I went into Irwin’s room and said, “How you feeling?”
“Tired,” he said. “But better than earlier today.”
“Irwin,” Nurse Jen said firmly.
“Yes ma’am,” Irwin said, and meekly placed the breathing mask over his nose and mouth.
“Your mom’s coming to see you,” I said.
The kid brightened. “She is? Oh, uh. That’s fantastic!” He frowned. “It’s not . . . because of me being sick? Her work is very important.”
“Maybe a little,” I said. “But mostly, I figure it’s because she loves you.”
Irwin rolled his eyes but he smiled. “Yeah, well. I guess she’s okay. Hey, is there anything else to eat?”
Later, after Irwin had eaten (again), he slept.
“His temperature’s back down, and his breathing is clear,” Nurse Jen said, shaking her head. “I could have sworn we were going to have to get him to an ICU a few hours ago.”
“Kids,” I said. “They bounce back fast.”
She frowned at Irwin and then at me. Then she said, “It was Fabio, wasn’t it. He was doing something.”
“Something like what?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know it . . . feels like something that’s true. He’s the one who didn’t want you here. He’s the one who sent security to run you out just as Irwin got worse.”
“You might be right,” I said. “And you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”
She studied me for a moment. Then she said, simply, “Good.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “That’s one hell of a good sense of intuition you have, nurse.”
She snorted. “I’m still not going out with you.”
“Story of my life,” I said, smiling.
Then I stretched out my legs, settled into my chair, and joined Bigfoot Irwin in dreamland.
Blood-Red Greens
JOEL A. SUTHERLAND
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
—Mark Twain
Sweltering in his own juices under the intense mid-July sun, Randall shook the steering wheel clenched in his fat fingers and swore. And not just a middling little cop-out swear. His was a full-blown, roof-raising, appeal-to-the-heavens swear.
A line of cars stretched in front of his Mercury Grand Marquis as far as his poor eyesight could see. Up ahead a tall column of smoke rose to the sky as if from some unseen massive pyre. Goddamn it, this accident’s gonna make me late and Errol’s gonna have a conniption, he thought with a sense of dread so thick he could taste bile creeping up the back of his throat. A fly buzzed lazily beside his ear before settling on the dashboard. Randall swatted at it with his palm. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t fast enough and the fly buzzed away even more lazily than it had been flying before, as if it knew Randall posed no real threat. Randall swore again.
The mix of the construction slowdown, the blazing heat and the fact that today he would play his last game of golf was stretching his patience rather thin. The fact that he hadn’t yet announced his imminent retirement from the game to Errol thinned his patience further still. And the fact that the no-good, rotten, pain-in-the-ass, brainless fly had been buzzing with a disconcerting proximity to his eardrum for the past fifteen minutes had him just about ready to pack it in and head to the loony bin.
A police officer spun a handheld sign around from STOP to SLOW, waving Randall and the rest of the waiting traffic through.
As he sped thankfully along the country highway, Randall was so consumed with the desire to get to Golden Links Golf and Country Club as quickly as possible that he didn’t take note of the birds and the bees, he didn’t smell the intoxicating aroma of roses floating on the summer breeze and he didn’t see the bloodied man at the scene of the accident with a six-foot length of steel pipe protruding from his chest and a vacant look in his eyes, chewing on the neck of a panicked paramedic.
“Cutting it a little close, don’t you think, Randall?”
Randall had been right. Errol was not pleased with his tardiness. He hurriedly spun the crank in circles until the window was completely sealed, smiling apologetically at Errol, who was standing beside the Grand Marquis. Randall opened the door and pulled his considerable girth from the car. The Grand Marquis’s frame bounced up, its shocks squealing. Randall removed the cap from his head and wiped the sweat from his brow. His canary-yellow golf T was wet under his arms, on his back and around his wide belly. His plaid pants, likewise, bore sweat stains down the middle of his round rump.
Errol tsked disdainfully.
