BYRON

My name is Angus, but almost everybody calls me Byron because I limp.

Peggy Winter was the first to call me Byron. We were in a high school English class studying Romantic poets. Byron was a poet and he limped. She said that I reminded her of Byron. We were very young when she decided that she knew me better than she knew anybody, knew me better than I knew myself, knew that I was special, which is how I came to think of her.

We were both so very wrong.

1.

When Allan fell, we were at the tee on the tenth hole of a golf course. It would take a long time to absorb the full impact of what happened there. Up close, death is like a mountain we happen to be standing on. Maybe we can see a piece of it, but the whole remains unreal until there’s distance.

In the moment, it was almost funny, Allan staggering as if he was clowning. I assumed that he was gasping to recover from a fit of laughter. Then he fell, sort of in slow motion.

Perhaps I should have noticed what was coming when we were on the ninth green. Three strokes and he was still four inches from the cup. Even his final angry backhand swat, guaranteed to sink the ball, failed. The ball, in defiance of all the laws of physics, not to mention his forty-something years of dedication to the game, swirled around the rim, then lurched away from it.

Finally, he used his foot to nudge it in.

–This fuckin game, he said.

–Nobody’s keeping score, I said. He laughed.

I clapped him on the shoulder as we stored our putters in the golf bags. But climbing back into the cart, his face was flushed and he fell into a deep golfer silence as we raced along. He needed a distraction.

I remembered the two little bottles I’d taken from the mini-bar in our hotel. It was ten o’clock in the morning, but so what. We were on vacation.

The day was warm and close, slightly overcast—the kind of day you’d expect a lot of insects. One of the charms of a golf course, I find, is the absence of insects. Absence of almost any form of life, actually. Just grass and other golfers who seem so far away there’s no danger of engagement. And, of course, the inconvenient trees.

And so it was on that day—no bugs, no other creatures near enough to see or hear, the distant highway sounds of whining cars and snarling trucks the only evidence of the world outside.
The mini-bottles were in the golf cart’s cupholder. I fished them out and held them up. Allan smiled, finally.

–Hair of the dog, I said.

I snapped the caps and handed one across to him and we drove on, sipping thoughtfully.

I’m not a golfer. I played with Allan to amuse him, so he’d get the practice and the personal satisfaction of humiliating me. But that day on the ninth green I’d accidentally sunk a twenty-foot putt and beaten Allan by two strokes.

Sometimes I think that partially explains what happened on the tenth.

Allan went first, while I sat in the cart and drained the little bottle. He positioned himself carefully, stared briefly down the fairway, glared at the golf ball for a moment, then swung. There was a precise click and the ball was gone. I lost it in the haze but knew that it was headed exactly where he wanted it to go.

We saw it land and then bounce to the edge of the green.

–I’m back, he said.

My turn. I struggled out of the cart. One leg is about an inch shorter than the other and slightly weaker. Getting in and out of vehicles can be challenging. I injected a tee in the damp sod and balanced a ball on top of it. Straightened up. Tried to seem like I had some control over what was going to happen next.

I took two practice swings, then swung mightily. Missed. The ball toppled off the tee.

I forced myself to smile.

I repositioned the ball and studied it some more, glanced at Allan. He was standing, kind of leaning on his driver. His face was neutral, as if his mind was a hundred miles away.

–This is for real, I said.

–Just keep your eye on the ball, he growled.

I stared at it for a few more seconds, then swung again. This time I connected. There was the satisfying click of con- tact, followed by two quick whacks as the ball ricocheted off some nearby birch trees then shot back between us, narrowly missing Allan’s head, and landed inside the golf cart, where I found it in the cupholder.

I plucked it out and held it up.

–A hole-in-one, I said.

Allan uttered what I thought was a loud guffaw, but when I turned toward him, he was stumbling and then he was on his knees, hands planted palms down in the grass. I assumed he’d lost his balance when he ducked. The sound that he was making could have passed for laughter had he not then rolled slowly onto his side and curled up, twitching, grimacing.

