Drive Like Hell: A Novel by Hudgens Dallas

Author:Hudgens, Dallas [Hudgens, Dallas]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2007-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

17

SHWOOOK! Nick smacked the range ball with his driver. We both stood there watching the grungy, dinked-up sphere shrink in the pale sky.

“Get legs!”

Nick grunted and performed a pelvic thrust, like a stripper.

“Now fade, goddammit! Fade!”

The ball picked up a nice little tail as it eclipsed the two-hundred-yard marker and zeroed in on its target like a heat-seeking stone.

CLANK.

The guy collecting balls atop the Massey Ferguson flinched a little as the ball ricocheted off the chicken-wire enclosure that protected him. He shook his head as though he’d just heard the same joke for the thousandth time.

Nick grinned and pumped his fist into the air. He couldn’t have been any happier if he’d dropped in a sixty-footer at Pebble Beach. “Did you see that? That was head high. Not a bit of fucking hook to it.”

“Right between the eyes.” I laughed.

“Now that’s what they need in golf,” Nick said. “Moving targets.”

“Yeah, and a shot clock. Give the players some fast carts and twenty seconds to get to their balls. Cut out all of that wagglin’ shit.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Nick said.

I was parked on the bench behind Nick’s stall, sipping a Coke and listening to the Braves–Phillies game on Nick’s transistor radio. I’d returned my one-iron to the trash bin earlier in the summer, right after I’d sworn off the royal and ancient game for good. Not even Cash’s Iron Tiger brand of golf had been enough to win me over.

It wasn’t long before Chuck Sosebee pulled up in his white BMW. He was one of Nick’s regular customers, as well as his traveling companion on the recent trip to Pensacola. Chuck flew the commuter birds for Delta Airlines and also owned a Piper Cub. That’s how he and Nick had gotten down to Pensacola.

Chuck walked over to where I was sitting, still wearing part of his Delta pilot’s uniform: the black pants and the white shirt with the gold wings over the heart. I’d met him twice before, though only briefly on each occasion, so I didn’t know all that much about him, except that he was married and had a young daughter. I wasn’t too sure of his age, though he appeared to be at least a few years older than Nick. He owned a shaggy blond head of hair that looked like it belonged on the PGA tour.

“So, how’ve you been hitting ‘em?” Chuck grinned and stood over me with his hands on his hips. A sweat bead trickled down the side of his face.

“I’m not.”

“What do you mean, you’re not?”

“I mean, I quit—retired—hung up the spikes—vaya con Dios, my one-iron.”

I hoped a string of simple explanations might help to satisfy his curiosity, though I doubted it would be that easy to get rid of him. During our other encounters, he’d tried to engage me in some sort of half-assed conversation before taking up his true business with Nick. I could never tell if he was trying to convince me, or himself, that he was an interesting guy.

“Don’t tell me we lost you to tennis,” he said.

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