FanStory.com - Saving Mr. Calvin - Chapter 5Bby Jim Wile

Background
A story about the origin and the future of the game of golf

See Author Notes for the list of characters and unfamiliar terms.

Recap of Part 1: The year is 2032, and young Kevin Parsons, living in Santa Barbara, CA, has invited his two good friends, Paul Putnam and Ernie (Dumbo) Dumbrowski, for breakfast and a round of golf afterwards. Over breakfast, the three engineers lament the sorry state of golf courses in not only California but in the rest of the country, as presumably non-golfing environmentalists are destroying the game, without specifically banning it, by destroying its field of play.

They go to the golf course, which is in terrible shape due to the lack of water and other restrictions, and meet Art Calvin, a retired golf course architect who actually designed the course they are playing. He joins the boys, and they begin their round. When they reach the 7th hole, Kevin hooks his tee shot out-of-bounds. He can see it resting on the other side of an old railroad trestle. The chapter ends as he walks beneath the trestle to go retrieve his ball.

The railroad trestle is a time portal, and all of a sudden, we are in 13th-century Holland. Kilian Pauls, a 14-year-old boy, is running out of the woods and through the fields, being chased by two big boys shouting curses at him. He hears a voice calling to him and makes for it. It is a redheaded young girl who beckons him into the entrance to a cave to hide. It appears as though they have vanished, and the followers cannot find Kilian and give up the hunt. Kilian has just met a cute young girl named Arie Papin, and the two are instantly attracted to each other. She leaves for home soon after, and Kilian starts back to his hill, where he tends sheep.

Kilian devises a plan to get his scroll back from his friend Lard who stole it. He will challenge him to a new game he devised called kolf, named after the club he uses to hit black walnut husks—the green ones that are perfectly round balls. He and Lard and another friend, Rube, have been playing the new game for several weeks, aiming at various targets in the meadows and fields. Kilian proposes that the prize for winning the game will be getting his scroll back if he wins, and getting his scroll back if he loses too, but then he will also have to teach Lard to read and write, as making fun of Lard’s illiteracy the day before is what led to the chase. They play the match, but Kilian lets Lard win because he felt badly about insulting him.

The next day, Kilian moves his sheep closer to where he met Arie in hopes that he will see her again. He sits down to write her a poem on the scroll he got back from Lard. She shows up before he has quite finished, and he reads the poem to her. She is touched by it and kisses him. They begin playing together and run a footrace back to the walnut tree where his kolf is stored. He teaches her to hit a walnut ball with it, and she is instantly delighted by the new game.

She put her left hand on the kolf next to and above her right hand, and started by hoisting the club as high as she could without first having set it on the ground behind the ball. Stepping into it, she took a mighty downswing at the ball… and missed it completely. The momentum of the swing was so forceful, though, that the kolf came right around and smacked her on the back. She lost her balance and fell down on her butt. Rather than being embarrassed, she burst out laughing, looked up at me, and said, “I missed!”

She was so cute there on the ground, laughing, that I laughed too as I extended a hand to help her back up. With an attitude like that, this was going to be fun teaching her to play!

Chapter 5B

“Why don’t you let me show you how I do it? I’ve been working at it for a few weeks now, and I think I’ve developed a good way to hit the ball—without falling down.”

“Alright. Show me how.” She handed the kolf back to me.

I took a stance next to the ball and placed the kolf on the ground behind it. “See, it works better if you start with the kolf where you want it to end up—back at the ball. Then you flex your knees, stand with your feet apart, and try not to move them around; otherwise, it’s very hard to hit the ball cleanly. Now, you just swing it back, not too fast,” I said, as I did these motions, “and then… whack it,” as the kolf came back down and struck the ball cleanly. Off it shot into the air and landed gently about 70 paces away. The momentum of the kolf had brought my body around, facing the shot. My weight was all on my left leg, and my right heel was off the ground. My arms were folded, and the kolf hung down my back. I was in complete balance on my left foot and right toes.

Arie looked at me in awe. “That was wonderful! Let me watch you again, then I will try it.”

