Becoming Andy Hunsinger Page 2

  Cooking became a game for me, a challenge like a jigsaw puzzle. The hardest part was getting everything ready to eat at the same time. Initially, I had problems with overcooking or undercooking certain dishes. But after a few weeks, I developed a better sense for when a recipe was ready for the table.

  A month into my tenancy, Mom phoned.

  “How are things?” she asked.

  “Not bad; keeping house isn’t so difficult.”

  “Oh, really?”

  I chuckled before I answered.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I said, “I’m the new Betty Crocker of Franklin Street.”

  After I hung up the phone, my gaze traveled about the barren walls of my silent apartment, and then I shook my head. Maybe I was becoming an accomplished cook, but what good were my newly-acquired skills if I ate my meals alone? Wasn’t it time I found myself a boyfriend?

  Who would he be? And where would I find him?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Every Saturday and Sunday morning, I rose at 6:30, showered, shaved, and then slipped into a pique polo shirt with a Capital City Country Club logo embroidered on the chest. I put on khaki slacks and a pair of golf shoes. After a hasty breakfast, I pedaled my bike to the club, making sure I arrived for the earliest tee-times. I caddied for rich people, ones like I’d never met before: state cabinet officers, Florida Supreme Court justices, high-flying lobbyists, and the city’s most successful lawyers, doctors, and bankers.

  I had landed the caddying job through a family connection, three years before.

  The clubhouse pro, Byron “Bucky” Buchholtz, served with my dad during WWII, co-piloting Flying Fortresses over Germany. Dad and Bucky were shot down twice -- both times narrowly escaping capture by the enemy -- and they’d remained friends ever since. Each fall, they took a trip together, to Montana or Wyoming, where they hunted elk and deer, or fly-fished for steelhead trout.

  Bucky was a “man’s man”, a dedicated bachelor, and sports fanatic.

  “Your mother excepted,” he told me once, “I can’t abide the company of women. They talk and talk, but never have anything worthwhile to say.”

  Half a head shorter than me, Bucky had wavy, prematurely gray hair and a deep suntan. He kept his waist trim through a program of rigorous calisthenics. He liked bawdy jokes, barbeque, and bourbon with branch water. Every year, he spent the four-day Thanksgiving weekend with us in Pensacola, and every year he asked my dad to play a round of golf.

  Dad always refused.

  “It’s no fun playing with you,” Dad would tell Bucky. “You’re competitive as hell, and too damned good to play with a duffer like me.”

  So I played a round with Bucky -- sometimes two if the weather was good -- at Pensacola Country Club, an elegant facility my dad could never have afforded to join on his Department of Transportation engineer’s salary. Bucky enjoyed membership privileges at PCC, due to his job at Capital City. We played alongside Pensacola’s elite -- “fat-asses”, Bucky called them -- a group of businessmen, lawyers, and retired colonels, the kind of guys who mixed plaids and stripes when dressing for the links.

  I was never much of an athlete, but my dad taught me and my brother the basics of golf at an early age. The three of us played public courses all over northwest Florida: Crestview, De Funiak Springs, Ft. Walton Beach, and the university course at Tallahassee. By the time I reached high school, I’d developed a smooth swing and reasonable consistency on the greens. My handicap drifted between eighteen and twenty-two.

  Bucky, of course, was a scratch golfer -- I wasn’t in his league -- but I offered him companionship on the golf course whenever he visited Pensacola. When we played, I only spoke when spoken to, and then I always addressed Bucky as “sir.” He taught me tricks while we walked the links: foot positioning, club selection, compensation for wind, sloping lies, and wet turf. He discussed reading of greens. When I shanked a putt, muffed a pitch, or hit a lousy chip shot, he’d explain what I had done wrong -- in detail.

  “When you hit from the rough, open your club face a bit. Otherwise, the grass will pull your shot left.

  “Right now, you’re pitching onto a green with a wicked slope. Use your 52-degree wedge. Loft the ball so it plops onto the green and doesn’t roll.

  “Stop trying to kill the ball.

  “Don’t swing with your arms. Let your body do the work; put your hips into your shot.”

