‘All right,’ I said. And I thought about the javelin throw — about how much a javelin would weigh and what it was made of and how hard it would be to throw the right way.
My father was staring toward where the sky was beautiful and dark and full of colors. ‘It’s on fire out there, isn’t it? I can smell it.’
‘I can too,’ I said, watching.
‘You have a clear mind, Joe.’ He looked at me. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you.’
‘I hope not,’ I said.
‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘I hope so, too.’ And we went on then picking up golf balls and walking back toward the clubhouse.
When we had walked back to the pro shop, lights were on inside, and through the glass windows I could see a man sitting alone in a folding chair, smoking a cigar. He had on a business suit, though he had the jacket over his arm and was wearing brown and white golf shoes.
When my father and I stepped inside carrying our baskets of range balls, the man stood up. I could smell the cigar and the clean smell of new golf equipment.
‘Hello there, Jerry,’ the man said, and smiled and stuck out his hand to my father. ‘How’d my form look to you out there?’
‘I didn’t realize that was you,’ my father said, and smiled. He shook the man’s hand. ‘You have a blueprint swing. You can brag about that.’
‘I spray ’em around a bit,’ the man said, and put his cigar in his mouth.
‘That’s everybody’s misery,’ my father said, and brought me to his side. ‘This is my son, Joe, Clarence. This is Clarence Snow, Joe. He’s the president of this club. He’s the best golfer out here.’ I shook hands with Clarence Snow, who was in his fifties and had long fingers, bony and strong, like my father’s. He did not shake my hand very hard.
‘Did you leave any balls out there, Jerry?’ Clarence Snow said, running his hand back through his thin, dark hair and casting a look at the dark course.
‘Quite a few,’ my father said. ‘We lost our light.’
‘Do you play this game, too, son?’ Clarence Snow smiled at me.
‘He’s good,’ my father said before I could answer anything. He sat down on the other folding chair that had his street shoes under it, and began unlacing his white golf shoes. My father was wearing yellow socks that showed his pale, hairless ankles, and he was staring at Clarence Snow while he loosened his laces.
‘I need to have a talk with you, Jerry,’ Clarence Snow said. He glanced at me and sniffed his nose.
‘That’s fine,’ my father said. ‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’
‘No it can’t,’ Clarence Snow said. ‘Would you come up to the office?’
‘I certainly will,’ my father said. He had his golf shoes off and he raised one foot and rubbed it, then squeezed his toes down. ‘The tools of ignorance,’ he said, and smiled at me.
‘This won’t take much time,’ Clarence Snow said. Then he walked out the front door, leaving my father and me alone in the lighted shop.
My father sat back in his folding chair, stretched his legs in front of him, and wiggled his toes in his yellow socks. ‘He’ll fire me,’ he said. ‘That’s what this’ll be.’
‘Why do you think that?’ I said. And it shocked me.
‘You don’t know about these things, son,’ my father said. ‘I’ve been fired before. These things have a feel to them.’
‘Why would he do that?’ I said.
‘Maybe he thinks I fucked his wife,’ my father said. I hadn’t heard him say that kind of thing before, and it shocked me, too. He was staring out the window into the dark. ‘Of course, I don’t know if he has a wife.’ My father began putting on his street shoes, which were black loafers, shiny and new and thick-soled. ‘Maybe I won some money from one of his friends. He doesn’t have to have a reason.’ He slid the white shoes under the chair and stood up. ‘Wait in here,’ he said. And I knew he was mad, but did not want me to know he was. He liked to make you believe everything was fine and for everybody to be happy if they could be. ‘Is that okay?’ he said.
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
‘Think about some pretty girls while I’m gone,’ he said, and smiled at me.
Then he walked, almost strolling, out of the little pro shop and up toward the clubhouse, leaving me by myself with the racks of silver golf clubs and new leather bags and shoes and boxes of balls — all the other tools of my father’s trade, still and silent around me like treasures.
When my father came back in twenty minutes he was walking faster than when he’d left. He had a piece of yellow paper stuck up in his shirt pocket, and his face looked tight. I was sitting on the chair Clarence Snow had sat on. My father picked up his white shoes off the green carpet, put them under his arm, then walked to the cash register and began taking money out of the trays.
‘We should go,’ he said in a soft voice. He was putting money in his pants pocket.
‘Did he fire you,’ I asked.
‘Yes he did.’ He stood still for a moment behind the open cash register as if the words sounded strange to him, or had other meanings. He looked like a boy my own age doing something he shouldn’t be doing and trying to do it casually. Though I thought maybe Clarence Snow had told him to clean out the cash register before he left and all that money was his to keep. ‘Too much of a good living, I guess,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Look around here, Joe. See if you see anything you want.’ He looked around at the clubs and the leather golf bags and shoes, the sweaters and clothes in glass cases. All things that cost a lot of money, things my father liked. ‘Just take it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’
‘I don’t want anything,’ I said.
My father looked at me from behind the cash register. ‘You don’t want anything? All this expensive stuff?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’ve got good character, that’s your problem. Not that it’s much of a problem.’ He closed the cash register drawer. ‘Bad luck’s got a sour taste, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes sir,’ I said.
‘Do you want to know what he said to me?’ My father leaned on the glass countertop with his palms down. He smiled at me, as if he thought it was funny.
‘What?’ I said.
‘He said he didn’t require an answer from me, but he thought I was stealing things. Some yokel lost a wallet out on the course, and they couldn’t figure anybody else who could do it. So I was elected.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a stealer. Do you know it? That’s not me.’
‘I know it,’ I said. And I didn’t think he was. I thought I was more likely to be a stealer than he was, and I wasn’t one either.
‘I was too well liked out here, that’s my problem,’ he said. ‘If you help people they don’t like you for it. They’re like Mormons.’
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘When you get older,’ my father said. And then he seemed to stop what he was about to say. ‘If you want to know the truth don’t listen to what people tell you,’ was all he said.
He walked around the cash register, holding his white shoes, his pants pockets full of money. ‘Let’s go now,’ he said. He turned off the light when he got to the door, held it open for me, and we walked out into the warm summer night.
When we’d driven back across the river into Great Falls and up Central, my father stopped at the grocery a block from our house, went in and bought a can of beer and came back and sat in the car seat with the door open. It had become cooler with the sun gone and felt like a fall night, although it was dry and the sky was light blue and full of stars. I could smell beer on my father’s breath and knew he was thinking about the conversation he would have with my mother when we got home, and what that would be like.