Cloob from Glasgow

The matter of receiving a trans-Atlantic phone call created such furor in the MacLendon household in Hart’s Point, Connecticut, that after it was over and Duncan MacLendon hung up the phone, it seemed a pity that he was unable to tell May and the kids what it was all about.

“Thought the old boy had died a long time ago,” he said, replacing the phone.

“What old boy? Where?” May and the kids demanded.

“My great uncle in Glasgow, Angus Campbell. Good Lord, he must be well over ninety. Poor old boy sounded pretty thin over the phone.”

“But what did he want?” May demanded, with an air of struggling to achieve calm.

“Darned if I know. Something about a cloob. Couldn’t make it out.”

“A cloob?” the kids asked in unison. The word fascinated them. They marched around the house chanting “Cloob, cloob, cloob,” until forcibly restrained.

“It seems to me,” May said later, “that when somebody goes to the expense of a trans-Atlantic phone call, the least you could do is understand what—”

“But honey, I talked to Uncle Angus back in ’34, face to face for two hours. And when it was all over, I didn’t have the faintest idea what he had been saying.”

“Then you must write him a letter and ask him why he called you.”

Duncan MacLendon made three drafts of the letter, and still he was not satisfied. The trick was to word it in such a way that it would sound as though he had understood, and wanted further details. By the time he was satisfied with the letter, he found that Uncle Angus’ address had been mislaid. In fact, he could not remember where he had last seen it.

And then the cable arrived, stating that Uncle Angus had died. Duncan figured back and found that Uncle Angus had died the day after making the call. The members of the MacLendon family went around muttering to themselves, convinced that the mystery of the “cloob” would never be solved

And then the cloob arrived. It was in a long narrow box. The eldest kid glommed onto the stamps. With the family gathered around, Duncan tenderly opened the box. The object inside was wrapped in tissue paper. He unwrapped that.

In unison they all shouted, “Oh, a club! A golf club!”

Duncan remembered someone telling him stories of Uncle Angus giving pointers to Harry Vardon when Harry had been a small boy, and something else about Uncle Angus being almost responsible for inventing the game. Looking at the club he could believe it. Compared with modern day weapons, the wooden head was grotesquely tiny, the impact surface no bigger than a quarter. It had no bottom plate. The shaft was of wood, heavy greasy wood which curved this way and that from grip to head. The grip was of leather with the patina of age.

With what May described later as a faintly stupid look. Duncan swung the old club. It had no more balance or feel than half a crutch. It swung up, contacted the ceiling light fixture smartly and rained shattered glass onto Duncan’s head and shoulders.

During the next week Duncan took it to a few antique dealers. Two of them laughed outright. The third one made a tentative offer of fifty cents. Duncan took the club home and put it in the store room off the garage. There was no more talk of the cloob in the MacLendon household.

In early May, as on every other year, Duncan MacLendon and Stu Finch and Ed DeRider and Mike Folsun began their annual attack on par at the Onondaka Country Club. Par won. Finch and DeRider were senior partners in the law firm for which both Duncan and Mike Folsun worked. Both Duncan and Mike were hoping for a partnership offer and their rivalry, though good-natured and casual on the surface, was intensely serious underneath. Duncan and Mike were both in their mid-thirties. Finch and DeRider were in their early fifties.

The set-up was Duncan and lean, nervous Stu Finch against muscular Mike and chubby Ed DeRider. Both senior partners were incurable dubs. A hundred and ten was a respectable round for either. Both Mike Folsun and Duncan operated on the theory of slamming hell out of the ball at every opportunity. As a consequence they were both in the middle nineties at all times.

Of the foursome, Duncan was the only one who hated golf. He detested trudging around eighteen holes and banging a silly little ball toward a sillier little cup. Yet he knew that, ridiculous as it seemed, the filling of the partnership vacancy would undoubtedly be based on the game. It wasn’t who won. It was based on who was the most pleasant partner. The result was a weekend match which seemed to be a contest between Stu Finch and Dale Carnegie, against Ed DeRider and Dale Carnegie. Duncan would come home wearied not so much by the golf game as by the effort of maintaining a pleasant smile, even when a drive went merrily into a water hole.

Tension ran high as the golf season neared Duncan’s secretary told him that Mr. DeRider’s secretary had told her that a partnership was going to be offered to either Folsun or MacLendon. And soon.

Duncan firmly believed that the Onondaka course at Hart’s Point had been laid out by someone who had an unhappy childhood. The fairways were smug and narrow and curved. The roughs were a jungle sneer along the sides. And no one who ever played the eleventh, fourteenth and eighteenth holes wanted to drink water again.

On the first Saturday in May when golf seemed possible, if not feasible, the foursome trudged squishily from club house to first tee. Only one caddy was available. He was assigned to carry double for Finch and DeRider.

