The wipers wumped softly, squeegeeing mist on the windshield. The red light glowering over Delmar’s Four corners turned to green, and I let in the clutch. The ’56 Plymouth jerked ahead.

            “Gas,” growled my grandfather, balancing his coffee mug.

            As the car accelerated, the vacuum-powered wipers slowed, then beat a flurry as I went up into second. The Pill was a real rod after dad’s progression of Dyna Flow Buicks. At sixteen I reveled in the feel of clutch, gas, shift.

            “Take it easy,” said Poppy as I snapped down into third and we swished up wet Delaware Avenue. “I’d like to get some of this mocha on the inside.”

            A block beyond the Dutch Reformed Church, my buddy Leo Thompson stood beside the curb, his plaid bermudas, white basketball sneaks, and white tee shirt, contrasting with the dripping gloom of the elm-hung street.

“Hey Pops!” He climbed into the back seat, clapping my grandfather on the shoulder.

            Poppy half turned, stiffly, “I’m not deaf!”

            Leo leaned forward, arms on the back of the front seat. “Watch out guys, this is gonna be my day!” With the windows up, his Aqua Velva was pretty overpowering.

            A car approached with its lights on, and I switched ours on. 

“Real pea soup.”

            “Think we’ll be able to play?” asked Leo.

            “It’ll burn off,” I said. “The only way to play is get out early.”

            “Yeah, beat the crowds.”

            Poppy was staring at the fog-shrouded landscape that rolled past.

            Leo settled back. “Hey, remember that piece of shale I got on the field trip last Spring? It broke open – there’s a fern inside.”

            “A fossil?”

            “Yeah. Like it was pressed in the pages of a book.”

            An Elm Dairy milk truck loomed in the fog and passed.

            “I wonder if it’s worth something?” said Leo. “You know about fossils, Mr. Staub?”

“No,” said Poppy, “They were before my time. Believe it or not.”

 

We were the second car in the Albany Public Golf Course parking lot, the first being Rusty Crennel’s black bullnosed ‘49 Merc. He was the clubhouse attendant.

“Only three loonies’d be here at this ungodly hour in this stuff,” grinned Poppy. I lifted his folding golf cart out of the trunk along with my bag.

I paid our green fees in the clubhouse – Poppy’s treat – and Leo rented clubs. We could see my grandfather through the window taking practice swings.

Looking off the first tee you couldn’t see twenty feet. It was like a tv with the station off the air. You couldn’t tell you were high over a long fairway hemmed in by pine woods and a swampy stream.

“Well, here goes nothing.” My grandfather nested the ebony head of his driver behind the white ball.

“It probably won’t even land,” said Leo. “I mean, the fog’s so thick – it’ll probably hold the ball up!”

Poppy settled his weight, then slowly swung the club back, and then forward cleaving the air – “click” – the ball vanished and he followed through. At seventy-four he had beautiful form.

He plucked up his red tee. “You next, Thompson.”

Leo stood, the seat of his bermudas striped from the three fog-soaked slats of the bench. He teed a ball, wiggled his hips, and swung like Mickey Mantle.

“Watch the back of your head,” said Poppy, “That one’s coming right around.”

Leo was studying the ground.

“Don’t bother,” laughed my grandfather. “That tee went further than the ball.”

I got off a fair drive. We plunged downhill into the fog, Leo and I carrying our golf bags slung on our shoulders, Poppy being led by his cart. Leo left us, disappearing to the right.

It was still. Bushes dripped. Trunks of trees went up and disappeared in the fog. My sneakers were soaked already, and squished with every step. The old public golf course was like those dried-up star fungi that swell in the wet.

“We should have brought a compass,” I said to Poppy. We were walking together in the fog, just the swish of shoes through the wet grass, the easy jangle of clubs. But then he came right up on his ball. I asked if he had X-ray eyes or something.

“You hit a ball straight, two hundred yards, a blind man can find it. What do I want here, spoon or mid-iron?”

“Better use the iron. You don’t want to overshoot this one.”

