Meet The Divots

"If no one finds out, then how can anyone know? The nozzle's already covered over with paint, and you can't really tell what it is unless you stand about three feet away. Anyone coming around the clubhouse turn will be way too close to recognize the likeness. Trust me, that whizzing gas-bag will never find out. His wife's already three-months gone. She took all his buttons and trading stamps; he's as good as goitered."

Dexter Divot droned on. Danny, the less hairy of the two, let his brother's voice trail out. Sure, it seemed like a good idea to beg the Mayor for more fish nuggets, but now the Space-A-Twirl had broken down. Maybe it had been unwise to tank up on single malt whiskey and Pogo Dogs™ but they had to remove all possibility of being coherent and therefore cognizant of their actions.

As the boys went over "The Scheme" again, they watched Bub the Maintenance Clown over on the 18th hole. He appeared to be applying a thin layer of yeast to the apron surrounding the green. The clown would take a few tentative steps, bend at the knees, and spread something yellowish and rising on the close-cut grass. T'was ever thus: a clown with a pail will always catch eyes.

"That fucking clown has all the laughs," snarled Dexter. "What'ya bet he's raking in loads right now. Some life: mite-combing chimps and sneering at trees. What I wouldn't give not to have the life he doesn't."

"Huh?" uttered Danny.

"Okay, the portrait's finished. Let's stow this stuff out of sight and wait for the fireworks," chortled Dexter, heartthrob of many a moist teenybopper. The Divots made their way toward the chip bus. "Let's have some fun with the man in tights!"

As soon as Bub saw the Divot Duo approaching, he left his yeast laying. "Knowing those two, they're up to their baby-fuzz in no-good-noodling. I best make for the tent and grab all the Bavarian rolls I can fit in my face." So saying, Bub left the 18th hole to pursue matters breadular. Bub loved bread. There wasn't anything earth-shattering or egg-smearing about it; he just loved bread. He could almost always be found trimming the crust off a neglected slice of buttered Wonder. But Bub's bread fetish went far beyond mere decrusting or fondling; he had, carefully hidden behind his paint-by-number of Queen Victoria, a sheaf of papers covered in his musing and mumblings, the majority of which concerned bread, or bagels, or English muffins. Late at night, when the shrimps had ceased their maroon moanings and the chimps had commenced their phoning, Bub would light up a fresh batch of guano, fill his jar with weiner water, and peruse his scribblings.

Bub, working as a tee-jockey and rubbing the daughters of over-priced finance barons, found writing his only solace. His writing gave him a little niche of solace from the constant staggering and gaping of the golfers. The dimes and bus tokens they threw at him from the saloon porch came in handy when he ran out of crayon stubs, but it was their horrible, jaundiced laughter that cut Bub to the core. Oh, how they could posture and pose, with their joints hanging out and their females covered in Hollandaise! They knew nothing of Bub's dream: to lead the band at Carnegie Hall. This dream had taken him as far as the bus station. There they told him that, no, a piece of sausage casing could not be traded for a bus ticket to New York. Bub had learnt a lesson that day; a lesson that was hard to forget but somehow Bub had managed.

"So now here I sit, while some other jerk twirls his stick in front of all. What's a poor clown to do?"

Bub had always hoped that someday his self-pitying outbursts would be met with a reply, any reply, but the only reply he heard was the snoring and occasional fart of the chimps camped out on his bunkbed. The chimps would turn up at the caddy shack just as the sun sent its last simpering rays to twinkle in Bub's good eye, promising "lots of neat stuff and songs and snack food". Invariably, the apes would unearth some of the hapless clown's decantered gasahol, drink it off in thirty minutes and then trade off-colour knock-knock jokes until they passed out in a puddle of urine. Bub never had the heart to toss them out of his bed. "What's good for chimps, is good for me. Though the urine gets kind of tacky later on."

The moon rose above the golf course. Bub took one last thoughtful puff on his pipe and then bid the club goodnight. "Good night club. I hope you rest well this peaceful night. May I find you safe on the morrow."

"Shut the fuck up, clown!" someone hollered from the saloon.

Drunken laughter was Bub's only lullaby.