At eight-thirty of
a late April morning a well struck golfball cracked an echo through the course’s
border trees where Brother Skunk rose awkwardly from his squatting position to
wonder just what the hell it was he thought he was doing.
At his feet and
just off one of the woodland’s trampled pathways lay a clattered nest of peanut
M&Ms, with barely visible in the leafmould some twenty or thirty feet back,
another. The one beyond that was out of sight, and so on invisible all the way
back to the third floor of the hotel where ache1 was only now
opening her bedroom door.
Skunk imagined
himself some manner of fertile toystore poultry, stepping out a course between
the trees, periodically discharging himself of the brightly-coloured cargo
until permitted rest by an unwound internal mechanism.
Skunk: What the
hell am I doing?
Unlike his partner’s,
the second golfer’s ball failed to soar and having burped its shallow arc
defied momentum to pull up far short of expectation. Skunk smiled, sat down
with his back to the nearest tree trunk with the sun in his face silhouetting
the leaves green to black, and closed his eyes in prayer.
Skunk (laughing):
Remember this, me and this guy, ehm, Johnny, we used to go golfing after, after
school every day, well, not every
day, but ehm, well, almost every day
speech lazily
befitting his calm environs
Skunk: and... We’d,
it was about a mile from school to where we lived, he didn’t live, he lived
just round the back of my house and eh, we’d run home from, yeah exactly, me running, but we would, we’d run home from school and we’d get our, either we’d...
His dad had a locker at the golf club, and eh, we’d either leave our clubs
there, our clubs would be there and we’d just run home and get our, we’d get
something to eat really quickly, our mums would knock up some food for us and
then we’d either, we’d cycle down to the golf club and pick up our clubs, or we’d
actually cycle down with our clubs
which was always a bit hazardous because they’d be swinging around like mad,
but ehm...
He brought out
another packet of peanut M&Ms. Biting down hard on the candy shell he felt
his mouth fill with a tired peanut flavour that did not appeal to him at all.
Skunk (spitting
broken nut and colour): Jesus, M&Ms aren’t breakfast are they?
and was relieved to
acknowledge that in one sense at least, the morning’s endeavour had not been a
waste.
Skunk: The one
really vivid memory I have of me and Johnny is sort of like... We were, when we
were golfing and we...
clearing his throat
Skunk: What we used
to do was, sometimes we just played eight holes, ehm, we’d play the first four
and then cut in and play the last four back but ehm, this wasn’t, this was a, I
think this was maybe a Saturday morning we’d gone out to play, but we were
coming in, I remember we were coming in the back nine holes and probably
somewhere around either fifteen or sixteen we were on the tee and there were a
couple of older guys, old, older golfers ehm playing behind us, and I think
they must have been on the green when we were on the tee and eh, I, I think ehm
Skunk clambered up
and back to the bare dirt track, tipping a few M&Ms into his open hand, the
palm deep-patterned with its memory of earth and twig as he moved again through
the woods, laying additional deposits to his trail. Another driven golfball
punctuated his words with a clean thwack.
Skunk: I can’t
remember the exact, it’s a long time ago now but I hit a really poor drive and
eh, I mean, it might have been a good drive for me but these old guys that were watching us from the green, you
know, they would probably just look at it and think, oh, not, not see it as
being relative to the rest of my game, just, you know, seeing it as being a
weak drive which is basically what it was, and ehm, Johnny hit another one and
we sort of shoved our clubs into our bags a bit disgruntled and headed off down
the fairway and these old, one of these old golfers shouted at us “SWEAR AT IT
BOYS. IT HELPS”, you know, as if this would, it wouldn’t improve our golf any
but it would, it would make us feel better about having hit such poor drives,
so eh, we thought this was pretty funny and we just kept on walking and then
Johnny just bellowed out “FUUUUUCK!” like that, and that was it, we just walked
down until we came to our balls, you know, Johnny just screaming out these
swearwords, and, I mean, I don’t know what they
thought about it, but... You don’t really think of anybody listening to you on
a golf course, even when there’s people there it seems like quite an empty
place, probably because of the distance between the people, you
hoking down into
his pocket for more sweets and suddenly realising that the nearly empty packet
he held in his hand was in fact the last.
Skunk: Oh Jesus,
there’s not going to be enough of these is there?
but his Uncle Jesus
knew a rhetorical question when he heard one, and let it go.