“This year, Dunc, we’ll make ’em wish they never learned the game,” Stu Finch said with grim heartiness.

“Dollar, dollar all the way?” DeRider asked blandly.

“Sure,” Stu said quickly.

Dunc leaned his bag against the bench. Mike Folsun put his beside it, then stared at Dunc’s clubs. He reached out and pulled the cloob from Dunc’s bag.

“What’s the rule on secret weapons?” Mike asked. They all stared at Uncle Angus’ cloob.

Duncan laughed a bit thinly. “Guess one of the kids or the wife stuck it in my bag. It was in the garage.”

“Whittle it yourself?” Mike asked.

“My Uncle Angus sent it to me from Glasgow this winter,” Duncan explained carefully. “It is the sort of club that was used when the game was first started.”

That short-circuited Mike’s attempt at humor — changed it to interest. They all swung the cloob, commented on its unwieldiness, until Ed DeRider slapped his hands and said, “Let’s put the show on the road, gentlemen.”

Duncan, with his pleasant smile firmly in place, tried not to think of the long weekends that stretched interminably out ahead of him, until the snow would fly again. Stu Finch teed up his ball, waggled, jerked back, lurched and chopped a drive down the middle of the fairway, half-topped, that went no more than seventy yards. “Up to you, partner,” he said with a nervous laugh. Ed DeRider hit the ball cleanly, but without much snap. Duncan banged one out two hundred yards, and it stopped just short of the rough. Mike whanged a screaming slice deep into the jungle.

The first hole was halved. Sixes for Mike and Duncan. Eights for Stu and Ed. Folsun and DeRider took the second hole by a stroke. The third was halved. Duncan and Stu Finch took the fourth hole by a stroke, halving the match to date.

On the fifth tee, Ed DeRider said, “Stu, I think we better tell these boys.”

Duncan almost lost his smile. “Tell us what?”

Finch turned spokesman. “Like this, Dunc. We’ve been talking it over. There’s a partnership opening. Both of you know that. And we know that you each want it. But, dammit, we haven’t been able to choose between you. We don’t want to embitter the man we don’t pick. So this isn’t as childish as it might sound. We decided to leave it up to the game, today. If you and I win. Dunc, you’re in. If we lose, Mike gets his chance to buy in.”

Duncan glanced at Mike and noticed that above Mike’s smile, his eyes were like shale ice.

“We’ve gone over last year’s cards,” Ed explained, “and you boys are so evenly matched that it’s going to be like the flip of a coin, only more interesting.”

Duncan suppressed the urge to say that it seemed more sadistic than interesting from where he stood. He was conscious of the chill of tension on the back of his neck, of a trembling in his knees and elbows.

“Your honor, Dunc,” Stu Finch said mildly.

Duncan managed to get his ball teed up on the third attempt. He stood over it. It seemed about the size of an aspirin tablet. The driver felt like a spaghetti wand. He swung. The fifth hole at Onondaka is a 340 yard dogleg to the right. Dun’s drive covered the forty yards, leaving him three hundred to go.

“You’re all tightened up, boy,” Mike said heartily.

Mike teed up his ball. Dunc watched carefully. Mike’s backswing seemed smoother than usual. The wrist-snap looked almost professional. With a sound like a pistol shot the ball fled the tee. It screamed toward the trees on the right. It kept rising, rising. Duncan stopped breathing. The ball cleared the trees. It was nauseatingly obvious to Duncan that the ball would come to rest on the fairway beyond the trees, probably only a short iron from the hole.

“Lucky!” Mike said with casual glee.

“Best drive you ever made, Mike,” Ed DeRider said happily.

“I guess I do better under pressure,” Mike said with becoming modesty.

Duncan managed to pull himself together. His fairway wood was out in the clear. His two iron was on the lip of the green. He almost holed the long putt, and took his five. But Mike had pitched on and two-putted for a four.

“Is this competition between Mike and me for holes, or total?” Dunc asked.

“Just like we said, Dunc,” Finch replied. “The match.”

For the next three holes, Mike Folsun played par golf. It put Folsun and DeRider four up. The little spreading vine of suspicion in Duncan’s mind put down new roots and flourished. Mike’s game fell apart, but not very much, on the ninth hole. On that hole both Mike’s drive and Duncan’s were on the right side of the fairway. The caddy and the other two men were laboring and hacking their way down the left side.

Duncan said coldly, “Okay, Folsun. Have your fun.”

“What are you talking about, old boy?”

“Where have you been hiding that golf game? And why?”

Mike laughed. “Ever hear of customer golf? Funny you never figured it, even when, all last year, I kept the match just as even as I could. One week you and Stu would win and the next week we’d win. Makes it interesting. But now the gloves are off, baby.”

“Congratulations, Folsun.”

“My goodness, such bitterness! Don’t worry, baby, I won’t beat you too bad.”

