hurt and forced himself not to flinch. The years taxed Lyle’s shoulders as well by his recent birthday. He liked to think a courage came with those years that allowed him to witness his friend’s inevitable pain, but Lyle knew that, closer to the truth, it was a hatred that opened his eyes.
Ken drew his club into his backswing in a short jerk that lacked rhythm. He hardly paused before his stiff legs fell into the downward swing. Ken grunted as the pain bit his bones. His balance nearly deserted him, but Ken wavered to reset his weight before bringing his hands one more time into the finishing pose long ago so easily achieved..
The golf ball darted to the right, the result of contact made with the driver’s toe instead of the sweet spot. The shot gained little altitude, fighting through the air for each yard it could claim. Nonetheless, the wind beat the interloper ball into the thick rough. The drive did not go far. The drive did not go straight. Ken grunted at the ugliness of his effort. He held no illusion that he would any longer do better. The par that was once so easy to achieve was now beyond his reach.
“It’ll play, Ken,” Lyle wished that one Tuesday or Thursday morning he might enunciate the words without them sounding so hollow. “We’ll find it to hit it another time.”
Ken almost melted. “It’s barely past the woman’s tee, and it’s going to be difficult to get a fairway wood through that thick rough.”
Lyle replayed the golf round each Tuesday and Thursday morning. Over time, Lyle came to consider Ken’s troubled tee shot off the sixth tee as noble as any of his partner’s earlier and more elegant swings.
Lyle moved slowly from one shot to the next during that sixth hole. Ken’s struggles continued off the tee. His second shot hopped into the first water hazard cutting across the fairway. Following his drop, Ken’s fourth shot rolled far short of the green rather than fly towards the pin. The momentum changed as it did every Tuesday and Thursday morning round, and Lyle, not Ken, waited for his partner at the green. Lyle saw the sweat beading on Ken’s forehead. Ken’s eyes winced as he tried to ignore the pain that flared from walking such a long fairway. Ken concentrated as hard as before to roll his puts, but he had lost the touch which once turned long putts into eagles and birdies rather than bogies. The ball lipped the cup, mercilessly, at the end of the sixth hole.
“That’s a gimme,” Lyle always pointed it out though Ken never accepted a free putt. “Pick it up.”
Ken smirked. “Already have seven strokes. Might as well make the most of shooting a snowman by keeping it honest.”
Though his hands quivered and his arms trembled because of his pain, Ken tapped the ball well enough to find the center of a difficult hole.
“What did you shoot, Lyle?”
“Seven.”
Ken’s eyes blinked as he silently counted. “No need to save my feelings, friend. I saw your nice pitch out of the sandtrap, and you downed that long put for the bogey. You got a six, old man. Don’t think you have to hand me strokes just yet.”
A short walk to the seventh tee followed. Yet Lyle noted that stretch pained his friend more than all the longer paths. The sun rose towards its peak and burned on the golfers’ backs. In one step, Ken Sutton appeared the heavy golfer who shambled down the path due to the pain that gnawed his bones. A few paces later and Ken’s girth disappeared from his frame. His skin turned pale. In a blink, he shifted into a shriveled skeleton of a man. Ken’s cheeks drew long and hallow. His hair fell off onto his shoulders. Each step demanded all of Ken’s efforts. Lyle reached the seventh tee with a shade that looked little like the golfer who awaited him at the first tee.
“The doctors tell me there’s still a lot of hope,” Ken’s eyes appeared glazed with confusion. “We’re praying the latest round of chemotherapy takes care of whatever else might be in the colon. We’re hoping it hasn’t spread too far. But my vision’s starting to blur on me, and the headaches I’m starting to get floor me.”
Lyle used to hesitate on the seventh tee box before he pinning his tee into the earth. He would hope that Ken, as sick and shriveled as he may be, would be encouraged to take one last swing from the tee. Lyle no longer hoped for such. He could not change the course of Ken’s suffering. Lyle set his tee as quickly as he could and took a hasty swing to shoot the ball further down the par four, dog-leg right fairway before he walked away from the course in tears. Lyle shot quickly so that his conviction did not falter and abandon the wisp of his friend. Lyle did not know if ghosts could navigate their own way to the end of a fairway. He did not know if ghosts could shelter themselves from the wind. Lyle stayed with his friend because better memories would not let him run. He would not jeopardize his Tuesday and Thursday morning rounds by fleeing when the holes became too hard.