Randall pretended not to hear and hobbled around to the back of the car, his knees and hips stiff after sitting for longer than he was accustomed to, and pulled his club bag from the trunk. “Didn’t you see that accident on the Forty-eight?” he asked by way of explanation. “Goddamn! I doubt anyone will be walking away from that mess.”
“No, I took the Sixty-seven. No matter, we still have time. Let’s check in.” Errol, aside from his age, was everything that Randall was not. Tall, slender and immaculately dressed, his entire being screamed wealth. He uncrossed his arms, wondered for the briefest of moments why, on such a beautifully sunny day, there were so few cars in the parking lot and then followed his perspiring friend into the clubhouse.
Shadows painted the walls of the pro shop, the window blinds closed against the early morning light. A ceiling fan spun lazily, trailing tangled strands of spiderweb. Other than clubs and putters standing in rows like sentinels, the room was empty and deathly quiet.
Randall and Errol approached the desk. Randall picked up a scorecard and a tiny pencil (the kind that always made him feel like a giant) while Errol craned his neck in an attempt to see into the back room. “Hello?” he called out as he dinged the metal bell next to the cash register.
A single blanched hand snaked quickly up from behind the counter and landed on the surface with a hollow slap. Errol flinched and Randall yelped, pitching the mini pencil over his shoulder. The hand tensed as it searched for a grip on the counter, pulling a man up behind it. The man’s face was pallid, his skin splotchy and wet. A thin strand of mucus dribbled freely from his left nostril and embedded itself in the black mustache covering his quivering upper lip. Randall was about to stuff his dignity, turn tail and run, but the man spoke.
“Good morning, Errol. Randall.” He tried to sound bright and cheery, but his voice was too full of phlegm and barely concealed pain to be successful in that endeavor.
Errol peered intently at the man. “Sam? My word, is that you?”
“The one and only,” Sam said with a forced smile.
“What on God’s green earth happened to you?”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Sam repeated, as if saying it twice would make it so. “Just a head cold. Caught something from one of the tykes.” His smile disappeared as he doubled over and coughed into a handkerchief. Randall saw that it came away covered in blood and yelped again. Sam hurriedly stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket and his spurious smile returned. “Well, gentlemen,” he croaked, “there have been a few cancellations this morning—guess this cold of mine has been getting around, ha ha—so you two can tee off as soon as you like.”
“Thanks,” Errol said. “Say, have you heard the weather forecast for today?”
Sam cleared his throat loudly. It sounded like he had a spoonful of extra-sticky Jell-O clinging to the walls of his pipeline. “Unfortunately, they say the sunshine’s not going to last. A big storm’s heading our way, but you might get lucky and finish before it hits us. Just remember, gents, if lightning strikes, hold your one-iron up in the air because—”
“Even God can’t hit a one-iron,” Errol finished lamely with a roll of his eyes. Each and every time the forecasters called for a thunderstorm, Sam dropped this especially feeble joke on them. Clearly not tired of it yet, Sam began to laugh uproariously, which quickly proved too great an effort and he fell back into another manic coughing fit.
“Come on, let’
s go,” Errol said as he turned and walked to the door.
Randall cautiously picked up another tiny pencil and hurried to follow his friend out of the decidedly macabre pro shop.
Standing next to his motorized golf cart, Randall looked out upon his doom: Golden Links Golf and Country Club’s first hole. The hole was short for a par 4, clocking in at a mere 286 yards. The difficulty of the hole was placing your tee shot. The choice was either to go for the green or to take the more sensible approach and lay up, putting yourself in a decent position for your second shot. The fairway before the green was exceedingly narrow and slanted on both sides. If your ball ran off the fairway it landed directly in a large sand bunker on the left or a swampy bog on the right. Standing guard before the green was a creek eight feet wide known to regulars as the Ball Sucker. The green itself was sinisterly small and notoriously hard to land. Randall had never parred it, never bogied it, never even double-bogied it. He would be happy to settle for a seven but often had to take a dishonest eight.
