Argus and Wino go to the Driving Range

Wino just came in the door, and he’s still wearing his aviator sunglasses. He pulls them off, the arm catching on his ear as he pulls them from his head. “Hey,” he grunts. His face is all blotchy from the sun outside. I'm watching tv, waiting for him to come in.

“Check it out,” I say, pointing to the corner.

He looks. “Golf clubs. Whose are they?” he says.

“Mine. Jason gave them to me – for free! He got them at a yard sale, but he doesn’t like them. I guess one of the club heads flies off, but I can’t remember which one he said. I think we should go try them out. There’s a driving range down the road,” I say.

“I dunno,” Wino says. “I’m hungry. I feel like eating.”

“Well, Wendy’s is on the way.”

Wino brightens up a bit. “Hmm. I guess if I had to, I could force myself to eat a hamburger!” he says, full of beans again.

I wish the thought of a fast-food hamburger still did that for me. I can’t help but think of Dave, that old coot with the cheesy apron in the tv commercials, who probably died with chunks of burger stuck between his teeth, and a rough sketch of a proposed “Quadruple Classic Burger” clenched in his stiffening hand. Our local Wendy’s kept a cardboard cutout of him standing for months after he died, watching over the burgers he loved so much. And then he was thrown in a dumpster.

*

The range is ten minutes down the road, and there aren’t many people there when we arrive. It’s the dinner hour, so most people are probably still eating. I had an apple on the way, so I’m all right for now. But Wino is griping.

“Cripes, we’ll be teeing off right into the sun,” Wino complains. “And we should have gone to Wendy’s first.”

“If we did that, then everybody else would be here too by the time we showed up,” I say.

But it isn’t all that bad. With almost nobody on the range, we are easily able to pick a couple of stalls that are side by side, and are soon driving balls downrange, or slicing them merrily into a nearby farmer’s field. And in my case, launching them nearby other golfers with frightening regularity. What? What’s that, man? No, I didn’t shoot that ball at you. You must be mistaken. No, it was that other fellow. My balls are orange, see? Relax, man. Put the club down.

Some people, they take this stuff so seriously.

It isn’t long before we notice the guy out in the field in his little cart, trundling around in circles, collecting golf balls.

“What a shitty job he has,” I say, shading my eyes to look at him.

“Definitely. Watch this,” Wino says. His voice has the tone of a kid waiting for a bottle rocket to go off. He lines up the cart, and drives the ball, missing him by a mile. I laugh.

“You have to lead him a bit, he’s motoring along pretty fast. Aim ahead of him,” I say.

Wino sets up another Day-Glo orange ball on the rubber tee, and fires a second unnoticed shot. “Goddam,” he says. “To hell with the tee.” He grabs a handful of our balls out of the little bucket, sprinkles them around on the threadbare turf, and begins to shoot, rapid-fire. Pwip! Pwip! Pwip! I quickly join in the fun. The guy in the cart is nowhere near the little colored flags we’re supposed to target, and it becomes rapidly apparent what the hell we’re up to.

“Hey dad! Those guys are trying to hit the man in the cart! Can I do that too? Ha ha ha!”

We turn, and a little kid with his dad is pointing at us and smiling, and to our surprise, so are a few other people. It would seem that shooting balls at the cart-guy is accepted course etiquette.

We blow a few kisses and settle back into our stances, recommencing our shooting, each near-miss drawing cheers and clapping from our little crowd:

“Good one, man!”

“That was close!”

“Cap that motherfucker!”

It is no secret to the fellow in the cart what is happening either, and he is trying his best to wither us with dirty looks as we shoot, but he can’t really do anything about his little problem. And besides, I reason, this is why he earns the big bucks. To my amusement, his long stares are only provoking more laughter and ridicule from our fan club:

“Lookit ‘im! I don’t think he likes it!”

“Suck it up, buddy! What did you think would happen?”

“You’re a retard!” screams the little kid.

It is Wino who finally makes contact. The cart makes an abrupt turn towards us, when a previously off-centre shot touches down on the roof of the cart.

Pong!

“Oh yeah! Direct hit! Way to go, champ!” yells the guy with the kid. Wino smiles and raises his hands, brandishing an imaginary heavyweight belt for the spectators.

“Okay, I’ve got to get him now,” I say. “There’s only one more ball, so I have to make it count.”

“Hurry, he’s driving straight at us. Put down the wood and try an iron. Maybe an eight or a nine,” Wino urges.

The guy is really booting along. I grab the eight, drawing back for my patented home-run swing. “Die, rebel scum!” I yell, swinging for the fences.

And that’s when the head flies from my yard-sale eight-iron, spinning majestically through the air, catching the rays of the setting sun like a chrome boomerang as it arcs through the sky, the trajectory ending perfectly on the windshield of the ball-collector’s cart. Behind the destroyed spiderweb of glass, the driver goes apeshit, tromping the gas.

“What do you say we go get those burgers, Wino?” I say.