Duncan glanced at Mike and noticed that above Mike’s smile, his eyes were like shale ice.
“We’ve gone over last year’s cards,” Ed explained, “and you boys are so evenly matched that it’s going to be like the flip of a coin, only more interesting.”
Duncan suppressed the urge to say that it seemed more sadistic than interesting from where he stood. He was conscious of the chill of tension on the back of his neck, of a trembling in his knees and elbows.
“Your honor, Dunc,” Stu Finch said mildly.
Duncan managed to get his ball teed up on the third attempt. He stood over it. It seemed about the size of an aspirin tablet. The driver felt like a spaghetti wand. He swung. The fifth hole at Onondaka is a 340 yard dogleg to the right. Dun’s drive covered the forty yards, leaving him three hundred to go.
“You’re all tightened up, boy,” Mike said heartily.
Mike teed up his ball. Dunc watched carefully. Mike’s backswing seemed smoother than usual. The wrist-snap looked almost professional. With a sound like a pistol shot the ball fled the tee. It screamed toward the trees on the right. It kept rising, rising. Duncan stopped breathing. The ball cleared the trees. It was nauseatingly obvious to Duncan that the ball would come to rest on the fairway beyond the trees, probably only a short iron from the hole.
“Lucky!” Mike said with casual glee.
“Best drive you ever made, Mike,” Ed DeRider said happily.
“I guess I do better under pressure,” Mike said with becoming modesty.
Duncan managed to pull himself together. His fairway wood was out in the clear. His two iron was on the lip of the green. He almost holed the long putt, and took his five. But Mike had pitched on and two-putted for a four.
“Is this competition between Mike and me for holes, or total?” Dunc asked.
“Just like we said, Dunc,” Finch replied. “The match.”
For the next three holes, Mike Folsun played par golf. It put Folsun and DeRider four up. The little spreading vine of suspicion in Duncan’s mind put down new roots and flourished. Mike’s game fell apart, but not very much, on the ninth hole. On that hole both Mike’s drive and Duncan’s were on the right side of the fairway. The caddy and the other two men were laboring and hacking their way down the left side.
Duncan said coldly, “Okay, Folsun. Have your fun.”
“What are you talking about, old boy?”
“Where have you been hiding that golf game? And why?”
Mike laughed. “Ever hear of customer golf? Funny you never figured it, even when, all last year, I kept the match just as even as I could. One week you and Stu would win and the next week we’d win. Makes it interesting. But now the gloves are off, baby.”
“Congratulations, Folsun.”
“My goodness, such bitterness! Don’t worry, baby, I won’t beat you too bad.”
“No, you don’t want it to show, do you?”
Mike addressed his ball. He winked at Duncan, took a mighty swing and topped it badly. “Cheer up, baby. You’re going to win this hole and bring it down to three up. Maybe you’ll win the tenth too. I’ll have to think about it. Anyway, on the seventeenth tee, Ed and I are going to be two up, with two to play.”
“Terrible chances you take,” Duncan said. “Suppose I tell them?”
“Tell them what, old boy? That I’m in there striving?”
Duncan played along doggedly. He played as well as he could. But Mike never let the margin narrower than two up. When Mike and DeRider were in danger, Mike would take a little time over a stroke and make a recovery. Duncan was sourly surprised that the two older men remained oblivious.
As Mike had predicted, they came to the seventeenth tee with Duncan and Stu Finch two down. The seventh at Onondaka is a five hundred yard par five. The fairway swoops over two young mountains and the woods are thick on either side.
The hole before had been halved and it was Duncan’s honor. He teed up the ball. He had long since ceased to smile. If they thought him a poor sport, it didn’t matter. The only cheering thought was that this was very probably the last round of golf he would ever have to play.
He hit his drive harder than he had ever hit a golf ball before. It carried over the first hill and angled off toward the woods.
“Tough,” Mike said. He hit a ball that never did get off the ground, but Duncan noted that it was pounded hard enough to get more than halfway up the first hill.
After the other two men drove, Duncan slogged off into the woods. He came to a quiet glade. His ball rested white and smug on the springy grass.
“Need help?” the call came, faintly.
“Found it!” he yelled back. He studied the shot. Ahead was a hole in the greenery, framing the distant green. Maybe an expert could use a wood and pound the ball through that hole with just enough of a fade to catch the roll of the second hill. Duncan decided to use an iron.
He set the bag down, took a club absently, and then discovered that he had taken the cloob. He grunted and jammed it back in the bag. It refused to stay. It bounded out. He tried again. It bounded out again. He stood very still, feeling faintly dizzy. The cloob actually seemed to demand to be used. The glade was very silent. In the distance he could hear the sound of running water. Small blue flowers were half hidden in the grass.
Duncan MacLendon had always been a relatively unimaginative man. Pixies were for other folk. For the first time in his life he felt the shiver with which we greet any manifestation of the supernatural.
There seemed to be nothing to lose. If the cloob demanded to be used, then the cloob he would use. He took his stance. The cloob felt awkward. He bit his lip and took a mighty swing. The ball took off. It hissed through the open hole in the surrounding brush. As straight as arrows, it flew. It diminished, a tiny white dot in the distance, and then faded off to the left just enough. It dropped behind the crest of the second hill. Duncan stood watching. It reappeared again, rolling and bounding. He could barely see it. It missed the yawning trap and rolled onto the green, rolling, rolling, up to the base of the pin, disappearing.
“Heavens to Betsy!” an awed voice said at Duncan’s elbow. He jumped. It was Ed DeRider. “Came up just in time to see you swat it,” he said, “One under par is a birdie. Two under par is an eagle. What do you call three under par?”
On the green they added up the score. Ten for Stu and two for Duncan, making twelve. Five for Mike and nine for Ed De-Rider, making fourteen.
“Well, one down and one to go,” Mike said. Duncan was still too dazed to comment. He still held the cloob in his hand. He could not forget the look of that ball at it fled into the distance. Nothing had ever been as beautiful. If golf could only be like that all the time...
The eighteenth at the Onondaka is evil and insidious. It is a 275 yard par four. The water hole begins one hundred yards directly in front of the tree and it is precisely a hundred yards wide. The choice is limited. You either hit a ball which will go two hundred on the carry, or you play short with an iron and carry it on your second shot. Duncan had always played short. It was his honor. He stood up to the ball.
“Hey!” Stu Finch said, “Don’t try to hit it with that antique!”
“That’s what he used up there in the woods,” DeRider said.
In a trance-like state, Duncan swung at the ball. For the first hundred yards it was no higher than twenty inches off the ground. Then it began to rise. It went high. It floated. Duncan’s eyes misted and blurred as the ball began to drop. Then Finch and DeRider were prancing around him, yelling hoarsely, “An ace! An ace!”
Duncan looked at Mike. There was an odd, uncertain look in Mike’s eyes. Mike teed up his ball, banged it to within ten yards of the front edge of the green. Both DeRider and Finch played short and safe, cleared the water safely on their second shots, pitched their third shots onto the green. They took a pair of fives. Mike got a birdie three, but it was of no help to him.