NOTUS, THE SOUTH WIND DEITY, expelled a prodigious sigh that propelled a scorching gale down the desiccated fairways on quaint Chicken Ranch Golf Course.
Bo Benson shook his head in disgust as he ripped a chunk of dead grass from the barren turf and cast it into the furious blow. Six consecutive years of relentless drought had parched the soil, transforming it into an impenetrable layer of hardpan. Despite exhaustive efforts, his beloved executive course nestled within a narrow canyon was in critical condition—on life support and fading fast.
“You gonna hit, or are you waitin’ for a personal invitation?” barked his younger brother, Jess.
Bo squinted as he gazed toward the once-verdant green, now but a small brown stain on the horizon. The dispirited man pulled an iron denuded of all luster after repeated beatings on the hard-baked fairways. Regarding the damage with a pensive expression, his fingers gingerly traced razor-sharp edges of chipped chrome protruding from the flange.
He expeditiously stepped up to his shot and powered through the rocky lie amidst a shower of sparks. In anticipation of what was to follow, he quickly turned his face as the persistent headwind blew a cloud of abrasive debris in his direction. In a flash, he was pelted by a barrage of gritty particles that blasted the side of his windburned face. He shook his head and blinked several times in order to flush sand from his abraded eyes.
That’s when he saw it.
In a matter of seconds, a small ignescence had ignited a patch of dry tinder. Fanned by the tempestuous gale, the hot spot flared up and spread directly toward him. Visualizing a potential wildfire in the making, he yelled for help and frantically stomped on the threat.
Jess rushed over and extinguished a small incendiary streak that had eluded his brother. “Man, that was close! You’re gonna burn down this whole county if you don’t start pickin’ your shots more cleanly!” he shouted.
“We could only be so lucky. If this place were insured, I’d be tempted to torch it myself.”
“Next time, just move the ball. Pasture rules state a free drop for inflammatory lies.”
“Speaking of inflammatory lies, what’d you get on the last hole?”
“One less than you—whatever the hell that was.”
Bo marked an “X” on the scorecard next to his brother’s name.
Nelson, one of their playing partners, spit a jet of tobacco juice. The trailings dribbled down his chin like sludge and lodged in his gray beard, adding to the permanent mahogany stain. He winced, baring a set of toothless, brown gums.
“See what happened to your ball?” he screeched at Bo.
“Fat chance. Was too busy saving our asses.”
The nearly deaf codger hitched over and screamed in his ear. “That sucker bounced fifteen feet into the air after it hit that slab of concrete you call a green!” The crazy old coot cackled. “Only good thing ’bout that shot was ya won’t have to worry none about fixin’ no gull-durn ball mark!”
Bo was tempted to volley a terse response, but all the bite had been taken out of his bark lately.
Marcus, the other member of their foursome, spit on both hands and rubbed them together.
“You boys don’t know how to play your own course. Watch and learn.”
Using a high-lofted club, he launched a shot that fell sixty yards short of the green. The ball subsequently bounced numerous times before it seemingly rolled forever and settled on the far side of the putting surface.
Bo cut him a grin wide as the Grand Canyon.
“What? Never hear of the bounce and run?” Marcus chortled.
“That would be bump and run,” Bo corrected his ill-informed counterpart. “And I didn’t see a hint of bump in that run. Nice shot, by the way.”
“Au contraire, my fine-feathered friend. Out here it’s the bounce and run,” Marcus contended. “Not since the Dutch invented a ball-and-club game they called kolf around the end of the thirteenth century has it been necessary to invent a new form of golf-speak. Your rustic course, my good man, has added to the sport’s vernacular. Never will the term ‘target golf’ be used out here.”
“I thought Scots invented the game.”
“Well, some scholars contend Dutch sailors brought the game to Scotland. In 1457—two hundred years after the invention of kolf—the first documented mention of the game appeared in Scotland when an edict issued by King James II prohibited the sport, known there as gowf, as it was deemed a distraction from military archery practice. Origin of the term golf is disputed, but it was in common use by the sixteenth century. Some believe it came from the Dutch word, while others conjecture it was derived from an ancient Scottish verb meaning ‘to strike’.”
“Thank you, professor. Aren’t you a wealth of knowledge?”
“It’s my passion to illuminate the minds of the less cultured,” Marcus stated. “While I find it invigorating to nurture my brain, you find solace swilling beer and cutting greasy farts while allowing your mind to stagnate in its own toxic juices. And just a side note…the Dutch are also credited with bringing the game to America. An ordinance issued in 1659 at Fort Orange, New York, banned the game from being played in the streets of nearby Albany due to concerns about property damage and danger to its citizenry.”
“Enough with the history lessons. Let’s play some gowf,” Bo said with a Scottish burr.
