Soldiers of Ill Fortune

the 6th

"You think maybe they didn't hear us?" Roberts finally suggested, or rather snapped, tossing his ball idly from one calloused hand to the other. He was in no particular hurry, but his slumbering sense of justice had been aroused.

"He hears us," said the other.

"Unless he's deaf too...."

"He hears us. I know 'im."

"Yeah? Well then why the hell---"

"Relax, lad. Relax."

Roberts squinted his swelling irritation all 200 yards down the short 6th fairway. The little old man---made far littler and strangely nobler, somehow, by the two football fields he stood from the eye---was preparing to hit his fourth shot. To Roberts it was like an English travel brochure, the old man standing there....the fleshy dots of hands seemingly welded to a ball by the flashing steel-gray of an iron, high red socks engaging baggy blue plus-fours at the knee, a crown of grayish white seemingly supporting the sagging rim of a red tam-o'-shanter. What he could see of the old face was tanned, wrinkled and rubbery. The face was not even trying to point down at the ball, but rather straight out, as if gazing wistfully towards the clubhouse to the east, occasionally jerking in little leftward spasms as if the chin were being tugged by an invisible string. Finally ready....a slight wiggle of the rear was the signal that the trigger was about to be pulled....And then the backswing, slow and painfully deliberate, the red and blue checks of a wool torso twisting slightly from left to right, slowly, the fleshy hands thus lifting the steel-gray blade high into the blinding white rain of the sun, so slowly, all the while the rubbery old face remaining curiously fixed to the clubhouse; and then finally the stroke, as violent a thing as the backswing was calm, baggy blue hips exploding right-to-left and pulling the disinterested gaze from the clubhouse to the hole. The crisp report of contact arrived just in time to punctuate the follow-through. Like an old 40's newsreel....Meanwhile, the tip of the far-away blade had chopped quite cleanly into sun-hardened soil, a chunk of brown flew up, and the ball, amazingly well-struck, not at all safe from this aged, improbable assailant, was seen to be lobbed about seventy yards downfield, took two generous hops, kept going, fighting seemingly for each precious extra yard, dribbling defiantly to a stop not fifty yards from the front of the green.

"He's amazin', 'e is!" said the other, Roberts's playing partner, a tense rail of a man thirty years his junior, "I reckon I must admit, he is amazin'."

"Yeah yeah, but if he hears us why the hell doesn't he wait up?"

"Amazin'...." said the other, his grin of grudging admiration open-mouthed.

Without pausing to reflect on his 95-yard effort, the old man reached out for the left arm of his young Oriental companion, found it, handed the young man his club, and the two proceeded to the result of their collaboration as one animal. The old man took short, measured steps, as if he were keeping track. The young man walked in equally short strides, as if a disciplined effort to accommodate his master. The young Oriental carried the only bag of clubs.

"Well I guess they're outa my range," the American proclaimed with a wry smile. He drew the 1-wood from his bag. Holding the driver in his left hand he bent gingerly at the waist and knees to tee up a yellow ball with his right. A tall, powerfully built man, barrel-chested, with heavy sloping shoulders and unusually thick forearms, Eugene G. Roberts could once take a wooden-headed club and buggy-whip a teed-up ball over 300 yards as often as not. But it was not his fifty-eight years that had robbed the length from his drives. A piece of metal that had once briefly inconvenienced his legs had gradually, over the last twenty-three of those years, succeeded in manifesting its lifelong cruel destiny in his lower back; and since golf is a game that is played essentially from the waist down, it is easy to understand why he could no longer produce the rotation necessary to reproduce those 300-yard drives of yesteryear. He thought of the old man's relatively violent explosion into the ball, the hip-turn, the unfair flexibility of torso, and, rising slowly and carefully now from his teed-up ball, winced.

"Y'git ahold of it, lad, y'may nail one of 'em. Serve 'im right fer not a-lettin' us git by."

He stood with his feet comfortably apart, but not as far apart as he was originally taught. His eyes angled down to the yellow ball. He made sure it was lined up with the instep of his front foot. The club head he menaced behind the ball, flicking it back and forth in the golfer's time-honored prelude to assault. There would be no practice swings. He looked up once, to his left, a last survey of the dry fairway. It was during this oh-so-brief visualization of his unstruck drive that he couldn't help but spy the Englishman and the young Oriental, linked together and advancing on the 6th green. In that mixed marvel of speed, clarity, and occasional deductive agility that only the human mind can achieve, Roberts, in a blink, confirmed to himself that the Oriental was most surely a Japanese. Even from 300 yards, the body language came clear. He'd slaughtered quite a few Koreans in '52, while attached to a special disposal unit so classified that the Pentagon still had not yet published its existence, and had terminated his first Viet Cong as early as '63, by then a field commander of a similar, updated detachment. He'd survived by studying his quarries. He knew Gooks and he knew Charlie....this "Oriental" was surely neither of those. And in seventeen years of private business he had broken bread with more than enough Chinks and Japs to be able to tell the difference. Instantly.

