The ball started up the slope of the rise, moving more and more slowly, until at last it came to the top, where it almost stopped.
But it didn’t stop.
Instead it made one more slow revolution, then began rolling down the gentle slope, curving slowly to the right.
It picked up speed, and the curve straightened out, sending the ball directly toward the hole. It was still gaining speed, and even Seth could see that if it missed the hole, it wouldn’t go just ten feet beyond the cup, it would go at least fifteen, or maybe even more.
But it didn’t miss the cup.
Instead, it rolled directly into the center of the hole, struck the opposite side, then dropped out of sight.
Now it was Zack who turned to his father with an exaggerated bow. “Looks like our hole,” he said. “Unless Seth can figure out how to make his putt.”
The knot in his stomach tightening, Seth carefully replaced the ball on the spot he’d marked, then stepped back to look at the putt.
One foot, straight at the hole.
No slopes, at least not that he could see.
The knot in his stomach throbbed.
He felt his father’s eyes fixed on him and knew exactly what would happen if he missed the putt.
His arms trembling, he swung the putter back a few inches and gently tapped the ball.
It started slightly left, and for one horrified moment Seth was certain it had happened. He’d missed a twelve-inch putt — a putt that anyone but Zack Fletcher would have given him. Then, just as the ball was about to roll past the cup, it veered slightly right, hovered on the edge for a moment, and fell in.
“Not your hole,” Blake Baker said. “We split.”
Zack rolled his eyes scornfully. “Ooh, I’m so scared! Now we’re going to lose.”
“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” Seth mumbled fifteen minutes later, after he and his father had lost the ninth hole by two strokes. Without waiting for his father, he rushed to the men’s locker room, ran directly to the toilets, slipped into one of the stalls, and threw up. For almost ten minutes he crouched by the toilet, puking his brains out until there wasn’t anything left to vomit up. But no matter how much he threw up, the terrible knot in his stomach never loosened. The retching finally eased up and he was sitting on the toilet catching his breath when he heard the door open.
Then he heard his father’s voice: “You can’t hide in here all day, Seth. You’re holding up the whole game.”
The terrible knot in his stomach tightening even more, Seth nevertheless flushed the toilet and left the stall. Knowing that telling his father his stomach hurt too much to play would only make things worse than they already were, Seth trudged back to the course.
Ed Fletcher had already driven his ball down the right, where it drifted into the trees. As Seth watched, his father sent his ball into the bunker that lay two hundred yards out on the left side of the fairway, then glowered at Seth as if somehow the shot had been his fault.
Seth could already feel the sting of the extra lash he’d get from his father’s belt later tonight.
Now Zack was teeing up, and a moment later he began his backswing, his club coming smoothly up, his athletic body twisting until the club was extended horizontally behind his neck. The driver’s enormous head hovered for a moment, and then, just as Zack began his swing, there was a sudden blur of motion as something darted out of the boxwood hedge behind the tee box, shot past Zack’s ball, and disappeared into a tangle of ivy. Startled by the sudden movement, Zack pulled the shot. The ball soared in a huge hook, disappeared into the stand of ancient maples that bordered the fairway, and a second later they all heard it clatter off at least two trees.
Zack hurled his club at the ivy into which the animal had vanished. “No fair!” he howled. “I should get the shot over!”
“This is a tournament,” Blake Baker replied. “There aren’t any mulligans.”
“Come on,” Ed Fletcher said. “It’s not like it was his fault — anybody would have jumped when that happened. I jumped, and I wasn’t even at the tee!”
Blake Baker shrugged impassively. “Doesn’t make any difference. The rules are the rules.”
Ed Fletcher’s eyes narrowed angrily. “For Christ’s sake, Blake — he’s a kid!”
“Do you see me giving Seth mulligans?” Baker asked. “Or even asking for them?”
“If you did, we’d be here all day,” Ed Fletcher shot back. “He hasn’t hit a decent shot yet.”
Seth barely heard what Ed Fletcher had said. His eyes were still fixed on the spot where the animal had vanished into the ivy.
It had looked to him exactly like the black cat he and Angel Sullivan had buried yesterday.
But that was impossible. Houdini was dead! He’d been dead when he took him out of Angel’s locker.
“So what’s it going to be?” he heard his father saying. “Is he going to play it as it lays, or be three off the tee?”
“Who cares?” Zack said, his voice trembling with anger. “It’s best ball anyway, and we’ll just use Dad’s — he’s farther out than you, and you’re stuck in the bunker.”
Blake Baker’s eyes narrowed angrily, but he said nothing, rather than risk offending Ed Fletcher. Instead, he gave his own son a tight-lipped nod that told Seth it was time for him to get on with it.
Pulling his driver out of his bag, Seth set up the ball, but by now all he wanted was to get the whole tournament behind him. So this time he didn’t even bother to aim, or take a practice swing, or any of the other things his father had pounded into him the other day when they were out practicing. Instead he just straightened up from the tee, stepped back, pulled the club up, and swung it, barely even bothering to watch where the ball was.
Except for the sharp
It landed in the exact center of the fairway.
More than two hundred yards out.
There was a long moment of silence, then Ed Fletcher uttered a low whistle, followed by a quizzical expression. “Where the heck did that come from?”
Blake Baker only rolled his eyes. “You know what they say — even the stupidest pig finds a truffle now and then.”
But Seth barely heard him, for his entire attention was focused on the black cat, who had now emerged from the hedge and was sitting on the edge of the tee box, its tail wrapped around its legs exactly the way Houdini’s always had.
Its eyes fixed on Seth for a moment, then it vanished back into the hedge.
Five minutes later, after first Ed Fletcher and then Zack had blown the shot out of the woods — winding up with their third shot coming out of the light rough and no farther ahead than before — Seth stood over his own ball, not quite certain what to do. It was the first of his balls that he and his father had used all day, and until now he’d simply used whatever iron his father had used, knowing it wasn’t going to make any difference anyway. But he’d just caught a glimpse of the black cat again. It was sitting in the shade of the closest tree, and he would have missed him except for the white blaze on his chest.
The blaze that looked to Seth to be identical to Houdini’s.
And the cat was staring at him again.
Almost like it was trying to tell him something…
“Looks like a five iron,” Seth heard Ed Fletcher say. “Or maybe a six.”
With no better idea of his own, Seth pulled the five iron out of his bag, stepped up to the ball, and once again swung without thinking.
And again the ball soared into the air.
This time it dropped onto the green.
“Well, well, well,” Ed Fletcher said quietly. “Looks like we got a sandbagger.”
Seth stared at Zack’s father. “I–I don’t know how I did that,” he stammered.
