Waiting for Augusta Read Online Free PDF

never ditched school?” Daddy let out a phlegmy cough so real that I wondered if he was spraying spit-snot or ash inside his urn. “Well, never mind, I could have guessed that. When I was your age, I was skipping school once a week to caddie or go fishing. Both sometimes. No better feeling than missing class and bringing home money and dinner.”
    I picked up the kitchen club, half expecting to get zapped again. When I didn’t, I settled my grip and took a light swing. “Daddy, the Masters starts two days from now.”
    â€œThe Masters?” I swear, I heard my father smile inside that urn. “Hot dog , isn’t that a trick? Fate or the Ol’ Creator or Mama Nature or Whatever must have waited a month to send me back so I could go to the Masters. And so you could take me.”
    I saw him rub his hands together like he was excited to bite into a batch of twelve-hour pork butt. “I’ll finally make you fall in love with the greatest game ever played. We’ll watch most of the tournament together, and then you shake me outta this can by Sunday morning, so I can be right there on the last day of play. Front and center, eighteenth green. You pull this off and I can’t tell you how much it’d mean. That’s the plan, okay?”
    I couldn’t answer. My daddy’d come back from the dead so I could skip school and sneak him into a golf tournament.
    Sounds about right , the club head said.
    Maybe you can change his mind about scattering him there—make him want to stick around for a while , said the golf calendar.
    I shook my head at it and let my eyes drift over to the counter, where golden pie crust crumbs lay like sprinkled ashes. Maybe while he’s trying to make you finally love golf, you can finally make him pay you some attention, said the smallest crumb.
    â€œI don’t know about that,” I said.
    Fine, then , the crumb said. You could make him proud.
    â€œPlease, Ben.” Daddy coughed. “I need you.”
    I need you . Those were magic words. Soft, warm, hickory- smoke words that wrapped around me and gathered me close, until I sank inside and belonged only to them. “Okay.”
    Today was Tuesday. The Masters tournament lasted four days, starting Thursday and ending on Sunday. If he needed to put his soul to rest by the time the players took the course on the final day, that didn’t give me long to go over four hundred miles, sneak onto private property, let my father watch the greatest golf tournament in the world, and commit what I suspected was a crime of some kind. “I’ll try. But you know this is impossible, right?”
    â€œLots of things are, right up until they’re not. Now, listen here . . .”

HOLE 5
Filled Up
    M y runaway bag was Daddy’s old canvas camping pack, the one that still smelled of his cigarette smoke and had Marlboro patches all over it. It was wide as Daddy’s shoulders and deep enough to hold a water bottle, a flashlight, a big plastic container packed full of pork, a bag of pretzels, a ball cap, a change of pants, two shirts, three pairs of clean underwear, a framed photo of Mama so she’d be with us, Daddy’s Augusta book, our nearly untouched Rand McNally road atlas, my lucky quarter, and my box. The box had my paint pad, drawing pad, color set, brushes, and pencils.
    Daddy’d told me to take my dress pants and my one golf shirt for walking around the tournament, so I grabbed those. Then I picked up a year-old picture of him and me from my dresser.
    In the photo, we’re standing side by side at the municipal golf course and he has his arm around me right at the firsthole’s tee box, both of us smiling. It was taken just before the last round we shot together. Two rounds, actually. We played thirty-six holes that day, since the first eighteen hadn’t gone well for me. There hadn’t been many times when Daddy’d asked me to come along,