out about his father's death until a few months after it had happened when he'd run into one of Jaycee's old drinking buddies in a Nacogdoches saloon. Dallie wished he had known at the time so he could have stood next to Jaycee's coffin, looked down at his father's corpse, and spit right between the old man's closed eyes. One glob of spit for all the bruises he'd earned from Jaycee's fists, all the abuse he'd taken throughout his childhood, all the times he'd listened to Jaycee call him worthless… a pretty boy… a no-account… until he hadn't been able to stand it anymore and had run away at fifteen.
From what he'd been able to see in a few old photos, Dallie got most of his good looks from his mother. She, too, had run off. She had fled from Jaycee not long after Dallie was born, and she hadn't bothered
to leave a forwarding address. Jaycee once said he heard she'd gone to Alaska, but he had never tried to find her. 'Too much trouble,' Jaycee had told Dallie. 'No woman's worth that much trouble, especially when there are so many others around.'
With his thick auburn hair and heavy-lidded eyes, Jaycee had attracted more women than he knew what to do with. Over the years at least a dozen had spent varying amounts of time living with them, a few even bringing children along. Some of the women had taken good care of Dallie, others had abused him. As he grew older, he noticed that the ones who abused him seemed to last longer than the others, probably because it took a certain amount of ill temper to survive Jaycee for more than a few months.
'He was born mean,' one of the nicer women had told Dallie while she packed her suitcase. 'Some people are just like that. You don't realize it at first about Jaycee because he's smart, and he can talk so nice that he makes you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. But there's something twisted inside him that makes him mean right through to his blood. Don't listen to all that stuff he says about
you, Dallie. You're a good kid. He's just afraid you'll grow up and make something of your life, which
is more than he's ever been able to do.'
Dallie had stayed out of the way of Jaycee's fists as much as he could. The classroom became his safest haven, and unlike his friends he never cut school-unless he had a particularly bad set of bruises on his face, in which case he would hang out with the caddies who worked at the country club down the road. They taught him golf, and by the time he was twelve he had found an even safer haven than school.
Dallie shook off his old memories and told Skeet it was time to call it. a night. They went back to the motel, but even though he was tired, Dallie had been thinking about the past too much to fall asleep easily.
With the qualifying round completed and the Pro-Am out of the way, the real tournament began the next day. Like all major professional golf tournaments, the Orange Blossom Open held its first two rounds on Thursday and Friday. The players who survived the cut after Friday went on to the final two rounds.
Not only did Dallie survive Friday's cut, but he was leading the tournament by four strokes when he walked past the network television tower onto the first tee on Sunday morning for the final round.
'Now, you just hold steady today, Dallie,' Skeet said. He tapped the heel of his hand against the top of Dallie's golf bag and looked nervously over at the leader board, which had Dallie's name prominently displayed at the top. 'Remember that you're playing your own game today, not anybody else's. Put
those television cameras out of your mind and concentrate on making one shot at a time.'
Dallie didn't even nod in acknowledgment of Skeet's words. Instead, he grinned at a spectacular brunette standing near the ropes that held back the gallery of fans. She smiled back, so he wandered over to crack a few jokes with her, acting like he didn't have a care in the world, like winning this tournament wasn't the most important thing in his life, like this year there wouldn't be any Halloween at all.
Dallie was playing in the final foursome along with Johnny Miller, the leading money winner on the tour that season. When it was Dallie's turn to tee up, Skeet handed him a three-wood and gave his final words of advice. 'Remember that you're the best young golfer on the tour today, Dallie. You know it and I know it. How about we let the rest of the world figure it out?' Dallie nodded, took his stance, and hit the kind of golf shot that makes history.
At the end of fourteen holes, Dallie was still in the lead at sixteen under par. With only four holes to go, Johnny Miller was coming up fast, but he was still four strokes behind. Dallie put Miller out of his mind and concentrated on his own game. As he sank a five-foot putt, he told himself that he was born to play golf. Some champions are made, but others are created at the moment of conception. He was finally going to live up to the reputation the magazines had created for him. With his name sitting at the top of the leader board of the Orange Blossom Open, Dallie felt as if he'd come out of the womb with a brand-new Titleist ball clenched in his hand.
His strides grew longer as he walked down the fifteenth fairway. The network cameras followed his
every move, and confidence surged through him. Those final-round defeats of the past two years were
all behind him now. They were flukes, nothing but flukes. This Texas boy was about to set the golf
world on fire.
The sun hit his blond hair and warmed his shirt. In the gallery, a shapely female fan blew him a kiss.
He laughed and made a play out of catching the kiss in midair and slipping it into his pocket.
Skeet held out an eight-iron for an easy approach shot to the fifteenth green. Dallie gripped the club, assessed the lie, and took his stance. He felt strong and in control. His lead was solid, his game was on, nothing could snatch away this victory.
Nothing except the Bear.
The Bear's voice popped into Dallie's head sounding just as clear as if Jack Nicklaus were standing
beside him.
back the club and hit. The crowd let out a collective groan as the ball drifted to the left and landed in
high rough. In Dallie's mind, the Bear shook his big blond head.
Skeet, his expression clearly worried, came up next to Dallie. 'Where in hell did that shot come from? Now you're going to have to scramble to make par.'
'I just lost my balance,' Dallie snapped, stalking off toward the green.
The 'Bear had begun to appear in Dallie's head not long after Dallie had started playing on the pro tour. Before that, it had only been Jaycee's voice he had heard in his head. Logically, Dallie understood that he'd created the Bear himself, and he knew there was a big difference between the soft-spoken, well-mannered Jack Nicklaus of real life and this creature from hell who spoke like Nicklaus, and looked like Nicklaus, and knew all Dallie's deepest secrets.
But logic didn't have much to do with private devils, and it wasn't accidental that Dallie's private devil
had taken the form of Jack Nicklaus, a man he admired just about more than anyone else-a man with
a beautiful family, the respect of his peers, and the greatest game of golf the world had ever seen. A
man who wouldn't know how to fail if he tried.
the sixteenth green. It lipped the edge of the cup and scooted off to the side.
Johnny Miller gave Dallie a sympathetic look, then sank his own putt for a par. Two holes later when Dallie hit his drive on eighteen, his four-shot lead had been reduced to a tie with Miller.
the right.
The worse Daliie played, the more he joked with the crowd. 'Now, where did that miserable golf shot come from?' he called over to them, scratching his head in mock bewilderment. And then he pointed
