Louis Dion III Creative Writing 3/12/15 Unreliable
Narrator/Unorthodox POV
A Day on the Golf Course
We were thinking of a place to go to discuss the new
position at my firm, and you thought it would be a good idea to be interviewed
on the golf course, since you have always thought you are read better when you
have a club in your hand. Thinking that this was a very good option, I decided
to make a tee time for the two of us. TPC Boston at two-thirty, a perfect time
to play since it is just before the high school teams went out to practice.
I arrived at the course around one forty-five. As I pulled
in, I saw you warming up by your gently used Corolla.
“Good day, Mr. Johnson,” you
said to me as I got out of my BMW.
I asked with deep interest, “How
long have you been here, boy?”
“Oh, about fifteen minutes.”
“Why are you here so early?”
“Just wanted to make a good
first impression, sir.”
So I put my shoes on,
grabbed my clubs, and began to walk down the hill towards the two-story
clubhouse at the bottom. As I walked in, I saw you were in awe of the facility,
seeing the brand new equipment and accessories staring right into your
lightly-colored eyes. We walked up to the counter, and I told the golf pro who
we are. He tells us the total for the 18-hole round and the cart we were going
to share. As you saw me taking out the company card, you stopped me:
“I got this, sir. You don’t have
to worry about a thing today.”
“Are you sure? This round does
cost a great deal of money.”
“I don’t mind. This a once and a
lifetime opportunity to play this course, so it is definitely worth it to pay a
little extra cash today.”
After you paid for our
round, we each received a small bag of golf balls to warm up at the 22-stall,
grass driving range. We placed our clubs on our cart, drove to the range, and
hit our balls, me with my brand new Titleists and you with your ten year old
Callaways. We got back into our cart and then took the long, winding journey
through the woods over to our first hole of the day.
We drove up and gazed
out, looking at the beautiful landscape that the first hole brought. To the
black tee markers we went, ending up parallel to them. Three-hundred thirty
yards was the distance, so I decided to take out a long iron to start the day
off right. But as I turned to my left, I saw you taking out your driver:
“I like to be aggressive,” you
said as we walked over to the tee. “Go big or go home, right?”
You gave me the first
shot, and I hit my ball right down the middle of green fairway, but it stopped as
soon as it hit the turf because of the rain that fell the night before. I walked
away, and you began to walk towards the middle of the tee markers. Bending down
to put your tee in the ground, your hand was shivering like a cold dog that
stayed outside for too long. You stood up, took a deep breath, and lined up
your body so your shoulders pointed towards the bunkers on the right edge of
the fairway. I knew there was short grass on the other side of those sand pits,
but you didn’t seem strong enough to carry the traps. You exhaled one last time,
and with sweat dripping down your face, you began your backswing. Swinging the
club head backwards until it was right above your head, then quickly reversing
course, you smashed the club into your ball, and I saw the Nike swoosh fly away
from the tee. I watched the ball throughout its flight, and as I saw it
descending, I could not tell where it would land. But as I looked away for a
second, I saw you picking up your tee and walking away, almost knowing exactly
where it would land. I turned back around, picking out the ball around the
blue-colored space around it. Ultimately, it landed where I could not see, and
I thought to myself, Wow, this guy is
really special.
Things went well for
you during the first few holes, but I went off the rails right away. I could not
make any putts on the greens, but you were making everything, as if you have
played the course many times before. But things became to change for me. It was
the fifth hole. I hit a good drive but an awful seven iron into the green. You
kept my hopes up after that shot, telling me you had confidence in me making
the almost impossible putt. A forty-five footer, uphill then back down,
breaking to the right, to the left, and back to the right; most professionals
just hope to get this putt within five feet.
Hoping to do the same, I hit my ProV1, and we both watched it roll.
Halfway there, you intervened:
“It looks good, sir.”
It did look good. As
it began to go back down the hill, the ball straightened out after a long trip
to the left and began to turn back to the right. Both you and I saw that at
ten, five, three feet left that it was on track. Suddenly, the ball just
disappeared.
“Nice one!” You scream as you
viewed the ball drop into the cup. “That’s one amazing birdie, sir. I always
knew you could make it.”
