The Mini Golf Cuckold

Let me tell you how it started, because it started with a sandwich board, of all things.

My name's Elliott Sandman, I'm sixty-three years old, and back when I was twenty-six I won the regional mini golf championship in Bellingham, Washington. Two years running, actually. Nineteen eighty-eight and eighty-nine. There's a photo of me in the paper holding a trophy shaped like a windmill, and I looked like a fool but a happy fool, you know? Nancy keeps that clipping in a drawer and pulls it out whenever I get too big for my britches.

I married Nancy when I was twenty-four and she was twenty-two. That was thirty-nine years ago and she's sixty-one now, retired schoolteacher, still sharp as a tack. We met at a line dance out in Ferndale. She walked in wearing boots with actual fringe on them and I said to myself, well, there she is. Thirty-nine years and we still dance two or three times a month. Our knees complain but we go anyway.

So retirement comes along and I figure, what better way to celebrate than a trip? Three-day ferry crossing from Vancouver up to a little port in Southeast Alaska, aboard a ship called the MV Taku Star. Nancy packed for both of us because she always does, and off we went.

Now here's where I need you to understand something about me. I have not lost my touch. Forty years on and I can still drop a hole in one from thirty feet. Nancy jokes that I'd putt in my sleep if the bed had a green. So when I saw that sandwich board outside the dining hall the first morning, I nearly dropped my coffee!

The thing said, in big letters, "DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE INAUGURAL MINI GOLF CHARITY CLASSIC." And below that, "TOP DECK, 2 PM."

Well! A practice round! For a tournament! On a ship! I read it three times to be sure and then I went looking for competition, because a man doesn't stay champion-shaped by sitting around.

"Did you see this?" I said to Nancy, pointing at the board like it might get away.

"I see it, Elliott."

"Practice round at two! I'm going to enter. You should too!"

"I think I'll watch, honey," she said, and she had this little smile on, which I took for amusement at my excitement. I should have paid closer attention to that smile. I'm telling you that now at the front so you can't say I didn't warn you.

So I'm standing around the top deck at quarter to two and that's when I spot the big fella leaning on the rail. Tall, gray beard, hands like shovels. Turns out he was fifty-eight years old and a farrier by trade, which means he shoes horses, which means those hands weren't for show.

"Name's Finn," he said. "Finn Stone."

"Elliott Sandman. You golf?"

He laughed. "I shoe horses for a living. What do you think?"

"I think you're about to find out," I said, and I held up the putter I'd borrowed from the activities desk. "Practice round for the tournament. You in?"

"Sure, why not!" he said, and shook my hand hard enough to reset my shoulder.

We played the front four and I'll admit the wind up on that deck does funny things to a putt. He took the second hole when my ball caught the little windmill's blade dead center and bounced back twenty feet. Twenty feet! I nearly threw the putter overboard.

"You've done this before," Finn said, watching me line up on the third.

"Regional champ, eighty-eight and eighty-nine," I said.

"Get out."

"Look it up."

And here's where I have to be honest about what I missed, because Nancy had come up to watch by then, and she wasn't watching me. She'd planted herself on a bench near Finn's side of the green, and every time he sank a putt she clapped. She asked him about the horses. She asked him where he was from. She laughed at things that, looking back, were maybe half as funny as she made them sound.

"Your wife's got good taste in champions," Finn said to me, nodding at her.

"She's humoring me," I said. "She's known me since we were young. She watched me win that windmill trophy in person."

"Windmill trophy?" Nancy said, grinning. "You mean the one shaped like a windmill, or the one where you acted like a windmill afterward?"

I did a little dance at that tournament, I'll cop to it. Line dancer's curse. Can't win anything without busting a move.

By the back four I was up two holes and feeling fine, and Finn was a good sport about it, laughing and slapping the rail. Nancy had moved from the bench to standing closer, and at one point she touched his arm when he told a story about a horse that kicked a judge in Bakersfield. Just touched his arm, casual as anything. I noticed it the way you notice weather. Barely.

"Sixty-three years old and still got it," I hollered when I sank the eight hole.

"You do, honey," Nancy called.

What I didn't know, what I could not have known sitting there counting my strokes like I was defending a crown, was that Nancy had been carrying around an idea for a long while. Years, she'd tell me later. A fantasy she'd never once said out loud in thirty-nine years of marriage, and here comes a handsome farrier onto a ferry, and here comes her husband busy chasing a golf tournament that doesn't exist.

Because here's the kicker, and I found out the next morning: that dress rehearsal had nothing to do with golf. Mariah Wilks, the cruise director, fifty-five years old and friendlier than a puppy, was running a rehearsal for the ship's musical revue. The sandwich board was printed wrong. Somebody in the print shop put the mini golf charity classic name on the theater notice, and nobody caught it, and there I was on the top deck at two o'clock sharp playing a one-man tournament against a farrier while the actual cast rehearsed down in the lounge.

Nancy figured it out before I did. She read the fine print on the dining hall door that first afternoon while I was bragging about my birdie on five. And did she tell me? She did not! She kept it to herself, because that woman saw an open door and, well, I'll get to how she walked through it.

But that's ahead of myself. That afternoon ended with me beating Finn by three strokes and him demanding a rematch the next day, and Nancy saying, "Oh, you two should definitely play again," in a voice that had a purr in it I didn't recognize at the time.

"Same time tomorrow?" Finn said, and he was looking at Nancy when he said it, not at me.

"Wouldn't miss it," I said.