  Once, when I was sixteen, I lit a cigarette on a tee-box at PCC. As soon as I took a drag, Bucky snatched the cigarette from my lips. Then he tossed it into the branches of a gardenia bush.

  “Andy, those things are garbage. They damage your health and foul the air; they have no place on a golf course.”

  Bucky lived on Cherokee Drive, east of the Capital City course. He shared a neat cinder block house with his brother Eddie, and Eddie’s wall-eyed wife, Flo.

  Flo cooked meals, did laundry, and kept the house clean.

  A shell-shocked Korean War veteran, Eddie spent his days puttering in his yard. He fertilized azaleas, pruned camellias, raked pine needles and oak leaves, and mowed the clover-green grass. Some days he’d sit on a lawn chair in the home’s one-car garage, watching traffic pass on Cherokee Drive and staring at the cars like they were Mardi Gras floats. I don’t know what sort of financial arrangement Bucky had with Eddie and Flo, but the situation seemed to work for all concerned.

  When Bucky learned I would attend FSU, he phoned me in Pensacola, just before my freshman year began.

  “You should caddy for me at the club. The money’s good -- you’ll earn more on a weekend than you could flipping burgers or bagging groceries in two weeks -- and you’ll meet influential people in this town, those who count.”

  The job was a godsend. My work didn’t interfere with my university classes or my study hours. As Bucky had said, the money was great. Rising early on weekends kept me from partying too hard on Friday and Saturday nights, so I didn’t use drugs too often or binge-drink like most guys in the dormitory did.

  My buddy Biff Schultz teased me about the job -- he called my employer “Capitalist City” -- and he often gave me shit about my golf attire.

  “Look at Mr. Country Club. I love your outfit -- the saddle shoes and all. How big’s that corn cob you’ve got stuffed up your ass?”

  The Capital City course was a beauty designed by A. W. Tillinghast. Towering live oaks, long leaf pines, and magnolias framed the emerald fairways. The greens were as smooth and soft as cut-pile carpet. The clubhouse offered Tallahassee’s best prime rib dinner, and the lounge served martinis so potent they could have felled a rhino. Membership typically required a three-year wait, as slots only became available when an existing member either died or quit.

  The only black person I ever saw at Capital City was Rufus, an elderly man who served as attendant in the oak-paneled men’s locker room. Dressed in a white waiter’s jacket, tux pants, and patent leather shoes, Rufus passed out towels and offered cologne spritzes. He made sure the porcelain sinks shone. Word had it Rufus was close to eighty years old, but his memory was sharp. He knew the name of every Club member -- every staffer as well -- and he always addressed me as “Mr. Andrew.”

  By custom, six boys caddied at the club on weekends, and when my senior year at FSU began, four guys I worked with attended a private academy; they were high school age and sons of prominent club members. One kid’s father was a Tallahassee city commissioner, another’s dad was a former Lieutenant Governor. These boys were local patricians -- way out of my league -- and I didn’t try becoming part of their world. But one caddy, a boy named Jerry Justus, I befriended when I returned to school, in the fall of 1976.

  Jerry’s dad was head greens keeper at the Club; he wore Dickies work-clothes and lace-up boots, and I’d never once heard him raise his voice. He mowed fairways, spread fertilizer, and trimmed camellia bushes, often while whistling tunes I didn’t recognize.

  “Do me a favor,” he once told me. “Whenever you pull the pin, try not to step on the edge
of the cup. It’s tough enough, keeping the edges level, and I’ll catch hell from members if the greens are less than perfect.”

  Jerry was a senior at Lincoln High School. About six feet tall, with broad shoulders and big hands, he parted his chestnut hair on the side. His huge, cola--colored eyes and square chin lent him a sexy aura, but Jerry suffered from stuttering. He couldn’t complete a sentence without halting once or twice, and he rarely spoke, unless someone spoke to him first.

  The other caddies shunned Jerry; I think they considered him socially inferior because he attended public school. One caddy, Dustin Ausley, a slender kid with a cleft chin, freckles, and a mouthful of white teeth, liked to pick on Jerry. Dustin would mimic Jerry’s stuttering -- right in front of Jerry -- and the other caddies would giggle. When this happened, Jerry’s cheeks would color; he’d shake his head and feign laughter himself. But I felt certain he inwardly seethed at this sort of taunting.