Scarcely three seconds had elapsed since he looked up and now he returned his eyes to the ball, flicked the club head one last time (the relentless whirring machine of his mind taking a few extra milliseconds to lament that this rented club was a so-called "metal wood", that most ridiculous of oxymorons, the impossible juxtaposition of the two words thereby affirming how much he hated such so-called progress polluting the innate perfection of tradition), and leaned slowly into his backswing. As he leaned back on his right foot he made sure not to take his hands up too high. The swing he'd devised to insulate his lower back from needless pain called for a short backswing, and very little, in fact almost zero, hip and shoulder turn. As always, all power would have to be generated from the thick shoulders and forearms. And they were plenty. Snapping the metal club down and through the ball produced only the soft explosive sound of small weapons fire (perhaps a .30-ott-six, Roberts could easily have particularized), but there was plenty of club-head speed at impact, so that very little follow-through was required to achieve an acceptable result. Just a slight forward lean and a high club-head finish to ensure a smooth stoke, and when he looked up Roberts found himself admiring what he had come to expect from his drives, a medium-high, medium-length tracer trajectory flying straight down the fairway, approaching its target with nary a hint of hook or slice, falling safely to earth in the middle of what looked more like a hard brown landing strip than a fairway, about 170 yards away. A surprising lack of recent rain, an even more surprising spring heat wave, and the persistent Channel breezes that could always be counted upon to blow this coastal course dry had hardened the ground nearly to asphalt. Roberts's still-keen eyes watched his ball kangaroo high off the hard turf, take two smaller jumps, and dribble another 50 yards downfield before dying. 220 yards. Now a nice, baby-soft 7-iron and I'm puttin' fer birdie....

"Not all bad, lad. A right good line, at least."

"Thanks....I guess," said Roberts.

"Come t'think, I reckon I should be bloody tickled if I can poke it two hundred yards when I'm 'old as you!"

"Two-twenty," said Roberts, a little sharply this time. He glared at the youth. The young man didn't glare back; on the contrary he seemed to Roberts rather amused with himself, smiling squinty-eyed, chuckling and pretending to scratch his curly red hair, and so, as this curly-headed, somewhat needlessly chuckling youth approached the tee, jauntily hitching up his pleated green slacks and grinning down the waiting fairway as if it were a helpless wounded fawn, Roberts was filled with indignance. He was seized with an oft-recurrent notion that the essential disease of the young, of all youth, is invincibility, the primary symptom being an attitude that they, the young people, are the only ones that matter. He slammed the driver back into the bag, but the other betrayed no notice. I wonder if I was ever like that, he wondered, and smiled inside when he realized immediately that the answer was yes....

The younger man teed up. Roberts observed him. The younger man had only just caught up to Roberts on the 5th green, so there was no way of knowing what to expect from his drives. The younger was even taller than he, six-four or perhaps even six-five, but scarcely 180 pounds attached themselves to his sharp, angular frame. But Roberts wasn't fooled. His eye was too well trained, and while a less observant observer might be quick to label the possessor of such severe measurements "skinny", Roberts knew better. The way the young man carried himself, the brisk way he moved, the controlled yet reckless self-assurance, all these clues pointed to a hidden reserve of power. The older man could literally feel that strength, even through the ten feet of thick spring air between them. Roberts had encountered these wiry types many times before, and he had always prevailed, but he was now forced to wistfully recall how difficult they could be to subdue. It made him decide to expect a lot from the young man's drive; and now the young man was ready. Noticing the wide-apart stance briefly depressed Roberts, a sad reminder of all things in Life he could no longer do. He couldn't quite see the eyes, but was no less moved by the intensity of the stare; predatorial, merciless, familiar. The backswing was slow and mechanical---like the old man's---the same wonderful, enviable, irritating hip and shoulder turn, not unlike the slow raising of an axe, no visible hesitation in the transition, and then the attacking downstroke, like the old man's a violent thing but oh so many times more lethal, the club head too quick to even be called a blur....and there was no mistaking the dull concussion of shotgun fire at impact. Roberts had played in dozens of amateur golf tournaments between his two wars, and off hand he could not recall a cleaner swing, a greater arc, a smoother follow-through. And the drive itself exceeded all his hastily heightened expectations. It started out on a low, irresistible line, like an inquisitive low-flying missile, a line seemingly parallel to the parched terrain it cruised over, then suddenly it was rising from the terrific underspin, rising, rising in a majestic parabolic curve to reach high above the scorched earth and defy for a moment all Nature's laws for governing engineless flight. As the ball hovered briefly in the northern sky they watched, and could each reflect, briefly, through their radically different frames of reference and personal perspectives, on its unnatural progress and majesty. A white mote of dust to them now, it could easily be imagined as an evening's first star over the sunwashed Firth of Clyde, or perhaps a single nameless soldier parachuting softly to earth, hitting the hard soil in silence, a couple hops, dribbling, rolling, disappearing into a rare thicket of grass a little left of the fairway....but only twenty yards short of the green.

Roberts stared speechless, but not from awe. It was another nostalgic wistfulness, a silent, smoldering salute to the ruthlessness of Time. This magnificent drive could once have been his. And he found himself wishing again, he couldn't stop it, wishing with his guts that he could turn back the clock and do the whole damn thing over again....

"....holy cow."

"A bit left, I'm 'fraid." The face grimaced and the head shook side-to-side. "Bin left all bloody day."

The tall young man finally bent down, picked up his tee. Amazingly, it had barely tilted forward. "Dicey lit'l chip from there," he kept on. Again Roberts was not moved. He knew that self-deprecation had always been the soundest tactic for calling attention to a great golf shot. A little white ball straying four feet wide of the fairway takes nothing away from the human being that just propelled it 320 yards. Roberts didn't respond, he didn't smile. But he didn't betray any indignance either, because the tactic reminded him of his former self and so there wasn't any.

