Train by Pete Dexter Read Free Book Online

three hundred?”
     
     
“Three fifty,” the fat man said, as if that was a much different thing than just losing three. “A hundred for the side, fifty a press . . .”
     
     
“All right, fat man, I’ll bet you the three fifty back that—” He stopped for a moment and looked at Train. “What was your name?”
     
     
“Lionel Walk, Jr.,” Train said.
     
     
“I’ll bet you the three fifty back that Mr. Walk here does the right thing.”
     
     
The fat man looked at him a minute, trying to figure it out. “Fuck it, Miller,” he said finally, “the old man probably didn’t even have a wife.”
     
     

Train cleaned the clubs and set them out on the drop stand near the driveway; then he walked down the path past the machine shed and the storage barn to the tin-roof caddy’s shed and bought himself a grape Nehi out of the machine. He sat down in the corner with the nine iron that he’d found in the reeds near the pond a year ago, on the same hole where Florida just died. It was a Tommy Armour autograph, with a thin blade and a smooth, hard grip. The shaft was spotted with rust, so he knew it already been there awhile when he found it. He played with it on Mondays, but took it to work every day, took it home every night, not wanting to get on the bus anymore without something in his hands. There were people living in cardboard boxes— or garages or tents— all over Darktown and Watts who took what they could.
     
     
He held the club about halfway up the shaft and absently began to bouce a ball off the blade. Straight up and down, then spinning it one way, then the other. He left the Nehi on the bench between himself and another caddy named Plural Lincoln, who was referred to as No-Tank by the other caddies when he wasn’t on the premises. Plural had little broke-looking hands hanging at the end of his huge arms. Little bitty feet too. He minded his own business and smelled like fresh laundry, but nobody took his good nature for granted.
     
     
Even in the morning, when the room was crowded before anybody went out yet, he had that bench to himself. The only soul would sit down next to him was Train. Plural looked over now and noticed the Nehi, picked it up and had a swallow.
     
     
The ball was out of round, and Train could feel the shape of it right through the shaft of the club, as if he was tossing it up and down in his hand. He sensed from bounce to bounce which side of the ball would land on the face of the club when it came back. He hardly had to look.
     
     
He sat in the corner with his Nehi and his golf club, Plural a yard away, and the other caddies played cards or slept. Except for the ball and the nine iron, the caddy room was in slow motion, like it always was until the phone rang, and then Sweet would answer it and look over to see who he had and what shape they were in, and decide who went out to the first tee. For those few seconds it took to make up his mind, everyone sat up like they was posing for a picture.
     
     
Sweet had a sign on the wire mesh that said he was superintendent of caddies, and an identical one on his space in the parking lot. He had a hair-trigger temper and fingernails as long as a hairdresser. He knew all the members by name, but not by their faces, and remembered which ones would give a caddy a decent tip and which ones couldn’t bring themself to do it. He had a diamond set in one of his front teeth and drove a three-year-old yellow Cadillac that he parked in his reserved spot next to the superintendent of greens. He had once been incarcerated at the state prison at Vacaville, for the criminally insane. He was light-skinned and handsome, and people whispered that he had a thousand women in his book, that he even slipped in and out the sheets with the members’ wives.
     
     
People said he liked the old ones best.
     
     
He kept behind his wire cage all day, and padlocked it at night. The lock wasn’t much, but nobody had ever broke in to see what was