Nailles got some putters and balls out of the hall closet and they drove to a miniature golf links off Route 64. The links, Nailles guessed, had been built in the thirties. There were deep water traps, bridges and a windmill. The place had long ago gone to seed and had then been abandoned. The water traps were dry, the windmill had lost its sails and the greens were bare concrete but most of the obstacles were intact and on summer nights men and boys still played the course although there were no-trespassing signs all over the place. There were no lights, of course, but that was a summer night and there was light in the sky. A little wind was blowing from the west and there was thunder across the river. When Nailles described the scene to himself, as he would a hundred times or more, his description followed these lines.
"I was ashamed of having quarreled with Nellie and I kept blaming the whole thing on psychological motives and mouthwash. If I hadn't gone to Westfield none of this would have happened. Tony led off and I remember feeling very happy to be with him. I taught him how to putt and he has a nice stance. I gave up golf four years ago but I thought I might take it up again. We would play together. I know he isn't handsome-his nose is too big and he has a bad color-but he's my son and I love him. Well, it was windy and there was some thunder on the other side of the river. I remember the thunder because I remember thinking how much I liked the noise of thunder. It seems to me a very human sound, much more human than the sound of jet planes, and thunder always reminds me of what it felt like to be young. We used to belong to the country club when I was a kid and I went to all the dances-assemblies-and when I hear the music we used to dance to-'Rain' and The Red, Red Robin'-and so forth I remember what it felt like going to dances when you're seventeen and eighteen, but thunder refreshes my memory much better. It isn't that I feel young when I hear thunder, it's just that I can remember what it felt like to be young. We shot the second hole at par and on the third hole you're supposed to make your ball loop the loop through an old automobile tire. I had some trouble with this. Tony made it in par but I was two over and still trying when Tony said: "You know what, Dad?' and I said, "What?' and he said I'm going to leave school.'
"Well this got me off-guard. It really spilled me. The idea had never crossed my mind. The first thing I figured out was that I mustn't lose my temper. I must be reasonable and patient and so forth. He was only seventeen. I worked out a reasonable and a patient character like a character in a play. Then I tried to act the part. What it really felt like was that patience was this big woolly blanket and I was wrapping myself up in it but it kept slipping. So I said very patiently, 'Why, Tony?" and he said because he wasn't learning anything. He said that French was all grief and English was even worse because he read more than the teacher. Then he said that astronomy was just a gut course and that his teacher was senile. He said that whenever the teacher turned off the lights for a film strip everybody took naps and threw spitballs and that once the teacher cried when they piled out of the class in the middle of a sentence. He said that when he got to the door he looked back and saw the teacher crying. So he went up to him and explained that they didn't mean to be rude, they just didn't want to be late for the next class, and then he said that the teacher said that nobody understood him, that he loved his students, he loved them all. Then Tony said he didn't think too much of a teacher who cried. Well, then we played the fifth hole where you have to get your ball through a gate. I did this in par but he was three over and we went on talking. I said that he had to get his diploma. I asked him what he was planning to do without a diploma and he said he thought he might do some social work in the slums. He said there was this place for children with disturbed parents and he thought he might work there. Well, I was having trouble with my patience, my woolly blanket. It kept slipping. I said that if he wanted to do social work that was all right with me and I felt sure it would be all right with his mother but first he had to get his diploma. I said I guessed that social work like everything else needed training and preparation and that after he got his diploma I and his mother would be happy to send him on to some college where he could get training as a social worker. So then he said he couldn't see what was the good of a diploma if he wasn't learning anything. He said it was just a phony, just a phony scrap of paper like a phony treaty. Then I said that phony or not you had to observe some of the rules of the game. I said that trousers, for instance, weren't perhaps the most comfortable form of clothing but it was one of the rules of the game that you wear trousers. I asked him what would happen if I went to the train bare-ass and he said he didn't care if I went to the train bare-ass. He said I could go to the train bare-ass as far as he was concerned. By this time we'd stopped playing and that was when these other men, men or boys, asked if they could play through and we said yes and stood aside.
It was windy, as I say, and there was more thunder and it looked like rain and the light on the course was failing so you really couldn't see the faces of the men who played through. They were high school kids, I guess, slum kids, hoods, whatever, wearing tight pants and trick shirts and hair grease. They had spooky voices, they seemed to pitch them in a way that made them sound spooky, and when one of them was addressing the ball another gave him a big goose and he backed right into it, making groaning noises. It isn't that I dislike boys like that really, it's just that they mystify me, they frighten me because I don't know where they come from and I don't know where they're going and if you don't know anything about people it's like a terrible kind of darkness. I'm not afraid of the dark but there are some kinds of human ignorance that frighten me. When I feel this I've noticed that if I can look into the face of the stranger and get some clue to the kind of person he is I feel better but, as I say, it was getting dark and you couldn't see the faces of any of these strangers as they played through. So they played through and we went on talking about his diploma and the rules of the game. I said that whatever he wanted to do he had to train himself for it, he had to prepare himself. I said that even if he wanted to be a poet he had to prepare himself to be a poet. So then I said to him what I've never said before. I said: 'I love you, Tony.'
"So then he said, The only reason you love me, the only reason you think you love me is because you can give me things.' Then I said this wasn't true, that the only reason I was a generous father was because my own father hadn't given me very much. I said that because my own father had been so tight was why I wanted to be generous. So then he said: 'Generous, generous, generous, generous.' He said he knew I was very generous. He said that he heard about how generous I was practically every day in the year. So then he said, 'Maybe I don't want to get married. I wouldn't be the first man in the world who didn't want to get married, would I? Maybe I'm queer. Maybe I want to live with some nice, clean faggot. Maybe I want to be promiscuous and screw hundreds and hundreds of women. There are other ways of doing it besides being joined in holy matrimony and filling up the cradle. If having babies is so great why did you only have one? Why just one?" I told him then that his mother had nearly died when he was born. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 1 didn't know that.' So then he said that I had got to understand that he might not want to come home at dusk to a pretty woman and play softball with a bunch of straight-limbed sons. He said he might want to be a thief or a saint or a drunkard or a garbage man or a gas pumper or a traffic cop or a hermit. Then I lost my patience, my woolly blanket, and said that he had to get off his ass and do something useful and he said: "What? Like pushing mouthwash.' Then I lifted up my putter and I would have split his skull in two but he ducked and threw down his club and ran off the links into the dark.
"So there I was on this ruined miniature golf course having practically murdered my son but what I wanted to do then was to chase after him and take another crack at him with the putter. I was very angry. I couldn't understand how my only son, whom I love more than anything in the world, could make me want to kill him. So then I picked up his putter and walked back to the car. When I got home I told Nellie that I'd had a fight with Tony but she sympathized with him, of course, because I'd already had a fight with her. Then I had a drink and looked at television-there wasn't anything else to do. I sat there in front of the set until about midnight when he came in. He didn't speak to me and I didn't speak to him. He went upstairs to bed and I went up a little later.