They shouldered their bags and embarked upon the baked fairway. "By the way, I'm Gene Roberts," said the American. "O'Flaherty," said the younger. They shook hands. It was a quick, restless handshake. Roberts felt the power. "O'Flaherty, huh. Dublin?" The Irishman's hollow white cheeks tightened, permitting only a half-smile. "Vairy good...." he said, rolling the r. But when the American, pleased, opened his mouth to speak---"....Me-self I was born in the village Dundrum, near Belfast. Jist a dirty lit'l hamlet, a shanty town you'd call it. But I 'ave visited Dublin a time or two, if that's what'cha meant!"

Roberts transformed the hole of his open mouth into a tight thin smile. He didn't say anything. The North-Irish kid was good, and the clumsy American was out of practice....

Accompanied by the gay whistle of an old Celtic folk tune, they continued their leisurely stroll down the 6th fairway. It felt good. With apologies to Mark Twain, golf is perhaps the best excuse for walking, and spoils it not. It could easily be argued that a friendly round of golf is perfection in walking. And these two veteran golfers strode accordingly, with feeling. The air mixed salt with pine, and the pleasing result made the deep breaths Roberts used to pace his stride taste better. The unscheduled heat was also good; he could feel it through the thinning hair that refused to trade black for gray. He found himself staring at the old man and his Jap, still camped on the green. They were lining up their third putt, their eighth shot. They sure seem to make a good team, thought Roberts. He almost yelled something out to them for the second time. But he didn't. There's plenty of time, he reminded himself, and it's a beautiful day. The 6th hole, at 344 yards, is a short par-4, but nevertheless is the second longest hole of Royal Eastbourne Golf Club's "inner 9-hole course". The regular 18-hole championship course surrounds the inner, forming the right-angled perimeter of these elegant square grounds, the inner course folding itself conveniently into a smaller square to comprise the center. The 18-hole course is for club members only; the short-fairwayed inner is considered a "practice" course. (It was Roberts's older brother---stationed in the area in '44---who had, a lifetime ago, recommended he play Eastbourne.) As they strode with deliberate arrogance down the sun-blanched earth their panoramic view was limited to the lush, heavily watered 14th fairway of the members' course, the high wall of trees beyond that, and beyond that, to the north, the endless roof of fiery blue sky with white scars of clouds that stretched beyond their sight and over the rest of the empire. There was plenty of time, and it was a beautiful day.

"So you still live up in Northern Ireland do yeh?"

"I'm from Ireland," O'Flaherty said flatly.

"I guess there's always trouble up there...."

The Irishman, ever-smiling, didn't answer right away. "I move 'round a great deal. Business," he finally said.

Roberts labored to sound casual.

"I'm semi-retired, myself. Drink'n play golf, mostly! Howza 'bout you....here on business then? The golf course is a great place to meet with clients, I always say."

A tired Channel breeze came up from behind and washed lifeless over them.

"I reckon yih might a-call me a soldier of ill fortune," the Irishman said.

They didn't talk anymore on the way to Roberts's ball. Roberts was becoming more than a little intrigued with his all-but-silent partner. The lean, hungry grin didn't jive with the aversion to conversation. On the other hand, it had been Roberts's experience that the soft-spoken man has much to say, but out of expedience chooses not to. But that was his mania for deduction badgering him again, and he had promised himself he wasn't going to do that. He was in Britain to play golf. Period. And he had paid for the privilege; seventeen years clawing his way to the top of a St. Louis computer software firm, two divorces. Marriages of convenience, really; fathers in high places, accessible, acceptable bodies. But now that he could afford the best physical comfort money could buy, he didn't need their fathers or their bodies. What the jettisoned wives didn't take still left him with a poor-man's fortune, almost $200,000. Enough to live out his twilight years traveling the free world, seeking out its finest golf courses, enough, he figured, to ensure that the final dollar would not be squandered until he'd holed the final putt on the final green of the final course on his list. By then he knew he'd be more than sick of his beloved golf, more than ready to punch the clock, and would most likely do the honors himself.

"Soldier of ill fortune...." the American echoed dully under his breath.

Soldier. The one preoccupation of Life dear to Roberts's iron heart. The word sung of all-consuming passion, Roberts believed, a word the general public could never hope to understand. How he hated the word to be thrown upon the wind metaphorically, frivolously, as his taciturn partner had done. To his way of thinking, there could be no more serious or satisfying distinction a man could earn than that of soldier. Objective, tactics, execution, precision, result; that simple, sublime progression. Free from politics, divorced from any frail or fleeting philosophy, far below (or above?) that Sophistic plateau of reason responsible for those twin impostors, Right and Wrong. This is the way he'd been taught, and he'd learned his lessons well. He wondered if this tense, wiry Mick, this Northern Irishman, had ever earned the right to use the word. He was through asking questions (for the moment) but still he allowed himself to think them. Did his young golfing clone really know what was behind the thrill of the kill? Roberts knew. That's why, after he was wounded a second time, in late '69, he didn't renew his enlistment just to sit behind some damn desk. To be called a professional soldier and at the same time be denied the privilege of combat?...He knew that this would be one contradiction of terms he would not be able to suffer. That's how the business world came to be his penultimate theater of operations. And succeeding in the private sector had been relatively easy for him, as he knew it would be. Compared to securing someone else's ravaged real estate from an all-or-nothing firefight, fighting the comparatively trivial paper engagements of the corporate theater had been a piece of cake....

But all that was behind him now. Arriving at his ball broke the spell, terminated the wistful stray of his thoughts, and repatriated his mind back to the last great campaign of his life; coaxing a little yellow ball as many times as he could into a parade of seemingly endless four-and-a-half-inch-wide cups. His eyes blinked and focused. The old man and his young Oriental appendage, having just holed out on their ninth shot, were leisurely making their way from the green.

