Miracle at Augusta (8 page)

“WHAT NOW, TRAVIS?” ASKS
Sarah two days later at breakfast. “Any plans?”

“Sarah, I've been out of work eight minutes, less if you consider I worked the weekend.”

“I know. But we love you and want to keep you out of trouble, so we're just wondering, like I said, if you had any plans?”

“As a matter of fact, I was thinking about it on the flight back, that is when I wasn't seeing Earl's Bridgestone dive into that pond. No disrespect to Jack, but it's kind of a cliché to put water in front of the last green, don't you think?”

Sarah makes a circular motion with her index finger.

“I thought I'd spend a week practicing, then fly back down to Florida and play a couple of events on one of the mini-tours not under the auspices of the PGA. The courses are dog tracks and the prize money worse, but the best players are at least as good as the seniors, and if nothing else, it will give me an idea of what I need to work on. When I'm back, I figure I'll write a long, heartfelt letter to my pal Finchem and try to convince him that I've been rehabilitated. I'll explain that caddying for Earl and slumming on the mini-tours have given me time to take a long, hard look at myself. If he buys it, he may knock a couple of months off my suspension.”

“Sounds very reasonable, Travis.”

“You seem surprised.”

“Not at all.”

“And how about you, Noah? Does this meet with your approval?”

“Absolutely,” says the kindergartner as he shovels Cheerios into his mouth.

“Good. Because those are my plans, at least my medium-range ones. Short-term, I'm taking Louie for a walk.”

OUTSIDE, IT'S STILL SUBURBAN
Chicago. Still February. Still cold as hell. Although there hasn't been another snowfall, the old snow hasn't gone anywhere, and after lying around for two weeks, it's not nearly as picturesque.

Louie, who has a coat like a woolly mammoth, is undaunted by the chill and as relieved to be out of the kitchen as me. Spewing steam from both nostrils, he struts up the block like a cop walking his beat. As he writes tickets in yellow script to potential interlopers, school buses pick up students and commuters stride purposefully to their cars, and even if it has only been eight minutes, their well-dressed haste makes me feel underemployed.

With nothing beckoning except my frigid stall at Big Oaks, I give Louie the reins and encourage him to take his sweet time. Straying beyond our usual four blocks reminds me how much the neighborhood has changed since Sarah and I moved in twenty-seven years ago. Every other house has been razed, rebuilt, or added to within an inch of its life, and the new construction is bloated and out of scale for the half-acre lots. In many cases, there's no yard left, and what's the point of paying down a mortgage if you can't walk out on a summer evening and have a catch or hit a few chips?

A block away and across the street is a turreted eyesore, and in front of it, a dozen slouching teens wait on their bus. Standing among them—but not with them—is a tall student wearing a green wool cap.

“Hey, Louie, look. It's Jerzy.”

I wave but fail to get Jerzy's attention. As he gazes into the distance like an explorer scanning the horizon, three classmates in shiny black parkas saunter over. By way of greeting, the middle one punches him in the stomach. Then the other two, who are bigger, join the fun. As Louie and I look on, pinned to the wrong side of the street by brisk commuter traffic, one knocks the books from Jerzy's hands. The third kicks them down the street.

TRANSFORMING BIG OAKS INTO
Augusta National requires not only concentration but a certain level of optimism, and after witnessing what happened to Jerzy, I'm not feeling it. Instead of dogwoods and doglegs, I see a school bus rolling down an upscale suburban street, and instead of my line and trajectory, I picture Jerzy trapped inside, doing his best to act like what just happened didn't, avoiding eye contact with his classmates as assiduously as they avoid his.

Unable to float a color-corrected daydream, I lower my sights and aim my 8-iron at the filthy Srixon banner hanging from the wire mesh at the end of the range. I had a feeling Jerzy saw me waving from across the street, and now I'm certain of it. His not wanting to acknowledge me suggests he knew what was about to happen, and that probably means it happens a lot. And so much for that explanation for the wound on his forehead.

After a dozen desultory swings, I abort my practice and walk across the street to a diner, where I nurse a coffee till it's time to pick up Noah. Reflecting on this morning leads inevitably to thoughts of Noah, who, like me, took an instant shine to Jerzy. Let's face it, Noah is a bit of an odd duck himself. Does that mean he's going to have to deal with this crap in a few years?

At Belltown Grammar, three yellow and black buses are lined up in the lot. Manufacturers must make them look antiquated on purpose. In forty years, they've barely changed. Is that why they stir such strong feelings and pop up in so many coffee commercials? This afternoon, they seem sinister in their indifference.

Lost in thought, I don't notice Noah until he opens the front door.

“How was practice, Dad? Bring Augusta to its knees?”

“Actually, I just hit balls.”

“Really?”

Now he's the one worried about me.

THE NEXT MORNING IS
worse, because like Jerzy, I know it's going to happen again.

I had hoped to reach the bus stop sooner, but Louie doesn't take well to being hustled, and by the time the turrets loom, the school bus has made the turn onto Parade Hill Road. Like yesterday, Jerzy is conspicuous for his height, isolation, and attire, which bears little relation to the season or decade. Despite the twenty degrees, he wears a too-small blazer over a white shirt, and his signature green cap. In their dark parkas, his tormentors are easy to spot as well. For the moment, they ignore Jerzy, but even from across the street, I can tell that the reason they're hanging back is to instill dread, which for characters like these is half the fun.

