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very small place back then, and such things could happen. Flavianno never bothered me again.

Golf Games
    I CAME TO GOLF FAIRLY LATE IN LIFE, WHEN two of my pals more or less forced me to go over to Skinner’s and give it a try. Skinner’s—I can’t remember its official name, but Skinner Coffin ran the place—was an ancient nine-hole course open to all at a dollar a hole. Nothing fancy, but well maintained. Phil and Tom gave me a few pointers, showed me how to hold the club, told me to keep my head down during the swing, and finally teed me up. I addressed the ball with a two-iron, swung smoothly, and got off a clean, straight shot that soared out 110 yards to land at the edge of the green, where it proceeded to run up halfway to the pin.
    â€œHey! This is fun!” I said. “I see what you guys mean.”
    Tom gave me a slightly puzzled look. Phil just laughed. It would be two years and hundreds of missed, bungled, dribbling, slicing, hooking shots later before I managed to drive to that particular green again. I turned out to be a poor golfer, shooting in the high nineties most days while Phil and Tom cruised along in the low eighties. I kept on, though, unable to forget the almost orgasmic thrill of that first shot.
    We were three guys from very different backgrounds who enjoyed one another’s company. (A few winters on the island and you found out who you liked pretty rapidly.) Tom, from the South, was a builder, soon to invent a one-handed pepper mill (The Peppergun!) and make his fortune. Phil came from Indiana and worked as a master carpenter as well as sommelier during the season. I was a writer from New York. The game of golf brought us even closer together, and that was definitely one of its pleasures.
    The rituals were reassuring. Everybody had to show up, first of all, each of us by that act recommitting ourselves to a certain tacit camaraderie. Gathering at the first tee, fussing with our bags and carts, there was a pleasant sense of anticipation. We knew exactly what we would be doing for the next hour and a half, and we knew exactly the parameters of our activity—drive, approach, putt, move to the next hole, and do it again. A comfortable rhythm at a comfortable pace. There was no sense of competition—even between Tom and Phil, who played at more or less the same level of skill—rather the sense that each individual was playing against himself, against the maddening vagaries of golf itself, so deceptively simple on the surface, so infinitely complex underneath. For us there were no external variables except, occasionally, the wind. The challenge was almost entirely unchanging and static—the pesky fourth hole always the same every time you approached. The variables were within—inside our individual bodies and minds. Which is why the game can drive people nuts. Which is why it’s probably not such a good idea to play the game alone for any length of time.
    We knew the story of Chester Wilmont, after all, the local lawyer, unmarried, upstanding citizen, on the town board, etc., who played Skinner’s every day, always alone, sometimes mumbling abstractedly or making gestures in the air. It was Skinner himself, lounging on the porch of the clubhouse, who watched him fiveputt the fourth hole and sat transfixed while Chester, a big man, removed one by one the clubs he had inherited from his father, breaking them over his knee, taking off his shoes, and leaving everything—bag, busted irons, shoes, balls, tees, scorecard, pencils—right there on the grass. He walked to his car without looking back and was never seen on a Nantucket golf course again.
    â€œHe got too deep in the tunnel,” Phil explained.
    â€œWhat tunnel?” I asked.
    â€œThe tunnel of self,” Tom said.
    â€œI bet he birdied the first three holes.”
    They nodded together and shook their heads at the folly of mankind.
    My first season was to spend time in the