Dallie laughed and then yawned.
"Shoot, Dallie," Skeet protested, as he watched the speedometer inch its way from seventy-five to eighty. "Why don't you crawl in the back and get some sleep? Let me drive for a while."
"If I fall asleep now, I won't wake up till next Sunday, and I have to qualify for this sucker, especially after today."
They had just come from the final round of the Southern Open, where Dallie had shot a disastrous 79, which was seven strokes over his scoring average and a number he had no intention of duplicating. "I don't suppose you got a copy of Golf Digest mixed in with all that crap," he asked.
"You know I never read that stuff." Skeet turned to page two of the Enquirer. "You want to hear about Jackie Kennedy or Burt Reynolds?"
Dallie groaned, then fumbled with the dial of the radio. Although he was a rock-and-roll man himself, for Skeet's benefit he tried to pick up a country-western station that was still on the air. The best he could get was Kris Kristofferson, who'd sold himself out to Hollywood, so he put on the news instead.
"… Sixties radical leader, Gerry Jaffe, was acquitted today of all charges after having been involved in a demonstration at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base. According to federal authorities, Jaffe, who first gained notoriety during the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, has recently turned his attention to anti-nuclear activities. One of a dwindling group of sixties radicals still involved in activist causes…"
Dallie had no interest in old hippies, and he flipped off the knob in disgust. Then he yawned again. "Do you think if you try real hard you could sound out the words in that book I got shoved under the seat?"
Skeet reached over and pulled out a paperback copy of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, then set it aside. "I looked at this one a couple of days ago when you was out with that little brunette, the one who kept calling you Mister Beaudine. Damn book don't make sense." Skeet flipped the Enquirer closed. "Just out of curiosity. Did she call you Mister Beaudine once you was back at the motel?"
Dallie popped a piece of Double Bubble in his mouth. "As soon as she got her dress off, she mostly kept quiet."
Skeet chuckled, but the change of expression didn't do much to improve his appearance. Depending on your viewpoint, Clarence "Skeet" Cooper had been blessed or cursed with a face that made him pretty much a dead ringer for Jack Palance. He had the same menacing, ugly-handsome features, the same pressed-over nose and small, slit eyes. His hair was dark, prematurely threaded with gray, and worn so long he had to tie it in a ponytail with a rubber band when he caddied for Dallie. At other times he just let it hang to his shoulders, keeping it away from his face with a red bandanna headband like his real idol who wasn't Palance at all but Willie Nelson, the greatest outlaw in Austin, Texas.
At thirty-five, Skeet was ten years older than Dallie. He was an ex-con who'd served time for armed robbery and come out of the experience determined not to repeat it. Quiet around those he didn't know, wary of anyone who wore a business suit, he was immensely loyal to the people he loved, and the person he loved most was Dallas Beaudine.
Dallie had found Skeet passed out on the bathroom floor in a run-down Texaco station on U.S. 180 outside Caddo, Texas. Dallie was fifteen years old at the time, a gangly six-footer dressed in a torn T-shirt and a pair of dirty jeans that showed too much ankle. He also displayed a black eye, skinned knuckles, and a jaw swollen twice its normal size from a brutal altercation that would prove to be the final one with his daddy, Jaycee Beaudine.
Skeet still remembered peering up at Dallie from the dirty bathroom floor and trying hard to focus. Despite his battered face, the boy standing inside the bathroom door was just about the best-looking kid he'd ever seen. He had a shock of dishwater blond hair, bright blue eyes surrounded by thick, paintbrush lashes, and a mouth that looked like it belonged on a two-hundred-dollar whore. As Skeet's head cleared, he also noticed the tear streaks etched in the dirt on the boy's young cheeks as well as the surly, belligerent expression on the kid's face that dared him to make something of it.
Stumbling to his feet, Skeet splashed some water in his own face. "This bathroom's already occupied, sonny."
The kid stuck a thumb in the ragged pocket of his jeans and thrust out his swollen jaw. "Yeah, it's occupied all right. By a stinkin' piece of no-good dog shit."
Skeet, with his slitted eyes and Jack Palance face, wasn't used to having a grown man challenge him, much less a kid not old enough to have much more than a weekly date with a razor. "You lookin' for trouble, boy?"
"I already found trouble, so I guess a little more won't much hurt me."
Skeet rinsed out his mouth then spit into the basin. "You're about the stupidest kid I ever seen in my life," he muttered.
"Yeah, well you don't look like you're too smart, either, Dog Shit."
Skeet didn't lose his temper easily, but he'd been on a bender that had lasted nearly two weeks, and he wasn't in the best of moods. Straightening up, he pulled back his fist and took two unsteady steps forward, determined to add to the damage already done by Jaycee Beaudine. The kid braced himself, but before Skeet could strike, the rotgut whiskey he'd been drinking got the best of him and he felt the dirty concrete floor give way beneath his wobbly knees.
When he woke up, he found himself in the back seat of a '56 Studebaker with a bad muffler. The kid was at the wheel, heading west on U.S. 180, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging from the window, beating out the rhythm of "Surf City" on the side of the car with his palm.
"You kidnappin' me, boy?" he growled, pulling himself up on the back of the seat.
"The guy pumpin' super at the Texaco was getting ready to call the cops on you. Since you didn't seem to have a legitimate means of transportation, I couldn't do much else but bring you along."
Skeet thought about that for a few minutes and then said, "Name's Cooper. Skeet Cooper."
"Dallas Beaudine. Folks call me Dallie."
"You old enough to be drivin' this car legal?"
Dallie shrugged. "I stole the car from my old man and I'm fifteen. You want me to let you out?"
Skeet thought about his parole officer, who was guaranteed certain to frown on just exactly this kind of thing, and then looked at the feisty kid driving down the sun-baked Texas road like he owned the mineral rights underneath it.
Making up his mind, Skeet leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. "Guess I might stick around for a few more miles," he said.
Ten years later, he was still around.
Skeet looked over at Dallie sitting behind the wheel of the '73 Buick he now drove and wondered how all those years had flown by so quickly. They'd played a lot of golf courses since the day they'd met at the Texaco station. He chuckled softly to himself as he remembered the first golf course.
The two of them hadn't traveled for more than a few hours that first day when it became evident that they didn't have much more than the price of a full tank of gas between them. However, fleeing the wrath of Jaycee Beaudine hadn't made Dallie forget to toss a few battered clubs into the trunk before he hotfooted it out of Houston, so he began looking around for signs that would lead them to the next country club.
As he turned into a tree-lined drive, Skeet glanced over at him. "Does it occur to you that we don't exactly look like country club material, what with this stolen Studebaker and your busted-up face?"
Dallie's swollen mouth twisted in a cocky grin. "That kind of stuff don't count for shit when you can hit a five-iron two hundred twenty yards into the wind and land the ball on a nickel."
He made Skeet empty out his pockets, took their total assets of twelve dollars and sixty-four cents, walked up to three charter members, and suggested they play a friendly little game at ten dollars a hole. The charter members, Dallie declared magnanimously, could take their electric carts and their oversize leather bags stuffed full of Wilson irons and MacGregor woods. Dallie announced that he'd be happy as a clam walking along with only his five-iron and his second-best Titleist ball.