Master of the ball Hawks

perfection was what he was looking for--in those hard little white spheres and in the soft curves of a woman

One day, Bertie McKeon would be up there competing with the best in the Masters Tournament. But we find him now in his formative years, on a summer afternoon, standing--and waiting--on a hill that overlooks the grass sward that is the 14th link of the public golf course in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, New York City.

Bertie does not even know yet that he will become a master golfer, only that something draws him repeatedly back to the links, something that excites him, that makes his insides buzz.

Right now, at the age of 12, he believes he is here, like the other ball hawks, to retrieve and pocket the golf balls that stray off the links to his side of the fence. Selling the strayed balls is a very lucrative activity, one that Bertie hopes will help him get some golf clubs--his first--this summer.

But Bertie has not been too successful at finding the lost white treasures. That is why he is waiting for the master of the ball hawks.

Unlike the other ball hawks, the master does not carry a long stick to poke the grass with. And where the others move at a snail's pace, methodically probing, the master strides at what amounts to a trot--the better, Bertie knows, to keep up with the Irish setter that invariably accompanies his patrols, running ahead of him like a galloping flame.

The master is younger than the others, too--30 or 35, to their 50 or 60. And yet, with all these differences, he always manages to find three stray balls to every one they find; and to top everything, he throws most of them away!

It is magic the master works, and Bertie wants to learn the magic. That is why he holds the three Dunlop Gold Cups in his hands. He will pay to learn.

And now, here comes the master, right on time, as Bertie knew he would be, the great dog gamboling ahead of him. Bertie steps down the hill on an intercept path, and his heart is heavily thumping. Will he have the nerve to speak?

"Hey, mister. What kind of dog is that?"

"Irish setter."

"I have a dog like that."

"An Irish setter?"

"No, but he's like that. Except he isn't red."

"No kidding?"

Bertie never noticed before, but the master has a very mournful face. He falls into step beside him.

"And he has short hair," Bertie says, "not that kind."

"Yeah?"

"And he's just about half that one's size."

"But otherwise, just like him?"

(continued on page 138)The ball Hawks(continued from page 127)

"Yeah."

The master has stopped in his tracks. He looks hard to his left. He starts off again, this time on a slightly altered course uphill. A few paces and he stops, bends, picks up a golf ball.

"Wilson K-twenty-eight," he says, examining it with a frown. "It'll do, I guess." He sticks the ball into his pocket and resumes his walk.

"Mister?"

"Yeah."

"Will you teach me how to find golf balls?"

"Teach you how to what?"

The master's mournful expression has changed to one of disbelief.

"I'll pay," says Bertie, exhibiting the three Dunlop Gold Cups.

"I don't know anything about finding golf balls, kid."

"You're the best ball hawk there is."

"Ball hawk. What the hell is a ball hawk?"

"You are. You're the master. Better than any three others."

"You mean those guys with the sticks?"

"That's right. You make them look silly."

"Listen, kid, this isn't really my line. I'm not a ball hawk. I'm a commercial artist, albeit a temporarily unemployed commercial artist."

"You find the balls and you take them home, don't you?"

"Yeah, but--"

"Then you're a ball hawk."

"All right, then, I'm a ball hawk."

Bertie knows it is going to be tough dealing with the master. After all, why should he reveal his secrets to anyone? But Bertie is determined to press on.

"Teach me how to find golf balls," he pleads. "I can't find many myself. I wear glasses. I'm slow. Somebody else sees them first or gets them first. I never get any, except sometimes. I got these ones. You can have them if you teach me!"

"Kid--"

"I'll give you two U. S. Royals, also. Please, mister, please!"

The master stops in his tracks again and turns to the boy. He looks not mournful now but intent. "You really want to know how to find golf balls?" he asks.

"I have six Spalding Dots at home that I will also throw in."

"Sit down."

Bertie sits.

"Close your eyes."

Bertie does.

"Imagine in your mind a golf ball. Round. White. Perfect."

Bertie tries; finally the image comes.

"See it whole, entire. Count each one of its concave facets. Got it?"

"Wait...yeah, yeah, I've got it."

"Now let the ball recede, back off from you, off, way off, until it is only a tiny dot in the distance. Now bring the ball back. Slowly, slowly. Now let it recede again. And remember, remember how round it is, how glistening white, how perfect. See it now on a green field, a round whiteness on a green field, now big and up close, now far away and small, but always round, always perfect. Roll the ball up and down the field, smoothly, smoothly. Think of it white, think of it round, now this size, now that. Keep doing it, OK? Now...open your eyes and look around."

Bertie does.

"Look over the bridle path and up the hill. First to the right, then to the left."

"It's very confusing," says Bertie.

"Sure, you see rocks, the bottoms of beer cans, white bits of paper, a thousand things that could be golf balls."

"I think I see one!"

"Look at it again. Remember the perfect white ball you imagined. Perfect roundness, that's what you're looking for. And whiteness, unblemished. Don't settle for anything else. Look again."

Bertie looks again. In contrast to the unsullied green link beyond the fence, the field rising up before him is littered with picnickers' rubble--bottles, beer cans, bits of paper, as the master said. And much of it quite like, but not exactly like, the perfect white roundness in his mind.

"It isn't a ball," he says.

"Most of them are not," says the master. "Using my method, you eliminate a lot of needless effort. You don't run off on a hundred wild-goose chases. You see, it's an old principle you're observing, kid. They call it keeping your eye on the ball. You probably don't know, but it's sort of like with a woman."

Bertie notices that the master looks mournful again.

"Every man in his mind's eye sees the shape of the perfect woman--her face, her body, even her soul. Every man looks for her, some knowingly, some not knowing, but every man looks. And when he finds her, recognition is instant. And he marries."

