Club

The sky was the colour of asphyxiated lips when he got the call. The woman next to him hardly stirred. His hand, clumsy and cold, gripped the phone and he answered.

“Hello?”

“Do you still have your clubs?”

He heard the voice and felt he had been awake for hours. The inexorable years wound back and he was twenty years old again.

“Tom?” he said reverently, softly, almost like a prayer.

“Clubs. Still got them?”

“Clubs?”

“Seven. Six. Five.” Tom replied. “Driver. Wedge.”

“I didn’t think they let you have phones in there.”

“They don’t. Clubs, John. Do you still have them?”

“What?” His heart turning hard in his chest.

“What is not an answer. That’s how children talk John.” He laughed.

“Yes, I have my clubs.”

“You still near the Brighton course?”

“Yes. Well, no we moved away a few years ago.”

“We?”

He looked at the body next to him. She was awake, her shining eyes like a fox in the night.

“Anyone I know?”

“No.” he answered quickly.

“Kiss her goodbye, John. We’ve got a game to finish.”

Afterwards, she had twisted her arms around his neck and he had wrapped his gnarled hands around her wrists and thrown her off like a noose.

“You didn’t tell me he was out.” He said.

“I didn’t know.” She said as she knelt on the bed in the corner, away from him.

“They would have called you. First thing before letting him out.”

“But they didn’t.”

They looked at each other. They thought of the cold halls they’d left Tom in. The alabaster tiles and ticking clocks, each moving hand commanding the trajectory of lives. They thought of the men in white suits with soft soled shoes.

“I’ll call the police.” She said, reaching for the phone.

“Don’t touch it.” He said.

She stopped moving. He stood, picking his jeans up from the floor and sliding his hand through the loop of his watch.

“What are you going to do?”

“Play golf.” He said.

The beams of the headlights bridged the night, from the car to the figure on the course. John’s hands were on the steering wheel. He pressed his palms into the leather, feeling the rough give of his callouses. Tom stared at him, a few feet away, illuminated. He wore a sagging coat, old and worn. His pale gown ended at his knees and he was barefoot. He looked like an apostle. Some strange messiah out there in the dark. John felt his ankle twitch, the dark desire coiled in his gut to press down on the pedal. But he didn’t. The lights went out. He got out of the car.

“Hello Tom.”

“You’re looking well John.”

When they embraced, John felt how thin he was under the coat. He felt the sharp lines of his bones press against him, his skin like wax paper, as easily yielding as a peach under teeth. His hair was shaved down to the scalp. There were scabs by his temples. Old burn marks and new ones. In Tom’s hand was a club and John felt the stiff steel against the nape of his neck.

“Do you remember the last time we were here?”

“Tom, listen I-”

He waved his hand.

“They could have waited couldn’t they? Until we were done. But they didn’t. They chose to do that to me. Coming for me in the middle of my back swing.”

“When did you get out?”

“When did I call you?”

His breaths came out in short misty bursts. In his hand was a faded piece of paper, yellowed with age but it was grey in the low light.

“The coupon.” John said.

“The last gift I ever got.” He smiled. “Thank you John.”

“They let you keep it?”

“Their one kindness. One item of personal significance per room.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? All those years I had this on the wall. The lone décor. Kept me going.” He sniffed the air, his eyes deep in their sockets like pits of coal. “We were on the eleventh hole if I recall.”

When they hit their balls the sound was like the cracking of ice. They walked in the early morning, hoping to feel the balls underfoot. John followed behind Tom. His hands kept clenching and unclenching around the handle of his seven wood, the head stark like an pick axe. He looked at the back of Tom’s head as they walked into the underbrush.

“I’m in here.” He declared.

John looked into the silhouetted mass of curls and arches of thorned branches.

“Just take a drop out here.”

“No.”

“It’ll be easier.”

“Do you think I know anything about ease, John?”

He turned to look at his companion. Standing on the dew slick golf course, once as young men and now not.

“Hold this.”

Tom handed over his only club. John took it. His fingers stuck to the wet neck and he smelt iron. He groped the head and felt part of it come away. In the dark it looked like grass but it felt coarse like hair. He watched Tom wade into the thorns. He heard whispered cursing. He watched Tom’s leg catch on a branch and a sharp inhale. Then he brought his pale, withered foot up and drove it down, hard on the branch. His leg rose again, crooked like a spider and he kicked again, the loud cracking of wood giving way. He swore with each blow. Fuck. Crack. Fuck. Crack. Again and again.

When he crawled out from the broken bushes it was light enough to see his wine-coloured heel.

“A lot changed since I was gone.”

Tom looked at him.

“For instance,” he smiled, “When did you start wearing my wife’s perfume?”

They stood there. Their hands on the clubs, slightly titled, pointing up at the sky. They stood there, neither one of them moving. Not even when the sun crested the trees and the field turned gold.