Short Fiction

sometimes afternoons during the week when the men and women aren’t playing, and we go round together, for a nickel a hole sometimes. I’m a little better than him and I have to give him three strokes on the nine, and we break about even that way. I’ve made the nine holes once in forty-three already, and I’m only sixteen. Most generally I get round in about forty-eight or forty-nine. Jake’ll average round fifty or fifty-one. Mac, the pro, he’s an old crab. He wouldn’t try to learn us nothing. Besides, I think a fella’s better off learning by himself. Francis Ouimet started as a caddy and I guess nobody ever showed him anything. But, besides getting the chance to practice, I and Jake’s considered the best kids they got, and we make pretty good money⁠—twice as much as the younger kids get. The regular price is two bits for every nine holes, but fellas like Mr. Joyce and Mr. Davis and them, they always slip us fifteen cents extra and sometimes as high as thirty or forty. That’s outside of the two bits.

There’s a rule in the club that nobody can call up ahead of time and engage their caddy. They’re all supposed to take whoever they get when they get up here. We’re all supposed to stick round the shop, and when somebody’s ready to play Mac tells who shall caddy for them. But I and Jake work a kind of a system. When we see somebody walking to the first tee that takes good care of us, we get outside of the shop, where the guys can see us; and then they usually holler to Mac to send them Jake and I. And when some old tightwad or some crab shows up, Mac can’t find us with a search warrant. We’re gone⁠—that’s all.

When we make the best cleanup is when Mr. Joyce and Mr. Davis and Mr. McNally and Mr. Harper play together. They never shoot for less’n a dollar a hole, and sometimes it’s as high as five bucks. And they’re all fellas that likes to win; but when they get beat it ain’t never our fault, like with some of the crabs. And the fellas that cop most of the dough don’t never forget to remember Jake and I. Mr. Joyce win thirty dollars one day this spring, and he give I and Jake a five-spot to split between us. Believe me, when there’s any balls found laying loose round the course they belong to Mr. Joyce! And I’ve gone out in the river over my knees more’n once, chasing a new ball for him, when he happened to hook one on the seventh or eighth hole.

The other kids always are trying to fix it so’s they can go round with him and the rest of the live ones, and I and Jake sometimes feel like we were hogging it. But it ain’t our fault, is it, if they’d rather have us and ask Mac to let them? Fellas that does as much for the club as them, they’ve got a right to have the caddies they like.

Well, if they were all Mr. Joyces nobody’d have a kick coming. But, believe me, there’s a few guys in the club that’s so tight you could play on them with a drumstick! I’ve been round with some of them when I couldn’t get out of it, and it’s like pulling teeth to get them to come acrost with the regular pay they’re supposed to give us. There was one that used to come out from town last year, and he never had nothing less’n a twenty-dollar bill when it was time to settle up with his caddy. The first time he sprung that on me I said I couldn’t change it but the man in the clubhouse could. So this guy said he’d go in himself and get it changed. So he went in and stalled round half an hour, hoping I’d go home. I stuck, but it didn’t get me nothing. He was studying astronomy when he came out. And the next time I seen him he’d forgot all about it.

When I went round with him again and he hauled out his twenty, I said I thought I could break it, and before he could get it back in his jeans I copped it out of his hand and ran in the clubhouse.

I got it changed into a ten and a five and five ones. I gave him back nineteen dollars.

“It’s half a buck for eighteen holes,” I said. “There was eighteen holes today and eighteen last time, so it’s a dollar altogether.” And by the time he begun to argue I was on the way to the village.

He never took me after that, but I managed not to shed tears over it.

Then there’s the fellas that everything you do for them is wrong and spoils their game. If they’ve got a five-foot putt and you take the flag out, and they miss the putt by four or five feet, it’s “Why in hell didn’t you leave the flag alone?” And if they’ve got a mashie shot and you give them their mashie and they make a flivver of it, it’s “Why didn’t you give me my niblick, like I ast you to?” And if you stand over in the rough on the right side of the fairway when they’re driving, if they dub their drive it’s because you weren’t over on the left side.

And then there’s the guys that can’t remember how many strokes they’ve had, and they ask you. If you tell them the truth they’re as sore as a boil. What you’re supposed to do is lie a stroke. That saves them the trouble and disgrace of doing it themselves. All us kids were in the shop one week day, waiting for somebody to show, and we were talking things over; and Davy Schultz was crabbing because he never got to go round