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the 14th fairway, Louie picks up the scent of Simon and, barking maniacally, follows it to the portion of the green where my older son tipped Pop’s ashes. What, I wonder, did my grandfather see in me? If I were nothing more than a little sawed-off bag of shit, even he wouldn’t have loved me. Since he did, he must have detected a crumb of decency. Right? Or was it all just biology, a kindhearted old coot giving his flesh and blood the benefit of the doubt? Unfortunately, that sounds more like it.
    As we hover over the fresh memory of Pop’s remains, Louie starts barking again, this time skyward, and when I tilt my head back, it looks as if an enormous old pillow has burst open. Like Louie last night on the couch, the sky is letting it all go. Still barking, Louie sprints out into the pouring snow, and after one last aside to Pop, I head after him.

19
    IT SNOWS FOR TWENTY-FOUR hours, and when I look out the window Thursday morning, Winnetka has rarely looked better. All the tacky details and worst pretensions of suburban architecture have been whited out. What’s left is the snow-topped geometry of rooftops and telephone lines and the poetry of trees.
    Just as lovely is the muffled quiet, and so in its own way the rattling and scraping of the first wave of municipal plows. Then the local citizenry wheel out and rev up their snow-moving toys. To escape the din, I grab my golf bag from the garage and haul it to the basement.
    Downstairs, I pull out all the clubs and lean them against the wall of my workshop. It’s been almost a week since I’ve touched my sticks, and I miss them. What happened in Hawaii wasn’t their fault. At least, not entirely. Arrayed by height, from my homely Big Bertha to my lovely ancient bull’s-eye, they look like the multiple generations of a large, eccentric family gathered for a portrait.
    I’d clean the clubs, but Johnny A took care of that before we packed up, and the shaft, grip, lie, and loft of every one have already been tweaked and fitted to within an inch of their lives. I consider adding a couple of degrees of loft to my 4-iron to close the gap between it and my 5-wood, but decide instead to replace the grips on my wedges, which is equally unnecessary but at least not destructive. I’ve got my gap wedge in the vise and the old grip half off when Louie starts imitating a watchdog.
    Upstairs, I open the front door to a tall, pudgy teenager, about seventeen, whose face is scarred with acne. He holds a shovel and, despite the cold, wears only a sweater, scarf, and hat, all three of which are made of the same coarse green wool and are far too sturdy and singular to have been purchased at the local mall.
    “Sorry to interrupt your pliering,” says the boy, referring to the pliers in my right hand. “I was hoping I could shovel your walks and driveway.”
    “I’d appreciate that.”
    “Does twenty dollars seem fair?”
    “Not to you,” I say. “There’s at least two feet of snow, and it’s wet and heavy.”
    “Your points are all well taken,” responds the boy with a goofy grin that outshines his acne, and his European accent underlines the arcane diction.
    “Let’s make it forty dollars.”
    “Excellent,” says the kid, extending a large hand reddened by the cold. “We have a verbal contract and a handshake agreement.”
    Then he turns his back and starts shoveling, and while he digs his way from the front door to the driveway, I return to my subterranean busy work. In total, I manage to kill almost an hour. I replace the grips on all three wedges (twenty-five minutes), polish and clean my big white Mizuno bag (twenty minutes), then do the same to my golf shoes (ten minutes).
    When I climb out of the basement, the sun is blinding and the smell of hot chocolate wafts from the kitchen. Outside, the kid has finished the walk and is attacking the driveway, and as I watch from the living room, Noah, with Louie trailing, emerges from the side of the house bearing two