Sparing little time, he ambled over the extraterrestrial landscape. Forty feet beyond the dying brown vestige of a green, he found his ball stymied by a large boulder. Under normal conditions, he would’ve hit a flop shot over the buried elephant, but the excessive amount of bounce on his wedge and the bare, hard lie precluded any such bold attempt. The crafty player withdrew a putter from his bag and commenced preparation for the shot by removing a number of small stones from his intended line.
“Hey, hey, hey! Hold up there, bro. What’s the rule on removing those from your line?” Jess asked his brother. “Why not just dig a trough straight to the hole? Play it as it lies, I say.”
“Since when did you start playing by the rules—except when they’re to your advantage?”
“Just tryin’ to keep it real. If you can justify cheatin’ with a clear conscience, more power to you, dude.”
“Ever hear the phrase loose impediments? Obviously, you never saw the tournament where Tiger had a legion of fans remove a five-ton monolith from his line.”
“Yeah well, I’ll have to check out the rule book when we’re done.”
“There’re no pictures. Who’s going to read it to you?”
“Look who’s talking, Einstein. If you’re so damn smart, how come we’re both stuck with this shit hole of a ranch?”
Bo ignored his brother and went about his business, aiming much farther right of the pyroclastic intrusion than the shot warranted.
“Hey, pea brain. You playin’ the same course as we are? The pin’s over here,” Jess sneered while rattling the stick.
“Why don’t you two take it somewhere else? The rest of us are trying to play a little golf, thank you very much,” Marcus said, exasperated.
Bo drew a bead on his intended target and, much to the surprise of his playing companions, banked a shot off a smaller boulder closer to the green. It veered at the perfect angle before trickling to within easy tap-in range.
“Now that’s how you play a bump and run,” he said, pointing at Marcus. “It’s cow pasture pool at its finest, if I don’t mind saying so myself.”
“Didn’t hear nothin’. Did you, Nels?” asked Jess.
The old man cupped his ear and wrinkled his forehead.
“Thought not. You know the rule, Bo. That’s a stroke for not callin’ a bank shot.”
“We’re not exactly playing nine-ball here, Minnesota Fats.”
“What part of pool in cow pasture don’t you understand?” Jess asked. “It’s all in the book.”
“You mean that one you continually rewrite on the fly?”
“Quit whining, bend over, and take your penalty like a man.”
“Don’t know what kind of dudes you hang with, but bending over ain’t gonna happen with this weed cutter.”
Jess made a halfhearted stab at his two-footer and watched in horror as it juked and changed directions six times before dying right of the hole. “That was good—within the leather.”
“So, you get to pick and choose which set of rules you’re playing by as the round evolves? You know damn good and well it’s not dead until the ball finds the bottom of the cup.”
“Let me get this straight. All those putts I’ve been conceding to you aren’t good?”
“Strictly speaking, no,” Bo said. “In stroke play there’s no such thing as a gimme, but in a friendly match, a bit of leeway is given if all parties are in agreement. However, under no circumstances can you arbitrarily bend the rules to cover your ineptness at the game, especially when a wager is on the line.”
Jess heaved his putter toward the next tee. “Good luck collectin’.”
“You’ve got that right. According to my calculations, I’ve never seen one red cent in all the times I’ve kicked your ass.”
“And you never will ’til ya start throwin’ a few more strokes my way, tight ass.”
Marcus escorted Bo to the next tee. “Where’s the brotherly love?” he asked. “You two are going to kill each other over this stupid-ass game.”
“It’s not the game that’s stupid. It’s that knucklehead brother of mine. He’ll never find peace of mind until he’s laying six feet below the fairway.”
Bo had just witnessed his competitors hit an array of shots on the last hole—none of them particularly noteworthy. Now one down against his three playing partners’ best balls, he weighed his options on the eighteenth tee. Playing severely downhill, the sharp dogleg left was the longest on the course at 370 yards.
Upon a whim, Bo chose an uncharted route, a move so bold he questioned his own sanity. He aimed forty-five degrees left of the fairway on a path directly in line with the green. A large apple tree, the last standing survivor of his father’s grove, blocked his way. He teed the ball high and forward, making sure his head was well behind it.
His Titleist quaked on the tee as strong turbulence pushed from behind. He steadied his nerves and literally leaped out of his shoes when he swung hard in pursuit of the distance the shot required. The ball damn near rose vertically as it miraculously slipped through the uppermost branches of the tree.
Jaws dropped as the ball defied Earth’s gravitational pull. It landed hard on the declivity and sprang forward in leaps and bounds so immense words could not express. As if guided by the hand of a higher power, the little white sphere ultimately settled on the edge of the green well over three hundred yards from the tee.
Bo pumped a fist and snatched up his tee as he strode off all full of himself.
“Hey, hey, hey! Hold up there a second, Hercules,” Jess said. “What was that?”