Even with his extensive familiarity with the hole and its many pitfalls, Randall never exuded anything other than overrated bravado when teeing off.
He pulled his driver from the bag strapped to the back of their cart, envisioning the eagle he was about to score to begin the match. “This hole is going down,” he said.
“First, let’s talk business,” Errol said, opening his well-worn pad of paper and uncapping his pen. “Skins game? Five dollars a hole?”
“Of course. Same as every Tuesday for the past fifteen years. Now stop stalling and let’s see what you’re made of.”
Errol made a few quick notes in his pad and stepped away from the cart with his three-iron. He propped his ball on a tee in the supple ground, stepped back, surveyed the hole and approached the ball. After the briefest of moments he swung his club back and then swiveled forward, striking his target gracefully. The ball soared majestically through the air, touched down and rolled a short distance in the middle of the fairway, ten feet from being devoured by the Ball Sucker. “Just short of the green,” he said as he stepped around Randall. “Should be on in two and down in three.”
Randall snickered. “Not bad. But it’s only two hundred and eighty-six yards to the hole. For me, that’s good for one long drive and a putt.” He plopped his ball down on a tee, took a hurried practice swing, stepped up to the ball, fiddled with his grip, wiggled the club back and forth, exhaled slowly, then swung the club quickly back and forth, topping the ball and sending it a mere ten yards in front of where he stood. With a clenched jaw, Randall shoved his driver hastily back in his bag and sat down on the cart.
“And now for one hell of a putt,” Errol said with a straight face.
“Shut up.”
Randall’s follow-up shot was more unpropitious than his first, landing squarely in a patch of fescue to the side of the fairway, a long way from Errol’s drive.
The two men stood ankle-deep in the long tangled grass, passing their clubs back and forth over the ground like metal detectors in search of buried treasure.
“I swear this is right where my ball went in,” Randall said.
“You should have stayed on the fairway.”
Randall paused for a moment and glared at Errol. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll try that next time.”
Errol shrugged his shoulders and continued the fruitless search. “Here’s a good one: what’s the difference between a lost golf ball and the G-spot?”
Randall thought for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“A man will spend five minutes looking for the lost golf ball.” Errol laughed alone before slowly trailing off.
After trying to decode the joke’s mysteries for a moment, Randall considered laughing anyway but decided against it. He was a terrible actor and Errol would know he was faking. “What’s the G-spot?”
Errol cast his eyes to the ground without comment, resuming the search for Randall’s errant ball, his joke hanging limply in the air between the two old friends.
After making sure that Errol’s eyes were far from the space around his wide feet, Randall deftly reached into his pocket, pulled out another ball with the same markings as the first and gently let it fall to the ground. Looking up and smiling, he called out, “Found it!”
Errol spun around, an eyebrow raised and a curl to his lip. “It’s true what they say. Golf is a game where the ball lies poorly and the player well.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Randall returned from the cart with a nine-iron. He grinned in pride for the sting he believed he had pulled off and prepared to chip onto the green. He looked at the flag and frowned. “What the hell?”
Another golfer was pacing slowly back and forth across the green. He didn’t seem to have any purpose in being there other than to walk in circles without any apparent direction.
Randall sandwiched the club in his sweaty right armpit, cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Hey! Get off my green!”
The unidentified golfer’s head swiveled in their direction. A prolonged and throaty moan rumbled forth from his lungs and he began to amble toward the source of the shouting. However, at the rate he was moving, it would take forever for him to reach them.
“What a jackass!” Randall complained.
“Don’t worry about it, Randall,” Errol said. “Swing away. He’s standing in the safest spot on the course right now.”
“Shut up.” Randall bent over his ball and shot Errol one last dirty look. “I’ll show you. And him.” Despite Randall’s skill level’s best attempt to make him scupper another shot, the ball lifted perfectly off the ground and soared straight for the green.
