|
BACK NINE
|
SMOKEY ENLISTS -- A TRAGEDY IN THE
4TH ACT
|
For those who say
that American lives have no second act, here is one word for you to
consider: sildenafil.
But having succeeded to a second act, what of the third, and the
fourth? Major Saul V. was
well into his fourth act when he re-emerged from a foxhole in For the Major,
this
period of enforced exile had also been an opportunity to work out the
colossal
misunderstanding that had led Officer De Selby Fox to believe that Saul
had
attempted to blow up the Hancock Shopping Center in Austin, Texas,
apparently
for no better reason than that he had been unable to purchase his
favorite
brand of mosquito netting at the Sears store there. But Officer Fox
had not fully accepted this reason for Saul’s terrorist plan. True, the
source
of Fox’s intelligence – Smokey Countryman, the clubhouse attendant at
Austin
Golf Club – was unimpeachable, partly because he had never been elected
to
anything, and also because he was famously honest, although just as
famously
misinformed a great deal of the time. Smokey could be relied upon to be
absolutely veracious with the misguidance that he followed and, if
asked,
dispensed. No, Fox sensed a
deeper motive, something to do with retribution for the AGC’s loss of
its back
nine holes decades earlier, a loss that was felt as acutely today by
the AGC
members as it had been that frightful
morn back in 1962 (p. 24) when the will of the majority of eligible
voters in town had been
revealed: Sell the nine holes, said the majority of the small minority
of
eligible voters who had voted, and give the money to real estate
developers so
the developers could build themselves houses on the lake. Further, Fox
suspected that the plot ran even deeper, and pointed to a general
disaffection with
the American Way of Life, and in particular Capitalism, with its
fertile
support of innovation, which led to the surfeit of shopping options,
causing
the necessity to impose buildings in which Americans could shop –
buildings which
seemed always to require the obliteration of entire genuses of trees,
turf, and
open space. Capitalism, it seemed, bred the apotheosis of the lowest
common
denominator of human sensibility. Why would that be? wondered Fox. The
essential Calvinist depravity of the human soul? Or maybe the bad role
models
of Fox had overheard
some of the conversation at the Austin Golf Club, in which
nonagenarians and
their seniors vented vociferously against the evolving expansion of the
City of
Austin, and the resultant drying up of all of the creeks as the water
table
calcified into limestone, while snappy younger men graduated from their
fraternities and found their places in the accounting, legal, and
engineering
professions, because accountants must have numbers to count, lawyers
must have laws
to litigate, engineers must have engines to get turned on by, and laws
and
numbers were Austin’s engine of growth. That there was a
strong undercurrent of reactionary fervor among the veteran members of
AGC, Fox
did not doubt. “All change is bad,” he had heard Major Saul declaim
once during
a debate over whether AGC should pave its driveway, his thesis seeming
to be that
each step forward is a step further away from the Garden of Eden whence
we
ought return. Could this badditude betoken an underground movement at
the Club
to undermine Capitalism and overthrow the City Government? Given the recent
upsurge of terrorist acts emanating from Middle East Austin, Fox knew
that he
had to pursue any leads vigilantly. He decided it was time to pay a
little call
on one of his best-informed informants, the ex-attorney Morty Fishman,
currently
serving as driving range impresario and sometime sports book
custodian/proprietor
of Shalom-o-Rama Golf Kibbutz in * * * Neither Fox nor
Saul V. was aware that each was in the employ of the same Service.
Major Saul
was the highest-ranking member of the Service, but he did not know the
identity
of most of his agents. It was safer that way; he couldn’t kill them
when their
missions went blooey, which happened approximately 100% of the time. Saul knew that in
the fog of war, you had to be nimble. His agents were trained to think
on their
feet, and to be empowered to take the initiative to make creative
decisions
on-the-spot based on changing conditions on the ground without waiting
to ask
permission. And they were punished severely every time their
independent action
did not work out well. In this way Major Saul both inculcated in his
employees
the freedom to improvise, and taught personal accountability. One of
these days
he would write a book, a how-to about how to manage a high-flying
organization
that outperformed the market while protecting its stakeholders’
interests and
delivering value to its customers by fostering innovation and fear of
failure. Reconciling
contradictions, Saul was fond of saying, is what a manager does. Saul relied
heavily on his Letter B’s assistant, Mrs. Peel. Though Saul was Letter
A in the
Service, Saul could not have an assistant himself, because then he’d
have to
kill him or her. While ensconced in This could not
stand. Fox or Countryman,
one of them must pay. The Service had to be protected, for the good of The Nation – the Service being the security
arm of The Nation magazine, which
needed protection against the ongoing dirty tricks of the invidious
agents of
the International Wolfowitz Fund. Saul ruminated
over the question for a month. Finally it was simply arithmetic that
decided
the matter: Smokey was over 100 years old and was bound to expire of
his own
volition in the relatively near future, the Major felt fairly sure.
Fox, on the
other hand, was a strapping young buck with many more years of
troublemaking
ahead of him. True, the odds were not overlong that Fox would find the
path of
a bullet at anytime, given his seeming action-oriented meddlesomeness.