I dropped down beside him. One of the happier consequences of my disability—or I should say one of my abilities—is upper- body strength from the time I spent periodically on crutches and in gyms. Slinging heavy lobster traps and bales of hay when I was younger. I gently sat him up, held him in my arms.

His head rolled back, his eyes panicky and wild. He was struggling to speak, but the sounds he made were meaning- less. He was drooling.

I could hear the whine of a golf cart and the sound of some- one running. Then there was a stranger crouching on the other side of Allan, clutching at his wrist, fingers on his neck.

–Lie him flat, he ordered.

I gently lowered Allan to the grass and struggled to my feet.

–I’m a doctor, said the stranger. He was already scrolling through a cellphone.

The ambulance couldn’t have been far away. In what seemed like a couple of minutes, I heard a little whoop of urgency, saw it trundling down the fairway toward where we were waiting. By then there was a small cluster of golf carts gathered around us and a dozen golfers watching silently.

–What’s your connection with this guy? the doctor asked.

–We’re family. We’re in business. Our wives are sisters.

–Maybe you should call his wife.

–What can I say?

–It’s too early to say anything.

–But he’s going to be okay, right? The doctor didn’t answer.

He stepped aside as the paramedics carefully positioned Allan on a stretcher then hoisted him and slid him into the back of the ambulance. The doctor clambered in and squatted down, bent close to Allan’s face, checked his eyes and pulse again.Then he hopped out nimbly, retrieving his golf gloves from his pocket.

One of the paramedics slammed the back doors, hustled toward the front. The ambulance whooped once more as it started up.

I watched it roll away down the hill toward the main road. I saw a foursome on a fairway stop to watch it pass. Nearing the highway, the lights began to flash and the siren began its terrifying, urgent screaming.

I remembered the sensations, being trapped inside an ambu- lance while the external wailing just goes on and on and on.

Unknown destination. The future rapidly unravelling.

I sat in the golf cart, struggling to grasp the implications of what had just occurred. The doctor paused beside me to ask if I was okay. I nodded. One by one the other golf carts slowly wheeled away, the unexpected interruption over.

Then I remembered Peggy, Allan’s wife, and the need to call her, and the potential gravity of what was happening almost took my voice away.

I managed to call my wife, Annie, Peggy’s sister. It’s been years since we’ve lived together, Annie and I, but I know her number off by heart.

–I need to get in touch with Peggy. Do you have her number handy?

–Is there something wrong?

–Yes, there might be something very wrong. But if you see her before I talk to her, don’t say anything. Allan is in an ambulance, on his way to a hospital.

–Oh Christ. What happened?

–He collapsed. I need Peggy’s cellphone number.

–Should I be there?

–Sit tight for now. It’s probably just stress.

When Peggy picked up, I tried to be tactful without dimin- ishing what, from my perspective, was potentially momen- tous. Peggy has always been unflappable and she seemed to be taking it all in stride.

–There was a doctor near, I said.

–That’s a relief, she said.

–Hey, everything is going to be fine. Okay?

I was working hard to sound upbeat, but there’s something about falling down. Never a sign of good things to come.

–What do you think? she asked.

–Probably nothing serious. He was having a great game. He’s as strong as a horse.

–I’m on my way, she said.

–You can find the hospital okay?

–Yes. And he told me the address of the hotel where you guys are staying. I have it somewhere.

–I’ll see you there, I said.

–Or at the hospital?

–Yes. The hospital. I’ll try to be there.

I returned the golf cart and my rented gear to the pro shop. Everything was starting to sink in, but in a kind of haze. My head was full of vague imperatives. Get back to the hotel. Find the hospital. Figure out the next few days. Perhaps the next few decades. We were getting old, but there was still a future to navigate.

And then I thought of our hotel room, where all his stuff was still scattered as he left it. The half-full water glass on the little bedside table, beside the half-read book. Things we start, assuming that we’ll finish. The nearly empty liquor bottle. Trousers sprawled across a chair, a sock dangling from an empty leg. Unlived life left messy. A job for someone else.