  Who wouldn’t?

  I always made it a point to engage Jerry in conversation during lulls at work. We talked while hitting balls at the driving range, or while we played gin rummy in the caddies’ tent. I liked his baritone voice and syrupy drawl.

  Jerry fished for freshwater bass, his favorite activity.

  “You d-d-don’t talk much w-w-when you fish,” he told me.

  In his wallet, he carried several snapshots of bass he’d caught in lakes surrounding Tallahassee. Each photo featured a grinning Jerry dressed in a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a ball cap. He would hold his fishing rod in one hand and a glittering bass in the other, always with his fingers thrust inside the fish’s crimson gills. In the background, cypress knees and cattails sprang from dark and placid waters. Some of Jerry’s catches were huge -- as long as a man’s lower leg -- and I could not to imagine how he’d coaxed them out of water with the spindly rod he held.

  “Do you eat the fish you catch?” I once asked him.

  Jerry shook his head.

  “I c-c-could if I wanted, but I don’t like k-k-killing things. After I catch a b-b-bass, I always release it.”

  Jerry’s golfing performance was a mixed bag. His short game was wickedly precise, but chaos reigned when Jerry stepped into a tee-box, or when he swung an iron on the fairways.

  “He’s a Jekyll and Hyde,” Bucky told me. “Any shot less than one hundred yards, he’ll nail. But longer than that... look out. I never know where it’s gonna go.”

  Once Jerry told me, “My dad stuck a p-p-putter in my hands when I was three. He thinks golf is my t-t-ticket to wealth, but I c-c-could care less about the g-g-game. I’d rather f-f-fish.”

  Jerry could pitch from twenty yards out and place the ball a foot or two from the cup, consistently. Once, I watched him pitch from the rough, sixty yards out, where his ball rested in a thatch of pine needles. Using a lob wedge, he popped the ball over a mature laurel oak. His shot landed on the green, and then the ball rolled right into the cup.

  Jerry’s putting was deadly, too. I rarely saw him two-putt, even on the larger, more sloping greens at the club. He possessed an uncanny ability to read greens, and then to adjust his strokes to suit the terrain, something I couldn’t seem to manage no matter how much I practiced.

  Jerry’s long game was another matter. He couldn’t control his drives from the tee-box. His shots often hooked or sliced. Bucky tried working with Jerry on this problem; they spent hours together at the club’s driving range, trying to straighten out Jerry’s swing, without success. The same held true when it came to Jerry’s second shots on par fours and fives. Whenever he used a fairway wood or a three iron, his balls never flew where he wanted them to go.

  Once, late on a Saturday afternoon when the course was empty, Jerry and I played nine holes, just before sundown, using clubs we’d borrowed from Capital City’s rental closet. The second hole had a huge water hazard to the right of the fairway -- a lake with mallard ducks swimming in it -- and Jerry drove three consecutive shots from the tee-box into the water.

  The ducks squawked and flapped their wings in protest.

  Jerry’s lost balls were new Titleists he’d just bought at the pro shop.

  “G-g-g-godammit,” Jerry cried, “I hate this f-f-fucking game.”

  This was the first time I’d ever heard him curse. The sound of his voice echoed in the pines while he glared at the wooden-headed driver in his hands. His face grew brick red. He strode from the tee-box to a nearby live oak, and then beat his driver against the tree’s trunk until the club’s shaft snapped in two.

  Jerry looked at me and grinned like a kid on Christmas morning.

  I shook my head. “You’d better hope Bucky doesn’t find out you did that.”

  “I don’t care if he does,” Jerry said. “I’ll pay for the club if I have to.”

  I made a face. “Why destroy a perfectly good driver? What’s the point?”

  “It feels good,” Jerry said. “That’s the point. Now, lend me your driver.”

  I drew back while gathering my eyebrows. “Only if you promise you won’t break it,” I said.

