The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life Read online

  I remember, even as a boy, the desperation that suffused the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Krewe Island at last was christened. She was grand, magnificent, spectacular. Not a single guest had slept a night on her virginal linen sheets, nor a golfer sunk his spikes into her immaculate bermuda fairways. And now it looked as if none ever would. The class of newly rich, the citizen millionaires, had been utterly wiped out by the Crash. All that remained of a possible Krewe Island clientele was the old rich and even they felt constrained, not so much by fear of the future as by an understandable reluctance to indulge themselves in luxury by the sea when so many of their countrymen were struggling so desperately just to survive.

  Something had to be done.

  Something to make Krewe Island transcend the current calamity. Something not just to lift it in the minds of the wealthy above the Greenbrier or the Homestead, but to make its extravagant existence palatable to the masses who would never be able to glimpse it, except in photos in the Society pages.

  An event.

  An occasion.

  Something bold and dramatic, to capture the public imagination, lure the press, put Krewe Island before the eye of the world in a bright and even historic light. Money was no object, for if the Links and Hotel couldn’t leap instantly into the black, the whole colossal enterprise was doomed.

  Adele’s brainstorm was this. A golf match. An exhibition for the unheard-of prize of $20,000. Between the two greatest golfers of the age, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.

  Hagen the professional, if he won, would take the cash. If Jones the amateur prevailed, the prize would be donated to the Atlanta Athletic Club.

  The prospective contestants were approached and, for whatever reasons professional or personal, agreed.

  A date was set.

  And, true to Adele’s dream, the story caught fire. Perhaps it was just what the country needed as it writhed in the tentacles of depression. A show. A circus. Something bright and patrician, on a sunny greensward by the sea, where two gallant knights would joust for a king’s ransom.

  Babe Ruth came down from New York by rail. Dempsey took an ocean view suite. Scott and Zelda flew to Savannah, motored daily to Krewe Island from her cousin’s cottage on Poinsettia Street. Even Al Capone, rumor had it, was on his way to swell the gallery.

  Savannah was beside itself with anticipation. The city tumbled headlong into the grip of madness.

  Three

  I WAS PRESENT for the next scene in this saga, but being ten years old and exhausted from a day of caddying, shagging and so forth was unfortunately sound asleep.

  I must rely on the witness of my father, who had carried me along to the Hesperia Elementary School for the event. The Civic Auditorium would have been the appropriate venue for this colloquium, but that night was occupied by a Women’s Christian Temperance meeting. The town fathers gathered at the nearest reasonable alternative. This turned into something of a fiasco, as the only chairs available for Savannah’s loftiest personages were those designed for children aged eight and under. These were Lilliputian, to say the least. The dignitaries refused to sit upon them. They insisted on standing, which led, after five or six hours of heated, sweltering, smoke-choked debate, to a very real shortage of temper. But let me recall how my father told it:

  It was Judge Neskaloosa River Anderson whose nose was out of joint from minute one. One of Invergordon’s ditcher operators had accidentally shot the Judge’s prize bitch, Jupiter. It wasn’t so much the dog’s death as the way Adele handled the apology; apparently she had no conception of how attached a Southerner could be to his best hunter. You could have shot the Judge’s firstborn and it wouldn’t have grieved him as much. Anyway, Old Neskaloosa took a stand opposing the golfing extravaganza, and his vote on the Council could put the bollocks to the whole damn shooting match.

  The problem, as Judge Anderson saw it, was how much the city of Savannah was supposed to contribute to this exercise in private enterprise and greed. Our causeways would be used to transport spectators. Our streets would be employed for parking, our constabulary to maintain order, our homes to shelter the incoming hordes. Every office and business would be grievously inconvenienced for three days prior and God only knows how many days after. And the mess? Who would be responsible, who would clean it up, and most of all, who would pay for it? The judge felt that Adele Invergordon was taking advantage of Savannah’s good nature. “Our city is the doormat,” he declared, “upon which the heiress wipes her feet!”