“Right off, I say it was one hell of a shot.”
“No can do.”
“Because?”
“’Cause it’s not part of the course.”
“The greens aren’t part of the course?” Bo asked, throwing up his hands out of frustration. “Do you realize we could cut at least an hour off our rounds if you’d quit arguing with me on every hole?”
“Pasture rules state golfers must stay within the boundaries of the course, and that clearly was not the case here.”
“Don’t see any O.B. stakes. Do you?”
“Maybe not, but the hole wasn’t designed to be played that way.”
“Tough titty, bro. That’s weak, and you know it,” Bo stated. “Can’t you come up with something better than that? I’m entitled to play this course any way I see fit as long as I don’t end up out of bounds.”
“That’s a load of crap. There are no markers on this entire course.”
“That’s my point: there are no markers. And besides, my ball’s location in the air is irrelevant. Where it finally ends up is what counts.”
“Why can’t you ever be straight with me?”
“Say what?”
“Your whole relationship with me’s a lie.”
“Not sure what that has to do with golf, but I’ll bite just to see where you’re going with this.”
“Don’t try to deny you and dad always held mom’s death against me.”
“Wow, never saw that coming. The truth of the matter is, you blame yourself for her death and end up projecting your guilt through the eyes of others.”
“Yeah, go ahead and keep tellin’ yourself that, but I know the truth.”
“It’s said that truth will set you free. You are anything but free, my brother. You’re imprisoned in an asylum of guilt and hatred.”
“You prick!” Jess reviled before storming off.
“What was that about?” Marcus asked.
“Hell if I know…and Jess for damn sure doesn’t know either.”
The relentless hot, dry wind had sapped the last bit of strength from Bo. He replaced the pin after tapping in for his gimme bird on the eighteenth and gave a shout-out to the guys from Lazy S Ranch who were about to tee off on number one.
“You boys about ready to tour the most exclusive club this side of the Mississip?” Bo asked flippantly as he approached the threesome.
Moose, the Lazy S Ranch foreman, waggled his driver and surveyed the deserted, windblown landscape. “Chicken Ranch is exclusive, all right—so exclusive it’s vacant. What’s par today?”
Bo raised his eyes heavenward while calculating the damage he had inflicted on Old Man Par. “Eighty sounds about right—give or take a few dozen strokes,” he joked.
“That for the front nine or back?” Moose retorted amid hoots and hollers of his ill-bred cohorts.
“How about we play one hole—double or nothing for your green fees, and I’ll use only a putter,” Bo boldly challenged. “Ties go to the house, standard pasture rules.”
“You’re shittin’, right? Don’t forget, I’ve seen you putt.”
“Put up or shut up,” Bo said, laying down the ultimatum. “Ladies first.” He bowed while extending his right arm in a sweeping motion.
Moose needed both hands and all three hundred pounds of his girth to push his tee into the hard-baked clay.
“Stand back, fellers. Don’t want nobody gettin’ caught in the back draft,” he said, nervously laughing.
He wrapped his big meat hooks around the grip and stood a mile from the ball in order to peer over his immense gut. Like an angry bull, he pawed at the dirt with a cowboy boot, and before you could say strike one, he was nothing but a big blur on the downswing as he pivoted around his right leg while stepping into the bucket with his left. The ball bobbled slightly on the tee as the sonic breeze surpassed Mach One.
“Pasture rules state it don’t count ’til ya hit the damn thing,” Moose stated with a scowl.
Bo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at such an unmanly display of athleticism. “You must be reading the same version Jess wrote. The rules also stipulate that forfeiture is decreed in the case of noncontact before sunset,” he improvised.
“Smart-ass,” Moose grunted.
Globs of sweat peppered the ground around the big man as he prepared to make another pass.
“Better hit it soon or you’ll have to play from that water hazard you’re creating,” Bo ribbed.
More determined than ever, Moose’s homemade swing sent his black-striped green range ball spinning far right somewhere into the next county.
“That’s gone,” Bo said without reservation.
“The hell, you say. What about the little-used Area 51 rule? Quote: ‘A ball deemed to have vanished under mysterious circumstances in an area of known supernatural phenomena entitles that player to a free drop in the vicinity of said occurrence.’”
“There’s nothing mysterious or supernatural about hitting a slice so far off line that it ends up in another time zone. But who am I to squabble over a technicality?”
“Okay, dickwad. Let’s see how you’re going to manage rolling a putt over this moonscape you call a course.”
“Watch and learn,” Bo said with confidence.
The former high school all-star ballplayer rested the putter on his right shoulder and tossed the ball high into the air. He then connected with it about waist high as if he were hitting fungos during fielding practice. The ball took off like a well-struck drive and headed straight toward the green.
“Kinda got your games mixed up there, don’t you, sport?”