He drew the long blond-shafted spoon out of his bag. “I love this old club.”

“Yooooo . . .” Leo’s voice floated on the fog.

“Find your ball?”

“Nooooo . . .”

Poppy trod a few times like a cat on your lap, and then hit the ball. “Long. Had to get that out of the system.” He gestured to the right. “You sliced over there.”

I’d out-driven him by twenty yards, but lay in the rough.

“Fore!” came from behind us. Poppy cupped his hands and called, “Who’s that for, the woodchucks?”

“Up my snout!” came happily back.

I hit, and as we moved ahead, Poppy and I separated. He grew fainter until I was alone.

I had learned golf, caddying two summers for Poppy. When I played my first game, he didn’t say anything for eighteen holes. Afterward, he went over the game stroke by stroke – a hundred and fifty-two of them. He then considered my apprenticeship over. We could play golf.

My ball sat on the end of the curve it had rolled in the green’s dew. I could hear Leo coming up, whistling in the fog. Poppy stood under some wild grape vines above the green.

“You should have used that iron,” I said.

“Yes, yes. Come up here.”

I held the vines back, and he exploded the ball to an accompaniment of dead leaves and soil. It sailed high and landed, bouncing up two feet from the flag.

 

By the long dog-leg Fifth, the sun was burning off the fog. It would be a scorcher. Leo had put on a sailor hat, brim turned down, and looked like a guy from a backyard cook-out.

“Whoa!” called Poppy, as Leo began a swing. “This isn’t a butcher shop – slice, slice, slice! Keep the left arm straight, snap the wrists – and follow through.”

Leo hooked the ball.

Poppy put his hand on Leo’s shoulder as they advanced. “Golfing is like eating, you have to forget about it to do it. However, to forget about it you have to know how to do it.” They arrived at Poppy’s ball: “Downhill lie, a hundred fifty yards to the pin; green trapped, sides and back. Strategy for the par?”

 

Coming up the long slope to the ninth green in front of the clubhouse, I could see Poppy’s swing had eased up and he was taking more time with his shots. The usual ram-rod posture, learned from his Prussian father, had melted a little in the heat. He leaned into the golf cart, pushing it up the hill. Poppy was timeless in his baggy beige pants, white shirt with crossed drivers under the pocket, white Ben Hogan cap. He wore real spiked golf shoes: white saddles over brown, with fringed tongues that hung down to cover the laces. They reminded me of Fred Astaire.

 

(2 spaces)

We sat at the clubhouse bar drinking lemonades. The bartender had moved away after serving us, as if we gave off too much heat. Leo looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

“What do you say to calling it a day?” I asked Poppy.

“You talking to him or me?”

“It’s going to be a wicked back nine.”

We’d better get started then, hey what?”

 

“We should have played the back first . . .” Leo murmured.

We were taking a break under the big maple at the thirteenth tee, spread out on the bench not touching. Leo had filled his hat at the last drinking fountain and emptied it over his head.

I knew better than to suggest shortcutting to the seventeenth and playing just the last two holes.

“Your honor,” I said to Poppy.

My grandfather ran his hand through his thin silvery hair, and put his cap back on. It had been his “honor” all day.

The “Alps” lay ahead. I don’t know how bad they were, but you came to them tired. There were two strategies: power drive clear across the valley and land on the opposite plateau, within chipping range of the green; or, like Poppy, play it smart and stroke easily into the valley. Then take another easy shot up and over the rim.

I got up next and blasted.

“Jesus . . .” Poppy shook his head staring down at the acre of brush into which my ball had slewed. I think he would like to have done something to save me the trouble of being young.

 

An hour later I was helping Poppy up the steep gullied hillside to the fifteenth hole, pulling him by his seven-iron. Leo, laden with his own golf bag, and dragging Poppy’s cart, pushed upward against the old man’s behind. Poppy was grabbing grass tufts with his free hand. We must have looked like Larry, Moe and Curly.

“Let go of that club,” grunted Leo, “and I’m a dead man.”