You finished out the
hole, ending up with a good bogey from the woods, and we drove over to the next
hole of our round.
We played a couple
more hole, but then we got stopped at the eighth hole, a par three that
sometimes takes a while to play. While we were waiting on the eighth tee for
the group in front of us to finish, we continued the interview portion of our
round:
“So you seem pretty young?”
“Yes, I’m twenty-five, just out
of law school.”
“So why do you want to join Dion
and Johnson anyway?”
“Well, I’ve always been
interested in being a lawyer, fighting against the criminals who are deserving
of their punishments. I love taking a stance and fighting for that stance, and
I know you guys do that every day in your cases, so I want to join you guys and
continue what I love to do.”
“That sounds like the person we
need. So, what are some things that you can contribute to our firm so we can
maintain our success?”
“Well, I am a very good public
speaker. Even if I don’t have the best argument, I can say it in a way that
makes a lot of people, hopefully the jury, believe what is coming out of my
mouth. Also, I’ve had a lot of experience in prosecuting, even though I am
young. At my school, we used to have a mock trial every two and a half weeks,
and I almost always was prosecuting. And most of the time, my team won the
trial.”
“Well that’s very good to know.”
We watched the group
leave the eighth green, and we were able to continue our round.
About an hour later,
we left the tenth hole on the course and drove towards the eleventh. A par
three, but a very long par three, playing about two hundred yards on this day
based on the scorecard attached to our cart. As the cart path turned left we
gazed out and saw there was a water hazard between us and the green, and the
green was severely uphill compared to the tee box. It seemed like the hole was
going to play longer than what we thought it would play.
You trotted up to the
tee, after a fantastic birdie at the last hole. You put the tee into the box
with almost no fear appearing on your face, and then you place the ball right
on top of it. You got up next to your ball, which what appeared to be a four
iron, like I’ve seen you do all day, but then everything changed. Your
backswing was choppy, your club head finished by your left shoulder, and your
swing bottomed out four inches behind the ball. Your club jerked up, barely tapping
the top of the ball, which ultimately rolled fifteen yards and slipped into the
pond. I would have added another piece of equipment into that pond, but you
reacted very differently:
“Oh well,” you said as we were
passing each other on the tee. “Not everything is going to go your way. Hmm,
better luck next time.”
And after my shot, you
did have better luck, standing up and hitting your next shot to six feet.
The round continued, with
you playing fairly well and me looking like I’d never played a hole of golf in
my life. As we played the last few holes, you tried to ask questions about the
firm.
On the sixteenth tee, ”So how
many people work at the firm right now?”
On the seventeenth fairway, “How
many cases does the average lawyer work on throughout the year?”
On the eighteenth fairway, “Does
the firm offer many benefits?”
I answered these
questions to the best of my ability, making you very sure of what you were
getting yourself into. You stopped what you were doing every time I spoke, and
I did the same for you. As we were finishing the round, it seemed that we were
a perfect pair.
Putters in hand, we
walked up to the eighteenth green, our final hole today. We both had similar
twelve foot putts for par, and just like it had been all day, you made the
putt.
“Wow,” you said. “That was a
tough putt; I can’t believe I made it.”
I said back, “Nice shot.”
“Good luck on yours,” you said,
as you always did before my putts.
Even with the luck
that you placed on my shot, I did not do great. I managed to three putt from
the same spot as your putt, and I was about to explode on the green, but you
had other plans:
“Calm down, sir. It’s just
golf.”
And even though that was so simple, it was
so helpful, and surprisingly, I did not throw any clubs into the marsh in front
of the green.
We got back to the
cart, took off our hats, and connected through our hands.
“I had a great time today,” you
said as you gripped my hand with a lot of authority.
“I did, too. I learned a lot
about you and I hope you learned a lot about our firm.”
“I sure did, sir.”
We drove the cart back
to our cars. I dropped you off at your Corolla. I told you that I would call you
over the weekend with the decision, since I still had one more interview to
conduct. I also told you that the person I would choose would come into work on Monday. But as I
drove away to drop off the cart, I knew, based on what I experienced on the
course that day, who was coming into the office Monday morning.
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