I pulled another ball from my pocket and set it on the turf. I demonstrated the swing again and sent another ball sailing into the sky. “Do you think you have the idea now?”

“Maybe. Let me try it again.” First, she ran back and picked up a few nuts from the ground.

“Only the green ones,” I said. “The others aren’t solid enough.”

She picked up a few, placing them in the pocket of her tunic, and ran back. She pulled one out and placed it on a tuft of grass. Then I handed her the kolf. She gripped it the way I had, with her hands closer together, and took a stance beside the ball, setting the kolf lightly on the ground behind the ball the way I showed her. She flexed her knees slightly then she drew the kolf slowly back, much more controlled this time, but way around her neck so that the kolf was pointing almost to the ground while she bent her left elbow. Then she brought the club back down with a lot of speed and gave the ball a glancing blow, which sent it along the ground about ten paces to the left. The club wound around her body again, but she was able to stay on her feet this time—just barely.

She looked at me with a smile and said, “At least I struck it a little this time.”

“Yes, that was much better, but let me try to help you some more. Put another one down, and I’ll get behind you, hold the club lightly with you, and guide you through the swing.”

She put a ball down and made a stance, then I stood right behind her back as she bent over the ball, and I slipped my hands over the top of hers. My arms were much longer than hers, and I stood nearly a head taller, so this was not hard to do. “Now as we swing back, keep your left arm straight, but bend your right.”

We started the club back together, and she did what I said. When we got the kolf almost back to parallel with the ground, I stopped her from swinging any farther back. “Now we start back down by sliding our hips to the left a little, and then swing down into the ball.” As we did this, we gave it a nice whack, and it flew up into the air—not too far, but at least it was a solid hit.

“We did it!” she cried. “Now let me try it by myself.”

I stepped away and returned to facing her from the front as she placed another ball on the tuft. She bent over the ball again and started swinging back, this time keeping her left arm straight and stopping at the top, well short of where she had previously stopped. She started down again, forgetting to thrust her hips and perhaps straightening her wrists too early, but she hit the ball squarely this time, and it flew 25 paces in the air.

“Good shot!” I said. She was beaming.

“I really did it! It wasn’t as far as yours, but I got it in the air.”

“You sure did. It takes some practice to hit it farther, but you’re on the right path now.”

“I wanna try it again.” She took another ball from her pocket and put it down.

“Arie, did you ever beat a rug with a stick to get the dirt out?”

“Of course.”

“You know how your wrists are bent back when you take the stick back? You don’t then straighten them right away before coming back to the rug; you kind of wait until you’re almost at the rug, then you whip your hands through by straightening your wrists for more power. Same with this. Keep your wrists cocked for a while on the way down and let them whip through at the ball.”

“Got it.” She followed my directions and this time whacked the ball about twice as far.

“Good shot. See how much farther that went?”

She was beaming again. She put another ball down to try it once more. At the last second before she struck the ball, I noticed it was a brown one. When the kolf struck it, it smashed into hundreds of pieces, which flew everywhere. Some hit her, some hit me, but most just dispersed in a cloud of particles. She burst out laughing, and so did I.

“I just wanted to see what would happen,” she said as she pulled bits of it off her face and out of her hair, and I did likewise.

“Now you know. You are a pip, you know that?”

“Thank you. Maybe tomorrow we could try a game, but I think I’d better be heading home again. It’s getting near the noon hour, and I’ve chores to do. I don’t want Pa or Ma chastising me for being gone all day.”

“Yes, a game tomorrow would be wonderful. Can I walk you home?”

“No, but you can run me home.” She dropped the kolf and raced away.

I followed her and soon caught up. We jogged along, laughing together and just enjoying each other’s company. The meadow grass was fairly short for having been grazed by the sheep, and there were wildflowers everywhere. It was easy going, and we jogged steadily all the way to her farm. We agreed to meet again tomorrow at the cave entrance, when the sundial said 10 o’clock. She thanked me for the poem, and we said goodbye.