Train

Read Train for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Train for Free Online
Authors: Pete Dexter
Tags: Fiction, Literary
that.
     
     
“This man say who am I supposed to call?” The bartender noticed Train’s toe then, and took a step back. Train looked at it too, and it occurred to him for the first time that he come to the wrong place. That when the man said the clubhouse, he meant the pro shop.
     
     
“Just like it was a member,” he said, “that’s what the man said to do.” Half a dozen of them had died out on the course in the two years Train been working here, maybe one or two more. The old-timers would talk about it for a month, until every one of them had said the same thing to each other—“Well, I see old Bud Sears finally shot his age”— proud that another soldier died in his two-color shoes. In some way it wasn’t unrelated to having the most trees of any golf course in Los Angeles County.
     
     
The bartender used one finger and reached carefully through his hair and scratched a spot on his scalp, trying to figure out if calling an ambulance for a caddy could get him in trouble. Then he took a comb out of his back pocket and went over the spot, still thinking. “You go on back there,” he said, “tell them Richard took care of everything.” Train nodded, but he didn’t move. “I’ll take care of it,” the bartender said, impatient to get Train away from the clubhouse.
     
     
“You don’t know where he’s at.”
     
     
“Well then, where is he, nigger?”
     
     
“Sixth green.” Train pointed, and the bartender looked out in that general direction, then went back into the lounge. He was staring Train in the eye as he locked the door against the chance that there was any more like him out there waiting to come in.
     
     
Train walked to the edge of the green, past the man practicing short putts, and sat down and pulled on the toe until he heard it pop. Then he tore off the nail, which only been hanging by a piece of skin anyway. He had calmed down enough to feel these things exactly, and the pain rolled up at him in waves, the way his stomach did when he was scared.
     
     
He stood up and walked back down the long slope of the ninth hole and headed for the sixth green, leaving small round spots of blood on the grass. You come along later, you might think it was a dog had hurt his paw.
     
     

Florida was the same place he had been before, only he seemed smaller now, like he dried up. Mr. Packard was sitting on the grass next to him, his thoughts in a distant land. The fat man was off the green, sitting on his own bag, holding the thermos between his legs. Train saw all this as he jogged down the fairway— favoring the injured foot, not really hurrying anymore, just jogging for appearance sake— past the same old men who shouted at him before. There was several groups of them now, backed up and mean. The club had its rules about starting times and the speed of play. Train kept his eyes straight ahead and he stopped only once, to pick up his shoes.
     
     
Mr. Packard looked up and watched Train come the last thirty yards. He seemed tired. “They call an ambulance?” he said.
     
     
“Yessir.” Train didn’t want to, but he had a quick look at Florida anyway, saw that Mr. Packard had closed the lids over his eyes. Somewhere behind them a golfer yelled “Four!” and Mr. Packard looked slowly back in that direction. Chuckled in some way that was not amusedment at all.
     
     
“You wonder what gets into people,” he said, and if whoever was back there could see the way they were being looked at, they wouldn’t be shouting anymore. Train realized suddenly that Mr. Packard was talking to him, not to the fat man. That in fact he might be talking about the fat man.
     
     
“Yessir,” he said.
     
     
Mr. Packard set his hand on Florida’s chest. “Half of them can barely swing a golf club, like Pink over there, but their half-dollar Nassau, or whatever it is, it’s still the reason everybody else was put here on earth,” he said. Pink looked up at the insult but didn’t say

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