  Jerry’s fourth drive landed two hundred yards from the tee-box, in the middle of the fairway, and nowhere near the water hazard.

  I whistled. “You should do that more often,” I said.

  Jerry looked at me and waggled his eyebrows.

  By the time we finished our nine holes, the sun had already dipped below the horizon. I had shot a forty-seven and Jerry a thirty-nine, not counting the three balls he lost to the water hazard. I told Jerry goodbye, and then I pedaled my bike home in twilight. The glow from headlights of oncoming cars made me squint, and I shivered in the cool fall air. In my mind, I replayed the round I’d played with Jerry. I analyzed where I’d made mistakes at each hole, and I had almost reached home before I realized something I hadn’t thought of earlier.

  Jerry had ceased stuttering -- quite entirely -- for the duration of our round, right after he’d smashed his borrowed driver to pieces against the live oak.

  ***

  I was a good caddy: attentive, polite, and unobtrusive. I quickly developed regular customers who requested my services, including Florida’s Insurance Commissioner, Raymond Conner, a lean man from Ocala with tailored golf slacks, a smooth swing, and a treasure trove of racist jokes he liked to share with me when others couldn’t overhear.

  “Hey, Andy, do you know why God invented orgasm?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So the niggers’ll know when to stop fucking.”

  Or...

  “Andy, do you know why the Jews spent forty years in the desert?”

  “Not really, Mr. Conner.”

  “Somebody dropped a nickel.”

  And so on...

  I didn’t like Conner’s coarse humor -- I found his jokes offensive -- but wasn’t in a position to complain about it. When he made his wisecracks, I’d pucker one side of my face while feigning a snicker and shaking my head. How could a guy in his lofty position be so insensitive?

  I also caddied for Circuit Judge Doyle Davis, a courtly, silver-haired native of Leon County and a Harvard Law graduate. Every Sunday morning at nine A.M. sharp, he played in foursomes with lawyers who sometimes appeared before him during the workweek. The lawyers never discussed the cases they had before Judge Davis -- that would have been ethically verboten -- but they discussed other pending suits: medical malpractice claims, product liability cases, murder, or rape prosecutions.

  I found these conversations fascinating. It seemed to me these men held the fates of their clients in their hands; they were demigods of a sort. And yet, these lawyers were also mortals with ordinary problems in their own personal lives, ones they sometimes discussed while golfing: wives who drank, kids with drug problems, bad investments, and medical difficulties.

  The intricacies of legal matters these men discussed intrigued me. Sometimes, while listening to them, I asked myself, Could I practice law? If so, how would I perform in the courtroom? Would I flub my speeches before juries?
Could I handle the pressure these guys deal with every day?

  The club paid me a minimum hourly wage required by law -- not much, really -- but the tips I received were stellar. Each day, after I finished work, I pedaled home with a wad of cash in my pocket, money I needn’t declare on my income tax return. My earnings covered my rent, my food bill, and even my school books.

  My folks paid my tuition -- that was all.

  Some Saturdays, Bucky treated me to dinner at the clubhouse. I kept a pair of penny loafers at the club. Bucky would lend me a sports jacket from the pro shop, and then we’d dine alongside Tallahassee’s elite.

  “Order whatever you want,” Bucky always told me.

  I might devour a one-pound porch chop or a New York strip, accompanied by sides of au gratin potatoes and onion rings. Maybe I’d order an ice cream sundae or banana cream pie for dessert. All the members knew Bucky. While we dined, he spent much time exchanging greetings with folks passing by our table. Members sometimes greeted me as well -- they patted my shoulder or mussed my hair -- and their attentions made me feel light-headed.

  Still...

  “Don’t ever forget,” Bucky told me once, “we’re only hired help. We are not members and never will be. Don’t mistake their friendliness for social acceptance; they’re a breed apart from us. They know it, and we have to remember our place, always.

  “Understand, Andy?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before I’d moved to my apartment, I spent most evenings with my fraternity brothers. We played card games like Spades or Hearts, or board games like Risk and Stratego while drinking beer and smoking cigarillos. We threw keg parties. On weekends, the house teemed with sorority girls.