Walking with Jack by Don J. Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

revolutionize professional golf by lining the fairways with wind turbines and Welsh longbowmen who would shoot arrows at the players to make the game more challenging and more dramatic for TV.
    Just before we fell asleep, I heard a gust of wind rattle the windows across the room. I got up and looked out over the rooftops. A narrow band of moonlight lay along the shore. I watched some stars appear and disappear behind the drifting clouds.
    “I think it’s going to be cold out there tomorrow, Jack,” I called to him. I wasn’t sure he was still awake. Then I heard him roll over and face me in the darkness.
    “You’ve blamed your dad all these years for not being there for you after your mom died,” he said. “But if you read his army diary, you can tell he wasn’t a strong enough person to be a real father after Peggy died. It wasn’t his fault … People do the best they can. I just think it’s too bad for the two of you that there wasn’t any forgiveness.”
    This struck me as a remarkably thoughtful comment. “Well,” I said, “you’re right, Jack, I should have forgiven him, but there were a lot of things that happened—”
    He cut me off. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean
you
. You should have asked him to forgive you, man. You killed his wife and ruined his life.”
    I have thought for many years that our lives come down to a collection of moments. After all our planning and trying, there are only a handful of moments that really matter. Some of these moments tell us what we might have been, others what we might still become. Standing there in the darkness, I was sure that this was one of those moments. In all the years I had examined it and dreamed it, I had never seen things between my father and me as clearly as my son had.

      JANUARY 19, 2007     
    This morning I was raring to go. It was only twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind was already strong and rising out of the west, but the bright sun lay in gold bands along the fairways when we walked to the 1st tee.
    Jack hit one of his big drives toward the horizon beyond the 1st green, but rather than admire it, he turned his back disdainfully and walked to his bag. Something was wrong. He had barely spoken over his breakfast. I watched him a moment, trying to figure out what it was. He looked handsome in the new black jacket with the Carnoustie emblem that I had bought him.
    I hit a miserable drive on number 4. “Hit another one,” Jack said.
    I had been asking him for lessons for at least five years, and his response was always the same: “I can’t tell you how I hit a golf ball; I just hit it.” But now he was offering instruction, and I accepted it eagerly.
    “The trouble is you’re not releasing your hands at impact. Look, your clubhead is square like it should be, but you’re coming
up
because you’re not turning your hands over. Your right hand—there, you just did it again. The palm of your right hand is facing
up
when you swing through the ball. It should be
down
, turning over. Releasing. Try it again.”
    I hit a perfect drive. And then a perfect five-iron from the fairway. When I saw Jack smile, it made me think just how complicated our relationship was. The son wants to beat the old man, needs to beat him, and it’s a thrill when it happens the first time. It sets off a chain reaction of things the old man is no longer better at than the son.Golf, driving, using the remote control. It goes like that until the son has taken almost everything there is to win, and then he starts to get scared because there’s his father unable to beat him at anything anymore and it hits him that a certain immunity has now been lifted from over his head. His old man has reached a dark turn in the road. And he’s next.
    If I was right about this, then Jack was angry at me for playing so poorly, for making the same mistakes again and again, for giving golf away to him without a fight.
    So I began to fight hard.