Miracle on the 17th Green Read online

  For the second time in a row, Nicklaus aimed his ball straight and true, and this time when I turned to Earl in despair, he didn’t bother to contradict me.

  Like everyone else who was there, he just tilted forward and stared slack-jawed as the ball rolled inexorably toward the hole. With the bloodchilling vividness of an unwelcome flashback, I replayed in my mind Nicklaus’s immortal squat and charge at the Masters in ’86, when he had sunk that huge putt on 15, and raced off the green, his putter shimmering overhead in the dying afternoon light like a cavalry saber.

  The putt barreled holeward, dead center all the way. I braced myself for yet another Nicklaus sprint into history, recalling in that gloomy instant the often-forgotten fact that, in addition to being a golfing prodigy, young Jack was the Ohio high school champion in the 100-yard dash.

  I had no right to complain. It had been a great ride. Better than great. But now it was over. The fat lady was about to sing. Jack dropped into his standing crouch. It was in!

  Until it screeched to a stop on the lip, half a turn short.

  The crowd exhaled.

  So did I.

  Jack tapped in for par.

  Thirty-nine

  MY OWN TITLEIST 3, the sole survivor of the sleeve Pop had dropped on the grass the week before in Winnetka, was sparkling on the slope five feet off the green, twenty-five feet from the hole, with the green running sharply downhill away from me.

  It was the kind of chip you definitely wouldn’t want if you had to make par. But for a golfer on the verge of a nervous breakdown who needed a birdie, it was a chip with possibilities. For one thing, it was physically impossible to leave the ball short.

  Choking up—no pun intended—on a 9-iron, I set the blade behind the ball, then gave it the gentlest of flicks. I watched as the ball barely cleared the rough and bounced softly on the green. I watched it steadily put on more and more speed. Then I watched it dive like Bugs Bunny into the back of the hole. At least that’s what I think I saw.

  Everything went sideways. Twenty thousand people leaped toward the sky, and I fell to my knees, where Earl got down with me and gave me a hug I swear I can still feel. For several minutes, the world was nothing but noise.

  Finally the roar began to subside, and I stood up and walked to the hole to pluck out my ball. But before I retrieved my ball, I did something I hadn’t done in eighteen holes.

  I looked over at Raymond and I stared straight into his eyes.

  And I winked.

  Now, it’s one thing having to sink a six-footer on the last hole of the U.S. Senior Open to force a play-off with Jack Nicklaus, the holder of twenty major titles and the greatest golfer to ever trod the sod. It’s quite another having to sink a six-footer to avoid losing to Travis McKinley, an unknown rookie, who had never won a single full-length sanctioned event in his life, and six months earlier was squeezing out bad advertising jingles. As Floyd stepped up to his putt, he was fighting more pressure than any competitive psyche should ever be asked to handle.

  But if Raymond was feeling the heat, he wasn’t sharing that fact with me or anyone else. As I’d seen so many times before on TV, he strutted up to his ball with brisk, officious little steps, wiggled his butt into a comfortable position, and with his lips slightly pursed, squinted back and forth between the ball and the cup as if he couldn’t quite decide which of the two was a bigger asshole.

  He looked composed, and focused, and utterly unflappable. He looked like a contract killer taking care of business. Then he yanked that six-footer so far left that it missed the hole by half a foot.

  Suddenly, I had Sarah, Simon, Noah, and Elizabeth in my arms. I was dancing with Pop and then with Earl, and then I think Earl had all of us in his arms. I was shaking hands with Raymond Floyd and Jack Nicklaus, and then I was giving the winning golf ball back to my grandfather. “Thanks for the loan, Pop,” I shouted through the roar. “Now don’t hit this one in a lake.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, beaming even more brightly than usual. “I’ll just use it for chipping.”

  And somewhere in the basement of the Pebble Beach clubhouse, a lonely jeweler began scratching “T. McKinley” on a very large silver cup.

  EPILOGUE

  Post-Miracle Happenings

  TWO MONTHS LATER.

  Two in the morning.

  A dream stirs me from a deep sleep, and I sit up in a large oak bed where, in an odd way, I feel completely comfortable for the first time.

  As my eyes adjust to the moonlight, I scan a room that is both familiar and brilliantly new. On one side is an old wooden chest I inherited from my great-grandfather. On the right is a chest and mirror that Sarah got from her grandmother, with inlaid flowers on the doors, and a large lacquer tray resting on top filled with tortoiseshell combs and a pair of antique Russian silver bracelets she has been wearing for more than twenty years.

  Although I’d only been gone about six months, I have no trouble imagining how Odysseus must have felt to be finally back home with Penelope after a ten-year trek through the world.

  Careful not to wake Sarah, who lies on her side facing me, the slightest trace of a smile curling the edges of her small mouth, I slide out of bed and wander through my old house, a house my grandfather built, with the help of only a single laborer, the year I was born.

