Train Read Online Free PDF Page A

still.
     
     
“Then what the fuck, Leroy, give us the nine.” Train pulled the iron out of the bag and the fat man gave him the thermos to put away.
     
     
He swung the club once, a slower, easy practice swing, then looked again at Mr. Packard, and then at Train. “You says the nine, sho enough?”
     
     
The fat man stood over the ball only a few seconds, not nearly as long as before, and then his stomach rolled up— Train glimpsing that awful pelt of hair— and then it dropped back over his belt and the ball came off the club straight and high, a bit of the divot still stuck to the face, and the fat man held a finishing pose while it was in the air. Showing Mr. Packard his real game now, let him feel the hook in his mouth.
     
     
“Be the stick,” the fat man said.
     
     
Mr. Packard gave Train a quick look of amusedment, and the ball hung there in the sky, perfectly on line, right until it disappeared into the pond. About ten feet short of the far bank. The fat man opened his hands and the club dropped behind his shoulder.
     
     
“The nine iron,” he said, almost like he was asking a question.
     
     
The wrong place at the wrong time, that was the expression.
     
     
“Yessir,” Train said.
     
     
“Yessir? Yessir what? You seen where it went?”
     
     
Train looked at the pond and saw a line of bubbles.
     
     
“I liked him better when he couldn’t talk,” the fat man said, making a joke of it, but then he took a step closer and Train saw the flat shine in his eyes and knew it was trouble. He’d heard that sometimes a member forgot himself when things went wrong and slapped his caddy. It was against the rules at Brookline, and after it happened, the member had to cool down and give the caddy something to take care of it.
     
     
The way the caddies looked at it— most of them— the members was feeble enough, it was like finding a dollar in your shoe. There were some, though, that didn’t see it that way. Some of them wouldn’t take the money, and sometimes if they stared too long at the man after it happened, made his sand tingle, the member would say something to Mr. Boyd in the pro shop after the round, and the caddy had to go home and think over what else he could do for a living.
     
     
The fat man wasn’t feeble, though; he looked like he moved furniture.
     
     
“Pink . . .”
     
     
Mr. Packard said his name, and everything stopped. Didn’t say it any particular way that you’d remember— in fact, you could almost hear a chuckle inside the word— but something was rolling down on Train, right on top of him, and just like that it turned around and rolled the other way. A moment passed and then the fat man smiled.
     
     
“I was only fucking with him, Miller,” he said. “He’s fucking with me, I’m fucking with him. He’s a smart boy, he knows that.” Then he turned and looked at Train again. “That’s right, ain’t it, Leroy? You’re a smart boy. . . .”
     
     
Train couldn’t answer. Back to that.
     
     
“We all seen you got a sense of humor. . . .”
     
     
Train picked up the nine iron and waited for the fat man to start down the fairway. Waited the way a Mexican would for the problem to go away. There were days he wished he could be Mexican himself— give up toting the bags and just work on the ground crew for History, come out early and rake the traps or weed the flowers. He could always make things grow. But the Mexicans was all illegal, and the club hired them by the day, first come, first serve, and didn’t pay them but a dollar for ten hours, and even then Train sometimes saw them fighting in the morning over a place in line. Train guessed it was better work than picking fruit, and guessed they would caddy if the club would let them.
     
     
Carrying the bags, Train got a dollar and a half for eighteen holes, plus whatever the tote gave him at the end. Sometimes in the summer, when the sun set at eight-thirty or nine, he made twelve,