"I'll tell yeh somethin', O'Flaherty. I admire the old guy's pluck and everything, but it's ridiculous that he wouldn't let us play through."

The Irishman merely resumed his smile.

"I mean who does he think he is?"

"I reckon you'll soon 'ave the opportunity t'discuss the matter with 'im, lad," the younger finally said. "We'll likely catch up to 'em by the eighth tee."

Roberts drew the 8-iron from his bag. His former self would have arrogantly pulled the wedge, but he was a terminal realist nowadays. With no flexibility left to provide proper distance, there was no point in dreaming of the correct clubs of the past. He stepped up to the ball. Feet close together, open stance, hips angled slightly to the left of the green....nice'n easy. There were no sand traps bunkering these greens, and no water to worry about either, this being only a "practice" course. Nice'n easy....

"Sure yih got 'nough club there, lad?"

Roberts flicked the club head behind the ball, flicked it again. He didn't look up. True, his first inclination was to hit an easy seven, but the hot weather convinced his ego he could reach it with an eight. He knew the greens were too hard to stick anyway, no matter how much backspin the ball arrived with, and so he reasoned that if he bounced it short it would probably kick-release into a perfect lazy overspin and wind up rolling just about pin-high. Objective, tactics, execution, precision, result....the 8-iron was fine. "Who are you, my caddy?" he said; not sharply, but he didn't smile either. The Irishman only laughed, and continued to employ his hungriest grin.

Roberts had taken to using a three-quarter backswing on his short irons. With his superior arm strength this would normally have been enough, the eight would have been fine, the perfect club for 120 yards, but he either didn't notice or didn't take into proper consideration the emplacement of an insidious ring of shallow ditches around the green. His shot bounced about twenty yards short, as planned, and released as planned, but en route to the green the yellow ball was badly inconvenienced by one of the ditches. It managed to climb free, but ran out of gas a few yards shy of the putting surface and stopped dead.

"Wrong club," the younger said flippantly.

Even though he wasn't away, Roberts---who had practically run down the fairway after his ball to keep from saying something---pitched his third shot onto the green before his young playing partner could even hit his second. It was a rushed effort, naturally, and the result was sub-par. O'Flaherty's second shot, from the light rough, was decent. They were both looking at 15-foot putts. O'Flaherty had taken about as much time setting up this delicate second shot as a small boy might take to tie his shoe.

The lining-up-the-putt ritual was next. They circled the green like two fighters, each expecting the other to throw the first jab. "Yer away," Roberts said sharply. He wasn't angry anymore, but that was for him to know....

The young man from Ireland leaned over the white ball. His stance involved bending his six-and-a-half foot frame into a lean question mark. His grin screamed confidence, and he was hunched over his putt for only a couple seconds before commencing a thoroughly decisive backswing. He stroked the putt firmly, and it had a good line, but it was a little too brave and so it didn't slow down in time to take the break and thus it wound up sliding by the hole on the high side. His come-back putt was a good three feet, but he walked up to the ball and picked it up and shook his head and swore through his grin like it was the most natural thing in the world. This annoyed Roberts....

....who then squatted in position to putt his fourth shot. His putting stance was another necessary improvisation; back straight up and down, knees bent severely in order to bring the blade down to the ball and still allow for a bent-elbow grip. The American was acutely aware that if he holed out for a four he would earn a draw (assuming the Irishman would have dropped in his three-footer, which was hardly a "gimme"), and he wanted this draw. He wasn't nervous, of course, it wasn't a life-or-death thing, but the backswing wasn't smooth. "Breaks a tad left, I wager," O'Flaherty said suddenly. Roberts---saucer-eyed and totally incredulous---backed away from the putt and dropped his putter. "You sure don't want me to make this putt very much!" he said gruffly. He glared fire, but the challenge was not accepted. "Oh....so sorry, lad," the younger man replied simply. "I jist figgered since you 'adn't played 'ere an' I had...."

Roberts stepped on the blade and the handle flipped up to where he could catch it without bending over. "I can read a damn green," he said.

He two-putted.

By the time they'd walked halfway to the 7th tee Roberts was no longer angry, and was in fact smiling. "Tell me, O'Flaherty. Why yeh pick up yer short putts....nerves?"

The Irishman laughed. He waited for his own laughter to die down into a grin before he responded.

"Birdies is the only excuse fir golfin'. The precision required t'make a birdie, 'tis a beautiful thing."

"True enough...."

"So all the scores worse than that are the same, yih see."

The American's laugh was little more than a smile. It was becoming comical just how much the young man reminded him of him. The self-assurance, the decisiveness, the arrogance that grows from a genuine feeling of superiority....it was like watching his own home movies. Old home movies. But the difference was that the older man had never actually asked himself why he played golf; he just knew it felt good to make good shots, to excel. To win. He never saw any reason to contrive an inner game to be played concurrently within the game itself. Just execute the damn shot, he'd always commanded himself, and then the next shot, and then the next. That was enough. The North-Irishman's "birdie or bust" philosophy both amused and annoyed him....but that was the North-Irishman's business.

He thought back now to O'Flaherty's use of the sacred word soldier. Certainly had all the trappings of a fighter, he mused....pretty damned obvious, really. Perhaps the kid had already said more than he wanted to say....perhaps, out of pride, he'd let the word slip on purpose....Either way, details aside for the moment, Roberts had to figure that at the very least the kid understood the game....

