Cote Smith - Hurt People

* * *

I liked the golf course. Before I started school, when my mother first got the job because she felt bad that my dad had two jobs, she always took me to work with her. She would buy me fast-food french-toast sticks and tell me not to tell my brother. When I got bored playing with the putting machine in the pro shop, I watched TV in the club’s dining hall under the loose care of the cook, Sandy. She was a middle-aged ex-con secretly dating a large black man named Cornbread, another ex-con, who was in charge of the course’s greens. I had seen them hug once when they thought no one was looking. Whenever I came into the cafeteria, Sandy dropped whatever she was doing and gave all of her attention to me. “There he is!” she would say, in a way that tingled my neck. “Your VIP table is waiting, sir.” Then she would sit me down with a free grilled cheese, pinch my ear, and say, “Anything you need, you let me know. I’ll do my best to keep out the riffraff.”

When we got to the club that afternoon, Rick was waiting for my mother in the shop. He tapped the imaginary watch on his wrist.

“Look who decided to show,” Rick said, his lips stretching across his tan face. Rick’s entire body was a dark tan, from spending entire summers taking care of the golf course. He had a thin build, similar to my dad’s, except his came with more of a gut, from all the years he pissed away on whiskey, he once said. Nowadays he drank beer.

He didn’t see my brother or me at first, but when he did, Rick’s smile went wider.

“Hey, everybody, look here, it’s the Gabor sisters.” I didn’t understand the reference, but got that the sisters part wasn’t supposed to be flattering. Still, I had to look at Rick’s blond knees because I knew if I looked directly at him my face would start to reflect his smile. I don’t know why. I knew I didn’t like Rick.

A dying light flashed over our heads.

“Dammit,” Rick said, “I told Cornbread to change that stupid thing.” I counted the blinks of the light. My dad once told me to count the seconds between the flash of the lightning and the pop of the thunder — that’s how many miles danger was away from me. I tried to do the same thing with the golf shop light. There were big gaps in the flickers. I counted the danger far away.

“So, girls, what’s the lady outlook look like?” Rick said.

“OK, I guess,” my brother said, just to give Rick an answer.

“Just OK? Listen, you maroons.” He squatted down so our faces were even. His blond mustache sat straight, serious, telling us to pay attention. “You can’t settle for OK in life. Haven’t I told you that? You gotta always be looking, keeping your eye out for hot opportunities. They’re not gonna just stroll by your lazy ass and grab you.” He stood back up, and lunged at our mother. “You have to grab them!”

Our mother shrieked. She punched Rick’s hands away from her ribs. “Hey, cut it out,” she said, but with a smile. The two looked at each other, and the light above their heads flickered off, flickered on. “Boys, why don’t you see what Sandy’s up to?”

“Yeah,” Rick said, holding on to our mother. “Why don’t you go someplace that isn’t here. Your mother and I have a game to play.”

“Rick,” our mother said.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. We’re saving that for tomorrow.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What’s tomorrow?” I said.

An Army man came into the clubhouse and wandered into the pro shop. My mother broke free from Rick. “Go help,” she said.

“Fine, but tell these two goons I’ll be watching them. They better not mess up my course.” He pinched our mother on the elbow and walked away, a greasy handkerchief dangling out of his back pocket.

“Anyway,” our mother said, “tomorrow is my birthday. The day you two treat me like a queen.” She circled around my brother and me, slowly, giving her words an air of importance. “And to commemorate this historical moment, we’ll be having a party. At our place. What do you think about that?”

“Is Rick going to be there?” my brother asked.

Our mother stopped her circling and looked at the shop. Rick was cleaning the Army man’s club, and the two were sharing a loud laugh. “Of course he is,” my mother said. “All our friends will be there.”

“Rick’s not my friend,” my brother said.

“Sure he is.”

“No, he’s not,” I said. “He pinches people.”

Our mother laughed. She didn’t understand that we were serious. She didn’t know him like we did.

“Well, he’s my friend,” our mother said. “And he’s coming over. So you better learn to like it. OK?”

My brother threw his hands up. “Fine. What do I care.”

“What do you care? You care because this is my special day, a chance for your mother to have fun. Well-deserved, long-waited-for fun. I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

For a moment her eyes pleaded with my brother, but her mouth twisted into a smirk, like she knew what all her presents were before they were unwrapped.

“Sure,” my brother said. “Now can we go?”

“Wait,” she said, and for a moment she stared at us intensely, as if trying to memorize our faces. Finally, her eyes softened. “Yes, you may go.” She dug a hand into her shorts pockets. “Do you want tokens for the range?”

“No,” my brother said, pulling me away. “We’re fine on our own.”

* * *

Sandy had just returned from her break. She smelled of cigarettes and the citrusy perfume she used to cover up the smoke. She was taking inventory. Towers of wax-paper cups were stacked all over the counter. As we made our way across the cafeteria, Sandy unwrapped a sleeve of smalls and started counting out loud. She was up to thirty when she saw us and lost her place.

“There they are!” she said, throwing her hands up like it was a parade. “Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!”

My brother rolled his eyes, but my face smiled big. I couldn’t imagine this ever getting old. Sandy pushed the tower of cups to the side of the counter so we could see her better. She was barely taller than my brother, even with her balloon hairdo, a brown and curly perm that stayed the shape of a hairnet at all times. She was a few years older than my mother, and sometimes I liked to pretend Sandy was my mother’s big sister, my favorite aunt. I also liked her because she didn’t like Rick, which I could tell by the way her face changed when his name came up, and by the way the two talked about each other behind their backs. (Sandy was the office gossip, according to Rick, even though the golf course didn’t have an office; Rick, on the other hand, wasn’t given a mean name, but Sandy would plug her nose and wave away stink lines when he walked by.) Whenever the two had to talk to each other, their words were filled with leftover anger. It was like me talking to my brother an hour after a fight.

Sandy took a small cup and filled it with orange soda. She gave it to us to share.

“So,” she said, “what are the best boys up to today?”

She rested her elbows on the counter and put her head in her hands, very interested. We took turns taking sips and told her a little about our plans. The old spots we would hit. The new places we hoped to find. Now that we were older, my mother let us explore the course by ourselves. My brother took this new ability very seriously at first and brought a large sheet of sketch paper to map out the entire confines of the Fort Leavenworth Country Club. I eventually spilled red Kool-Aid on the map while my brother was coloring an oak tree. For that, I did time locked in our toy trunk. With my brother sitting on the top. The map was never mentioned again.

“Fun,” Sandy said. “That sounds like fun. Just be careful. I don’t want anything happening to the best. Without the best, what would we be?”