(…) Will there be episodes like this when you’re a man at your own tiller? A citizen of a world that won’t go pat-pat-there-there? Will your face crumple and bulge like this when you’re six-and-a-half grotesque feet tall, six-six-plus like your grandfather may he rot in hell’s rubber vacuum when he finally kicks on the tenth tee and with your flat face and no chin just like him on that poor dumb patient woman’s fragile wet snotty long-suffering shoulder did I tell you what he did? Did I tell you what he did? I was your age Jim here take the flask no give it here, oh. Oh. I was thirteen, and I’d started to play well, seriously, I was twelve or thirteen and playing for years already and he’d never been to watch, he’d never come once to where I was playing, to watch, or even changed his big flat expression even once when I brought home a trophy I won trophies or a notice in the paper TUCSON NATIVE QUALIFIES FRO NATIONAL JR CH’SHIPS he never acknowledged I even existed as I was, not as I do you, Jim, not as I take care to bend over backwards way, way out of my way to let you know I see you recognize you am aware of you as a body care about what might go on behind that big flat face bent over a homemade prism. He plays golf. Your grandfather. Your grandpappy. Golf. A golf man. Is my tone communicating the contempt? Billiards on a big table, Jim. A bodiless game of spasmodic flailing and flying sod. A quote unquote sport. Anal rage and checkered berets. This is almost empty. This is just about it, son. What say we rain-check this. What say I put the last of this out of its amber misery and we go in and tell her you’re not feeling up to snuff enough again and we’re rain-checking your first introduction to the Game till this weekend and we’ll head over this weekend and do two straight days both days and give you a really extensive intensive into to a by all appearances limitless future. Intensive gentleness and bodily car equals great tennis, Jim. We’ll go both days and let you plunge right in and get wet all over. It’s only five dollars. The court fee. For one lousy hour. Each day. Five dollars each day. Don’t give it a thought. Ten total dollars for an intensive weekend when we live in a glorified trailer and have to share a garage with two DeSotos and what looks like a Model A on blocks and my Montclair can’t afford the kind of oil she deserves. Don’t look like that.