The leader and his backup muscle don't sidle over until the bus is a hundred feet away, and this time Jerzy ends up on his knees on the curb and his books end up in a puddle. Once again, Louie and I are too late, and when we cross the street the bus doors are closing. After it pulls away, I notice a man in a wool tweed suit.

“One of your children on the bus?”

“Two,” he says.

“Did you see what those kids did to their classmate?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you say something? I know Jerzy. He's a great kid.”

“That's not what I hear from my daughters. You know those kids from Roxbury Farms are troublemakers. He probably asked for it.”

Roxbury Farms, a tiny complex of garden apartments, went up at the edge of the neighborhood four years ago. It provides exactly seventeen units of low-income housing, although based on the hysteria at the planning and zoning meetings, you would have thought the town had buried asbestos in our backyard.

“Maybe you should find another place to live,” I suggest.

“Why's that?”

“Because you're an asshole.”

I would have thought that someone who dresses (did I mention the pocket square?) and behaves like my neighbor would be accustomed to being called an asshole, and through time and repetition, it would have lost the power to offend. Apparently not. His cheeks flush and he throws a wild right hook, which I see coming from a block away. My response is less telegraphed, at least by comparison. It knocks his wind out and doubles him over, and it takes all my restraint not to slip the leather bag off his shoulder into a puddle.

“Whatsa matter?” I ask. “Don't you have cable?”

“I SAW THESE KIDS
roughing up Jerzy while he was waiting for the bus,” I explain. “Jerzy's the boy who shoveled our driveway. It happened two days in a row. The second time, Louie and I crossed the street. The bus was already on its way, but there was a parent standing there who had witnessed the whole thing and did nothing. In fact, he seemed to approve. He looked like the classic investment wanker—wing tips, horn-rimmed glasses, three-piece suit.”

“I really don't need a description of his wardrobe,” says Sarah.

“He also had a pocket square.”

“Travis.”

“Okay. I asked him why he just stood there and didn't say anything. He responded by taking a swing at me and I defended myself. This has absolutely nothing to do with the incident in Honolulu.”

“He tried to hit you for asking him a question? That seems unlikely. Are you sure that's all you said?”

This second interrogation is conducted in the front seat of Sarah's Jeep outside the headquarters of the Winnetka Police Department. The first, handled by two of Winnetka's finest, was less intense. Louie sits in the ample space between us.

“I may also have called him an asshole.”

Although the car is parked, Sarah lays her hands on the steering wheel and drops her head. Her hands, which have delivered hundreds of Winnetkans, are as beautiful as they are skilled, and I fell in love with them approximately ten minutes before the rest of her.

“Travis, are you having a midlife crisis?”

“It's about time, don't you think?”

She twists in the driver's seat and stares at me, as if forming her own diagnosis, and I convince myself that there's an inkling of a smile in her pale green eyes.

“So what are you going to do about Jerzy?”

“I don't know.”

“If you don't do anything for him, this is all macho nonsense.”

Sarah's smile, if that's what it is, is subtler than the Mona Lisa's, but there's no ambiguity in Louie's eyes. To Louie, there is no such thing as macho nonsense. To him,
everything else
is nonsense, with the notable exception of food, and since my altercation this morning, I'm convinced he's been beaming at me with newfound respect.

My arrest and release make the afternoon paper and are picked up by the wires, and that evening I get calls from both Earl and Stump. Like Sarah, they suspect that I've gone completely off the rails and they don't seem any more reassured by my version of events. The other call, the one from Ponte Vedra, Florida, informing me that my suspension has been extended for the remainder of the year, doesn't come till 11 p.m.

At least I don't have to write that letter.

THE NEXT MORNING, I
put on my most presentable blazer and one of my few pairs of shoes that don't have spikes sticking out the bottom and drive to New Trier Township High School. Since Elizabeth graduated a decade ago, I've only been back to vote. In fact, pulling a lever in a high school gym every four years is the sum of my input as an American citizen, and that makes coming here to this well-lit administrative office on behalf of a student I barely know all the more unsettling.

Behind the front desk is a human roadblock, whose placard reads:
LAURA SKELLCHOCK.

“Laura, good morning. My name is Travis McKinley. I need to talk to someone about a student who's being bullied.”

“That's Reece Halsey, our assistant dean. She's out of the office till Friday.”

“Can't I talk to someone else?”

“I'm afraid she's the one you need to talk to.”

“It can't wait that long, Laura. The kid is getting beat up every morning. He could be dead by then.”

“How do you know him?”

“That's the thing. I don't, and that's all the more reason why you should take me seriously.”

“I am taking you seriously, Mr. McKinley.”

“The only thing I know about him is that he shoveled my driveway and he did a good job and he's a nice kid and he was nice to my son. But even if he did a lousy job on the driveway and was a snotty kid and was mean to my son, he still shouldn't get beat up every morning.”

