Lost in the Garden by Philip Beard

Author:Philip Beard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.

8

Carpe fuckin’ diem.

—Sal

The thirteenth tee sits level with the Clubhouse, the equivalent of two full stories above the twelfth green and high enough to overlook all of Fox Run. For most of the summer the view from here is of the light green of the golf course cutting paths, some straight, some angled, through the deep green of what from above looks like dense forest. But now, at the height of a western Pennsylvania autumn, the only visible green is created by the bent and Poa annua grasses planted by the hired hands of F. Porter Beason more than eighty years ago. Everything else, in this late-afternoon light, is Technicolor, surreal in its vibrance. I have brought a camera to this spot almost every fall of my life, a new one every few years, with more and more buttons to push and knobs to adjust, and then, gradually, fewer and fewer. But every advance in photography has failed to capture, even once, what I have seen a hundred times. It is to this frustration that I have attempted to redirect my suddenly fragile psyche as Sal, still breathing hard from his climb up the railroad-tie stairs, repeats the question that I have apparently failed to answer.

“You okay?” he pants.

“I’m fine,” I say, though we both know that I am not.

Sal’s eyes narrow and his thick white hairline drops toward his eyebrows.

“You’re all of a sudden lookin’ like one of my asshole son-in-laws on his weddin’ day. Like you don’t belong in the clothes you’re in.” He looks at me hard. Then his brow unfurrows as my condition dawns on him. “Jesus Christ. You looked at the goddam scoreboard, didn’t you?”

“No!” I lie. “Sal, I swear to God, it’s like it was looking at me.”

He shakes his head. “You’ll never learn. None of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All you folks who grew up here. You get to thinking this is important.”

“Come on, Sal. You owe just as much to this game as I do, maybe more.”

“Oh, I didn’t say the game wasn’t important. The game’s important. It’s your game that ain’t.” Sal smiles to let me know he doesn’t mean this quite the way it came out. “I mean, ain’t it supposed to be fun to go low? Why is it all of you stop havin’ fun just when you’re playin’ your best?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t uncharted territory make everyone nervous? I’m five under, for chrissake.”

“Uncharted territory?” Sal blows a quick burst of air through his heavy lips. “That’s just what I’m talkin’ about, Mr. B. You ain’t exactly discoverin’ the New World here. This territory is well charted. Just not by you.”

Sal pulls my three-wood but he can tell I’m not ready to hit, so he takes the damp cloth he keeps slung over his shoulder and begins to work at the face with it, removing imaginary dirt.

“I’m not sure I like you lumping me in with everyone else who grew up here, Sal. You’ve known me almost my whole life.

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