It landed square on the top of the head of the stumbling golfer with a hollow thud.
The pair flinched and groaned, surprised that Randall’s shot was on target. They hopped in the cart and drove up to the man, who was lying on the edge of the green, unmoving, a large bruise-coated bump already protruding from his forehead.
“Damn, I’m sorry,” said Randall with genuine concern. “Please don’t be dead. What were you doing walking around on the green?” He dropped awkwardly down to his knees, his overburdened hips squeaking, and placed his index finger on the man’s neck. He found no pulse. “Shit!” Randall said, looking up at Errol for support. “I killed him!”
Without warning the man sat bolt upright. His scraggly fingernails latched on to Randall’s T-shirt and his jaws opened wide, desperate to bite, rip, tear, chew.
Errol screamed and Randall’s thick thighs propelled his quivering frame backward. His arms wind-milled, breaking the pulseless biting man’s grasp on his shirt, and he fell on his back. Errol recovered from his moment of abject terror and yanked two random clubs from his bag. He tossed one to Randall, keeping the other for himself. Randall fumbled the club and scrambled to retrieve it, the man crawling on hands and knees toward him. But Errol halted his slow progression, raising the club high above his head and bringing it down on the small of the man’s back. A loud snap split the calm summer day and the man fell to the ground. He spun around and his lifeless eyes fell upon Errol. He moaned again and Errol froze.
Randall had finally gotten a hold on the dropped club. He picked up where Errol left off, swinging the club in a speedy uppercut, connecting viciously with the man’s lower jaw. Three bloody teeth scattered across the immaculately trimmed grass of Golden Links’s first green like dice on a giant board of craps. Defying the limitations of the human body, the man seemed unconcerned and unfazed that his mouth was suddenly three teeth short and that his back was broken, and reached out a clawing hand for Randall’s plentiful flesh.
He didn’t get the chance for a single lick. Randall easily sidestepped the man’s arm and swung the head of the club into the rapidly deteriorating body again and again and again. His face was covered in a ceaseless spray of blood as bits of bone peppered the ground around the pulverized man. Finally running out of breath, Randall dropped t
he club and stepped back, whimpering quietly.
Errol placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but Randall slipped out from under its comfort, commandeered the cart and barreled it straight at the limp body. He heard a wet and meaty crunch as the cart jostled up and down over the remains of the body. Randall turned the cart abruptly around and brought it to a halting stop next to his friend.
Errol frowned. “I think he was already dead before you ran over him.”
“I thought he was already dead when he had no pulse, but then he tried to kill me.”
“Are you sure he was actually trying to kill you?”
“Errol, he tried to bite my face off.”
“Touché.”
A black crow cawed from a lofty perch in a tree, happy to have such a great view of the murderous proceedings. Unseen by Randall and Errol, another man was rambling from the clubhouse along the fairway behind them.
Randall wiped the blood from his face with the bottom of his shirt, exposing his hairy gut. “We’ve got to do something with the body. If we get caught we’ll be in big shit.”
“Body?” Errol asked, cringing. Randall noticed his friend’s disgusted expression and quickly pulled his shirt back over his pregnant-looking belly. “What body? All that’s left is a puddle of tomato soup.”
The man behind them rambled closer.
“Well, we can’t leave that puddle of tomato soup for the marshal to find.” Randall pointed at the sand bunker nearest the green. “Here, get that rake.”
Errol glanced slowly at the rake and then back at Randall, his jaw slack. “Oh, that’s a great idea. We’ll just spread the pieces around and no one will ever find the remains.”
“It’s all I can think of. What if Sam comes out and sees this? He’ll call the cops, or worse, he’ll ban us. Sam’s not to be trifled with.”
The rambling man rambled close enough for Randall to feel his fetid breath on the back of his neck.
The rambling man was Sam.
“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Randall asked, blanching.
Aftertaste Page 4