Over the breakfast table at Rick’s the next morning, LeBlanc was telling ethnic jokes as usual. “Do you know how you babysit for a black kid?”

Sharon saw Frank Matson come in and sit down across from Gil Evachevski, so she ordered his usual breakfast.

“What?” Howard Meyers said, setting LeBlanc up for his punch line.

“Wet his lips and stick him to the wall. Know how you get him loose? Throw him a basketball.”

“Sam, that’s gross,” Matson said, hoping the pissing match from the day before was forgotten about.

“You got a lot of room to talk, you damn sandbagger,” LeBlanc said. “I’ve played golf with you, and now I know you’re setting me up for something.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” LeBlanc said. “I know you’ve been holding back, waiting to unload on me.”

“Sam, have you been out in the sun too long?”

“No, but you’ve been out in the sun, out at the nudist camp,” LeBlanc said. “And you sure play a hell of a round when nobody from town’s watching.” He scaled a copy of the Record-Herald across the table, folded back to the bottom of the sports page.

Matson hadn’t seen the Record-Herald yet; he usually looked at it on Thursday morning at the bank. But there, on the bottom of the page, in headline type were the words he had hoped to keep quiet: “MATSON SHOOTS HOLE IN ONE”.

It was only a short article, but it told about Frank’s hole in one the previous Friday. It didn’t say that it was a shanked shot, that involved two very lucky bounces.

“Sam, you’re full of shit,” Matson said. “That shot was sheer damn luck. If the ball hadn’t hit a duck that was flying overhead, the goddamn thing would have been lost forever.”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” LeBlanc protested. “Anytime anybody gets an ace, it’s goddamn luck. I’m talking about the 87 round. I’ve never seen you shoot an 87, for Christ’s sakes. I’ve always seen you shoot 100, maybe 110, not down around the numbers that I shoot.”

“Sam, that was nine holes, for Pete’s sakes.” Frank said. “I was having a terrible round.”

“You’re full of shit and you know it,” LeBlanc said. “That’s just more goddamn sandbagging. No one is that bad. Christ, that would be a 174 round, and I know you’re better than that.”

Gil Evachevski spoke up, trying to make peace. “You ever play the West Turtle Lake Club course, Sam?” he asked.

“Never have,” LeBlanc admitted.

“It’s a tough damn course,” Evachevski told him.

“It can’t be that goddamn tough. There ain’t no course bad enough to add seventy goddamn strokes to a game.”

“All right, you son of a bitch,” Matson said, tired of LeBlanc’s needling. “I’ll play you for money, if that’s what you’re trying to do. How much do you want riding on it?”

“A thousand,” LeBlanc said.

“All right, a thousand,” Matson agreed. “Except we play it at the West Turtle Lake Club, with you bareassed like the rest of us.” That ought to shut him off, he thought.

“Not out there,” LeBlanc backpedaled. “My wife would pitch a fit.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Evachevski roared. “Screw the money. Let’s make this interesting. Frank and I will play you, match or medal play, us against you. To even things up, because we know the course and you don’t, we won’t ask for any shots from you even though you have a lower handicap than us.”

“You’re just as bad a damn sandbagger as he is,” LeBlanc replied. “What do you want to bet if I accept it?”

“If you win,” Evachevski said, “I’ll forget what I told you about Polack jokes.”

Ah, that was his idea, Frank realized. It was a good one, too, a better one than his own. “If we win,” he added, “You put a lid on the ethnic jokes.”

“To be specific,” Evachevski agreed, “You can just clam up with any jokes that relate to anybody’s race, color, creed, place of national origin, sex, or sexual orientation.”

“And any nudist jokes, too,” Frank added.

LeBlanc smelled a rat. These two guys hitting on him seemed too pat; but he was too mad to think straight. Grasping at straws, he said, “All right, I’ll take you up on it, but at the municipal course. You guys don’t allow golf carts out at the club.”

“The West Turtle Lake Club, or nothing,” Evachevski said rather heatedly, then softened his touch. “Tell you what, though. We’ll bend the rules a little more, just for you. I’ll scare up a caddie for you.”

“Otherwise, no bet,” Matson agreed.

“All right, you sons of bitches,” LeBlanc said, getting up to leave. “I’ll beat your asses bare.”

