Everybody Knows

Randle, a dyspeptic sort if there ever was one, was already at odds with Bob after Bob arrived fourteen minutes late for their tee off time. He came trundling up the path from the clubhouse, his ancient golf bag on its rusty cart behind him, head swaying in that way of his, white hair radiating out from under his hat. He had a sloppy way about him, with wrinkled brown shorts and a Hawaiin-print golf shirt under a fleece vest that looked like it had crawled up from the bottom of the laundry pile.

“Sorry, Rand, sorry”, he said when he arrived at last, huffing and puffing. He tapped his breast with his opposite hand in the manner of long-time smokers, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pack of gum. He held it out towards Randle and Randle looked him up and down, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips a thin line.

“We missed our time,” Randle said stiffly. He and Helen hadn’t missed a single tee time in the thirty-odd years that the two of them had been weekend members here at Nettlesworth Golf and Country Club.

“Well, let me make it up you then, why don’t you?” Bob said.

Randle pursed his lips and exhaled quickly through his nose. “And how would you do that, exactly?” he asked.

Bob grinned, his short white beard in contrast with his ruddy cheeks. He tapped his lower lip with a pudgy finger. Randle rolled his eyes, his left foot tapping impatiently. “We’ve no time for this. Let’s get our practice swings in and make off the tee.” 

He turned to retrieve a club from his bag and then walked up onto the tee box and into a square of bright morning sun. A glorious day for golf, the fresh green grass lit up with dew, no clouds in the sky. He’d have to remember to apply sunscreen later. Helen would have applied it on his nose before they left the house.

Bob’s eyes lit up and he hurried after Randle, then stopped, one finger held up in the air as if in exasperation. Then he went back to his cart and selected a club, a wood so old it had an actual wood head. 

Randle noticed the club and raised an eyebrow. “What’s this now? You’ve haven’t pulled a long club in all the years we’ve been playing here.” Bob appeared not to hear him as he paused before the steps up to the tee box, one hand on his hip, the other atop the driver at arm’s length like a mountaineer surveying his descent.

“No, no...I’ve got it,” he said. 

Randle, now at address, cocked one eye up at Bob, who took it as a sign to continue. Randle flared his nostrils, adding Poor Tee Box etiquette to Bob’s substantial list of personal flaws. “Don’t think we’re not playing our usual match, just on account of your club selection,” Randle said. 

Since Randle’s wife died eight years ago, he spent most of his week bumping about his split-level bungalow, cutting things (grass, hedges), blowing things (leaves, grass clippings), watering things (grass, hedges, perennials—himself, with the mid-afternoon Old Fashioned that Helen used to mix for him on breezy summer evenings, she with her Bloody Mary as they sat together on the verandah). 

The one thing he kept in his schedule, rain or shine (lightning the exception), was his walking round with Bob. Randle customarily won both the front and back nines and earned his pint and late lunch in the clubhouse afterwards, courtesy of Bob, who had a tight back and stuck to short irons, never making any great distance on his strikes, though his swing looked loose enough, to Randle’s eye. 

Bob never complained. He just chattered on amiably, sometimes pulling out one of his long-stemmed cigars, other times nipping a tuck from his flask, which Randle politely declined, not eager for the intimacy of a shared sip with his neighbour of thirty-eight years. A friend of proximity, really.

“How’s about this. I know you’ve always taken pride in your front walk—“

Randle raised his head out of his stance, about to protest.

“—No, no...no use arguin’ with me about it, I’ve been across the street for thirty years and I’ve seen you on your knees so many times if you’d been a preacher you’d be a saint by now.” Bob’s cheeks ruddied as he warmed to his subject. Randle stood up out of his stance, ball forgotten for a moment. Bob continued.

“I know you’re knees aren’t what they used to be,” he said, “and I also know, courtesy of Mrs. Bogsnitch—she pops in for a cocktail now and then, you know—that last summer you were forced to pay young Simon Pill to come and pull the weeds between the stones for you. I saw him do it myself, several times.” 

