FanStory.com - Saving Mr. Calvin - Chapter 10by 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 the story so far: 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 has invented a new game in which he hits a ball with a “kolf” which is Dutch for “club.” He plays this game, which he calls “kolf,” with his friends, Lard and Rube—fellow shepherds like him. He teaches Arie the game and together the four of them devise new ways to play it including putting the balls into holes on greens that the sheep have grazed smooth. They create different kolfs for different shots, and make wooden balls.

Kilian and Arie take a real fancy to each other, and Arie introduces him to her parents who also like him instantly.

As the game of kolf advances, with Arie’s introduction of holing (putting), so too does the relationship between Kilian and Arie as they share their first real kiss.

Chapter 10

It was another beautiful morning—not overly warm yet—and the sun was shining brightly through a clear sky with few clouds. I got to the cave first this morning, and after tidying up the area a bit by gathering together the remnants of the wood that comprised our fire last night into a pile again, I retrieved the kolfs, balls, and the trowel that we had secreted behind the tree. When I came out of the trees again, Arie was there.

We spent the rest of the morning laying out and playing new holes through the meadows, trying to stay mostly in the areas where the sheep had grazed because the grass was shorter there. We didn’t want to risk losing one of our balls, that took so long to make, in the long grass and weeds, so we made every effort to stay away from those areas.

We began to build some variety into the holes we made by aiming them around trees, running them close to creeks, and placing the greens on top of high ground; however, this presented a new problem.

Standing atop one hill, I said to Arie, “If we place the green up here, look how difficult the shot to the green becomes. The hill up to the top has a lot of weedy grass and crags in it, as well as some whins. It’s not smooth at all. If you’re down at the bottom of the hill, you won’t be able to run the ball up; you need to lift it up high and over this stuff. But we don’t have a kolf capable of doing that. I think we need to make one for just such occasions as this, and I think I know how to do it. Do you remember when your pa said that the extra angle on your kolf would make the ball fly higher?”

“Yes! So, we make one with much more of a slant to it to hit the ball high. That’s brilliant, Kilian.”

“So, you figured it out too! Why don’t we finish up by playing back to the green by the cave, and then we can find a good branch in the trees behind it?”

“Oh, this is so exciting coming up with all these ideas with you. I love this game! I love—”

Then she stopped and looked down.

“What? What were you about to say?”

She was blushing. “Nothing. Let’s just play back to the green by the cave,” she said, changing the subject. Then she turned and ran back down the hill.

I just stood there, watching her. I had a feeling about what she was going to say. I’m not exactly sure what “love” is when it comes to boys and girls, but if it’s the exciting feeling I get when I’m around her and the constant thinking about her when we are apart, then I certainly love her. And it’s not just the way she looks, which I find adorable, but the way she laughs, and makes jokes, and sticks her tongue out at me, and is so kind to Rube, and how she always wants to go first because she likes to—all of those things. Plus, she loves to play kolf. I just love everything about her.

“You hit from up there, Kilian, and I’ll hit from down here,” she called to me.

“Alright,” I shouted back as she was still walking forward. She turned then and watched me hit a beauty. It seemed to soar forever, sailing down that hill, and landed almost 200 paces away.

“Awesome shot!” I heard her cry. When I got down to the bottom of the hill and started forward to catch up to her, she turned and said, “Here?”

“You could move up a little bit more if you want.” We had been negotiating the shorter routes to the holes that she would take all morning.

“How about here?”

“That looks fine. Go ahead and smash it.”

As I walked up, I watched her take the kolf back slowly, but when she got to the top of the swing, she put everything into the shot, and it sailed a good 140 paces in the air and rolled another 20. She was improving rapidly. Like Rube, I was amazed at how such “a wee thing” could hit it so far. She was gifted at this. But her biggest strength came at holing the ball when on the greens. She had a fine touch and seemed to be able to judge slopes and their effect on the roll of the ball very well. She needed that ability at the end, as she holed one from six paces away to win the last hole by a stroke.

“Five strokes. I won!”

I was already laying five and not in the hole yet, so I just picked up my ball and congratulated her. “You’re getting so good now, Arie.”

“Thank you. I like to win the holes.”

I chuckled at that. I love the way she speaks her mind—just says whatever she’s thinking. We walked back to the cave then, put our kolfs and balls down behind the same tree, and started searching for a suitable branch to make our new angled-face kolf with.