Bertie's eyes run once more over the field in his view. With the perfect ball in his mind's eye, he can now dismiss, one after another, all the ball-like objects that--before the master's lesson--would have made his heart leap in false discovery. But he sees something else now--a little spot of white near a dirt ridge that runs along the bridle path. No matter how long he looks, the white stays uniform and whole, and the roundness, even at 45 yards, is perfect.

"I see a ball!" he says, and points it out to the master.

"Yes," says the master, "it seems to me that that is quite definitely a golf ball. Go get it."

Bertie does; and when he comes back, he turns it over to the master.

"Hmmmm," says the master. "A Dunlop sixty-five...too bad." And with a disdainful flip, he throws it away. And the white pellet bumps silently down the slope, to land at the heels of another ball hawk.

"What did you do that for?"

"It was nicked," says the master. "Didn't you see that?"

"So what?"

"So they're no damn good if they're nicked."

Even if he is the master, Bertie is appalled. So this is why he throws the balls away!

"Why are they no good if they're nicked?" he demands.

"It's like the perfect woman, kid. Every facet's got to be perfect, perfectly white, perfectly round, spanking-new. Otherwise, how the hell can you marry her? Right?"

"You could play with that ball," says Bertie.

"I don't play golf."

"You could sell it, even with the nick."

"I don't need the money."

"Well, what do you do with the balls you keep?"

"I just take 'em home, I guess, put 'em in an old beach bag."

To Bertie's relief, that other ball hawk has finished his probing below them, moving on down the bridle path, the white pellet of the discarded Dunlop gleaming in the black cinders behind him.

"What do you put 'em in a bag for?" asks Bertie.

"I don't know, kid," the master says mournfully. "A compulsion, maybe. Like with women. I like perfect things. I always have. I can't stand flaws. Golf balls. Etchings. Women. Women. Women."

"They have to be perfect, too?"

"They've got to be."

"Why?"

"Kid, you start out in life with certain ideals, certain pictures in your mind's eye, you can't just throw them away because of a--"

"That's a good ball down there. Even with the nick, I could get fifty cents for it. A good golfer could take that ball and whack it two hundred yards, I bet. And a good putter could sink it from forty feet. You could win the Masters Tournament with that ball."

"But it's got a nick in it."

"If all you do is take 'em home and put 'em in a bag, what do you care if it's got a nick in it or not?"

Another ball hawk is now moving up along the bridle path and Bertie knows he will reach the discarded Dunlop in a matter of minutes. But the master is speaking or, rather, mumbling, and he (concluded on page 183)The ball Hawks(continued from page 138) looks more mournful than ever now.

"You won't understand this, kid, but somebody has to hear it. You see, there's this woman I know, a really great woman, in all senses of the word. Except she just don't fit what I want to wind up with. She's a brunette, for God's sake, and another twenty years or so, she may even have a mustache. As if that's not bad enough, this woman, Gladys, she's not even educated! She's a nurse, a dumb nurse; she thinks Oliver Twist is a pastry recipe, that the theory of relativity is about family togetherness. And...her ankles are just a bit too thick. What would you do with a woman like that?"

"I don't know what you do with women."

"I do love her, you see. I'm crazy about her. That's what I don't understand. She's pretty, but she's not a blonde. Levelheaded, but dumb. Feminine enough, but not altogether compliant. In short, she's full of nicks. What do you do with a woman like that? It's driving me nuts. I tell you, I don't eat, I don't sleep, I don't care about anything but her. When I walk, I'm six inches off the ground. When I see my friends, all I can talk about is her. Wherever I am, I see her, hundreds of her; only, at the last moment, it's always someone else. I lost my job over mooning about her. And I never want to see her again!"

"Why not?"

"Are you nuts? She's full of nicks. Brunette, thick ankles, dumb. I can get any damn woman I want, and the ones I want have got to be round, white, perfect!"

"If you've got those kind, why don't you marry one?"

"Because they're so great I want to marry them all!"

"But you never do."

"No."

"Why don't you learn to play golf?"

"What has that got to do with anything?"

"I don't know," mutters Bertie, but his mind is now on other things; namely, the advancing ball hawk down the slope from them. "Look, mister," he says, "thanks for the lesson. It sure seems to work, that trick." And Bertie hands the master three Dunlop Gold Cups and two U. S. Royals. "Your pay," he says. "And I've got to run. Otherwise, that guy will beat me to the ball I found."

"Hey," the master calls after him, "I'll keep one of these U. S. Royals, but all the others got nicks in 'em."

"Thanks again," says Bertie, snatching up the ball on the cinder path. "They're all yours."

In the course of this day, using the master's technique, Bertie finds eight more balls, and only one of them is too badly scarred for use. And before the summer is out, the boy has amassed enough lost balls to purchase three golf clubs: a wood, an iron and a putter. His career, in other words, is launched.

• • •

It is autumn before Bertie sees the master again. He has teed off on the 14th link, his ball has hooked far to the left--over the fence, in fact, onto the bridle path. Right where the ball should be stands the master; only this time, there is a woman, not a dog, with him. She is a brunette and very pretty, although her ankles are a little thick.

"Hey, kid," says the master, "where you been the last six weeks?"

"Playing golf, I guess," says Bertie.

"Glad to hear it, kid. By the way, I want you to meet my wife, Gladys. Gladys, this is...what is your name, kid?"

"Bertie McKeon."

"Bertie McKeon," the master says to Gladys. "Remember that name. Bertie, I have a present for you, some things of no use to me anymore."

Bertie takes the old beach bag and opens it. It is full of golf balls, all of them shining white, round, perfect.