Assaulted by the voices, jostled by the crowds, TRH-247 wandered
through the camp. The driving tempo of its gaiety infected him,
stealing into his blood stream, quickening all his senses into a kind
of exaggerated awareness. Several drinks had blurred the residue
of horror left from the scene he had witnessed on the golf green,
and diluted the angry tension of the last two holes played out in
the fading light. In the evening's party atmosphere he could almost
forget--although, like someone holding a door closed against a ghost,
he avoided the shadowed places and the dimly lighted side roads which
separated the rows of residential buildings, seeking out the open,
crowded centers and the bright lights.
On those final two holes of golf Hendley had required thirteen strokes.
The number would not easily be forgotten, for each time he had
addressed his ball, the stocky, bald-headed player had stood behind
him, chuckling softly, tapping his weighted clubhead in his hand or
casually lifting it. Hendley had had to fight down panic. His shots
had been erratic and uncontrollable. To his lasting shame, on the last
hole, as he placed himself behind his amused opponent in position to
interfere with a drive, he had found himself thinking: If I struck now,
I could get him first.
But nothing had happened. Hendley had not acted, and the man he called
Curly had been content to smile at Hendley's nervousness and to mock
his ill-concealed anger and revulsion. At the end of the sixth hole the
stocky man had chuckled, saying, "Beat you by nineteen strokes. You're
not much competition." And with that he had picked up his ball and
walked away, leaving Hendley to stare after him bitterly, galled by the
intense relief that left him quivering, unable to walk steadily, his
hands shaking so he had trouble retrieving his ball.
Time, the serene beauty of the camp, and two quick whiskeys at the
nearest refreshment counter quieted Hendley's nerves and helped him to
gain perspective. Obviously there must be some form of internal force
for law and order among the Freemen. Outsiders presumably couldn't
interfere with that internal rule. To do so would be to deny freedom.
When Hendley found out how the system worked, he would have to report
the dangerously mad golfer. Something would be done. Surely the risks
of golf mentioned by Curly didn't include cold-blooded murder!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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