“Saturday afternoon, five o’clock, or you default. You got your work cut out for you,” Matson said.

“All right,” LeBlanc agreed. “Let’s just hope my wife doesn’t find out.”

“Screw your wife,” Evachevski said.

“Every chance I get,” LeBlanc said, heading for the door.

After LeBlanc stomped out, Coach Hekkinan spoke up. “I’m not in favor of betting on sports events,” he said, “but this is different. Fifty bucks says LeBlanc doesn’t show up. He’s all mouth and no balls.”

“You got a bet,” Ellsberg said. “The son of a bitch wouldn’t know what to do without a dirty joke to tell.”

“Yeah, but to do anything about that,” Hekkinan said, “They got to beat him. That ain’t gonna be easy. He can get into the eighties any time he wants, and the seventies if he bears down. I’ve seen the potlicker play, and he’s good.”

“Yeah, he’s good,” Ellsberg agreed. “Sure would like to see you guys beat him.”

“We could stand a gallery,” Evachevski said, “but the gallery has to be as bare-assed as everybody else.”

“I said I’d like to see you guys beat him, I didn’t say I’d watch,” Bud said. “My God, I don’t even want to think about what Kate would say.”

“Bring her along,” Matson teased. “Nice, healthy outdoor activity. It’d do her some good.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bud said, shaking his head. “I’d never hear the end of it if I suggested it. Kate doesn’t have that kind of a sense of humor.”

“I remember her from school,” Hekkinan said. “I don’t remember her having a sense of humor at all.”

Matson shook his head. “What I want to know is how this got into the paper. I never told anybody, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” Webb told him. “I didn’t notice it when we made up the page, but it happened about the time Harry Masterfield collapsed, so I could have overlooked it. Mike must have pasted it up.”

“Don’t take it out on him,” Frank ordered. “I just wonder who at the club could have told him. Probably my dad; I wouldn’t put it past him to stir things up for fun so he can sit back and laugh.”

As soon as he got to the bank, Frank called Gil; there were things he didn’t want to talk about around the breakfast table. “We’ll take him,” Gil agreed. “I ain’t as good a golfer as he is, but I’m better than you, and we got the home-course advantage. That course takes some learning if you’re new to it.”

“I’m kind of thinking we’ve got a psychological advantage, too,” Frank said. “That’s why I demanded he play bare-assed, too.”

“Figured that,” Gil said. “When you said that, I bought off on the deal.”

“You got any ideas who we can get for a caddie that’ll shake him up good? Carrie, maybe?”

“Yeah, she’d do,” Gil agreed. “But I got a better idea. You know that Langenderfer kid who hangs around with Carrie? Let’s get her to caddie for him, I’ll have Carrie caddie for you, and I’ll have Jennifer caddie for me. She can shake up almost anybody, but I’m relatively immune.”

“I don’t know how immune I am to Jennifer,” Frank said. “That kid of yours is something else. Has she rearranged her career goals any?”

“No,” Gil said, still disgusted over his daughter’s statement. “I think she says those things just to get reactions out of people. God knows they get a reaction out of me. Anyway, why’d you set the time so late?”

“I’ve got that damn stupid chili judging earlier in the afternoon,” Frank said. “Besides, the evening shadows are a little tricky, and he might not think to bring any bug dope. I don’t plan on loaning him any.”

“You know, Frank,” Gil said thoughtfully, “You’re about as sneaky as your old man. He won’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

“Thanks. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this week.”

“You got anything going the rest of the week?” Gil asked.

“Not particularly.”

“You know, it might not be a bad idea for you to go out there and get some practice, just to be on the safe side.”

“Yeah, I know. An ace on that last round didn’t cover up the fact that it was one of the shittiest games I’ve ever played.”

“It’s gonna be tough, Frank. Get some practice. You can stay with us if you like, bring Diane and the kids if you want to.”

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” the banker replied. “I might just take you up on that.”

As soon as he hung up the phone, Jane called from the outer office, “Your mother on two, Frank.”

“Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell,” he said, loud enough so she could hear him, and picked up the phone.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, June 7, 1975

LEBLANC WINS CITY TOURNEY

Spearfish Lake Golfer Sam LeBlanc carded a 78 to win the final round of the 17th Annual Spearfish Lake City Golf Tournament, held Saturday at the Spearfish Lake Municipal Golf Course.

