Kevin, the golf pro and manager of the country club, saw the dweeby linen-suited accountant come into the bar late that afternoon, looking a bit wigged out (he went straight for the gin instead of his usual mineral water at that time of day), but he paid him little attention, there was too much else to do, the new season was in full swing, first club tournament just two weeks away, his own urgent staffing problems were as yet unresolved (he’d appealed to the board, there was plenty of money for more help, what were they being so chintzy about), the greens and fairways were in shitty shape after the spring drought, the buttbrain groundskeepers handing him some crap about the water pressure being too low for the sprinklers to work properly, one of the local wives he’d been jamming was giving him a hard time since he’d tried to call it off, the new cook was threatening to quit (three in the last six weeks), one of the coolers was on the blink, also the pool filtering system, there were lights out over the east parking lot, potholes in the access road, dogshit in the sandtraps at the tenth and twelfth greens, Kevin hardly had time for that limp noodle, not even a golfer, more like a golf widower, husband of maybe the best all-round player at the club, her only weakness being her impatience around the edges of the greens. Her impatience generally: a pain in the hunkies. She was due in soon, old Marge — or Sarge, as some called her when not calling her worse — always one of the first ones back in, no matter when she went out. She just played through everybody like a bulldozer through butter: make way, you zombies. Big beef, Marge. This was one wife out here Kevin had not planted and would not. The crowds began to arrive, he was still shifting the beers into the working cooler from the dead one when they started pouring in, some clopping in off the course like old nags entering the feedbarn, others, as Trevor had done (he was over by the picture window now, staring blankly out on the dimming sky), joining them from town, full of all the usual asinine jokes and urgent demands. When John got back to town, Kevin would have a private chat with him about the workload out here. John always had a solution, and he didn’t need the goddamned board to get things done. Kevin missed him when he wasn’t around, the place always seemed a bit seedy without him. His wife had been out earlier in the day, or she probably had been, Kevin wasn’t taking any bets on that lady’s whereabouts anymore, or her ifabouts either, didn’t even like to think about it and mostly didn’t, but he was pretty sure he saw her, heading to the locker-rooms. He hadn’t seen her since, but only John’s wife could wear a gold lamé top over emerald-green slacks like that and look casual doing it. Another local hausfrau Kevin had not staked and would not, he knew, though would that he could. Just brushing up against her was magic. At the bar, the story of the day was about the bareassed preacher’s kid crawling up onto Stu and Daphne’s roof to retrieve his pants, and everybody had their own account of how those articles got up there in the first place. Some of them were pretty wonderful, and Kevin found himself loosening up a bit as the evening wore on, a tumblerful of iced single malt helping somewhat as well. Most of the stories had old Stu coming home from the car lot and finding Daphne in bed with the kid, throwing the pants on the roof himself, usually with some one-liner from Stu directed at Daphne or the kid. One version: “This time, son, you gotta crawl up there to get your britches back. Next time you’ll have to crawl up there to get your balls back.” Others said that Stu had tanned his ass before sending him up there, which accounted for the spectacular glow, or sent one of his mechanics over to do that bit of routine rear end realignment for him (that was another rumor: the brazen young mechanic), but others said they heard the kid threw them up there himself, a dare or something, or maybe just showing off: he’d also climbed up on the sign out in the front yard and started whacking off in full view, or so someone claimed who said they saw him. PKs: the same everywhere. An old regular out here named Alf said he didn’t know about the monkey business on the sign, but that the kid, feeling cocky, had tossed his own bluejeans up there himself before going on inside was what he’d heard, too. Said it was like a kind of signal flag, you know, like raising the old blue peter, which meant his ship was ready to sail and let the world know it. Kevin had been ready to believe half the stories being told, but he figured the deadpan doctor, known for his hoard of ancient anecdotes, was pulling one out of the hat here. Alf was a hopeless old bent-backed duffer who approached the ball in a slouch, swinging from the elbows and carrying his neck out in front of his shoulders like a turkey buzzard, but he was hell to beat with a putter. “Old Stu came home and said
he’d give him a blue peter, goddamn it, if he caught him around here again! He didn’t mind him taking his wife for a spin with his little banger, but he’d be damned if he’d let him have free advertising!” There was also the more plausible rumor that Stu and Daphne had actually hired the kid to enrich their sex life, Stu himself was known to tell a lot of jokes on the subject, while someone who’d had a beer with Stu out at the Getaway this afternoon said Stu had claimed that it wasn’t what it seemed, the kid was innocent, only came by to mow the lawn, it was just another prank of Winnie’s ghost which even Kevin had heard Stu say was haunting him nowadays. “Knucksie’s kid? Innocent?” old Waldo snorted, already half-bombed. “Naw, haw! Gimme a break, fellas! That boy’s been cuttin’ scrub all over town, he’s a menace to virtue everywhere! But Daph was too smart for the rowdy little jackrabbit. When he tried to jump her, she told him first he’d have to put his pants on the roof, that was the only way not to have babies, and then when he’d got them up there, she told him old Stu had got wind of it and was on his way home with a bodyshop mallet to work his chassis over, but if he got his butt up there on the roof in a hurry and put those pants to use, she’d tell Stu she’d hired him to polish the shingles!” Well, while they were all laughing to beat hell at that one, who should come in but Stu and Daphne themselves, both shitfaced, hardly able to walk, Stu asking what’s the joke. The sudden silence was earsplitting, but Waldo, not losing a beat, boomed out: “Haw! Look who’s here! Hey, you hear what happened to old Stu?” People were choking on their drinks, Kevin included, ready to fall through the floor, and Waldo’s better half grabbed his sleeve to yank him out of there, but the paint salesman winked with half his face and said: “Well, he was out in the sticks a coupla nights ago, miles from nowhere, and his car broke down, goddamn tin buckets they sell nowadays, can’t trust ’em, and so, you know, he needed a place to stay overnight. But the rube at the only farmhouse in sight said, sorry, mister, all he had was two beds, one for him and his wife and the other one for his daughter. That’s all right, says Stu, I’m harmless, my dingus got shot off in the war. I’m dreadful sorry to hear it, says the rube, okay, you can sleep with my daughter.” By now, everybody was relaxed back into their drinks once again, laughing more than the joke was worth, most of them having heard it before, the old nine-inch stub gag, but so relieved to have Waldo cover for them everything seemed funny. But then, while everyone was still falling about stupidly after the punchline, Waldo turned to Stu and asked: “So what’s this I hear about you sellin’ fresh hotcakes off your roof, ole buddy?” Stu grinned blankly, pretending not to know what Waldo was talking about, started telling some tired old joke of his own about a pretzel salesman, Daphne meanwhile keeping her mouth shut through it all. Not at all like Daphne, most people were beginning to get the picture. The two of them threw down a couple of stiff ones and staggered out early, the cluster at the bar by then having pretty much scattered. And then, later, as Kevin more or less anticipated, some woman came in and said she’d found some green pants with a gold top hanging in the lockerroom, she’d have kept them for herself if she could have got into them, whose were they?