Patrick Ness - The Crash of Hennington

—You can do it. Here’s some water to make the ground lovely and moist, and these little blue pellets will make you grow green and tasty. You’re going to love it out here. It’s a beautiful place, if you’d only make that little bit of effort.

—Father Kingham?

Jarvis sat upright and stared down at his basil in surprise.

—Am I interrupting?

Jarvis swung around and looked up.

—Mrs Bellingham! Of course you’re not interrupting. For a minute there, I thought my basil was talking to me.

—Oh! I say!

—Or would that be ‘my basil were talking to me'? No matter. What can I do for you this fine, warm, beautiful day?

—Do you have a few moments, Father?

—Always.

He motioned her inside the church to his office and sat her in a chair opposite him across his desk.

—What’s on your mind?

She gave a slightly embarrassed little frown.

—It’s kind of silly, Father.

—Coming from you, Mrs Bellingham, I highly doubt that.

—That’s very kind, Father, but, well …

—You can feel free to tell me absolutely anything, sister. Not only do you have my strictest confidence and good faith, you’ve also got a legal system that says that I never, ever have to tell anyone.

Mrs Bellingham smiled.

—All right, then. How can I begin? I’m not a superstitious woman, Father.

—I’ve always admired your levelheadedness.

—But lately, I’ve been having these dreams. She paused.

—Dreams, Sister?

—Well, one dream in particular, but over and over again.

—Is it an especially bothersome dream?

—Yes, to be frank. She paused again.

—Why don’t you tell me your dream, Mrs Bellingham? And take your time.

—If you insist. And she told him.

—The secret is all in where you place your feet.

—Mm-hmm.

—If you get them square with your shoulders, then step a little bit apart, you can just let your center of gravity carry the swing away from you.

—You don’t say.

Thomas Banyon pulled another drag on his cigarillo as he waited for Armand Odom, President and COO of Odomatic Incorporated, purveyors of fine dried and canned meats, to just shut up and take his fucking swing already. They had been at the fifteenth tee for nearly ten minutes while Odom shifted and wiggled and realigned and rebalanced and talked and talked and talked. Thomas was letting the prick win, currently by all of two strokes, and Odom had got it into his head that Thomas should be the beneficiary of his own obviously superior skills and knowledge. Thomas held the smoke in his lungs. The things you went through to get a new customer.

—See, I think your problem might be that you’re rushing it, pushing yourself to just hit it as hard as you can without first getting the feel for your tee.

—Interesting.

—I mean, we can talk more about your putting problems when we get to the green, but remember, putting doesn’t matter if you can’t get there first.

—Makes perfect sense.

Thomas closed his eyes and dragged again on the narcotic-spiced cigarillo. They were made specially for him by a shady agribusinessman from over the border and contained a delightfully mild narcotic formed when one particular species of beetle laid its eggs on the leaves of one particular species of shrub, of which shrub the shady agribusinessman owned every single known specimen. When the beetle eggs hatched, the grubs would, in an action apparently unique in the natural world, attack and eat only the stems of the fern, causing the leaf to fall to the ground whole, beetle-egg husks still attached. The husks decomposed as the leaf dried up, igniting a most unusual chemical reaction that resulted in a dried fern leaf with black speckles. These leaves were then gathered by trained harvesters, mixed with regular cigarillo tobacco, and then hand-rolled in zero-humidity humidors into slender, smoke-able sticks. The whole process cost an obscene fortune, but the results were exquisite: a smoke that elated without cloudiness, relaxed without lethargy, and painted the world pink without painting it red. Thomas received them gratis. The shady agribusinessman, whose name was Dylan or Declan or some D name Thomas always forgot and preferred not to know anyway, recognized a good retailer when he saw it, and Thomas was the best retailer of shady agribusiness products in all of Hennington. The wholesale boxes of Maria John, posh, itch, Brown Dog, and katzutakis arrived like clockwork every fortnight, along with a fresh box of TB’s Special Blend.

—Now watch where my arms are when I bring the club back. Can you see how I’ve only got my elbows just slightly crooked? And look where the head of the club is.

Thomas kept his eyes closed.

—I see.

It was worse at the green.

—Your approach wasn’t bad, but did you see where I placed mine? I purposely hit it long to take advantage of the slight incline.

Thomas had purposely hit his own ball short to take advantage of a subtle groove he knew rested just below the hole. Now, he would have to shank even that. He blew smoke out of his mouth and reinhaled it through his nose. Odom missed his putt, sending it wide.

—See, I pushed it, just like you do the tee shots. That’s what happens when you rush. Goddamnit!

Thomas was going to have to three-putt a one-meter shot to keep this moron in the lead. He wondered whether it was possible to miss the hole that many times without looking drunk or blind. He picked up his ball and pocketed it before Odom could complain.

—I’ll give you the hole. Why don’t we call it a day and get some drinks inside? On the house, of course.

—But how will you learn?

—I think I’ve got enough to absorb today.

The clubhouse barmaid, Tracy Jem-Ho, was ready in the clubhouse with cocktails, one with twice the alcohol for Odom, who remarkably was still protesting.

—But a real sportsman would never quit a game in the middle.

—You were ahead. Your victory was inevitable.

—Still, a final score has a certain—

—We water the course every Thursday. We would have been wet by the eighteenth hole.

—You don’t water every morning? Pre-dawn watering is generally considered par for the course, if you’ll excuse the—

—Every pre-dawn except Thursday, when we water at this time.

—What on earth for?

—Drink up, Mr Odom. It’s free.

—Whew. Strong one.

—That’s the way we like them here at Hennington Hills. Now. Mr Odom.

—Could I get another one of these?

—Of course. Tracy? Have you met Tracy?

—It’s a pleasure.

—Interesting you should put it that way, Mr Odom.

—I beg your pardon?

Thomas paused. Was nothing ever easy? But then, easy wasn’t fun, was it?

—Surely you’ve heard one or two stories regarding all that we have to offer here at Hennington Hills.

—Oh, yes, it’s a beautiful course, and I hear the others are just as nice. The grounds are quite something.

—But you must have heard, I don’t know, a story or two? Regarding the facilities?

Tracy placed another drink in front of Odom. Thomas could tell by the small amount of blue at the bottom that this one was nearly pure alcohol. Good girl.

—I’m not following you.

—About the things we can also provide besides those things that are only, how can one put it, apparent on the surface.

—I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

—You didn’t just come to me for a round of golf and a country club membership, Mr Odom.

—What else would I have come for?

Odom took another long draft from his cocktail schooner, set it down on the countertop, and looked Thomas straight in the eye. He didn’t say another word. You’ll pay for this, Thomas thought. Literally, in amounts you’ll barely be able to afford but will somehow be unable to keep yourself from spending. I will take you down, and I will do it in the worst possible way, by making you beg me for it.