We went a few more feet like that, then started to laugh. Then Poppy dropped to his knees – Leo lurched forward spilling clubs and letting go of the cart.

“Oh, shit!”

Then Poppy fell over sideways.

There was another of those big maples at the top. We each got hold of an arm and dragged him up pretty fast, considering how heavy he was. We laid him on his back in the shade, and I got his head propped up. Leo ran toward the green and disappeared behind a sand trap. I fanned Poppy with his cap. His chest was going up and down. Leo came back, hurrying, spilling most of the water in his hat. We splashed it in Poppy’s face. His eyes opened and closed. The golf course right then was like the moon. Poppy’s hand lifted off his chest and dropped back. He mumbled something.

“He’s off his head!” exclaimed Leo. “We’ll rig his cart like a travois – drag him to the clubhouse!”

“That’s a dumb idea – it wouldn’t hold him.”

An electric golf cart was floating like a mirage over an adjacent fairway. Leo ran toward it, yelling.

I fanned my grandfather with his cap. Wisps of silver hair moved back and forth. I’d never noticed we had the same soft fine hair. It was so still, no birds sang, and there was a scorched dry smell. Leo was gone. The golf cart had vanished. Poppy’s chest rose and fell more easily, he seemed to be sleeping.

Thunderclouds were piling up in the West over the Helderbergs. That’s where we got the fossils. This had all been swamp and trilobites and fern trees. A dog day like this a couple million years ago. Trilobites ruled the Earth Mr. Freedman said. This air – breathing was like taking a bite and chewing and swallowing it. It felt like Poppy was always old and me sixteen. It felt like time had parked under that maple. I’d never grow up, get a date with Marie Vanderberg, graduate BCHS. Like Poppy and me had died and were sinking into the mud getting to be fossils. That trilobite back home on my desk had been alive – like a flashbulb caught him and tucked him in a rock. In a million years they’d find Poppy stretched out, me next to him holding his cap. 

A locust began a long summer wind down in the valley.

There’s a picture of Poppy as a kid. His hair thick and he’s skinny, but his nose and eyes are the same. He is standing with his father, and Poppy isn’t even ‘Poppy’, but ‘Emil Junior’. I am not born. He isn’t even thinking about what’s to come. Like right now.

Another locust started up as the first was winding down.

Poppy’s eyes opened.

“Stop waving that cap.” He propped himself up so he was sitting against the tree. “That me?” A ball lay twenty feet off the green.

“You ok? You keeled over and me and Leo--“

“I know, I know—“ He took his cap from my hand. “You pick up the clubs?”

“Clubs?”

“The next party coming along it’s gonna look like Custer’s Last Stand.”

“I was worried about you—“

“Get the clubs!”

“Okay!”

I criss-crossed the hill grabbing golf clubs, balls. The old goat’s cart was clear to the bottom on its side. One of the struts had bent, jamming the wheel.

“Over there! Wood!” He was standing on the edge, in the tall weeds, shielding his eyes and pointing.

“Get back! I bawled. “Goddamnit – get in the shade!”

He wobbled or maybe it was the heat and was gone. I dragged the cart over to the club, slammed it in, and scrambled up the hill expecting to find him in the weeds right there, saddle shoes pointed at the sky. But he was back under the tree.

“Hey, Poppy, take it easy! I don’t want you goddamn dying out here!” He didn’t look at me and I was sorry I’d said that. “I got all the stuff . . .”

We just sat under the tree in the complete heat and silence. If there was a clock you would have heard it tick.

Poppy drew in air suddenly so it sounded like a sob. He gave a little wave at the golf course. “Hard to believe, but this ain’t gonna go on.”

“Hey,” I said, “You gotta teach Leo to hit a straight one.”

He just stared out. Mirages shimmered.

“We’ll just play the front nine. We’ll get out early and play nine. That’s plenty.”

“Next it’ll be miniature golf,” he snorted. Then checkers!”

He rose up, steadying himself on the tree. “Thompson must have gotten a flat tire. Fetch my ball. Let’s not play it out.” 

The wheel of the cart dragged as he started off – with a kick he freed it.