It was the fourth year straight that LeBlanc won the tournament.

LeBlanc outpaced the nearest competitor, Mike Johansen, by four strokes to win the tournament. Chris Decker carded an 83 for the third-place finish.

Many girls secretly share Jennifer Evachevski’s particular career goals in their early teens, but usually they outgrow them. Gil and Carrie Evachevski were confident that their lovely, shapely young daughter would find some other interest, but both were secretly in agreement that their daughter was singularly well fitted for what she told her guidance counselor was her chosen career.

Jennifer Evachevski was strikingly blonde, and very pretty, awesomely pretty, in fact. Even at thirteen, she had a carriage, an attitude, a sophistication about her that attracted men like dogs are attracted to the butcher. And, even at thirteen, she was singularly mature about this attraction. Puppy love was not in this girl; she could handle what her parents sometimes considered to be a somewhat unfortunate physical affliction, that of being so naturally, stunningly beautiful that it seemed almost unnatural.

Jennifer was a bright girl with a sharp wit, and even her parents had never quite been able to tell what was going on inside her pretty head.

At the junior high age, the Spearfish Lake Junior High School was not terribly serious about children’s plans and goals, but encouraged them to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and towards the end of the seventh grade, each child was scheduled for a brief one-on-one interview with the high school guidance counselor, Kathy Webb.

Kathy knew Jennifer’s mother from the Record-Herald office, of course, and had met Jennifer on several occasions. The young girl came gracefully into the principal’s office, which Kathy had borrowed for the occasion, and sat gently on the lip of the chair opposite the principal’s desk.

“Well, Jennifer, have you made up your mind what you want to be when you grow up?” Kathy asked automatically.

“Yes,” the young lady said sweetly.

“What do you want to be?” Kathy asked, halfway expecting something like being a nurse.

“A prostitute,” she replied courteously.

“That takes a lot of prepar … A WHAT?”

“Not a street hooker,” Jennifer told her. “I want to stay a virgin until I’m eighteen, then be a highly paid call girl.”

Kathy was a rather straight person, and she had just received absolutely the last response she had ever expected to that question, especially from this girl who had so much going for her. But Kathy give her credit and tried one more time to get serious: “That’s a very hard and illegal thing to do,” she said.

“Yes,” the girl replied, quite seriously. “That’s why there’s a lot of money in it, and I don’t intend to be cheap.”

Both Carrie and Gil Evachevski were well aware of the interview within seconds of its ending, and not just due to the speed of the Spearfish Lake rumor mill, either.

Carrie assumed, at first, that Jennifer was just sticking a pin into Kathy’s highly stuffed shirt, but when confronted by a set of parents who didn’t know what to think, the girl just as coolly and levelly repeated her career plans.

The degree of consternation in the Evachevski household that evening was not quite off the scale. “The only thing I can think of,” Gil said, “is to ignore it, and maybe it’ll go away. If we fight her, she’s hard-headed enough to do it.”

“It’s not all bad,” Carrie told her husband.

“Where is there anything good about it?”

“If she wants to be a virgin at eighteen, then there might be less of a chance that she’ll be pregnant at fifteen. And you know as well as I do that it happens around here, and she draws men like flies.”

“You have a point, kid,” Gil admitted. “I can tell you one thing, though.”

“What?”

“If she does go through with it, she’ll be richer than her granddad by the time she turns thirty.”

Carrie thought about it for a minute. “You may be right,” she said finally. “But I hope we never have to find out.”

A year and more later, it was still too early to tell if they had made a wise decision. The subject had not come up again, and neither parent had dared to bring it up.

Guidance counselor Kathy Webb, however, still had to secretly settle her nerves with a shot of vodka when she thought about the upcoming ninth grade counseling sessions.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 20, 1975

Back to School Section

GUIDANCE COUNSELING

All high school students at Spearfish Lake High School are encouraged to work with the school’s guidance counselor to develop career plans and goals, and to plan how to use the educational process to further those goals.

To help develop the student’s goals, the school employs a trained school guidance counselor. Parents are encouraged to consult with the guidance office to help understand the process, and help the counselor in developing the child’s education.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.