-the 7th-

The 7th hole of the Royal Eastbourne Inner is 126 yards. By the time they reached the tee the old man and his Oriental companion were already on the green. They three-putted for a six. O'Flaherty unsheathed his wedge. Roberts drew his 7-iron.

They played the hole quickly. The Irishman's tee shot was a magnificent high thing that landed twelve feet beyond the hole and miraculously stuck there. The American pulled his tee shot left of the green, chipped to within six feet, but two-putted for his second straight bogey. (Prior to his being joined by the Irishman, Roberts had parred the first five holes.) Just as he was about to address that six-footer the Irishman had said, "Knock 'er in, lad," without much conviction. "Nice tactics!" the American countered, they both laughed, and then he went ahead and blew the putt. The Irishman had already missed his birdie try and picked up.

-the 8th-

As young O'Flaherty had predicted, they caught up with them on the 8th tee:

"Beautiful day," Roberts said to the old man.

"Good afta'noon," came the curt reply.

Eugene Roberts was never much on negotiation when he was in the service, but during his business career it was a talent, over the years, he had developed grudgingly.

"I was yellin' at'cha back there," he said cheerfully. "I guess you didn't hear me."

"I 'eard you, Yank." The rubbery old face stared straight ahead. The first thing that caught Roberts's eye was the old man's baggy blue plus-fours, stopping a few inches below the knee, in precise reflection of the garment's quaint name.

"Oh....Well why didn'tcha stop, then?"

"I don't believe the bloody rules o'golf require that I stop to honour the petulant whims of every impatient foreigner that might come along---no' to mention a non-member."

"What?"

"I was playing at an acceptable pace," the old man said. His imperial gaze was now directed off to the side. His left arm was hooked inexorably inside the Oriental's right.

"We must exercise more patience with our tourist friends, Sir Clive! What would her lov'ly majesty say if she heard you were so inhospitable tih one've her guests?"

"Ah! I thought I smelled yer father's foul stench, Patrick O'Flaherty! Even a bloody American 'as trouble bein' rude 'less 'e's provoked, I might've known!"

"Oh, tih be compared with me-illustrious father....I appreciate the compliment, Sir Clive."

"Hey, what is all this---"

"The only compliments you'll get from me are the back o'me-hand an' the heel o'me-boot, you traitorous Mick brat!"

"Such flattery!"

"And I'll thank you not t'mention Her Royal Highness in my presence...."

The three of them were standing close together, now; the single entity of the Englishman and the Oriental, Roberts right in front of them, the Irishman a few steps behind Roberts. The Irishman was smiling and scratching fire-orange scalp with his right hand.

"Look," the American said. "You two old friends can reminisce some other time. All I wanna know is if you'll let us play through."

"God save Queen Lizzie."

"Why---"

"She looks so cute in those floppy dresses."

"Why you impertinent swine! I gave you fair warning---I'll see you thrown from this course!" He tried to lunge in the direction of the Irishman's voice, but his Oriental companion restrained him.

"You can keep me off the members' course, Sir Clive, but I'll not be tossed from this pathetic patch a'ground," Patrick O'Flaherty said calmly.

The Englishman grumbled something under his breath. The Oriental teed up a ball. Roberts threw his hands in the air, shook his head, and walked a few steps away.

"Actually, my lord, you truly remind me of me-illustrious late father. Equally passionate, tempers like the bloody devil 'imself.... under different circumstances, sire, I reckon the pair of yih could've bin soldiers fir the same cause. Marchin' side-by-side, oh canney y'picture it! My my my. A trifle sad, wouldn't yih say?" He sat down on a little stone bench.

"How dare you refer to that bloodthirsty crim'nal as a soldier!" the old man seethed. Vollies of angry spittle could actually be seen flying from the perfect but stained-yellow teeth. "Innes O'Flaherty did no' know the meaning of the word! I wouldn't even lower myself to call'm a proper terrorist. In your father's world, they's only murderers and those they murder....in the son's world, for that matter!"

"Me-world is quite pleasant," said Patrick O'Flaherty.

"You want a soldier, I give you my old captain. Navy, yes---an admiral---but a soldier who followed the soldier's code!"

"Do I 'ave tih hear again the tall tale of how you and yir precious Lord Mountbatten won the war?"

"It is a story you could do well to 'ear again, brat! I was with the admiral on the decks of the Kelly when she started to go down. Courage under fire, no' yer killin' behind old women's backs!"

"Kelly....good Irish name," Patrick O'Flaherty said with a hungry smile.

"A soldier!"

"His cause was no more dear tih him than me-father's cause tih he," the Irishman said coldly.

"It was yer father who done'm! Yer bloody father an' 'e's bloodthirsty mates!"

"This is a golf course," said Roberts from a few feet away.

"It was a shame, the Mountbatten thing," O'Flaherty said quietly. There seemed to be genuine remorse in the voice, a tightness to the thin purple lips. He looked down the 8th fairway. Roberts, his antennae hopelessly alive, studied him. He watched with great interest the North-Irishman shake his head, then, curiously, start giggling.

"I think mebbe you were in on it, Patrick O'Flaherty!"

"Relax, old man."

"The father passes the dagger to the son!"