  At first no one took the old gentleman’s protestations too seriously. There was a great deal of shouting and declaiming to the effect that this golfing match was the economic boon the city was frantic for, that we desperately needed it in these dire times. Hotel rooms would fill, restaurants be packed, the average citizen could charge for parking, let rooms, perform services and in general line his needy pockets off the visiting Goths, who, thank the Lord, would in all probability be too-rich-for-their-own-good Yankees.

  But Anderson would not be swayed. The hours crawled by and, as often happens when normally rational individuals are too long cooped in an oppressive environment, the seething throng began to transubstantiate into a mob. It started coming over to the Judge’s side.

  If Adele Invergordon could offer $20,000 in prize money to two damn visiting golf players, by God she could come up with a matching sum for the civic coffers of Savannah, in whose bosom and by whose sufferance this self-aggrandizing stunt would take place!

  A messenger was dispatched to Krewe Island and returned promptly with the heiress’s refusal. I recall vividly the phrases “adamantine in my resistance” and, more unfortunate, “blackmail.”

  Shouting and countershouting resumed with a fury. Savannah’s pride had now been officially trodden upon. The Judge’s supporters swelled. The convocation divided into two equally rabid bands: those who saw the golf match, and the subsequent success of Krewe Island, as essential to Savannah’s economic survival, and those who declared that survival be damned, we had endured defeat in war with less of a blow to our honor and manhood!

  The atmosphere was explosive. No matter how fevered the indignation at Adele Invergordon’s affront to the city, all knew that the match must go on, Savannah was desperate for it economically. But how could it, now that our civic noses had been rubbed so ingloriously in the dirt? Cigar and cigarette smoke hung so thick you couldn’t see from one side of the room to the other. Meanwhile many of the elders had yielded to gravity’s demands and were perched absurdly on the kindergarten-sized chairs. The air was dense, humidity hovering just shy of out-and-out liquidity. Pools of perspiration pocked the hardwood floors, backs of shirts clung black with sweat. To this day I don’t know whose voice finally called out the solution. What I do recall is the zeal and enthusiasm with which it was met.

  The rafters shuddered with cheers; the little basketball backboards, only six feet high, nearly came off with the stomping of feet and clapping of backs.

  Savannah would nominate its own champion golfer!

  A third contestant, a local hero, to duel the great Jones and Hagen!

  This was when, Hardy [my dad told me], you came to and began blinkingly to demand to know what was going on. The town solons were congratulating themselves furiously on this brainstorm that would save Savannah’s name, draw attention to her fine young manhood, and so on, when someone—I suspect it may even have been myself—rose to ask whom precisely we would nominate for this loftiest of golfing honors.

  Instantly the hall fell silent. A name was shouted. Dougal McDermott. Cheers burst forth, till the obvious was recalled: that McDermott was the professional at Krewe Island, an imported Scot who had barely set foot in the town except for a stiff snort or to chase down the local trollops. No, McDermott would never do.

  Neither would Frank Laren, the pro at our pathetic Southside Public Links. Or Andy Dillion, the city champ. Or Nicholas “Nitro” Vitale, the greengrocer. There was one fabulous golfer, Enderby “Cottonmouth” Conyngham, whom all
agreed possessed gargantuan length, immaculate course management and a lockpicker’s touch around the greens. The only problem was Enderby was a Negro.

  So desperate was the throng by this point that a debate of some ten minutes’ duration ensued, in which half a dozen of the city’s most fevered bigots, crackers and peckerwoods rallied to the black man’s cause, frantic for a champion with a chance to prevail.

  Then came the breakthrough.

  “What about Rannulph Junah?” a voice cried from the rear.

  “He’s off to hell and gone, you damn fool! Tibet or Calcutta…”

  “No, no—he’s back! Been back a month.”

  Could this be true? Every heart leapt with hope. Rannulph Junah? Rannulph Junah!

  Here at last was our man!

  Scion of one of the South’s wealthiest and most venerated families, triple letterman at Columbia, law review graduate of Emory in Atlanta, handsome as a god, brilliant as Apollo, Junah possessed every virtue of shining Southern manhood.

  And he could play. My God, he could play.

  He was long. Titanic off the tee, with a rolling draw that he could turn on and off like a faucet. He could cut the ball as effortlessly as he hooked it. He was the only man I ever saw who could make a spoon back up on a green.

