'The Royal & Ancient Golf Curse' - Part 10. Eat a Peach

By: Richard Voorhees


[Editor's Note: In the ninth episode, under darkness of a full eclipse of the sun, Beer Boy opted for a tap-in eagle instead of an ill-gotten albatross and all is right with the golf world. This is the 10th in our friends' series of misadventures, suffered under the spell of the "Royal and Ancient Golf Curse."]

Hole No. 5 looks like we're going to have to climb the mountains on the moon to get to the next flag. The landscape ahead is awe-inspiring in a desolate, god-forsaken, soul-shattering sort of way. I can't for the life of me see how this can have anything to do with golfing.

We're standing on a tee box admiring the peaks barring our progress and a squirrel scrambles out of the brush and comes bounding toward us. It's carrying a ripped golf ball cover in its teeth.

It suddenly stops and stands on its hind legs, listening. After a few seconds, it dashes forward again, straight toward the cart nymph and me. It collides with the cart, bounces off, and lies motionless for a second. Then it rights itself, bumps along the side of the cart and keeps running, albeit more slowly, certainly suffering rodent head trauma, disappearing into the brush on the other side of the fairway.

"Watch where you're going next time, buddy."

"That was bizarre."

"Poor little knucklehead."

"Par for the course, I'd say."

"What is par anyway? Anybody see a sign?"

"Well," interrupts the cart gal, "what would you guess, looking at that mountain range?"

"Another par-5?"

"Yes, boys, the fifth hole is another par-5," the beautiful one confirms. "I've seen a couple players use a lob wedge to get over the mountain, but usually the safer play is to go around."

"She's kidding."

"Left or right?"

"You'll want to play along the stream to the left. You'll see it. It leads to… well, you'll find out."

"How many yards long is this hole?"

"No one's ever been able to say."

"Wish I'd brought my crampons."

"Yeah, cross-training."

"It'd be fun to hit a few balls off the summit."

"What do you suggest, should we hit driver or is that too much club?"

"It's farther than it looks," she says. "The mountains are quite a ways off."

"They look like they're about 75 yards away."

"It's an optical illusion, I assure you. Feel free to swing away."

Aiming left, we hit decent drives for the most part, and head off after our balls. But wait a minute, what's this? Up ahead, a stooped figure has emerged from a path at the foot of the mountains. He begins walking purposefully toward one of the balls. (Of us he's blissfully unaware.) He makes his way straight to the ball closest to him, picks it up, and puts it in a bag slung over his shoulder.

"That guy just swiped one of our balls."

"Hey, that's my ball! What the hell? Hey!" Beer Boy starts shouting. "What are you doing? Dude! That's my ball!"

The fellow looks left and right but not at us. Single Malt's ball lies in his path and he proceeds to it next, picks it up, and puts it in his bag, too.

"Buddy! Stop!"

I look to the cart nymph to see if she can't get this guy's attention. She's vanished, cart and all.

We pick up the pace, hustling toward the stranger, yelling and waving. When we get within a chip shot of the guy, he turns and looks in our direction.

"Dude, those are our balls!"

"Why'd you move them?"

"Those were in play!"

The stranger looks like some ancient Chinese sage. He could be 100 years old. He's clearly surprised to see the four of us but doesn't seem particularly concerned. He touches his wispy gray beard and gives us an appraising look.

"Hello…?" he says, smiling.

"You must not have seen us," I say. "By accident… I think you picked up our golf balls."

"Golf balls?"

"I think you put them in your bag…"

"I'm gathering tomatoes. It's the season."

"Well, do you mind giving us our balls back?"

"Here," he says, "Take a look," and he opens his coarse brown burlap bag.

Inside are dozens of small dark-red tomatoes. We keep staring at the contents of his bag, clearly unconvinced, so he dips his thin hand in and carefully shifts the contents so we can see that's all he has.

"Tiantai Mountain is a wonderful place to gather husks. Ground tomatoes. I always come here this time of year." He puts his finger to his lips. "Not a word to anyone, please. It's a secret."

"This is Tiantai Mountain?"

"Yes."

"In China?"

"Yes. A magical place, don't you think so?"

"Absolutely," says Single Malt.

"That's the word for it," I say.

"You young men look flushed," the elderly man says. "You're thirsty. The stream here has the most refreshing water in the world." Then he murmurs, more to himself than to us, "Oh, when I was young, I drank deep at the riverside and gorged on wild peaches."

With a faraway look in his eyes, he pops a tomato in his mouth, and chomps down on it. Then absently he uses his sleeve to wipe off the trickle of juice that spills from the corner of his mouth. We all agree that some cool water sounds like just the thing. Hole No. 5 can wait.

We follow him, lugging our clubs with us, decidedly cacophonous. He gives us a pitying look, burdened as we are, but doesn't say anything. Making a beeline for our other two balls, he stoops and harvests first one and then the other. He shows us his finds, cheerfully, before depositing them in his bag. More small dark-red tomatoes.

"Let's leave our clubs here," says Wild Turkey. "We're going to be taking a drop anyway." We follow his words of wisdom.

The unencumbered hike to the river is pretty and peaceful. The mountains seem to tower over us every-which-way but our new acquaintance knows how to go. Soon we hear an unmistakable sound, the chattering of a stream. The path he has us traveling is overgrown with roses, marvelously perfumed and shady. After walking a few minutes, our new friend leads us out of this bower back into the light of day.

Before us stand a half-dozen peach trees, branches brimming with fruit. Overripe peaches lie strewn on the ground.