  Even though she hasn’t lived at home for half a dozen years now, I visit Elizabeth’s room first. With its fading rock star posters still taped to the wall, and its stuffed animals, it looks like a kind of teenage time capsule, circa 1984. Earnest, irreproachable Elizabeth, who in twenty-seven years never gave us a thing to worry about. Was she ever really a teenager, or did she go directly from infancy to radiology? It occurs to me that I know less about her than my other children. The next morning I will call Elizabeth to schedule a trip to New Haven to try to do something about that.

  Then I lean into Simon’s room, and see him peace-fully stretched out, three earrings and all, his thin, six-two frame hanging over the edges of his ten-year-old single bed. You can’t love any one of your kids more than another, and I swear to God I don’t. But for better and worse, Simon is me, and my heart feels so connected to his that it doesn’t even have to go out to him. It’s already there.

  Lying beside him like a faithful little pup, or better yet, like a not-to-be-underestimated watchdog, his oversized shaggy brown head resting on Simon’s back, is our own great man Noah, who must have been feeling restless himself and wandered to his brother’s room in the middle of the night. Noah, the third and final member of this small generation of McKinleys. The miracle kid, whose arrival itself was a surprise and who has been startling us in one way or another ever since. But then again, as Lee said, and I call him Lee now, even in my mind, we’re all miracles out here, every last one of us.

  I carefully pick Noah up, and deposit him back in his own bed, in his own room across the hall. Then I take a seat in the living room, and sit there for a good long while in the dim light, just drinking it all in.

  Sarah. Elizabeth. Simon. Noah. Sarah. Elizabeth. Simon. Noah.

  I sit there until I catch my own smiling reflection in a large silver bowl on the mantel above the fireplace, and then I wander back to my own bed.

  If I’m not the happiest man alive, God bless whoever is.

  ONE LAST THING.

  That following Christmas morning I went out to play golf again.

  It wasn’t anything I’d planned on doing, but when I stepped outside that morning to scrape the Tribune off the stoop, and saw that even at eight in the morning the temperature was already in the high teens, it just seemed like the right thing to do, if only as a way of showing my gratitude for the whole chain of events last year’s round had set off.

  Once again Christmas caught the Chicago winter napping—the mercury continued to soar throughout the morning—and by the time I pulled my big burgundy Beemer into the Creekview Country Club a little past noon the temperature was a balmy 34 degrees. For some time, I just stood by m
y car in the empty lot, stretching and thinking in the steep light. I was like a seal sunning himself on an ice floe.

  Finally, I headed to the 17th tee, and as I bent over to thumb my tee into the resistant turf, I caught a wave of déjà vu so powerful it almost knocked me over.

  As I started to play, it only grew more intense.

  Hadn’t my first drive last year come to rest beside the very same sprinkler head? Didn’t my 5-iron check up on this exact spot on the green? Haven’t I seen that skinny red squirrel somewhere before?

  Once again, I stood over a nine-foot eagle putt on the 17th green. Once again I saw the line as clearly as if it had been stenciled on the short grass. Once again I poured it dead center into the back of the cup.

  And once again, I played or replayed, however you want to put it, the round of my life. If anything, I played a little better this time out, because after a year on tour and a lot of help from Earl, I wasn’t quite so unnerved by being a few strokes under par.

  But this was more than a few strokes under par. Eagles weren’t an endangered species in Chicago that Christmas—I had two in the first four holes—and by the time I made the turn, I knew in my bones I was going to break the course record of 62, a mark I’d been chasing since my grandfather brought me to this course almost half a century ago.

  With only 15 and 16 left to play (remember, I started on 17), I was already eleven under par. To break the record, all I had to do was par out. Then I birdied 15. Now all I had to do was bogey 16, and 16 is the shortest and easiest par 4 on the course.

  Whistling like Fuzzy, I bent over to tee up my final drive of the year. But as I stood back up, a strong gust lifted my Pebble Beach cap into the wind, and when I spun to snatch it back, I saw the same Christmas display tethered to a nearby house that had snapped me out of my reverie the year before.

  Once again, it sent me fishing for my watch in a panic.

  When I read the time, I had the urge to drop to my knees and kiss the semifrozen Winnetka dirt. I had spent a lot more time stretching than I thought. Maybe I even zoned out there for a while. But even if I ran into a parade and caught every red light in town, I could still walk into my house with plenty of time to shower and shave before Christmas dinner.

  In fact, I could probably finish my round and still get home on time.

  But I’d be cutting it close.

  I didn’t even bend down to pick up my ball. I just threw my bag over my shoulder, and started running for dear life.

  An Afterword

  ONE MORNING in the spring of ’95, there was a knock on my door and Jim Patterson stuck his then-bearded head into my small office. Although Jim was already a bestselling author, the rare dealings I had with him were based on his formidable day job as president and creative director of J. Walter Thompson North America. For a copywriter who spent much of his day brazenly working on freelance magazine stories—that’s why the door was shut in the first place—unexpected visits from upper management were rarely a good thing, and as Jim gently closed the door behind him and turned to face me, I had ample reason to be uptight. “I’ve got a proposal,” he said. “I have an idea for a small novel about a middle-aged guy who, after getting fired from his job and dumped by his wife, qualifies to play the Senior Tour and wins the United States Senior Open. It will be called Miracle on the 17th Green and I think it could be very good, but I don’t have time to do it by myself. Would you like to write it with me?”

