Hole In One!

There it was again! Bub sat up, slamming his head on the upper bunk. He strained his ears, trying to place the curious noise coming from outside the caddy shack. Ichinisango... The noise came again, this time closer to the far corner of the shack. One of the chimps chortled in its sleep: “Slimy piece of shit...no more humpa-dumpa for you...” Bub never dared to peep inside the chimps dream book, that slim volume they kept guarded closely under the tent pegs. Only God knew into what sort of scribbling the chimps translated their dreams. The noise came again. Bub plucked his guitar string and bleated out a feeble, “Through goes where?” No answer.

“Hole in one!” someone shouted from the fairway. Most probably the Moors: late-night golf and wife-swapping was their speciality.

Bub leaned over the side of the bunk to retrieve his blunderbuss. If some no-good twizzler was “whizzing in his weeds”, he’d soon put a stop to it. He cautiously slipped from between the urine-hardened sheets: their tackiness causing his pajamas to stretch and squeak.

The tattoo gleamed eeriely with an almost fluorescent sheen. It was a gnarled piece of poke-and-dye: twisted; bent; the work of a madman. Bub had never really decided to get a tattoo — it was more a case of right place, right pants. Strolling the byways and highways of New Orleans in his younger days, Bub had known swarthier times. As you can imagine, life on a shrimping vessel is always full of fun and excitement and Bub had it, in spades. When he ruminated over those times, usually when full of too much cream soda and graham crackers, Bub would recall the hard work, good food, and great sex.

Tiptoeing softly towards the door, his shoes emitting a sombre “too-oot!” with each step, the hapless clown gathered his garters around his middle; his shaking hands doing their damndest to keep the trembling webley aimed at the door. The noise came again! Bub considered waking up the chimps: surely their caterwauling would scare off the most hardiest of golfers. But what if it proved to be nothing — maybe just a loose squirrel or a ring-bolt come free. If that were the case, then the chimps would beat on him like an old sock. Their pointy teeth shredding his paisely and upsetting the urn. No way was he going to interrupt the chimps.

He was at the door now. He turned the knob slowly and stepped out into the night gloom. A pale, waxing moon hung low over the greens. Its luminescence illuminating the pins with their little flags hanging limply, forgotten hankies, scattered Divots. Bub was always struck by the realization that the moon itself contained no light: its glow was simply the reflection of the sun. Strange to think that Bub’s view of the golf course was possible only because at that moment some Chinaman was pointing his little scrunched-up face up at the gleaming sun and thinking, “Stick of butter ... stick of butter.”

Bub shuffled around the shack, keeping one ear cocked for any alien noise. This wasn’t the first time that the clown had found himself creeping around his little hut on the prowl for interlopers. Last year, the Triceratops family had held a raffle at the clubhouse to raise money for Mr. Bhamjee’s ocelot farm. The prizes ranged from a ride in a hot-air balloon to a taste of leather from the personal cat-o-nine-tails of Mistress Murphy, the social director. One of the prizes consisted of a late-night hootnanny out at the eighth hole, complete with Mr. Triceratops’ own moonshine. The winners, a elderly couple from Mesquite, Wyoming, had consumed the entire still in about forty minutes, then spent the rest of the night taunting the regulars and defecating on the caddy shack. Their gastrointestinal shenanigans had awakened Bub suddenly and he was soon confronted by the awful sight of Mr. and Mrs. System’s back-ends. Horrid was the whiteness of their shining rears.

Bub steeled himself for such an eyeful now. If this nocturnal visit meant enduring more middle-class poop, Bub would go over the edge.