"Look here," Roberts cut in. He had moved directly in front of the Englishman again, close enough to where his skilled nose could identify the eye-watering aroma of dentures, not-too-recently cleaned. It was an odor the second wife had often accused him of spreading....He stepped back a few inches so that the heavy air might swallow up the smell. The Oriental drew closer to the old man's left side: "I don't mind a lively discussion once in a while, but I shelled out eight pounds for the privilege of playing this so-called golf course and I'm damn well gonna do it!" He placed his right hand in friendly fashion on the Englishman's left shoulder. "So why don'tcha just let us play through, huh? I admire you, I really do, but the fact is yer playin' too damn slow. Where I come from, it's just plain common courtesy to let---"

In a shocking, alarmingly quick explosion, the Oriental reached across and slammed his left hand down on Roberts's thick right forearm, and then held it. "You no touch Meesa Preesha-Gorda-san!" the Oriental said, and tightened his surprisingly strong grip on the American's arm. Roberts, his whole body electric with so many years of trained involuntary responses, felt all the old instincts, all the cold, conditioned blind hates, but still somehow managed to impose his will upon this carefully mechanized nervous system, and kept still. If he had turned around he would have suffered the Irishman's ravenous grin. But his eyes were welded to those of the Oriental. The Jap's eyes were dark, steady, impassive. They betrayed no urgency of emotion. Roberts hid his thoughts behind an unusually wide smile. He knew that a few years ago he would not have been able to check the hair trigger of his reflexes. And he couldn't help but think of exactly how he, once, might have handled it, how unfortunate it would have been for the poor Jap to have grabbed his former self's arm....two simple, cat-quick movements and the Jap arm would be broken....two more, and he would be stiff-necked and dead before he even hit the ground....

"I'm so terribly sorry!" Roberts said, bowing a head which retained an exaggerated smile. He dropped his arm and the Oriental's hand was torn free. "Tell the little fella I'm sorry," he repeated in the direction of the Englishman.

The old man was not amused: "Yer skirts'r 'ardly clean, Yank! It's 'ardly a great wonder that you should knock about with this Irish trash!"

"There yih go flatterin' agin," chirped the Irishman from his bench.

"I guess this means yeh won't reconsider and let us through...."

"I'm under no obligation to do any such thing!"

"Tried warnin' yih, lad."

Roberts backed off, hitched up his pants. "Never met anybody so stubborn in all my life...." he muttered under his breath.

The old man, his lined, chalk-white face still flushed with red, stepped up to his drive. The Oriental companion positioned his master so that the ball was lined up with the old man's front foot. The old man immediately stepped forward with his back foot, keeping the front foot anchored, felt for his ball and when he found it placed the wooden head of his club directly behind it and carefully returned to a standing position. He then immediately assumed his driving stance. He did not flick the club head back and forth behind the ball. The backswing was even prettier up close, the slowness, the perfect left-to-right body turn. During the whole swing the lifeless eyes happened to be pointing in Roberts's direction, and Roberts, fascinated, made a mental note.

But this time the downstroke was too explosive. Contact was solid, but the violent pull of the old man's baggy blue hips had imparted a fatal, counterclockwise spin to the ball, and the resulting hook threw the shot into a virtually unplayable rough far left of the fairway.

"Where! Is it in the bloody fairway, Tomo!"

"Right down meedle," said the Oriental. He put his hand in his right front pocket and left it there. The hand closed around something.

"Yeah. Helluva shot there," said Roberts.

"Yih should a-seen it!" said O'Flaherty.

The old man handed the 1-wood back to his Oriental companion and took his arm. They proceeded to their next shot as one animal, but not before...."Mark me well, Patrick O'Flaherty---if ever I catch you in range of me-club I'll part yer curly head!"

Roberts went over and sat down next to O'Flaherty. He knew it would be awhile before the Brit and his Jap were out of range, and his lower back was crying out for the angle of rest provided by the sitting position. (In fact, the 8th hole of the inner---a par-4---is a mere 262 yards, not really a par-4 at all, and due to his North-Irish playing partner's considerable length off the tee the American knew that they would have to wait until the disagreeable pair were clear of the green before hitting away.) He got a kick out of the Brit and his Jap. It amused him how well they seemed to get along, these not-too-distant war enemies, and made him think of all the pleasant rounds of golf he'd shared with the owner of his computer software firm, a Korean, who, being a Korean War vet himself, could easily have had the bad luck to meet him in the field. Wars begin and end, and the grudges begin and end just that quickly, thought Roberts. He'd liked his Gook boss, and the Brit and the Jap obviously harbored no animosity either, and it made him feel good. Made him feel right. War is execution and precision, not hate....well that's the way it should be, anyway. About the only thing Roberts didn't like about the old man was an old man's pig-headedness. But as much as he felt that he and O'Flaherty should have been allowed to play through, he didn't mind the wait. He was looking forward to the talk. The bond that he had sensed developing from the beginning, which at first he tried to deny, was too strong, they were too much alike, and he could sense that the younger man could sense it too. There was no point in trying to pretend to dislike him. It would be the same as saying he disliked himself....

"Spunky old guy."

"Indeed," the Irishman said dryly. He was studying the word TITLEIST stenciled across his white ball. They were both leaning forward as they sat, forearms resting on knees, facing the Eastbourne skyline and the Channel to the south. The 8th fairway fell away from them.

"How long you known him?"

"Me-father knew 'im. They knew each other."

"You kept callin' him sir....he some kinda royalty?"

The Irishman laughed, cruelly. "Hardly, lad. I jist call 'im that tih git 'e's hackles up, the lit'l rooster. Name's Clive Pritchard-Gordon. Prominent family. Old money. Vairy, vairy proper. I jist give 'im the bloody title they all think they bloody-well desairve."

"He said somethin' about Mountbatten---"

"Oh, our friend the late, great, Lord Mountbatten!"

"I take it he served under him."

"They were shipmates in their war. As tih who was commandin' who, depends who y'ask."

