Then he heard his father’s voice: “You can’t hide in here all day, Seth. You’re holding up the whole game.”
The terrible knot in his stomach tightening even more, Seth nevertheless flushed the toilet and left the stall. Knowing that telling his father his stomach hurt too much to play would only make things worse than they already were, Seth trudged back to the course.
Ed Fletcher had already driven his ball down the right, where it drifted into the trees. As Seth watched, his father sent his ball into the bunker that lay two hundred yards out on the left side of the fairway, then glowered at Seth as if somehow the shot had been his fault.
Seth could already feel the sting of the extra lash he’d get from his father’s belt later tonight.
Now Zack was teeing up, and a moment later he began his backswing, his club coming smoothly up, his athletic body twisting until the club was extended horizontally behind his neck. The driver’s enormous head hovered for a moment, and then, just as Zack began his swing, there was a sudden blur of motion as something darted out of the boxwood hedge behind the tee box, shot past Zack’s ball, and disappeared into a tangle of ivy. Startled by the sudden movement, Zack pulled the shot. The ball soared in a huge hook, disappeared into the stand of ancient maples that bordered the fairway, and a second later they all heard it clatter off at least two trees.
Zack hurled his club at the ivy into which the animal had vanished. “No fair!” he howled. “I should get the shot over!”
“This is a tournament,” Blake Baker replied. “There aren’t any mulligans.”
“Come on,” Ed Fletcher said. “It’s not like it was his fault — anybody would have jumped when that happened. I jumped, and I wasn’t even at the tee!”
Blake Baker shrugged impassively. “Doesn’t make any difference. The rules are the rules.”
Ed Fletcher’s eyes narrowed angrily. “For Christ’s sake, Blake — he’s a kid!”
“Do you see me giving Seth mulligans?” Baker asked. “Or even asking for them?”
“If you did, we’d be here all day,” Ed Fletcher shot back. “He hasn’t hit a decent shot yet.”
Seth barely heard what Ed Fletcher had said. His eyes were still fixed on the spot where the animal had vanished into the ivy.
It had looked to him exactly like the black cat he and Angel Sullivan had buried yesterday.
But that was impossible. Houdini was dead! He’d been dead when he took him out of Angel’s locker.
“So what’s it going to be?” he heard his father saying. “Is he going to play it as it lays, or be three off the tee?”
“Who cares?” Zack said, his voice trembling with anger. “It’s best ball anyway, and we’ll just use Dad’s — he’s farther out than you, and you’re stuck in the bunker.”
Blake Baker’s eyes narrowed angrily, but he said nothing, rather than risk offending Ed Fletcher. Instead, he gave his own son a tight-lipped nod that told Seth it was time for him to get on with it.
Pulling his driver out of his bag, Seth set up the ball, but by now all he wanted was to get the whole tournament behind him. So this time he didn’t even bother to aim, or take a practice swing, or any of the other things his father had pounded into him the other day when they were out practicing. Instead he just straightened up from the tee, stepped back, pulled the club up, and swung it, barely even bothering to watch where the ball was.
Except for the sharp thwack when the face of the club struck the ball, Seth would have sworn he’d missed completely, for he didn’t feel the contact at all. But the ball shot off the tee, arced high into the afternoon sky, seemed almost to hover in the air for a few seconds, then began its descent.
It landed in the exact center of the fairway.
More than two hundred yards out.
There was a long moment of silence, then Ed Fletcher uttered a low whistle, followed by a quizzical expression. “Where the heck did that come from?”
Blake Baker only rolled his eyes. “You know what they say — even the stupidest pig finds a truffle now and then.”
But Seth barely heard him, for his entire attention was focused on the black cat, who had now emerged from the hedge and was sitting on the edge of the tee box, its tail wrapped around its legs exactly the way Houdini’s always had.
Its eyes fixed on Seth for a moment, then it vanished back into the hedge.
Five minutes later, after first Ed Fletcher and then Zack had blown the shot out of the woods — winding up with their third shot coming out of the light rough and no farther ahead than before — Seth stood over his own ball, not quite certain what to do. It was the first of his balls that he and his father had used all day, and until now he’d simply used whatever iron his father had used, knowing it wasn’t going to make any difference anyway. But he’d just caught a glimpse of the black cat again. It was sitting in the shade of the closest tree, and he would have missed him except for the white blaze on his chest.
The blaze that looked to Seth to be identical to Houdini’s.
And the cat was staring at him again.
Almost like it was trying to tell him something…
“Looks like a five iron,” Seth heard Ed Fletcher say. “Or maybe a six.”
With no better idea of his own, Seth pulled the five iron out of his bag, stepped up to the ball, and once again swung without thinking.
And again the ball soared into the air.
This time it dropped onto the green.
“Well, well, well,” Ed Fletcher said quietly. “Looks like we got a sandbagger.”
Seth stared at Zack’s father. “I–I don’t know how I did that,” he stammered.
Ed Fletcher’s brow lifted. “Looked to me like you did it perfectly.” His gaze shifted to Blake Baker. “Want to just take that one and get on with it?”
Blake shrugged. “I guess I can live with it — should be good for a par anyway.”
With their next shots the Fletchers still weren’t on the green, but with their fourth they managed to leave the ball only three feet from the pin.
As Seth set up his putt, he once more saw the cat watching him, this time from the top of the bunker at the back of the green, and when the putt was finished, the ball lay only six inches from the cup.
Ed Fletcher conceded the hole.
“Not sandbagging, huh?” Ed Fletcher said as they approached the eleventh tee.
“I never hit a ball like that before,” Seth said. “I mean, never!”
Ed Fletcher shrugged. “You know what you did different?”
Seth shook his head.
“You relaxed. That’s the key to golf — just relax. Trouble is, most of us just can’t do it.”
“And flukes can happen to anyone,” Blake Baker said. “Even Seth.”
Something that looked like anger flashed through Ed Fletcher’s eyes so quickly that Seth wasn’t certain he’d seen it, and then it was gone.
But as Seth was setting up for his tee shot, Ed Fletcher said, “I’ve got twenty bucks that says it wasn’t a fluke.”
Blake Baker eyed his client uneasily. “You want to bet on Seth?” he asked with disbelief. When Ed Fletcher nodded, Blake shrugged. “Fine — easiest twenty I’ll ever take from you.”
As his father agreed to bet against him, Seth felt his eyes start to sting with tears, but rather than either wipe them away or risk anyone seeing them, he simply pulled his driver back and took a swing at the ball.
Once again it soared into the air and flew down the fairway, landing to the right, where it would be easy to send the next shot around the dogleg toward the green. As the ball rolled to a stop, Seth saw the black cat disappear into a thicket behind the tee box.
Seth’s next shot hit the green five feet from the cup.