BACK NINE THE AUSTIN GOLF CLUB STORIES

Red Greens

Sputnik Kaplow limped out of the Hi-Lo-Medico testing clinic with bandages on his right temple, left testicle, both hamstrings, and $28. He weaved to the covey of ratty trailers in the Hancock Shopping Center food court parking lot and rapidly ate a grub burrito with coffee grounds and downed a couple of previously owned Falstaffs.  Not having eaten in two days, he suddenly felt a pleasant surge of animation. He limped the perimeter of the center: along the interstate highway, cluttered with abandoned vehicles—now homes to transients—past overgrown vacant lots and overcrowded apartment buildings that had hourly meters on the front doors. Then he came to Red River Street. Across it lay the Austin Golf Club. He hawked up a nuclear loogey and launched it toward the 7th green. The great mass got to the center stripe, where it laid like a sautéed slug.             “Hey, Sputnik. Whaddaya doing? Gonna play a little golf?” Hap Penis slapped Sputnik on the back of his head. “That is one big head you got there. I bet that’s why you’re called Sputnik. That’s what your head looks like.”             “Hap, if you weren’t a such a old piece of crap, I’d wad you up and sell you to those food trailers back there, but, hell, even they wouldn’t serve something like you.” Sputnik rubbed the back of his head where Hap had hit him. Everything was starting to ache and he was seeing haloes around each of his fingers. He wondered what they had given him or taken from him in the medical testing joint. Or maybe it was the food. “No, I am not going to play golf. I hate golf. And even more than the stupid game itself, I hate golfers. Look at us. We’re hanging around a hell hole bunch of stores selling us used diapers as food and those leeches over there are lolling around swatting little balls and saying ‘Blimey’ and ‘Aspidistra.’ Why do they get the breaks and we get the shaft? God, it makes me want to kill.”             “Cool down, Sputnik. It’s just a stupid game and a stupid life. The breaks break where they do. Hell, those people hate us ‘cause this shopping center used to be the back nine holes and they want it back.”             “Really? I didn’t know that. Ha! That’s a rich one.” Sputnik turned and surveyed Hancock Shopping Center, trying to envision a golf course rather than a strip of shops selling Brazilian wax figurines of Jesus, dog customization, and toenail rentals. “Why don’t they buy it? This pile of crap can’t be worth that much.”             “You’d be surprised how much this place takes in. The owners get their cut off the top for every turd taco or scratch-and-sniff Bible that’s sold. Besides those people at the golf club don’t have all that much money. Nobody does these days.”             “Hap, you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Anybody who can join a golf club is living off the sweat of our backs. Wake up.”             “What you got against golfers anymore than the guy who owns this damn shopping center? He just sits back and rakes in my dough ‘cause some store sells me a pair of cardboard underwear. Those golfers are lucky and lazy, but they ain’t hurting me.”             “Can’t you see it’s a class war? Sure, I hate the jerk that owns this crappy ripoff shopping center, but at least he’s providing something we obviously need. Those, those…golfers…they’re ticks. Line ‘em up and brain ‘em with a putter.”             “I’d be careful thinkin’ like that. At least one of those old fart golfers carries a big ol’ horse pistol. He aimed it at us once when we tried to crash a party there.”             Sputnik stared at the golf course, his jaws clinching, his eyes squinting so hard that the bandage on his temple popped off.  “I’d a lot rather sleep in that clubhouse and take a crap in that golf hole than doing both those things on the loading docks of this place like I been doing.  Maybe I’ll think about a plan for us taking them over rather than them taking us over. Yeah, I like this idea.”             Hap Penis shrugged and meandered off, leaving Sputnik Kaplow to ponder a strategy.   *     *     *   Sputnik was the fiercely illegitimate son of two Marxist ne’er-do-wells who had met at college in the 1950s. They rejected capitalism, marriage, and ambition. When they had their only child it coincided with the Soviet Union’s triumphant launch of the first Earth orbiter, so they named him Sputnik. They felt it was best to work among the lowest in society and convince them communism was their savior. The father worked as a stunner at an abattoir, a telephone operator, a carnival barker, and a caddy. The mother was a paper boy, a milk man, a cowboy, and a clubhouse attendant at a golf course. They never recruited a single person to their cause but did greatly increase their rage and sense of righteousness, at least until those final jobs. At the golf course where they ended up working together they were treated well by refined and generous upper class gentlefolk. The father and mother earned excellent tips and, after working steadily for a few years, were given financial advice by some of the golfers that led to a solid middle class existence. The parents’ Marxism morphed into a watery leftism, then a moderate Republicanism. They even married.             During this period, Sputnik—the now-embarrassed parents called him Nik—became an increasingly angry leftwing radical. This led to him dropping out of school and running away from home at age sixteen. He wandered the land doing odd jobs and blaming society for his failures. He had inherited his parents’ lack of irony.             Now, as Sputnik stood at Red River, glaring at the verdant fairways of the Austin Golf Club, his years of struggle and bitterness were made corporeal. “I vow to make that golf club wish it had never been born,” he said aloud.             *     *     *               On the verandah of the Austin Golf Club, Major Saul surveilled the horizon with his combination telescope / grenade launcher. He daily monitored activity he considered potentially threatening to the club, most especially the squirrels who ravaged the pecans by the second tee box. But today he espied a haggard balloon-headed figure on the fringe of Hancock Shopping Center. The major swore he could actually see waftaroms emanating from the man, who had a threatening stance as he stared at the club. “Best check this out,” he said to house dog Geronimo, who rolled over in agreement.             Major Saul got into a golf cart and headed east, toward the soft perimeter. As he approached, the figure crouched menacingly (although in fact it was due to severe stomach cramps resulting from his visit to the food court). The major always felt the best approach was unfettered aggression so he pulled out his horse pistol and idly shot a squirrel from a pecan tree just over Sputnik’s head. This uncorked the poor man and a stream of vile bile exited down his legs. Even Major Saul was appalled and drove away.             Sputnik dropped to his knees in agony. Rage filled his now empty guts. He laid on the sidewalk, disgusted by his circumstances, a bloody squirrel corpse staring at him. He envisioned the locker room with hot showers at the golf club. He began to crawl across Red River Street, across the 7th and 6th  fairways, across the parking lot, and into the foyer of the club. He vowed to kill the first person who tried to stop him.             “Blimey! Look at you. What a mess. Let’s get you to the showers.” Janine, the grill room manager, pulled Sputnik up and walked him to the locker room. “Smokey, help me get this guy in the shower. Plenty of hot water.” Janice began taking Sputnik’s clothes off, something every heterosexual male at the club had personally longed for.             Smokey, the ageless attendant, pushed a bench in the shower so their tottering guest could sit. He got some cleanish towels and dug out some golf togs from the lost and found. Meanwhile Janice returned to the grill, washed her hands four times, and cooked a grilled cheese sandwich for their visitor, who soon appeared, sporting lavender slacks and a tartan sweater.             He sat on the verandah overlooking the 9th green, eating the sandwich, drinking a pint of Falstaff, and watched a twosome hit good shots onto the green. One sank a 20-foot putt and both the golfers laughed and shook hands.             “They’ll wish they had never let me into this place,” he muttered, then burped.               © Red Wassenich April 2009 Back Nine home page | Back Nine table of contents | Next story If you would like to be notified when a new story appears, send us an email at backninestories@gmail.com. Back Nine: The Austin Golf Club Stories Web site founded April 2008 All stories copyright of the authors. May not be reproduced without permission (the stories, not the authors).