  He had won the Georgia Amateur at eighteen, the Trans-Miss at nineteen, and had reached the finals of the North-South in ’27 despite a nearly ten-year hiatus from the game. The Walker Cup Committee had selected him as third alternate for the ’28 squad, and he had even practiced with the team for a week at the Chicago Golf Club before withdrawing for “personal reasons.”

  Junah’s iron play was fearless. He hit the kind of low screaming bullets that started out jackrabbit-high and rose like eagles to peak, tower, float till they were nearly motionless and then drop feather-soft to the green, where they would alight, as Sam Snead later used to say, like a butterfly with sore feet.

  And Junah could putt. Eschewing the charging, hell-for-leather style then in vogue, he utilized a touch like gossamer to ghost the ball with aching, tremulous slowness up to the very marges of the hole, at which exquisitely tender gait it would topple in from any corner of the quadrant, and never lip out for excess of speed.

  Rannulph Junah, Rannulph Junah, Rannulph Junah! The galleries rung with the hero’s name. We must summon him, nay, collect him at once!

  The crowd surged for the exits. But wait! The clock. It was nearly one in the morning! Manners precluded descending on the poor fellow at this hour, but, by God, the issue could not wait. A mad, sputtering paralysis gripped the posse. For an instant it seemed as if a mass nervous breakdown was immediately at hand. Then Willie “Argyle” Lofton, the town barber and sole Republican, spun straight toward you, Hardy….

  “The boy! Send the boy!”

  This motion was adopted by instant acclamation, as various members of the congregation shouted out its virtues. You, young Hardy, knew Junah; you had shagged for him, caddied for him; Junah was partial to you. Send the boy to be sure our man was awake, to prepare him for the coming delegation (which would follow within fifteen minutes), but on no account, under no circumstances, divulge the nature of our call.

  “Will ye do it, Hardy?” the throng queried as one.

  “Well, I…”

  That was all you got out, son, before half a hundred fevered hands seized you and began tossing you skyward in triumph like Mercury himself.

  “Fly then, lad, with winged sandals on your feet!”

  Four

  THE AERIE, JUNAH’S PLANTATION, lay four miles down the Skidaway Road, backed up against the tide channels where my brother Garland and I used to paddle after porpoises playing with the shrimpers as they cut in and out for the fishing grounds. I rode the whole way on my Burke Lightning in under twenty minutes, despite ruts and washouts, no lights and a regular gauntlet of coon hounds and croppers’ mutts that took after me at every fence line.

  It got spookier out toward Junah’s, for his property began nearly half a mile east of the gatehouse. There was nothing but weeds and pitch-black slough canals with pocket moccasins ghosting everywhere. I pedaled like hell and figured, Let ’em jump, I’ll be where they ain’t by the time they get there!

  The closer I got to Junah’s, the ghostlier it became. The big gate was rusty and untended, not a soul standing watch or a light anywhere. I was shocked at how rundown and gone to seed the place had become. The live-oak-lined drive was all ruts and weeds, dank as a swamp in the night dew with wet branches slapping against my bare legs under my shorts. I could feel cobwebs catch my face, and all manner of crawling things spring and fall on me.

  Thank God there was a light ahead. Junah was awake! I pedaled up the stone drive. There was a Ford wagon parked out front, a Peugeot-Pickard sitting on blocks and a huge black Chalmers beneath the porte cochere. “Mr. Junah!” I hollered, more to hear my own voice for courage than expecting to raise him. “Mr. Junah, it’s Hardy Greaves, come to hail you!”

  No one answered for the longest time. I got off my bike and peeked in the big Georgian windows. The front hall was lighted, but by only a single flame on top of a piano. All the furniture was covered in ghosty white sheets.

  Finally Ezra, Mr. Junah’s main man, appeared in the side door and waved me over with a cross expression. “Master Hardy, what you doing out here this shade of night? You not hurt, are you?” I explained rapidly that my father knew of my whereabouts and in fact, along with the town elders, had dispatched me.

  Ezra let me in, declaring he hadn’t seen such urgency in no boy’s eye since the day we whooped the Kaiser. “You sure Mr. Junah’s awake?” I kept asking. “I hate to disturb him but I got to.”