“There’s a lump on the back of my skull,” Ken’s shade, hardly more than a scarecrow, twirled and tried to catch its bearings. “I think the doctors knew it was there earlier. I don’t think they wanted to tell me the bad news. But I couldn’t wish it away after Sarah saw it.”
Lyle attacked his next shot with a low iron. He cursed as he topped the ball, and he didn’t care to look where the errant attempt rested. He dropped another ball from his pocket and took no aim as he swung wildly, digging large divots into the ground as he took his frustration out on his clubs and the earth. His hands ached before he reached the green. His back throbbed. Life might not choose to be fair, or just, and elements and years would claim friends as casually as they wished, but Lyle struck the ground all the same to make the dirt hear his meager protest.
“Where am I?”
Lyle was still too frightened to look at what remained of Ken. He locked his eyes down upon his putter.
“Who are you?”
“Am I far from home?”
“How much longer?”
“Where are you taking me?”
Lyle did not look up until he heard his putt rattle into the cup’s bottom. He looked up only when he knew for certain, after so many Tuesday and Thursday morning rounds, that his friend’s haunt would be gone.
Lyle would play the eighth hole, par four alone. But he never played the final hole nine. He did not care for that last par three’s pond or fountain. He pulled his clubs back to that ugly building that replaced the old clubhouse and did his best, after another round filled with grace, thrills, suffering and heartbreak not to let his mind dwell too deeply upon the glories that might have once been.
Brett was waiting for Lyle’s empty beer cans with a full, final third as the older man entered the air-conditioned clubhouse. Lyle sipped from his third can as he sat at a poker table and tallied his round’s score. Mothers crowded the room, bringing their children in minivans for the afternoon’s summer youth leagues. Many of the women frowned at Lyle, who grumbled and cussed as he drank from a cold beer with so little regard for the loud children who grabbed at range balls and putters. The commotion forced Lyle to recount his sum, but Lyle grinned when he saw the results.
His handicap hardly changed through so many years. When he was younger and stronger, he had owned such little technique. Though he had practiced and developed his skills with a discipline to make Ken’s spirit proud, his aging body did not allow him to much lower his score. Regardless, Lyle always felt proud. He had been graced with another good morning with memory, and he knew that even the fairways of the Bounding Hart would not live forever, no matter the Addisons’ efforts.
Ken’s score never changed. Lyle never added for very long. He played his round with shades, and so after the final hole, he chose the best strokes to etch onto a scorecard. He would not forget the morning Ken Sutton earned a birdie on every hole, and such a round, Lyle felt, was enough to memorialize well-played rounds with friends.
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Like “A Handicap of Shades?” Check out this excerpt from “Stars of the Shoemaker,” Available for Free Download from Flatland Fiction
"Surprise. Surprise." Tarence tosses the broomstick behind the bar and pounds my back in excitement. "Start lining up the cold ones. Blake Tuttle's returned to Koniak's."
"Sounds good, Tarence, but I'm here for business, not for drinks."
Confusion and disappointment wrinkle Tarence's face. As he fidgets, I notice the scuffed and dirty pair of green and gold sneakers on his feet.
"Here?" Tarence asks. "I like to think I remain a little in touch with sports in these parts, Blake. But I can't think of any player for miles around that's worth your attention."
"There's still one." Tarence follows me to the bar. "You might want to enjoy a few cold ones while you still can. I've come back here for you."
Tarence's jaw drops. His hands stray to his swollen stomach. His shoulders sag.
"You're cruel to come all this way to play a trick like that on me."
I shake my head. "I find it as hard to believe as you do, but I'm serious. My client needs a shooter. A pure shooter. Nothing less. Nothing more."
Tarence chuckles. "You drumming up talent for a circus? Maybe a carnival?"