But the
Major could not take that chance. Sitting around and waiting was not
one of the
Major’s favored management tactics. Finally Saul
tremored word to Mrs. Peel: Find Letter Y, Fox must go. (Letter Y was
one of
Saul’s most effective operatives, in stark contrast to the performance
of most
of his Letters. Y had almost been promoted to X a few times, but he had
a high
rate of rejecting missions for mostly dubious reasons, like leaving
town on a
hip hop tour, which spoiled his prospects each time he seemed ready to
take the
next step up.) * * * Everything about
Morty was fast. He had brought this with him from Brooklyn when he
escaped just
ahead of the posse of angry rappers who felt that their defense had not
been
optimally handled and who were in a state of collective denial
concerning their
sentence of 30 years of hard time for the alleged offense of
involuntary
manslaughter with a stretch Hummer while dealing psilocybin-laced
stolen
confidential government documents at an illegal-immigrant-run
dogfighting ring.
Morty listened fast, talked fast, breathed fast, and, it turned out,
could move
fast. In fact Morty had
had the opposite experience in Austin pizza places, when his “Gimme
slice p-p-rone
Electric Avenue whaddaya waitin’ for” was met with a solicitous but
mystified
“Excuse me please sir, could you repeat that, I didn’t quite
understand, maybe
a little slower please, hey I like your Ghostface Killa amulet, would
you like
a piece of pizza?” This made Morty crazy. A simple “Say wha?” would
have been
sufficient, why so many syllables? What did the guy think, Morty was in
a pizza
place to get his nails done? It was as if People in Austin
seemed to miss out the simple fact that the world was overpopulated,
other
humans must be dealt with as quickly as possible in order to get it
over with
and get ready for the next one that was coming along right after, the
odds were
very strong that this person – or if not this person, then the one
after – was
out to get over on you, and it’s better to get over on the other guy
first than
to let the other guy get over on you. When Officer De
Selby Fox wheeled into the gravel Shalom-o-Rama parking lot and pulled
into one
of the hundreds of empty parking places next to the unkempt, overgrown
driving
range, he knew that although Morty was only Letter Y in the
organization, the
lowly status did not prevent Morty from providing useful information.
After
all, hadn’t it been Morty who sprung the leak that finally revealed the
child
callgirl ring that the local highschool football coaches ran?
And wasn’t it Morty who offered the clue that led to the indictment of
the
checkout clerk ring that had conspired to speak slowly and be polite
beyond all
reason, thus clogging up the system? If it was information you sought,
Morty
was a good place to start. “Wuzzat ding in
yer ear?” Morty greeted Fox raspily when the Officer stepped into the
little
booth where Morty kept watch over the driving range, miniature golf
course, and
poker trailer out back. “What thing do you
mean?” Fox asked. “Speak fastuh, I
can’ unnastan ya.” “Oh, you mean the
new tattoo on my earlobe. A gift from Janine. A getting-back-together
gift.
See? It’s a teacher and her class, all lined up to say goodbye at the
end of
the schoolday. But now I’m kind of sorry about it because I’ll be
breaking up
with her tonight. Too high maintenance.” Fox gave Morty a near-wink to
indicate
common understanding between the two male specimens. Morty leaned
forward for a closer look. “Good stuff,” Morty muttered while wondering
why on
earth this big lug would want to break up with a dream-come-true like
Janine; “high
maintenance” indeed, it probably meant that Fox felt trapped because he
felt
guilty if he didn’t phone her each day when he was on his way home from
work. Fox wiped Morty’s
spittle from his cheek. When Morty spoke, 70 years of tobacco flames
and Retreating to a
safer distance, Fox began idly engaging Morty in a seemingly innocent
conversation, starting with the weather (hot), moving on to this
summer’s
infestation of crickets (crunchy), and sidling along toward the Austin
Golf
Club members who patronized the Shalom’s practice range (few) and the
poker
game out back (many). In this way, the clever Fox brought Morty around
to the
subject of one Major Saul V., who, it turned out, had been known to sit
in for
a hand or two on the odd occasion, like every Tuesday and Thursday
night til
dawn for instance. It was from Mrs.
Peel herself that Morty had obtained the inadvertent hint that led him
to
conclude that the Major had been absent from the poker game for months
because
he was engaged in an underground golf course renovation somewhere in
Burma, a
fact that he casually let fall while shooting the breeze with Officer
Fox. Fox
seemed to find this quite interesting, and decided it would be useful
to spend
much of this afternoon in the company of the loquacious ex-lawyer. “Good that you
showed up, Fox. Lend me a hand?” Morty graveled. “Sure Morty, what
can I do ya for?” Fox replied, with his usual can-do git-it-doneness. “It’s this tractor
mower. Damn thing’s blades ain’t working. We ain’t mowed in weeks.
Crawl under
here, Fox, why doncha, and lemme know if ya see what the problem is.” Officer De Selby
Fox took the flashlight that Morty handed him, and willingly crept
underneath
the large machine. When Janine heard
about the tragic accident, she was horrified for Fox’s two boys, and
relieved
that she wouldn’t have to break up with him tonight. Too low
maintenance.
Especially now. ©
Craig Van Dyck Back
Nine
home page | Back Nine table of contents
| Next story
If you would like to be notified when a new story appears, send us an email at backninestories@gmail.com. Back Nine:
The Austin Golf Club Stories |