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BACK NINE
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An Unplayable Lie
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Nathalia Veganthique paced slowly back and forth in the clubhouse of the Austin Golf Club, her tequila and lime swirling gently as she navigated the ancient carpet, the plastic chairs and tables, and the air thick with decades of grilled cheese sandwiches. Should she, or should she not? It was indisputably true that Major Saul V. had worked wonders on her new husband Jimmy Bingey-Purge. But now, after several months of wedded ness, the flaws that the Major had remedied (indecisiveness, hesitation, put-offingness, and procrastination, among others, such as hairlessness) seemed trivial compared to the new depths of psychic torment that had revealed themselves. And it was true that many members swore by the tonic powers of the Major’s advice. But Nathalia, who was guilty in various degrees of all of the venal sins, bowed to no one when it came to Pride. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”, she was called by those with whom she had gone to high school. At last she surrendered to the admission that help was called for. She opened the screen door to the verandah overlooking the implausibly green 9th fairway and approached the Major, who sat immobile as always in his favorite rocker, straw hat tipped forward over his eyes, dead asleep with the golfhound Geronimo also seemingly asleep at his feet. Nathalia stood before the Major, gazing down at the rising and falling of his belly, whose hairs were somewhat visible through two open buttons of his shirt. “Please take a seat, young lady,” rasped the Major, sitting up suddenly, doffing his hat and fixing her with a welcoming but somehow challenging eye. Far from sleeping, the Major had been deep in consideration of whether there were any word typed all on the left hand that had more letters than “reverberates”. “Oh, uh, why thank you.” Nathalia sat in the deckchair next to him. The Major peered at her expectantly, but Nats just continued to regard him with her characteristically alert but guarded expression. She fiddled with the glass that she had brought outside with her, still twirling the lime around in it. She downed a fistful of the perpetual pistachios that graced the table. “Ah, well,” sighed the Major. “I expect it’s to do with young Jimmy. I’ve been waiting for you.” “What do you mean, sir?” “For some years, my locker was across the aisle from his, and I had occasion to take note of, ah, shall we say, certain unhealthy behaviors?” “So you know.” Nathalia studied the Major’s face, looking for condemnation, or sympathy. She saw only giant white moustaches, which seemed to hint at the possibility of understanding at least, if not downright bathos. “I believe I do,” the Major muttered, and nodded humbly. “He seemed so stable, so simple, so blissfully ignorant of neurosis,” Nats waved her hand in exasperation. “I doubt that the lad himself is to blame. Surely he was victimized by his upbringing.” “Oh, you’ve met his parents then.” “Indeed.” The Major paused a moment, as if in rueful reflection. “Indeed. Bacchanalia Bingey and Pyrrhus Purge. It’s a wonder the boy can zip his own fly.” “On a good day.” “Come come, my dear, don’t despair. I believe I have known a similar case. Let me tell you about my old friend, the Senior Government Contractor, who suffered a particular malaise back on the Irish steppe. Perhaps his story can be instructive for the two of you, who deserve nothing but the friendliest of bounces off of the trees of life into the fairways of heaven.” Nathalia blushed slightly at these heartfelt good wishes. “Yes, please Major, I would like to hear the tale of your old friend the Senior Government Contractor.” “Well, Tyrone ‘Toetap’ Thompkins (he had earned his nickname by his own special methods of persuading caddies to point out the line of his putts) had suffered since his late teens with the late-night malady. Powerless to overcome it, he could only try to hold down the volume of his evening’s incomings and outgoings. Then, early one evening, vexed by a sliver of pork rind that begrudged Toetap’s most incisive betwixt-teeth inquisitions, he took to his brush and paste and gave his mug a thorough cleaning. From that night on, he was a cured man. Once he had performed this simple ceremony each evening, his appetite was gone for the duration. Who, after all, would want to sully their freshly sanitized gob with a box of Lorna Doones, or a bag of Pirate’s Booty, or a can of honey-glazed filberts, or a few dozen packets of Cajun party mix, or a jar of crunchy organic peanut butter, or a sleeve of chocolate Maxfli’s? Toetap gained twenty pounds in a week, improved his distance off the tee by sixty yards, and within a month his handicap was down from 26 to 23. Anyone with such a behavior pattern need only favor the up-and-down of the brush and the swirling of pasty water in the mouth, and the golf game is sure to be the beneficiary.” Nathalia grinned at the Major with admiration and thanks. She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek, tasting the faint aura of mothballs and coriander. “Is that when Toetap invented steppe dancing?” she murmured. The Major inclined his head slightly forward, then turned toward her and whispered, “Nathalia…I don’t suppose you know of any word typed all on the right hand with more letters than ‘lollipop’, do you?” “Hmmm…lollipopilly (the adverb)?” Nathalia breathed huskily, her bosom heaving as she caught her breath on the pistachio snagged in her wrong windpipe. “Please, young lady.” The Major sat up straight in his rocker. “As with mulligans, there must be limits on suffixes. But a nice try all the same, for a beginner. You show promise. Come back to me another day, after you have given the matter the thought that it deserves, and then share with me your discoveries, and we shall see what we shall see.” “Alright, how about this. Wordgolf from kinky to onion, with each stroke all on the right hand. Eh?” “A devilish lass, are you. You are on. What is par?” “I fear it’s an unplayable lie.” "I
look upon the veracity of that assertion with great dubiety. It needs
only
time, a bit of wit, and the intellectual rigor necessary to get to the
essence
of meaningless things,” said Saul gravely. “Well, two out of three’s
not
bad." Turning
her head, Nathalia tossed her brunette bangs -- a familiar gesture
meant to
signal "You might have a point (meaning you have a point and I can't
counter it), but to heck with it, change the subject.” “Tell
you what, Major,” she said. “I’ll come back to you about 9-letter words
typed
all on the right hand, and you come back to me about kinky-to-onion,
and we’ll
call it square.” “A
clever tactic to buy time. You think I’ll forget about it, and let you
off the
hook? Not til you’ve studied your monophony, polyphony, and homophony.” “Ante
upped. Touche.” Nathalia
gave Geromino a quick scratch behind the ears, rose, and disappeared
into the
clubhouse, wondering if phonophony were a word. A faint air of
petulance
lingered in her wake. Major
Saul lit his pipe, leaned back in his deckchair, and returned to his
contemplation of the mysteries of the qwerty keyboard, from which there
was so
much inspiration to be found.
© Craig Van Dyck April 2008 Back Nine
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