Dewey and the Seagulls

The sound that interrupted The Oldest Member’s Saturday morning contemplation was not, strictly speaking, a golf sound. It was the sound of a seagull — a single, piercing, indignant shriek from the direction of Laguna Verde — followed by a volley of similar shrieks, building in volume and intensity until the lake seemed to boil with avian outrage.

A member at the next table winced and set down his Bloody Mary. “I don’t know which is worse,” he said. “The coots in the summer or the gulls in the winter.”

The Oldest Member opened one eye.

“The coots,” he said, “are the worst nuisance. But the seagulls are the greater danger. Just not in the way you might expect.”

The member, who had been preparing to leave, paused. There was something in The Oldest Member’s tone that warned a tale was coming, and there was something in his posture — the slight forward lean, the brightening of the eye — that guaranteed it was coming whether one wanted it or not.

“Stay,” said The Oldest Member. “Let me tell you about Dewey Cutter’s fateful encounter with the seagulls.”

The lake at La Cucaracha (said The Oldest Member) is, depending on the season, two quite different bodies of water. In the spring and summer it belongs to the coots — those squat, black, impudent birds that waddle onto the greens and deposit their green calling cards with a frequency that would be impressive if it were not so revolting. But in the winter, when the coots depart for whatever foul convention they attend in the off-season, the lake is taken over by seagulls, and the seagulls are, if anything, worse. A coot going about its business produces a soft, dove-like murmur that is minimally annoying. A seagull going about its business produces a shriek like a colicky infant amplified through a public address system, and several hundred of them going about their business simultaneously can be heard as far away as Cucaracha Plaza. Laguna Verde in January is less a lake than a bird bathroom, teeming with these boisterous, ungovernable creatures, and the membership has long resented them with a smoldering hostility that would have been expected during the Spanish Inquisition.

It has therefore become customary, among a small but spirited minority of the membership, to express this displeasure in the most direct manner available to a golfer. The thirteenth at La Cucaracha is a two-hundred-yard par three played over water. It is a picturesque hole — the most picturesque on the course — and also the hardest par three, a combination that strikes me as typical of golf’s sense of humor. The tradition is this: upon reaching the thirteenth tee, each participating member produces a found ball of inferior quality — an off-brand specimen that one has picked up in the rough during a round and would never dream of actually playing — drops it on the turf, and hits a low, screaming iron at the seagulls congregated on the water. The proper form, as established by long custom, is for the entire group to strike simultaneously, on a count of three. It is not a practice that would be endorsed by the Audubon Society. It is, however, immensely satisfying to its participants.

The three golfers with whom this story is concerned were my grandson Bobby, Dr. Tom “Sticky Fingers” Barry, and Dr. Dewey Cutter. They had set out on a Saturday morning in late January under skies that looked like something a more cautious man would have stayed home to avoid. I should say a word about each.

Bobby you know. He has caddied for half the members of this club at one time or another, and has learned from each of them something useful, if only what not to do. He had recently joined the club in his own right.

Tom Barry was an internist, an adequate golfer, and the most suspiciously fortunate Liar’s Dice² player the club had ever produced. Tom Barry won it with a regularity that defied all known principles of probability. He always seemed to have exactly the dice he needed. The membership suspected his thumbs, which were unusually long — almost simian — and which were widely believed to be employed beneath the cup to rearrange his dice into more favorable configurations before the cup was lifted. Nothing had ever been proved. Tom accepted the nickname “Sticky Fingers” with the serene poise of one who has nothing to hide, or who is very good at hiding it.

And then there was Dewey Cutter.

Dewey was a thoracic surgeon of the highest distinction. He had, in fact, once saved my life, and he had done so by the most counterintuitive method available to a surgeon, which is to say by refusing to operate. I had presented myself with a condition that three other doctors had recommended addressing with immediate and aggressive surgery. Dewey, having examined the relevant data with the thoroughness of one who believes in looking before he leaps, informed me that surgery would very likely kill me and that I should instead go home, lay off the gin and tonics for a week, and stop eating apple pie on Tuesdays. I am alive today because of this advice, and I have never eaten apple pie on a Tuesday since.

On the golf course, however, Dewey’s gifts deserted him. He was a poor golfer. He had never in his life broken ninety, and this fact gnawed at him with the persistence of a rat breaking into a grain silo. He was also a man completely lacking a filter between his brain and his mouth. Whatever Dewey thought, Dewey said, instantly and at full volume, without the intervening step of considering whether it was wise, kind, or in any way appropriate. He had once given my grandson Bobby a crystal golf paperweight as a wedding present, announcing in the presence of the bride that he had selected it because ’if you get divorced, she won’t want this.’