"Me neither," Nancy said, and laughed, and Finn laughed, and I laughed too, because I'm an idiot. A happy, trophy-holding, windmill-dancing idiot.

That night at dinner in the dining hall, the three of us sat together, and Finn told horse stories and Nancy hung on every one. I was mostly talking about the course conditions and how the windmill hole was badly designed, which is true, and nobody was really listening to me, which should have been a clue.

"You playing in the charity classic tomorrow?" I asked him.

"What charity classic?" Finn said.

"The one the rehearsal's for."

"Elliott," Nancy said slowly, stirring her coffee, "did you actually read that whole board?"

"I read the important parts."

She and Finn exchanged a look. I caught it this time, but I read it wrong. I thought it meant "isn't he charming." It did not mean that.

Finn ordered us all a round of drinks from the bar and raised his glass. "To the champion," he said.

"To the champion." Nancy echoed, and she was looking at him over the rim of her glass, and I still didn't see it, folks. Thirty-nine years of marriage and I was blind as a mole.

We finished the night in the lounge where they actually were rehearsing the musical, which I took for a warm-up act. Nancy danced one dance with Finn to a country song, just one, just friendly, her hand on his shoulder. I watched from a table and felt proud, honestly. Proud that my wife could still turn a head at sixty-one. I should have felt a lot of other things too, but pride is loud and it crowds out the quieter feelings.

When we got back to the cabin that night, Nancy was quiet on the walk down the corridor. Then at the door she stopped and looked at me with that little smile from that morning, the one I should have studied harder.

"Elliott, honey," she said, "do you trust me?"

"Course I do. Thirty-nine years."

"Good," she said. "Because tomorrow's going to be interesting."

I laughed and asked what she meant and she just kissed my cheek and went to brush her teeth.

Morning came and I woke up on the MV Taku Star feeling like a man with a purpose. Day two at sea, one rematch scheduled, one trophy reputation to defend. I did my exercises, I ate a banana, I was at the activities desk at nine sharp asking if they had a practice putter I could borrow again.

"Again?" the kid at the desk said. He was maybe twenty-two, poor thing.

"Yesterday I borrowed one. Putters. For the mini golf."

"Oh. The dress rehearsal thing?"

"That's the one," I said. "Tell your bosses the turnout was small but passionate."

He gave me a look I would come to understand later, the look of a young man who knows something and is too polite to say it. "Sure, sir. Have fun."

I took the putter back to the cabin where Nancy was doing her hair in the little mirror. Sixty-one years old and that woman still fussed over her hair like it was opening night. She had on a sundress I'd never seen before, yellow, with a neckline that made me whistle.

"Who's that for?" I said.

"Anybody who looks," she said, and laughed, and I laughed too, because again, idiot.

We got breakfast and then Finn found us in the corridor, tall as a doorframe, gray beard, hands like baseball mitts. "Rematch day," he said. "I've been thinking about hole seven all night."

"Windmill hole?" Nancy said.

"Windmill hole," Finn said, and we both groaned, and Nancy laughed at us like we were two boys, and I remember thinking, what a nice friendship this is turning out to be.

Now here is where I need to explain my own stupidity, because it takes a special kind of man to be told the truth three separate ways and still miss it. On our way up to the top deck we passed the lounge, and the lounge was full of people. Real rehearsal happening. A woman at a piano. A fellow in suspenders singing something with a lot of feeling and no correct notes. And standing in the middle of it all with a clipboard was Mariah Wilks, the cruise director.

"Finn," Mariah called out. "You're not on until the four o'clock run-through."

"I'm not on at all," Finn said. "I'm losing at golf."

"Musical revue rehearsal," Mariah said to me, cheerful as anything. "You're welcome to watch but the golf classic isn't until next month, hon. The board was printed wrong. We've been telling people all week."

I stood there. I stood there for a good five seconds, holding a putter, in my good golf shirt, on a ferry, in front of my wife and a farrier and a woman with a clipboard.

"Well," I said. "Well, that's. Huh."

"You didn't know?" Finn said.

"I thought it was a practice round," I said. "For the classic. Why would there be a practice round, Elliott, you ask? Because championships are won in practice, Finn, that's why."

Nancy put her hand over her mouth. I thought she was hiding a laugh at my expense, and she was, but there was more in that laugh than a laugh, if that makes any sense. There was a plan in that laugh.

"So there's no tournament," I said. "Today. Or tomorrow."

"Not today," Mariah said kindly. "Next month. In Bellingham, actually, if you're around."

I want you to picture me, sixty-three years old, Bellingham regional champion of 1988 and 1989, thank you very much, standing there with a borrowed putter and nowhere to defend anything. And then I want you to picture what I did, which was the most Elliott thing I have ever done.

"Then I challenge you both," I said. "Right now. Top deck. Winner keeps the title of Taku Star Open Champion, a title I just invented, and which I will almost certainly keep."

"Oh honey," Nancy said.

"You don't have to play," I told her. "You can judge."

"I'll play," Finn said, grinning. "Rematch is rematch."

So we played. Nine holes, top deck, gray water going by, Nancy keeping score on a napkin and clapping for Finn's putts again, just clapping away. He beat me by two, and I demand a recount to this day. Then we played again and I won by one, and Finn demanded his own rematch for the afternoon, and Nancy said, "Why don't you two play at four, and I'll watch from the lounge, I want to peek at that rehearsal," and I said sure, fine, whatever, because I was busy lining up a putt and not paying attention to my wife arranging her afternoon like a flight plan.

Finn went off to wash up. Nancy kissed my cheek. "Play hard, champion,"