“No, you don’t want it to show, do you?”

Mike addressed his ball. He winked at Duncan, took a mighty swing and topped it badly. “Cheer up, baby. You’re going to win this hole and bring it down to three up. Maybe you’ll win the tenth too. I’ll have to think about it. Anyway, on the seventeenth tee, Ed and I are going to be two up, with two to play.”

“Terrible chances you take,” Duncan said. “Suppose I tell them?”

“Tell them what, old boy? That I’m in there striving?”

Duncan played along doggedly. He played as well as he could. But Mike never let the margin narrower than two up. When Mike and DeRider were in danger, Mike would take a little time over a stroke and make a recovery. Duncan was sourly surprised that the two older men remained oblivious.

As Mike had predicted, they came to the seventeenth tee with Duncan and Stu Finch two down. The seventh at Onondaka is a five hundred yard par five. The fairway swoops over two young mountains and the woods are thick on either side.

The hole before had been halved and it was Duncan’s honor. He teed up the ball. He had long since ceased to smile. If they thought him a poor sport, it didn’t matter. The only cheering thought was that this was very probably the last round of golf he would ever have to play.

He hit his drive harder than he had ever hit a golf ball before. It carried over the first hill and angled off toward the woods.

“Tough,” Mike said. He hit a ball that never did get off the ground, but Duncan noted that it was pounded hard enough to get more than halfway up the first hill.

After the other two men drove, Duncan slogged off into the woods. He came to a quiet glade. His ball rested white and smug on the springy grass.

“Need help?” the call came, faintly.

“Found it!” he yelled back. He studied the shot. Ahead was a hole in the greenery, framing the distant green. Maybe an expert could use a wood and pound the ball through that hole with just enough of a fade to catch the roll of the second hill. Duncan decided to use an iron.

He set the bag down, took a club absently, and then discovered that he had taken the cloob. He grunted and jammed it back in the bag. It refused to stay. It bounded out. He tried again. It bounded out again. He stood very still, feeling faintly dizzy. The cloob actually seemed to demand to be used. The glade was very silent. In the distance he could hear the sound of running water. Small blue flowers were half hidden in the grass.

Duncan MacLendon had always been a relatively unimaginative man. Pixies were for other folk. For the first time in his life he felt the shiver with which we greet any manifestation of the supernatural.

There seemed to be nothing to lose. If the cloob demanded to be used, then the cloob he would use. He took his stance. The cloob felt awkward. He bit his lip and took a mighty swing. The ball took off. It hissed through the open hole in the surrounding brush. As straight as arrows, it flew. It diminished, a tiny white dot in the distance, and then faded off to the left just enough. It dropped behind the crest of the second hill. Duncan stood watching. It reappeared again, rolling and bounding. He could barely see it. It missed the yawning trap and rolled onto the green, rolling, rolling, up to the base of the pin, disappearing.

“Heavens to Betsy!” an awed voice said at Duncan’s elbow. He jumped. It was Ed DeRider. “Came up just in time to see you swat it,” he said, “One under par is a birdie. Two under par is an eagle. What do you call three under par?”

On the green they added up the score. Ten for Stu and two for Duncan, making twelve. Five for Mike and nine for Ed De-Rider, making fourteen.

“Well, one down and one to go,” Mike said. Duncan was still too dazed to comment. He still held the cloob in his hand. He could not forget the look of that ball at it fled into the distance. Nothing had ever been as beautiful. If golf could only be like that all the time...

The eighteenth at the Onondaka is evil and insidious. It is a 275 yard par four. The water hole begins one hundred yards directly in front of the tree and it is precisely a hundred yards wide. The choice is limited. You either hit a ball which will go two hundred on the carry, or you play short with an iron and carry it on your second shot. Duncan had always played short. It was his honor. He stood up to the ball.

“Hey!” Stu Finch said, “Don’t try to hit it with that antique!”

“That’s what he used up there in the woods,” DeRider said.

In a trance-like state, Duncan swung at the ball. For the first hundred yards it was no higher than twenty inches off the ground. Then it began to rise. It went high. It floated. Duncan’s eyes misted and blurred as the ball began to drop. Then Finch and DeRider were prancing around him, yelling hoarsely, “An ace! An ace!”

Duncan looked at Mike. There was an odd, uncertain look in Mike’s eyes. Mike teed up his ball, banged it to within ten yards of the front edge of the green. Both DeRider and Finch played short and safe, cleared the water safely on their second shots, pitched their third shots onto the green. They took a pair of fives. Mike got a birdie three, but it was of no help to him.

“Even all,” Stu Finch yelled exultantly.

“Got to have a play-off,” Ed DeRider said. “Looks crowded over on the first. How about the tenth. Suit everybody?”