"Didn't somethin' happen to him? like a few years back?"

The Irishman produced his grin just as quickly as he stood up, grinning at the ground all the way over to where he teed up his ball. "The cheeky lit'l Jap's got 'im playin' from the fairway," he said.

Roberts was displeased with himself. He didn't like being clumsy. Out of practice, out of step maybe, age....he didn't like admitting any of it. His young clone was better than he was, and they both knew it. But he had to keep pressing. He was beginning to get the idea that the young man might really be one of those types, like the old man said, or at least a sympathizer. Disgust began to smolder in his veins. He had to find out. And since he wasn't so smooth anymore, it meant that it was time for him to drop the smoke screen and play it more direct: "I'm sorry. You don't hafta talk about it if yeh don't want."

"The Jap. You could a-done 'im, couldn't yih lad."

"It's just that the old guy practically accused you---"

"The way yih bloody looked at 'im!"

It was now Roberts's turn to smile and stand and move to the tee box. They looked down the barren brown fairway, at the end of which a single tiny, two-bodied insectoid was seen to be advancing on the green. It was suddenly a welcome challenge to regain control:

"He was a good soldier. And he was retired. So why the hell did he hafta die?"

The Irishman fastened his dull hazel eyes on Roberts, really, for the first time.

"Y'know, yir not doin' much tih dispel the prevailin' notion that all Americans are bloody obnoxious."

"From you that's a compliment."

"Ho!"

"Listen, kid, I think either you and yer old man had a hand in blowin' the man up or you know who did. Can yeh blame me fer bein' a little curious?"

"I argued against the Mountbatten thing from the beginnin'."

"Oh, you did."

"It was a shame---"

"Oh, it was."

"A shame they blew 'im up."

"They."

The Irishman took two quick practice swings with his 3-iron.

"Yir not an easy man tih like, Yank."

"Well you'll hafta excuse me, Mick. It's just that I don't have much experience with terrorists."

"I'm sure yih don't."

"And what's that supposta mean?"

"A man like you. I doubt vairy much if yir hands are clean."

"You sound like the old man," Roberts exclaimed. "What in Sam Hill is everybody around here talkin' about?"

"Yir charmin' lit'l adventure in Indochina. Did you attend?"

"What?---Oh come now, man. Certainly you can't compare our Vietnam with yer rag-tag IRA terrorism...." an increasingly irritated Gene Roberts spat out, feeling unexpectedly queasy the moment he said it. The Irishman's resultant grin was stretched as wide as that of a crazy man. His laughter only intensified its effect. And Roberts, for his part, was surprised at the nauseous, portentous quality of his own words. He didn't understand his own reaction. And he wasn't used to coming out second-best in a two-man confrontation. Damn....this is exactly why a soldier should never yap away on some damn philosophy, he thought....

"I mean how can yeh justify what goes on up there?" he resumed in time, as enthusiastically and forcefully as he was able.

With the young Oriental's help, Clive Pritchard-Gordon took a seven on the short par-4. The two, as one, were just making their way from the 8th green to the 9th tee, their eight aggregate limbs now resembling the marvelously intricate and complicated gait of a spider. Patrick O'Flaherty stepped up to his tee shot. His grin had relaxed, but had not left him. He flicked the club head menacingly behind the white ball. His eyes seemed somehow fastened to it. "Did yih believe in what'cha were doin'?" he said. The backswing was slow and perfect, so annoyingly perfect, and the downstroke was so smooth and technically pure that a stranger to the game could scarcely have thought it a thing of power. Contact was crisp as dawn, the projectile was thrown high and straight and far out over the charred plain, and there it hung. During the illogical duration of this white dot's protracted suspension above the earth, Roberts found himself gazing lightheadedly at the backdrop of its flight. The 17th fairway of the members' course---perpendicular to his line of sight---formed the bottom strip of the picture. Four squarish, identical apartment buildings, rowed close together, seemed to grow directly out of that lush green fairway, and their close illusion of height dominated the foreground. The background was the low, simple skyline of Eastbourne. Beyond that stretched the thin line of The Channel, paler than the hot sky, and beyond his sight lay the once-torn fields of Northern France that he had never seen. Off to the right of the apartments, perhaps another half mile in the distance, the skyline's unusually horizontal edge was disrupted by the high growth of two churches. They, too, were standing close together. One, a spire, resembled something he could easily have seen while driving along the quiet streets near his home in suburban St. Louis; the other, its top portion resembling a giant teardrop, was something his vague grasp of world cultures associated with both the Middle East and India. It struck him as odd that these particular two churches should happen to be flourishing in such close proximity....When his eyes refocused on the white dot it was dropping, finally dropping, finally quitting the flame-blue sky for the security of the bland fairway, which it hit once, bouncing high, landing a second time soft as a snowflake on the putting surface, the dot now skidding from its own backspin, then releasing, settling, rolling---but only for a moment---before finally coming to a dead stop not six feet shy of the hole.

Envy, resentment, and a grudging admiration conspired, for a moment, to keep Roberts frozen.

"I gotta hand it to yeh, kid. Knockin' it stiff from two hunnerd'n sixty yards with a goddam iron....helluva shot."

The Irishman moved over to the stone bench and sat. "Did yih truly believe in what'cha were doin'?" he inquired again.

Roberts teed up his ball. He could feel a cheek muscle twitching. His back was hurting. "Shut up and lemme hit my drive," he said.