  It took me a couple minutes to digest my good fortune. Jim wasn’t firing me. He was offering me a chance that would change my life.

  By the time our paths crossed, Jim had been writing fiction for more than a decade, getting up before dawn and writing for several hours before he came to work. His early-morning sessions produced nine novels, including Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, Hide and Seek, and Jack and Jill, but recently he’d come to realize that he had more ideas for books than he would ever have time to write himself.

  The subject matter and tone of Miracle were strikingly different from any Patterson book that came before it. Jim was building his reputation with streamlined, high-velocity thrillers, and here was a fable about love and family and chasing your dreams that was funny and sweet and self-effacing. I went on to write three thrillers with Jim, but Miracle is the one that elicits the strongest and deepest reaction—from all kinds of readers, not just from golfers. It’s also a book that has meant a great deal to me. When Jim stuck his head into my office, I had no trouble identifying with Travis McKinley’s plight at the beginning of his story. I had just gotten separated and I made my living doing something I hated.

  As a result, I threw myself at the semimiraculous offer to write a novel as furiously as Travis throws himself into his last chance at golfing glory. And I could appreciate how much it meant to Travis to finally be doing what he wanted, because the same thing was happening to me. That process culminated last year in the publication of my own thriller, Shadows Still Remain.

  —Peter de Jonge, spring 2010

  I am not in the habit of writing afterwords. Usually, when I finish one novel, I start right away on the next. But I will add this much to the legend of Miracle on the 17th Green. On July 24, 1997, I married Susan Solie—on the 17th green of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. That “miracle” continues on to this day. In fact, our eleven-year-old son, Jack, recently parred the magical 17th, which means so much to our family.

  —James Patterson, spring 2010

  About the Authors

  JAMES PATTERSON has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson’s books have sold more than 240 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Mr. Patterson also writes the bestselling Women’s Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the top-selling New York detective series of all time, featuring Detective Michael Bennett.

  James Patterson also writes books for young readers, including the Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, and Middle School series. In total, these books have spent more than 220 weeks on national bestseller lists.

  His lifelong passion for books and reading led James Patterson to launch the website ReadKiddoRead.com to give adults an easy way to locate the very best books for kids. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.

  PETER DE JONGE is the author of Shadows Still Remain and has coauthored three New York Times bestsellers with James Patterson. He has been a reporter for the Associated Press and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. His work has appeared in Best American Sports Writing, National Geographic, Harper’s Bazaar, Details, and Manhattan, Inc. He lives in New York City.

  Gaby Summerhill is ready to

  walk down the aisle…

  but who the groom is—is

  anyone’s guess

  For an excerpt, turn the page.

  GABY’S FIRST VIDEO

  ONLY TWENTY-FOUR DAYS until Christmas, and this Christmas is going to be one you won’t forget.

  Need proof? I think I can give you proof.

  I want all four of you to take a good, long look at the screen and your mom.

  Everybody watching? Emily? Claire? Seth? Lizzie? Emily? You see anything unusual or, well, kind of stunning?

  Okay. Let me turn around for you… Turning… Turning again.

  Yes. Your eyes tell the truth. I have lost twelve pounds and several ounces.

  Stop, stop! No worries, no frets or fears. No neurotic theories about my health.

  I’m not sick or anything like that. Maybe a little sick in the head. As always. Part of my charm.

  I just gave up Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and the occasional beer before bedtime. And I banished mayonnaise—low-fat or otherwise—from the house. And white bread. Dunkin’ Donuts for sure. It made me somewhat miserable… and hungr
y. But it also made me thinner. And, I must admit, happier. Yes, I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.

  I needed a big change. Everybody needs a change. If you don’t change, you’re stuck in a rut.

  I know that people around here always say, “Oh, Gaby, you lead such an interesting life… You run that farm of yours pretty much by yourself. You write a food blog that isn’t too egotistical or boring. You teach the local kids to read and write.”

  Oh, yes, I do… and I love it… but honestly, it just wasn’t enough for me.

  I was in a life rut that was only getting deeper. R-u-t. Put on boots and a loden coat the morning after a snowstorm and trudge to the henhouse to collect four eggs. Start adding nutritional facts to the recipes on the blog and people you never even met accuse you of being a nutrition Nazi.

  Teach English, or at least try to make the kids love reading. I know this is going to come as a bit of a shock, but most teenagers think that Great Expectations—to use a phrase—“blows,” but that any book with a vampire in it is brilliant. Especially if the vampire is darkly handsome and promises eternal love with every bite. Great Expectations does kind of blow, by the way.

  So anyway, I promise you, I’m not going through the dreaded midlife crisis. I’m not even at my midlife.

  And, hey, the first one of you who makes a crack about my being way past midlife gets tossed out of the will. I’m serious, kiddies.

  I do need some excitement, though. I think the wildest thing I’ve done in the last three years is to ask your kids to call me by my first name. I disliked being called Grandma. Made me itchy all over.