  “Mr. Junah don’t hardly never sleep no more,” Ezra told me as we padded down underlit hallways. “The poor man is up all the night, just a-steaming and a-stewing.”

  We passed beautifully appointed rooms, all shrouded over in sheets and dust covers. Where was Junah? I started getting scared all over again as Ezra led me outdoors, across another soaking stretch of grass.

  We were headed back to the old slave quarters.

  I trucked in after Ezra through a door so low even I had to stoop. Down a clammy stone corridor and there we were, stepping out into the ancient slave kitchen, a broad low-roofed room where the cooking had been done for fifty field men, maybe more. I blinked in the smoky dimness and then I saw Mr. Junah.

  He was wearing a blue dungaree shirt, salty with sweat and open to the navel. His hair was long, over his ears, and hung unparted in glistening sheets in the lamplight. He wore clamming trousers, open to the knees, with no shoes. He was sitting at a hundred-year-old coarse-cut serving table with his crossed feet propped up and a long Kentucky cheroot between his teeth.

  “Hardy, my boy! What a felicitous surprise! Come in and join us in a cold chicken sandwich!”

  I was just a boy, and had glimpsed little if any of the darker grown-up world. But one thing even my innocent eyes could not fail to see. Mr. Junah was dead, stinking drunk.

  Five

  I ADVANCED TENTATIVELY INTO THE GLOOM. Three or four colored men, apparently Junah’s hands, sat and stood around the margins, faces and arms so black they seemed to blend into the ironwood walls.

  “Gentlemen,” Mr. Junah addressed them, his sun-burnished arm stretching elegantly to indicate me, “may I present the only male in Chatham County who isn’t completely full of shit.”

  His hand clapped my shoulder warmly, I heard low chuckling from the darkness. I was frightened. I had never heard a gentleman utter such frightful profanity and had no idea what to make of it. Junah queried me as to whether my parents knew of my whereabouts at this hour and I blurted my nervous response. I could smell the liquor on Junah’s breath. I began to tremble.

  “Don’t be afrighted, Hardy lad. Your host is far from inebriated. There’s not enough whiskey in the state to get me as drunk as I need to be.” He ordered a milk brought for me. One of the men fetched it from an ice ch
est against the far wall.

  Then I realized Junah was not alone at the table.

  At the far end sat a black man of about forty years, tall and striking, wearing threadbare suspendered trousers and a worn English-cut jacket. He was not drinking, but sat upright with impeccable posture, dark eyes like pools soaking up the lamplight.

  Here was another shock to my untutored sight: a colored man sitting at the same table with a white. I must have gawked, or even started at the raw unholy cheek of it, because the man smiled and tipped his battered hat. I could feel my face flushing. The nerve of this fellow…

  “You offered the boy a sandwich, Ran,” the black man spoke. “Don’t you think you should make good?”

  Ran? Junah’s first name. Worse, short for his first name.

  The gall and effrontery were so egregious, my senses were struck numb. This was outrageous, unspeakable. Junah rose, steadied himself, then strode powerfully toward the black man. I braced myself for what certainly was coming: Junah’s fist smashing into the brazen fellow’s cheek, then Junah towering over his vanquished form, ordering the others to throw him out before he murdered him with his bare hands.

  I was terrified, yet anticipating it deliciously. Would Junah break his neck? Actually kill him?

  To my amazement, Junah strode straight past the black man, pausing only to brush an affectionate hand across his shoulder! At the breadboard, Junah plucked a knife and plate and called back to ask if cold chicken or ham was to my taste!

  “Forgive the tardy introductions, Master Greaves.” Junah’s gesture swept from me to the stranger.

  “My mentor and boon companion, Mister Bagger Vance.”

  Six

  I HAVE PUZZLED FOR YEARS and lain awake many nights, trying to understand what it was about this mysterious fellow that held my attention so raptly. He did nothing whatever to put himself forward. When the elders arrived (which they soon did in a thunder of Reo, Hupmobile and Model A engines) and the drama decamped to its new setting in the library of the mansion house, Vance withdrew inobtrusively to a corner, where he took up a solemn post and stood absolutely still, observing with an utterly detached calm, saying nothing.