Beyond is a narrow fairway lying athwart a swiftly dancing brook. Boulders line the banks of the riverside. Our elderly friend is still hunting and gathering. He goes up to one of the trees and begins gently feeling the peaches. Apparently satisfied with their ripeness, he picks several and puts them in his bag.

Then he chooses one especially magnificent, plump peach and takes a big bite. As the juice drips down his beard, he smiles at us and nods meaningfully at the trees, clearly indicating that we should help ourselves. Even after my four-leaf clover debacle, I'm drawn irresistibly to the fruit trees. We all are.

I step into a space beneath the branches of one of them and close my eyes to savor the fragrance radiating from the wood and the leaves and the peaches. After a moment, I pick myself a lovely ripe peach. It feels perfect and heavy in my hand. I take a bite. It seems as if it's the most delicious peach I've ever tasted.

"Omigod. These are unbelievable."

"Aren't they? I come every year and eat to my heart's content," he says.

"Mmm, mmm!"

"Eat a Peach!"

"For sure."

"Great album."

"The Allman Brothers knew what they were talking about."

"No kidding."

"Go ahead and pick some," says the elderly man. "We'll eat them down by the river."

We hike, hands full, down to the steam. It's a rowdier river than I realized, but there's a flat little area our new acquaintance knows where we can kneel, lower ourselves to the stream, and drink deeply. Not without giving ourselves a good dousing, though, which is fine. I didn't realize how parched I was. After gulping down the water from the mountain stream, I give my hands a quick rinse and splash water on my face and the back of my neck. Cool and invigorating, all the way down my spine. The elderly man perches on one of the boulders and we join him.

"I feel like a new man," says Wild Turkey.

"A new and improved dude," agrees Beer Boy.

"Don't you?" asks Wild Turkey. "Is this awesome, or what?"

"Are you kidding?" I say.

"Feeling awfully fine," says Beer Boy.

"This time I'm really not leaving," says Single Malt. "To hell with golf."

"Please, don't curse," says the sage, clearly pained. "This place is sacred."

"You're right. What was I thinking? I'm sorry."

"It's sacred to me, anyway," he says, looking at each of us in turn. "Want me to tell you why?"

"Definitely."

"Long ago, my best friend and I were out gathering ground tomatoes, on a day much like today. We came to this spot and discovered the wild peaches. And two women, lovely girls, sunning themselves. Oh, my goodness, they were so beautiful!"

"Hmm."

"And they didn't run away. They were surprised but happy to have company."

"I take back everything bad I've ever said about golf," says Single Malt. "I love this game!"

"I love this course!" says Wild Turkey.

The tomato-gatherer completely ignores our youthful enthusiasms. He looks as if he's surveying his whole life and that it's as vast as Tiantai Mountain.

Finally, the elderly man continues. "They said we could stay here with them, if we wanted. But we had lives!"

"Hmm."

"Still, I admit, we didn't depart immediately. How could we? We stayed with them in the mountains for a week, or two, maybe longer, tucked away in a cave where they lived, where no one ever bothered us. We were happy! But, one day, my friend and I decided we absolutely had to leave and we tore ourselves away. The girls were sad, but they didn't stop us. We went back - to our wives and children, our work, our friends."

"One almost forgets on this course," I say quietly.

"That's amazing," says Beer Boy. "That happened to you right here?"

"Yes, right here. In most ways, we were glad to return home. But from time to time we came back, looking. More than a few times. Here I am now. Just to see if… But we never saw them again! They gave us the choice. Stay with them, or leave and never have what they were offering us, ever again."

We all were quiet. Only the river kept on splashing along.

"Maybe your long-lost friends keep the stream flowing and the wild peaches growing."

"Maybe," he concedes.

"Just for you."

"And for you young fellows, too," he adds.

"Maybe."

Then we all lapse into silence and meditate of the usual things - love and loss and time and three-foot putts.

"Oh, I have a long trip home," the elderly man says finally, and he slowly stands up. "My wife will worry if I'm late. Understandably. I better be off."

"Great to meet you," Wild Turkey says.

"You know where to go?" he asks. "Back that way, through the trees, down the primrose path."

"We'll find our way."

"Good luck, young men, and choose wisely."

And with that, the elderly man turns and walks surprisingly quickly back toward the path into the woods of the mountains.

"Boy, it's good we scoped this out," Beer Boy says. "That second shot's completely blind."

"Is that all you can talk about?" I snap. "Golf?"

"That was a joke, Coffee. What do you take me for?"

"Man, can you believe that old guy? What a story."

Lilting from the direction of the heavenly peach trees, we hear a woman's voice. The cart nymph is back. For a moment she looks as if she's Chinese, too, wearing a kimono. That impression dissipates like morning fog and then she's really back.

"Is he gone?" she asks, walking up.

"The nice guy who stole our golf balls? Why do you ask?"

"He and I can no longer see one another. It's a long story. Maybe he told you…"

I feel a sharp pang of jealousy, sharper than the thorns of the blackberries. Suddenly, I know it's a little hard to believe, I'm jealous of a centenarian. I look back at the mountain to make sure the old man's gone for good.

"I brought all your clubs in my cart," says the nymph, moving right along. "You may drop on the fairway up ahead and play from there."

"Peach of an idea," says Single Malt.

"You're a peach," I say quietly to the nymph.

"Delicious," she replies, feigning not to understand, "aren't they?" And she takes a big bite out of a juicy one.

When not writing about golf, Richard Voorhees is a novelist, filmmaker and lexicographer. His novel, "Shooting Genji," and his dictionary of occupations, "The World's Oldest Professions," are available on Amazon.com and at his website, www.rgvoorhees.com.