“Okay by me,” Mike said. Duncan saw the knots of muscle standing out at the corners of Mike’s jaw, the muscle bulge at the temples.

The tenth is a slight dogleg to the left, mostly up hill, 415 yards, par four. Again Duncan drove with the cloob. The ball streaked off, climbing as before, fading toward the left. It cleared the trees nicely, dropped out of sight. Mike drove. His drive was almost a carbon copy of Duncan’s. Ed and Stu batted slow rollers down the fairway. They all walked forward, waiting for Stu’s and Ed’s second shots. Both were surprisingly respectable. Mike walked on ahead. Duncan walked with Stu. They went around the corner. Mike was standing in the middle, scratching his head.

“Here’s mine,” he called, “but I don’t see yours, Dunc.”

They all hunted. It was Mike who found it. The ball was nearly buried in the soft ground, just the top of it showing.

“Tough,” Mike said. “Must have hit a soft spot.”

Duncan looked at the ball and then glanced at Mike. He could almost see the cleat marks around the ball, and he was just as certain that Mike had stepped on it as he was that he couldn’t accuse him. Mike was leaving nothing to chance.

Duncan felt an enormous anger. He took the cloob and braced himself.

“Wait!” Stu said, “Better use an iron on that, partner.”

Duncan merely set his jaw and took a mighty swing. There was a chunking sound and a sharp crack, intermingled. The aged shaft splintered and the club head, with six inches of shaft protruding from it, bounded over and over, coming to rest twenty yards away. Duncan looked down at his feet for the ball. He looked at the others. They were all staring rigidly at the green.

“Six inches from the cup,” Ed DeRider whispered.

Mike took a long time over his. It ended up on the green, at least twenty feet from the cup. Stu and Ed took their second shots. There were four balls on the green.

“We’ll give you that one, Dunc,” Ed DeRider said. “That gives you a three. Pick it up.”

Duncan picked it up. Mike was away. He went back and squatted and examined the line. He fingered the grass. He removed an almost invisible twig in the path of the ball. Then he addressed the ball. Long seconds passed. The trembling started at the head of the putter, went up the shaft. Mike was as tight as a violin’s E string.

Duncan knew that to Mike the hole seemed to be fifty yards away, and the size of a cavity in a molar. At last Mike made a jerky stab at the ball. It stopped six feet beyond the hole. Ed DeRider holed out for a par four, the first, he yelled, that he’d ever gotten on the tenth. Stu missed his putt, took a five. A five and a three made eight. DeRider already had a four. Mike lay three. If he could sink his six footer, the hole would be halved.

Again he addressed the ball. This time it was worse. Mike looked physically ill.

“Thought you thrived on pressure, boy,” Ed DeRider said jovially.

“Shut up!” Mike rasped. DeRider flushed.

Duncan stood holding the parts of the broken club. By tremendous effort, Mike forced himself to loosen up. He stroked the ball. It trundled happily toward the hole, caught the rim, went off at right angles and stopped three inches away.

Slowly Mike stood up. He took a deep breath. He smiled. He stuck his hand out to Duncan. “Congratulations, baby,” he said.

May sat frowning at Duncan. Duncan paced back and forth, waving his arms. “I tell you it wouldn’t stay in the bag. It kept jumping out at me.”

“Now Duncan! Please, darling. A good night’s sleep.”

“And then I couldn’t do anything wrong with it. A magic cloob... I mean club. That’s why Uncle Angus called up.”

“Dear,” she said gently, “you have played a lot of golf, even though you don’t like it, and I’ve heard you say that if a person just relaxes and lets the club head do the work, it—”

“Do anything, May, but please don’t try to humor me.”

“Now honestly, Duncan, don’t you think that if you just happened to imagine that there was something supernatural about the club, you’d play better with it?”

“Maybe. Maybe. All I know is that it kept jumping out of the bag, demanding to be used. Explain that. Go ahead. Explain it.”

“Hey, Mom! Look, Mom!” the eldest said from the doorway.

“Go away,” Duncan said, “Your mother and I are having a discussion.”

“Hey, look! I found my BB rifle spring. I just now remembered I hid it in your golf bag, Dad. I’ve been hunting and hunting for it, all over.”

“Go away, young man. I told you... What did you say about my golf bag?”

“My spring was in there, Dad. I just told you. I didn’t want Betty messing with it while I was at the movies.”

The eldest went away. Duncan sat down and glowered at the face of his wife, contorted with revolting mirth. “It... it kept... jumping out at you,” she gasped.

Finally he found it possible to laugh with her.

On Monday Duncan was preoccupied at breakfast. May went to the doorway as he left. She saw him stick the clubs in the car.

“What are you doing, dear?” she asked.

He answered with enormous casualness. “Thought I might stop at a driving range on the way home tonight.”

She waved at him and went slowly back for her second coffee, thinking deep thoughts about the mysterious ways of man.