This condition made him an entertaining companion and an exhausting one. Bobby and Tom had long since learned to absorb Dewey’s unfiltered commentary with the good humor of men who know that the opportunity to turn it back on him will eventually, and inevitably, present itself.

Dewey was married to Jan, a woman of strong convictions, particularly on the subject of animals. He had three young children who had inherited their mother’s sympathies in this area.

The morning in question, as I have said, looked like rain. The skies over the valley were the color of a wool blanket that has been washed too many times, and the air had that heavy, expectant property that precedes a soaking. But the three men teed off regardless, because golfers are, as a species, optimists of the most delusional variety. Besides, Dewey had already prepaid for Jan and the children to spend the day at some extravagantly priced establishment involving pottery painting and a prix fixe lunch — an outing he had no intention of joining and which he could not, having already written the check, justify wasting by staying home.

They played the front nine in conditions that deteriorated from faintly threatening to mildly damp, and Dewey — here I must pause to let the significance of this sink in — Dewey shot a forty-three. For any competent golfer, a forty-three on the front nine is a mildly disappointing but perfectly acceptable start. For Dewey Cutter, a forty-three on the front nine was the equivalent of being told you have six months to live and then discovering the X-rays were someone else’s. If he could match that performance on the back nine, he would come in at eighty-six. He would break ninety. For the first time in his life, after years of toil and torment and equipment purchases that Jan had sighed over, he would break the barrier that had mocked him since the day he first picked up a club.

It was at this point, as they stood on the ninth green with the rain beginning to fall in earnest, that Bobby and Tom proposed calling it a day.

Dewey’s response was emphatic. He was not quitting. He had never quit anything in his life. He was going to break ninety or he was going to die on this golf course, and he did not care which.

Bobby and Tom exchanged the look of men who yesterday agreed to help a friend move and today have seen his piano. They could not, in any case, let Dewey play alone — because if Dewey did break ninety, he would need witnesses, and the testimony of a golfer who has attested his own scorecard without corroboration carries, at the patio bar, approximately the same weight as a campaign promise. They relented, and the three of them headed to the tenth tee in a rain that was now falling with the steady, purposeful commitment of weather that intends to be here for a while.

The tenth at La Cucaracha is a short par five, downhill off the tee, with out of bounds right and a stand of oak trees to the left that are technically in play but which drop anything hit into them down a steep gully that is also out of bounds. Bobby, despite the rain, striped his drive down the center. Tom, who played an adequate if unspectacular game, found the fairway as well. Dewey, whose hands had begun to shake with a combination of rain, cold, and the terrible pressure of imminent ninety-breaking, yanked his drive viciously to the left. The ball struck an oak tree with a crack that startled a newly damp squirrel off its branch and kicked sideways into the gully. Out of bounds.

Dewey uttered a four-letter word. He re-teed. He swung again. This time the ball departed to the right with equal conviction, bouncing off the roof of Mr. Sundberg, who had collected enough golf balls from his yard and pool to open a new driving range. Out of bounds.

Dewey wanted to quit. The dream was dead. Ninety was gone. But Bobby and Tom’s balls were sitting in the fairway, two hundred and fifty yards away, and Dewey was the man who had insisted they continue playing. He could not, in good conscience, abandon them now, and Bobby and Tom reminded him of this with the gentle but implacable logic of men who had made their decision and intended to see it through, regardless of Dewey’s feelings on the matter.

They pressed on. The rain intensified. All three began to play poorly, because golf in the rain is not golf so much as a grudge match between the human spirit and the elements, and the elements generally win. Dewey’s scorecard, which had been a document of hope and possibility through nine holes, became a chronicle of despair. Bobby and Tom fared little better. By the time they reached the thirteenth tee, they were soaked through, miserable, and in no mood to be charitable toward any living creature, least of all the several hundred seagulls that were at that moment occupying Laguna Verde in full voice.

And then the rain stopped.

It did not taper off. It did not gradually diminish. It suddenly stopped, as if someone had turned off a faucet, and the clouds parted just enough to allow a single shaft of watery sunlight to illuminate the thirteenth tee and the lake beyond it, upon which the seagulls bobbed and shrieked with the carefree abandon of gate crashers at a wedding.

Bobby reached into his bag and pulled out a found ball of dubious parentage that had been sitting in the side pocket over the course of a season, the sort of ball that Dewey, who needed every yard he could get, actually played in earnest. He dropped it on the tee and pulled out his two-iron. Tom did the same, selecting a ball of similar origins.

They both looked at Dewey.

Dewey’s face underwent a series of rapid transformations. There was, first, the delight of a child who is being invited to do something he very much wants to do. This was followed, a moment later, by the look of a husband who has remembered that his wife is a passionate advocate for the welfare of all living creatures, up to and including seagulls. And this was followed by the look of an actuary calculating, with extraordinary speed and focus, the exact probability that his wife will ever find out.