One of the most sacred excuses for poor shot-making in golf is physical discomfort, but Roberts was not a man designed for the making of excuses. Anger is another, so are nerves and sudden distractions, and then, of course, there is always the jealousy that comes from playing with an exponentially superior player. All these sacred alibis were there for his choosing. Not Roberts. He merely hitched up his pants, assumed his conservative stance, and forced his face not to respond to the commands of his tortured lower spine.

"Y'know I don' blame yih fir not talkin' 'bout it, Yank. Who could blame yih."

"I said shut up," said Roberts. He suddenly wanted very much to brain the North-Irishman with the metallic business end of his club. But he would not sever his eyes from the waiting yellow ball. The backswing was clean and slow, nerves apparently in check, hands unusually high and well-positioned; save the absence of hip turn, he could have been an illustration in a textbook....

However, the violence of the attacking stroke was an unfortunate attempt to exceed his limitations. He had chosen anger after all. A foolish attempt to explode his dormant left hip pulled the club head low and to the left, and drove a gasp of pain from his lower back up through his torso and out rasping from his throat. The club head tore at the hard ground. The yellow ball, not at all used to being struck from the bottom by a metal 1-wood, jumped from the surprise, almost straight up and to the right, spinning clockwise from the imprecise contact, like a high pop-fly cued off the end of the bat into short right field. But there was no grass in this right field. Just some sun-brown hardpan leading into a gathering of renegade dead weeds, into which the ball eventually, embarrassedly rolled, burying itself.

"Oh. Too bad, lad. Most unfortunate."

Roberts looked down at the six-inch scar in the ground, on the near side of an undisturbed tee. For the golfer, the signature of failure.

"I did my job over there," the American said.

"Job...."

"I did as I was told, goddammit."

"Congratulations! Is that what you would like me tih put on yir tombstone? that'cha did as you were told?"

O'Flaherty hoisted Roberts's bag and tossed it to him, or rather effortlessly threw it to him. In catching it Roberts was forced to reflexively tighten his back muscles, and it hurt like hell, but he hid the pain he had masked so well for so many years. The Irishman shouldered his own bag, and they proceeded in tandem to the American's ball. The American did not respond to any of his playing partner's questions.

His drive, hiding passively now in the right rough, had made it only halfway to the hole. They made the trip in silence. The low sun was in their eyes as they walked. For Roberts it was a long trip. And an uncomfortable one. It is a hard thing for a man to question the very code of his existence, to have to do it between a terrible drive and a scramble-chip back into the fairway can be downright demoralizing.

They found the yellow ball under a very tall tuft of weed. Roberts employed his wedge to get it back in play, hacking away like a machete cutting through thick underbrush. It took two hacks to rake the ball free. From the fairway he hit a 6-iron, and hit it well, the ball finding the green on the fly and biting and eventually stopping pin-high about twenty feet left of the hole. He'd pulled it a little, but it was still a good shot. The Irishman would be putting for eagle; the American knew he would have to bury a twenty-footer just to save bogey. Before, during, and after each of these three shots neither antagonist offered up a single word.

The walk from the divot his 6-iron had wrought to the 8th green was just about the longest of Roberts's life. The pain was for the moment gone from his back, but it didn't help and he didn't notice. His memory was sending out the daggers now. He thought about how many nameless, faceless souls he had laid to rest over the years. Suddenly their identities seemed in some strange way important to him. And he could tell the North-Irishman knew what he was thinking....

It was the Irishman who spoke first: "Tell yih the truth I feel sorry fir yih," Patrick O'Flaherty said. He looked straight ahead. He was grinning. "I do indeed. That....that old man up there....God knows I hate his livin' guts, God knows I do, but at least I can bloody-well respect the man. I respect that he hates me, and why he hates me. And 'e may be a cheeky old Tory bastard, but at least 'e's consistent! At least 'e's got an issue, Yank. A warped point a'view i'tis, but the old sod believes it and sticks to it and that desairves respect."

At this point the young Irishman, striding long and resolutely, paused in his monologue just long enough to unsheathe the putter from his bag.

"But this idea of killin' jist t'kill, fir no pair'snal reason, no bloody gain, no cause....why it's not even murder, it's worse! At least murder demands motive! Egad. Makes me chilly jist tih think of it."

"But it wasn't just---"

"If old Clive there were someday somehow tih kill me, Yank, there'd be a certain righteous dignity in that. At least 'e'd 'ave due cause tih be happy. And y'know?---in some queer way I'd be a-happy fir him...." He swished the putter back and forth in front of him, side-to-side, the hitting surface just missing the ground, as if the blade were a scythe and the Irishman was using it to clear dense foliage from their path. "....but tih be knocked off by a poor mechanical soul such as yirself?..."

Seeing no great need to finish his thought he let the last words be carried off, by the swift salt breeze that came up from the coast and rolled over them.

Roberts didn't like being outflanked by an adversary so many years his junior. But he had no ammunition left with which to hurt him. He was empty.

"That's all fine, pal, but terrorism's still terrorism," was all the fight he could manage.

"Oh ho! Now that's the ghost of a dead world talkin'---so I'll firgive yih!" the Irishman countered immediately. His grin was pitiless, hungrier than sin. "Comin' from yir era, I reckon they's no way a man like you could hope tih understand. Let's jist say that it's a different game now, lad. Yir world's gone. Human nature's the same, but the rules 'ave changed! An' I'll tell yih a secret, lad. They's no such thing as soldiers anymore. No soldiers, no terrorists, no patriots, no bloody maircen'ries. No anythin'. They's only who bloody wins an' who bloody loses."

SOLDIERS OF ILL FORTUNE

by

C. Bradford Eastland