Skellchock responds to this last rhetorical flourish with an eye roll.

“Isn't there a way I can get in touch with his parents? The student's name is Jerzy Solarski. I could also help identify the kids who are involved. The incidents occurred at the bus stop at Downing and Parade. Less than a dozen students get picked up there. It shouldn't be hard to figure out who they are.”

The way Skellchock's smile congeals tells me there's something impatient in my tone. The shadow that falls across her eyes bears a frightening resemblance to the one I saw at the Department of Motor Vehicles when someone was insane enough to ask why the line was moving so slowly.

“Aren't you the person who got into the fight with one of our parents?”

“That was unfortunate, but there were no charges.”

“Lucky for you, Mr. McKinley. And didn't another fight get you suspended from the Senior Tour?”

“That was also unfortunate.”

“Sounds like you're the bully, Mr. McKinley.” Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the shadow lifts and her smile softens. “Mr. McKinley, as I'm sure you can appreciate, we can't share information about our students to every nut job who waltzes in here. What I can do is pass your number to Jerzy's parents. If they want to reach out, they will.”

“I appreciate that, Laura. Truly.”

“My husband's a golfer,” she explains.

SARAH CAN'T BE THAT
mad at me, because that night, she roasts another chicken. Later, as I'm gratefully washing the dishes, I get a call from a woman with a strong Eastern European accent. “This is Rodica Solarski,” she says. “Thanks so much for coming to the school today. I can't talk now because I'm at work, but if it's not too late, I could call again during my break.”

Instead, I offer to come to her, and an hour later, I retrace my old commute into downtown Chicago. It's been a year and change since Leo Burnett
let me go,
and much longer since I've visited midtown at night. After hours, the district exudes the bristling vigilance of a military installation. Even emptied of workers, it throbs like an enormous machine that never gets switched off.

Rodica's address isn't far from my longtime employer's, and out of morbid curiosity, I walk past the darkened entrance, setting loose the bad old feelings. Three blocks south, still regretting the detour, I enter a massive tower that takes up the entire west side of the block and, escorted by the night guard, ride a chrome-filled elevator high above an inner atrium. “Rodica's the only one on the floor,” says the guard.

I slip him a twenty, and he buzzes me through the frosted glass doors. Then I follow the corridor that divides the executive offices and conference rooms that look out over the atrium from the green expanse of shoulder-high cubicles. Parked in front of an open office is a cart laden with cleaning supplies, and in the doorway, a surprisingly delicate woman in her early forties. I hand Rodica the coffee I picked up at the corner and follow her into one of the conference rooms, where we sit at a mahogany table.

“The meeting is called to order,” says Rodica, and peels the wax paper off a sandwich brought from home.

“Did Jerzy mention he shoveled my driveway?”

“No. Don't be offended. He rarely talks to me at all.”

“We didn't talk much either, but his wit made an impression.”

“I think the American term is
wiseass,
” says Rodica. Her pale face is framed by jet-black hair cut to her shoulders. Like Jerzy's, her accented English is fluent and precise.

“So did the generous way he treated my five-year-old. That's why I was so disturbed by what I saw at the bus stop. Why do you think they target him, Rodica?”

Rodica shrugs, as if the answer hardly matters. “Because he's too big to be invisible and too soft to fight back,” she says. “Because he has an accent and bad skin, and because he's really sweet.…”

The mention of her son's kindness causes Rodica's face to crumple. To gather herself, she pries the cap off her coffee and takes a long gulp. “Maybe it's my fault. It was my idea to come here from Bucharest, five years ago—me, Jerzy, and his older sister, Beata. Ironically, I came for the schools. For Jerzy, it's been disastrous from the start, and with Beata graduated, it's much worse. When his sister was here, he at least had someone to sit with at lunch, and she wasn't afraid to confront people.”

“Have you spoken to anyone at the school?”

“A waste of time, or, as you Americans like to say—a waste of breath. No one is willing to lift a finger to protect my son. Now his grades have slipped and he's stopped talking. My biggest fear is that he'll do something to harm himself. To be honest, Mr. McKinley, I'm terrified.”

Rodica's face crumples again, and now her coffee is finished, so she pushes her hair behind her ears, fits the lid back on the empty cup, and folds the brown paper bag that held her sandwich. “I should get back to work,” she says. “Thanks so much for coming and also for the coffee.” Before I can respond, she pushes herself away from the table, drops the cup into the garbage bag hanging off the end of her cart, and disappears around the corner.

I head in the opposite direction for a couple of steps, then stop and, for a minute or maybe two, stand there frozen by indecision. Then I head back around the corner and find Rodica in another office.

“Sorry to bother you again. How would you feel if I spent a little time with your son?”

“Doing what?”

“I'm a professional golfer, so I thought maybe I could teach him how to play.”

“That sounds wonderful, Mr. McKinley. Golf is all he watches on TV,” she says, but her expression is neutral. “I won't mention anything to Jerzy for now. You can surprise him.”

On the way to the elevator, I slow to peer into a cubicle very much like the one in which I spent five years. I wonder if Rodica has memorized these snapshots of weddings, babies, graduations, and barbecues.