“It’s all legal. Matter of fact, you’ll find it in small print right below that Area 51 rule you’re so fond of, under the heading ‘Article 52.1 Hybrid Golf.’”
Moose threw down his sweat-stained Caterpillar ball cap and stomped on it. “Goddamn som bitch!” he screamed. “What we playin’ here—liar’s poker?”
He headed off in the direction of his shot and stalled to claw around the brush and dirt. Looking guilty as sin, he palmed a ball and dropped it into his holey pants pocket. As intended, it traveled down his leg and landed conveniently behind his foot.
“Got it!” he yelled.
Bo rushed over. “Must’ve hit that awfully hard.”
“Sure as shit did.”
“Thought so. You knocked the color right off the Surlyn cover.”
Moose looked down at the white ball and cringed. “Get a free drop anyways—Area 51, remember?”
“Who could forget? You certainly never will.”
Bo darted up the fairway and sized up his next shot, which was within sniffing distance of the green. Still short of breath, he scooped the ball up with the back of his putter head, hesitated, and then winked at Moose. “Think you’re gonna like this.”
He began a slow spin that gained momentum with every turn and just like an Olympic hammer thrower, released the club at precisely the right instant. The ball gained impetus as it broke the interconnected link to his putter like a booster rocket. The little white shuttle landed ever-so-gently on the translunar brown surface of the exhausted green.
“The Eagle has landed. I repeat, the Eagle has landed,” Bo mocked, talking into his cupped hand.
“What the hell was that?” Moose asked. “Don’t tell me; let me guess. It’s covered in small print under Article 52.1. Well, the bet’s off. Let’s just say my original ruling supersedes yours, therefore nullifyin’ all sequential rulings of questionable nature as covered under Article 51.”
Bo pushed his cap back and scratched his head. “Have any idea what you just said ’cause I sure as hell don’t. It’s obvious I can’t match wits with the witless. Therefore, I declare this event non-contestable on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Have a good round, fellas. Oh, and by the way, be sure to replace those divots,” he said dryly.
“Wouldn’t want to deface this historical landmark, now would we?”
Bo passed the old, abandoned grain silo and wandered over to the honor box located near the first tee to collect the daily green fees. Some said the modest five-dollar fee was a bargain, while others felt it was way too much considering the poor condition of the course. But all concurred that golf was golf no matter how or where it was played.
“Son of a…” he heard himself say to no one in particular as he perused the contents. In the box he found two tattered Lincolns, a five-dollar Monopoly play note, a ball mark, a slug, a range token from another course, an unsigned handwritten IOU, and last but not least, a pamphlet on how to grow a lush, green lawn.
“What’s our take today?” Jess shouted in a belligerent tone as Bo approached the front porch of their farmhouse.
“Nice to see you got over your little snit.”
Still perturbed, Jess hawked a loogie and looked away.
“Take away the two legitimate bills, and it looks as though we were on a scavenger hunt. But on the plus side, if you want to play Monopoly, the advantage is mine.”
“Those jerk-offs from Lazy S are reveling in our plight as they sit back and collect their big, fat checks from corporate.”
“That may be true,” Bo said, “but they always come crawling back when the golfing bug bites.”
“How much more time and money you gonna keep sinkin’ into this losing venture?” Jess asked. “If it wasn’t for that sorry scarecrow out near number six, most days this course wouldn’t have a soul on it besides you.”
“Know what you’re saying, but I can’t let it go. It’s similar to that bad girlfriend we’ve all had who keeps shitting on you, but deep down you know you’ll always love her regardless.”
“Difference is at least with a girl, you occasionally get to be the screwer and not just the screwee.”
Bo rubbed his chin. “Interesting concept. Never looked at it that way before.”
“It’s about time we get back to basic economics. We’ve gotta cut our losses and concentrate solely on what’s gonna bring in positive cash flow. That is, assuming it’s not already too late.”
“So in a nutshell, what you’re saying is it boils down to a question of water,” Bo said. “Find it ironic we’re drowning in debt due to lack of it.”
He began to laugh so hard that he bent over and rested both hands on his knees. “Remember when dad used a divining rod that one especially dry year? He was out there for hours at a time waiting for that dumb stick to twitch. Not sure what he would’ve done if he’d managed to get a hit. Be damned if I was willing to dig down only to find nothing but bedrock. Some old-timers swore by the rod, but I believe it was nothing more than wishful thinking. Amazing how dad always came out smelling like a rose regardless of how dire the situation was. Behind it all, I think he feared the wrath of mom more than failure. If her ire didn’t motivate you, nothing would. That poor bastard worked his fingers to the bone in order to develop and sustain this worthless track. It cost him damn near everything, including his life. He was brokenhearted in the years right before he died, knowing for the first time in his life he was in debt. Sure put you and me behind the eight-ball when this place was dumped in our laps.”