Randle couldn’t imagine his neighbour, old Mrs Bogsnitch, making it across the street let alone visiting Bob for a cocktail. When would that have happened? Must have been during his afternoon naps. 

Bob was walking in a lazy circle now, one hand on his lower back, the other gesturing in time with his words like a Victorian gentleman lecturing on the fluxes of the body.

“To make up for my transgression, one of a long and notable list, I should add—” here Bob raised his own eyebrow at Randle, who was taken aback, for Bob had rarely, perhaps never, gone on the offensive in their long acquaintance, “—as Mrs. B, who I’ve come to know quite well, you should know, quite well indeed, has informed me.” 

Randle cleared his throat, frowned, and shook his head slowly from side to side. He resumed his stance, the head of his new driver swinging impatiently back and forth above the ball. The nerve. Here one thought one knew a person, only to find one barely knew them at all!

Bob appeared to take Randle’s silence as assent and beamed, hands on his hips, his antique wood—less an antique one would purchase for a collection of such clubs and more an item that he’d kept in his garage for decades, where it leaned against the wall near the rusty push mower and an old bamboo fishing pole with the shriveled carcass of a worm still on its rusty hook. The driver had fallen to the ground amid Bob’s analysis. He bent over slowly and picked up his club, bobbing back up with a flushed face and a pleased smile.

Randle took a breath, stilled the head of his club, reared back, and made the most solid contact off the first tee since the last time he could see past his belly to his bait and tackle, as it were, which was some time ago. Perhaps as far back as when he and Helen, then in their late thirties, having tried and failed to conceive, had resolved to make the best of it and had joined Nettlesworth as weekend members, intent on investing in each other and in their social circles. As Randle held his follow-through with only a slight wobble, his ball sailed straight and true, landing some distance into the fairway. 

Randle grinned helplessly, the pure strike eliciting a childlike joy. Helen would have beamed at him. He thought of Helen and her steady hits from the ladies tees, a gentle plink, a quick curtsy to pick up the tee and then she’d descend from the tee box. Sometimes he’d put his arm around her shoulders, a gesture of companionship and pride. 

Then he thought of his front walk. How she’d chuckle when she’d come out on a Sunday morning in her houserobe, coffee in hand and Randle already on his knees pulling out the weeds between the paving stones that led from the porch to the driveway. Speedwell, purslane, the odd grotesque crabgrass. But it was the purslane, portulaca oluraceau, a fast-spreading rascal with whom Randle had a fought a long war of attrition, the plump, flat weed waiting patiently for Randle’s knees to go. No chemicals! Helen had said. No matter what tactic he employed to keep the gaps clear of weeds, they sprouted up again between Sunday evening and the next Saturday morning, between his time at the office and his time puttering in the yard. 

Then after a brief battle she died of cancer, he retired, and stopped caring. About most things. The last thing he needed now was Bob bent over his front walk at all hours, cracking jokes to himself or humming unrecognizable but memorable and therefore annoying melodies.

He picked up his tee with swagger, and spun to face Bob, who was waiting expectantly.

“No thank you, Bob, my friend,” he said. Bob’s mouth dropped opened then clamped shut with a plop, the halo of white hair about his pale face translucent in the morning sun.

“Now Randle, listen here,” he began, but Randle simply raised his hand and walked off the tee. Bob followed resolutely. “But Rand, we’ve known each other for thirty-five years—“

“Thirty-eight,” interjected Randle.

“—and I know I’ve made us miss our tee time before, not just today, as you know,” he stumbled, “and I aim to make it up to you.” 

Randle sighed and turned. He imagined himself as someone else; indeed, he imagined himself as he was now, the happy thwack of his drive still ringing in his ears, out with Bob for their weekly round of golf. Bob’s lone social outing, as far as Randle knew, other than Mrs Bogsnitch, apparently, since Bob rarely left the bungalow across the street. Randle always resisted Bob’s entreaties to pop over for a scotch or learn how to tie a fly lure or any number of inane enterprises. He pictured himself feeling grand, and decided that it was a feeling that he could take on for a spell. It was something, after all.