"The Shoemaker's my client." I raise a finger at the underage girl working the bar and am awarded with a pair of chilled draft beers. "The Shoemaker wants a shooter. He made it very clear he's not looking for any young and quick player. He doesn't care if you dribble. Doesn't care if you play defense. He only wants a shooter, and I've got a feeling you've never stopped shooting those basketballs."
"You come all this way to ask me if I can still shoot?"
Tarence stands back from the bar without touching his beer glass. I follow him past stacked beer cases and out of Koniak's rear door. The sun shines on a narrow, concrete shipping driveway. An old telephone pole rises at a side, and my gaze follows it upward to find a netless, chainless hoop positioned ten feet above the ground.
"You don't even have a backboard?"
"I don't need any backboard."
Tarence grabs a cheap, plastic basketball off of the grass and spins it on his finger. "You just stand under that hoop and pay attention. I don't want you missing any I make because there's no net dancing along the rim every time I drop one through."
I've had the fortune to witness the greatest athletes of our age compete. I've represented hall-of-famers. I've enjoyed front row seats at the greatest of sporting exhibits. Still, I smile as watch Tarence shoot that plastic basketball through the hoop. His shooting form hasn't changed since those years we ran up and down those high school basketball courts. He doesn't miss a single shot out of those three dozen he arcs at the rim. There's no spot on that driveway where Tarence can't make a shot. Taking those shots make him look silly, with his swollen stomach, with his sneakers hardly lifting off of the ground during his jumpshot. Though I doubt he can make it up and down the court, bust open off of a screen, or defend any baseline, I know Tarence Nelson remains the same pure shooter he was twenty years ago.
I don't toss the basketball back. "You're my man."
Tarence smirks. I doubt he believes me. "So when do I play?"
"You're on the court this weekend."
I take a folded contract from my pocket and hand it to Tarence. His hands shake as he accepts it. Even here, people do not question my contracts.
"I think you'll find those terms to your liking," I smile. "You're about to earn a very prestigious pair of green and gold sneakers."
Fortune has indeed graced me. My luck continues as Tarence's heart withstands the shock flooding through his body as he tries to accept the truth of what the Shoemaker offers him on the flight back. Tarence empties the bar before our plane can touch back down.
About the Writer
Brian S. Wheeler calls Hillsboro, Illinois home, a town of roughly 6,000 in the middle of the flatland. He grew up in Carlyle, Illinois, a community less than an hour away from Hillsboro, where he spent a good amount of his childhood playing wiffle ball and tinkering on his computer. The rural Midwest inspires much of Brian's work, and he hopes any connections readers might make between his fiction and the places and peoples he has had the pleasure to know are positive.
Brian earned a degree in English from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. He has taught high school English and courses in composition and creative writing. Imagination has been one of Brian's steadfast companions since childhood, and he dreams of creating worlds filled with inspiration and characters touched by magic.
When not writing, Brian does his best to keep organized, to get a little exercise, or to try to train good German Shepherd dogs. He remains an avid reader. More information regarding Brian S. Wheeler, his novels, and his short stories can be found by visiting his website at www.flatlandfiction.com.
Other Works by Brian S. Wheeler
Stories
A Cruel and Burning Ice
A Handicap of Shades
A Voice That Summons Monsters
Butcher, Baker and Replicant Maker
Cat-Tooth Magic and Dog-Eared Miracles
Empty Urns Launched Into Stars
Given to Glass
Glass Desire
Glorious Gardens of Teetering Rust
Guarded Keepsakes
Kennel, Kingdom and Crown
Marble Fish
Mary, in Need of Belle
Meek in the Fields
Mudder Stew
Not All Spirits Be Foul
Opal, Is That You?
Patriots of Griffin XIII
Plastic Tulips
Rooms Without Furniture
Shadow Weapons of Doom
Starlight, Starbright
Stars of the Shoemaker
The Beckford Bottom Beast
The Dusty Dead's Revenge
The Llungruel and the Lom
The Warden’s Mark
Waters and Mirrors
Novels
Mr. Hancock’s Signature
The Sisters Will Dance
Visit us online today for these and other, great upcoming stories of magic and stars.
www.flatlandfiction.com
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