid, and it arced high over the green and to the left. They all watched its flight. Whitey’s grin widened as the ball cleared the green. It sunk swiftly out of the sky, heading like a small white missile toward the cart. It struck Cletis squarely on the forehead, knocking his sunglasses into his lap.

The golf ball’s ricochet looped it back towards the green. It hit thirty feet from the hole and bounced. The slope carried it toward the hole where it struck the pin and fell in. Whitey Dugan’s grin became a rictus. Charlie Bluehorse’s jaw fell open. Duck Miyoshi stood for a minute looking, then picked up his putter and started for the cart.

“Looks like Duck won the last skin,” Coarse Marshal Posey said as he stood next to Charlie Bluehorse.

“It sure as thunder does,” Blue said.

“Hell of a way to go out,” said Posey. Bluehorse only nodded. They both looked over at Worley.

“You know,” Posey continued. “I see this sorta thing three, mebbe four times a year, but I ain’t never seen anyone finish the Big Round like Cletis just done.”

Blue reached up and removed his hat. Posey followed suit. They stood there for several more minutes in reverent silence, watching the pennant on the eighteenth pin flap slowly in the evening breeze.

“Guess we’d better call someone ‘bout Cletis,” Posey said at last.

“Yeah,” Charlie Bluehorse said. “We probably should.”

© 2020 by Phil Truman. All rights reserved.

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