As some might say, if you don’t take the plunge, you can’t taste the brine. Others might not say such a thing. I’m taking the plunge, because I want to taste the brine. Here you’ll find the fifth installment of “A Golfing Memoir” as we trace a year in the life of Flip Hedgebow, itinerant teacher of golf. For January, click here. For February, click here. For March, click here. For April and May, click here.

cirE “Flip” Hedgebow was never in hurry. He considered his penchant for blending preparation with feigned disenchantment to be a singular and enviable proclivity. It wasn’t a predilection, as he had to work at it. If his managers felt that there employee was in a hurry, they would connect it to bother, and would wonder about what would eventually distract him from the jobs they had hired him to do. As for his clients, speaking of distraction, they believed that his time in their hire was all theirs, and that hurry translated to distraction, which led to let’s find another instructor. Complicated, huh?

June wasn’t a month for hurry. It was the beginning of the summer season, and the two months that followed represented an eternity. He had been on site at Klifzota for nearly two months, and had weathered the final dusting of snow, the conversion of informal cross-country ski trails into fairways, and the drying of those same fairways from frozen to quaggy to playable. Even thought there would be rains in the year’s sixth month, the deep frost had melted, which meant that arriving water would find its true level.

The arrival of the young woman whose attention Flip had capture in Florida was imminent. He had received a text message from her current outpost on Long Island. Whether it was the Hamptons, somewhere farther out, or nearer in, he did not know. Twenty-five percent of him was disinterested, while the other three-quarters cared deeply enough to not enquire. Don’t be too eager, that seventy-five percent had to be reminded. Agnes Porter the younger would arrive by air, and would then commute to Flip’s oasis by hired car. Not Lyft, not Uber, but hired car. Something about a hired car traversing the Allegany foothills compelled the golf pro to smile broadly. The byways were never flat, and were bent on balancing uphills and downhills with regularity. A hired car that was not used to country roads would certainly makes its share of quick brakes.

As a result, Flip was in the most massive hurry of his life. It, this, SHE all mattered. He didn’t know why, at least in his conscious mind. He had known since his parents went separate ways, that relationships were not permanent. The stars, the winds, the guarantee that another day were dawn, were as ephemeral as the connection between two human beings. After the age of 16, the one that John Cougar Mellencamp instructed us to hold on to, as long as you can, Flip Hedgebow had no need for a personal relationship.

The resort was humming. The Krupnik was flowing for the locals, and the White Russians remained the drink of choice for the Maple Leafs that crossed borders to reach their favorite chunk of the Empire state. Flip moved gracefully among them, although he would be the last to deem his efforts as bearing grace. That was something reserved for Agnes Porter the Younger, more than he knew.

What he did not know, over the past months, was that Agnes Porter the Elder had gone to the Hamptons to die. She knew that her passing was imminent, and she knew that the place say farewell to earthly matters was coastal. She would not stomp the soils of her beloved isle, so the waves and the winds would carry her ashes eastward, to its shores. She and her granddaughter had discussed these matters, and when the time had come, GES had smiled with eyes first, then cheeks, then mouth, at her namesake. She planted a kiss on her young forehead, then began her journey homeward. A single tear, for a single soul, made its way down her cheek. In an instant, the past turned its page, into the present and the future.

Flip Hedgebow left the shop in capable hands, and took his clubs to the practice area to settle his core. He found a barren spot of hardpan and scattered balls around it. As a youth, he and Freezer had determined that hitting off fairway grasses was easy, if you could hit it off baked earth. Flip had never feared taken a dirt divot, which explained why he would trust his action down and through, until the end of days.

Behind him, those red and yellow waves overtook the blue ones in the sky. Not even the sun could keep up its strength forever. It was these colors that settled Flip into an evening calm, that allowed him to transition from daytime pro to nighttime host, with little indication of intention.

That’s the golf swing I’d like to own one day.

He had missed the crunch of tires, the slam of the car door, and the muffled conversation between passenger and driver.

Grace Éimí Seáin had arrived at Klifzota. The sky burned red behind her.

Art by JaeB