“I can’t,” he said. “Jan would kill me.”

Bobby gave him the smirk of a provocateur who is about to enjoy himself at a friend’s expense. Tom followed instantly.

“So you’re afraid of your wife,” said Bobby.

“You are, aren’t you,” said Tom. “Afraid of your wife.”

This was, as both men knew, the one accusation that no married man at La Cucaracha — with the possible exception of Chip Wetherbee, who had nothing to prove — could allow to stand.

“Give me a minute,” said Dewey.

He reached into his bag, found a ball — though in Dewey’s case it was indistinguishable from his regular ball — and dropped it on the tee. He pulled out his four-wood, because Dewey could not hit a two-iron and had long since stopped pretending otherwise. He took his stance. His jaw was set. His eyes were fixed on the lake with the reckless resolve of a man who has made his decision and may be forced to deal with the consequences from another country.

“On three,” said Bobby.

“One.” “Two.” “Three.”

Three golf balls left three clubfaces in the same instant, screaming off the tee on low, hissing trajectories toward Laguna Verde. The effect on the seagull population was immediate and spectacular. Birds launched themselves skyward in every direction, a great white explosion of wings and outrage, their shrieks rising to a pitch that suggested they were composing, collectively and in real time, a strongly worded letter to the management. It was chaos. It was pandemonium. It was, for three rain-soaked golfers standing on the thirteenth tee, deeply and profoundly gratifying.

And then they heard the horn.

It came from Arroyo Drive — a single, long blast from what was unmistakably a Range Rover, because a Range Rover’s horn has an entitled character, a righteous, Hope Ranch indignation that distinguishes it from the horns of lesser vehicles. All three men turned. There was a white Range Rover, and behind the windshield was a face that Dewey recognized with the instantaneous, bone-deep certainty of a mere mortal who has just realized that the universe has been listening to his private calculations and has found them amusing.

It was Jan.

She was on her way home from the pottery painting, or perhaps she had stopped for groceries, or perhaps the universe had chosen to arrange her route with the same cruel attention to comic timing that it had brought to the rest of Dewey’s day. And she was not alone. Pressed against the rear windows of the Range Rover, their small faces flattened against the glass in attitudes of rapt horror, were all three of Dewey’s children.

They had seen the whole thing.

Bobby was the first to start laughing. Tom followed within seconds. The two of them stood on the thirteenth tee, laughing with the helpless, full-body abandon of men who know they are witnessing something they will be dining out on for the next twenty years. Dewey stood between them, motionless, his four-wood still in his hands, staring at the Range Rover and wondering whether Jabba has a spare room in Samoa.

The Range Rover did not move. Jan did not wave. The horn did not sound again. It did not need to. The silence that followed was one that speaks louder than any horn, louder than any seagull, louder, even, than any word Dewey’s filterless mouth might produce. It was the silence of a woman who is preparing not a response but a criminal indictment.

Dewey dropped his four-wood.

“I’m a dead man,” he said.

Bobby and Tom were unable to offer any contradiction to this assessment, owing to the fact that they were now supporting each other in an upright position and could not breathe.

The aftermath, as these things go, was both predictable and expensive. Dewey was required, upon arriving home, to explain to three children aged five, seven, and ten why their father had been hitting golf balls at seagulls, which is a conversation that no amount of surgical training prepares a man to have. The five-year-old cried. The seven-year-old asked if the seagulls were dead. The ten-year-old, who had inherited his mother’s talent for moral clarity, informed Dewey that he was “a monster.”

Jan’s justice was swift and fiscal. Dewey was compelled to make sizeable donations to both the local Humane Society and Animal Rescue, contributions of a magnitude that his accountant later described as “noticeable.” He accepted this penance with the silent, dignified suffering of a defendant who knows he has been caught dead to rights and that any protest will only increase the fine.

I saw Dewey at the patio bar the following Saturday. He was drinking a club soda — Jan had, as a supplementary measure, placed him on a two-week alcohol embargo — and staring out at the lake with the haunted, unblinking gaze of the condemned who has looked into the abyss and found it full of seagulls.

“How are the children?” I asked.

“The five-year-old,” said Dewey, “has started a fund to save the seagulls. She set up a card table in the driveway with a jar and a sign. She has raised eleven dollars. Seven of it is mine.”

He took a sip of his club soda and frowned at it with a grimace that showed he would have preferred something stronger.

“The worst part,” he said, “is that I missed every seagull.”

² Liar’s Dice is played with any number of players, each rolling five dice concealed beneath a cup. It is a game of bluff, calculation, and nerve.