“If I say yes, dear Bob, will you stop prattling on and get on with your swing?”

Bob nodded quickly, walked back to the tee, teed up his ball, and without so much as a warmup swing smacked his ball straight and into the fairway, just like Randle’s did. For Bob was many things, but bad at golf wasn’t one of them. 

Randle replayed what he just witnessed in his mind’s eye, the fluid, effortless stroke, the perfect contact and balletic follow-through. The ball sailing beyond Randle’s ball and rolling, rolling, perhaps a hundred yards further down the fairway. His jaw hung open and he looked back at Bob, who stood frozen in the golfer’s pose with perfect balance, pale belly exposed just below his golf shirt, his beaten Brooks walking shoes—the rear one standing on its tiptoe—the whole shambling structure impossibly, daintily balanced.

Bob bent over and picked up his tee, walked off the box and sheathed his old wood into his bag, as a dawning realization came upon Randle. Bob walked up and passed Randle without looking him in the eye, simply chirped, “That felt good”, and walked leisurely up the cart path in the direction of his ball. 

Randle closed his mouth and watched his friend walk off.

Helen used to say something that her mother taught her as a child. Everyone you meet knows something you don’t. She had half a dozen sayings in her bag and Randle would joke with her about it. Uh-oh, here comes the one about walking your own path , he’d say. But of course she was right. Randle felt stupid. 

Had he accepted one of Bob’s many invitations to stop by—to inspect the trumpet vines he grew alongside his house, to have a look at the fly lures Bob had crafted in his basement shop, to have Bob repair the stuck chain on Randle’s old bike, the one he stubbornly refused to have repaired—he might have noticed something in the garage. Above Bob’s ancient golf bag, leaning against one wall beside that old wood driver, near the rusted pushmower and the old fishing rod, was a shelf populated with the effluvia of suburban yard maintenance. Containers with faded labels, chain oil, wood sealant, ant traps, wasp spray. Tucked among them, incongruously shiny still despite their obvious age, a number of tall trophies with brass plaques that said things like Regional Junior Open Champion, Under 13 Winner, National Qualifier, and more. 

All Randle knew in the instant that Bob’s wood driver crushed his golf ball was that Bob was no weekend hack. He’d once been tremendously good at the sport. It was obvious as day. Which meant that Bob had held back for all those years of weekend golf since Helen had died, which revelation preceded another realization, that it was not Randle who was doing a kindness of his neighbour, pulling him out into the world, it was quite the opposite. That Bob, his avuncular across-the-street neighbour, for eight long years now, had allowed himself to be beaten at a sport at which he excelled, had covered lunch and a pint for as long as Randle, now red in the face with shame, could remember. Oh, the arrogance, the ignorance of it all.

And then, a peacefulness descended upon Randle. If Helen were here she would have taken his hand in hers, their heart rates lowering in a beautiful synchrony that Randle hadn’t felt in nearly ten long years. He realized that he looked forward to buying Bob his lunch and a pint, was far past due, in fact. You don’t know everything, my dear, he heard her say. 

Randle took hold of his cart and set off after Bob. Perhaps he would find more time for his friend. Perhaps he would delay his nap one afternoon. Sit out front and wait for Mrs Bogsnitch to emerge. Perhaps he would invite them both for a sit and a cocktail. He might even let Bob weed his walk for him, as much as the thought of it still nettled him just a bit.

“Hey Bob! Hold up now,” he huffed. Bob paused and turned. The sun was higher in the sky now and most of the dew had burned off. Bob’s eyes twinkled as he smiled knowingly at his friend. Randle caught up and they walked up the fairway together.

Randle turned to Bob.

“Say, I was wondering about that fly lure collection of yours. How long have you been at it?” he asked. And Bob told him, and Randle asked more questions, and soon they were out of view, over the rise of the fairway and around the dog leg, on their way to the green.