
Richard (A Man of the Times)
The boys from the Met office had got it right; pulses of rain had swept across the Pacific Ocean and funneled up and onto and through the practice ground of Bodega Golf Club. There was barely enough light to see from one end of the field to the other. On the high ground next to a wood, a solitary figure pounded golf balls towards the shoreline. The trees in the wood were full of sound; commotions of crows, rain dripping onto leaves, and from time to time a stronger gust causing branches to creak. After a while the rain saturated the man’s jacket and seeped through to his shirt; his socks squelched with every step and his hands struggled to grip the club. But the man appeared oblivious to these diversions. This was my very first sighting of the man who would become a friend; a man for whom I would come to hold enormous respect, but not as a golfer.
His only concession to preparation this damp, chilly morning had been a gentle rotation of the arms, which for a man who did little exercise and was approaching a fortieth birthday, was not enough. Every one of the dozen golf balls he struck speared off to the right. It was infuriating, even to a man with a twenty-four handicap. ‘Take it easy,’ he reminded himself, ‘take it away slowly and hit through the ball.’ He tossed another ball onto the wet turf; took another practice swing. Then there was that solid contact between steel and balata with no jarring of cold hands or tingling of fingertips. He watched the ball curve away in a lazy arc before reaching its zenith and plunged back to earth only a few paces inside the out-of-bounds ditch that ran alongside the field. He grunted a quiet obscenity and with the rain dripping off his hat reached into a shag bag for another ball. The man dispatched a succession of white balls into the restless, grey sky. For two hours, he practiced. For two hours, he thought of little else other than grip, alignment, tempo, takeaway. For two hours, he didn’t have to think about everything else.
“It will take time. Time is a great healer,” the doctor had told him. But these platitudes didn’t make it any easier. He kept asking himself how long would it be until there was no need to kill early morning hours watching black and white movies on the TV?
So, this is where it began, Richard, me, and our friendship. Me observing a lone character slugging golf balls toward the ocean before dawn, on a wintry morning, in a place called Bodega Bay. I didn’t know it then, but that man, in the most inclement weather, was doing what he had to do to get passed enormous hurt. I was a nobody, a man with no mother, no country, nothing of which most find time to care for; not until Richard. I have not loved a woman or man, though full of passion, all my strength wasted in strange, sad delusions. There was nothing delusional about Richard.
To be continued:
