SATURDAY’S RUN
by
Christopher A. Lane
He didn’t hear the golf ball and certainly didn’t see it. Had sight, hearing. or any other of his senses picked it up – like say, the way an F-16’s radar picks up an incoming bogey – he would have taken evasive action.*
*I’m using terms like F-16, bogey, evasive action in an ironic way of course since he was running along the golf course at a U.S. Air Force base when it happened. I would name the base but, as you are probably well aware, they would have to kill me. Top secret, hush-hush, G-14 classified stuff, if you take my meaning.
So anyway, he was running along the golf course at Petersen Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado… oops. (If I’m in the middle of a sentence and it just sputters out without a period or a conclusion, you’ll know what happened: thump-thump – that’s the literary sound effect for a pair of top secret, CIA-issue bullets coming out of a top secret, CIA-issue silencer and sending me to an earlier-than-I’d-like, top secret, CIA-approved grave.)
It was Saturday. That’s important information. On any other day, this couldn’t have happened. Why, you ask? Well, it seems rather obvious, but I will humor you with an explanation. On weekdays, he ran along the same golf course, but it was too early in the morning for any sort of white spherical weapon shenanigans. On Sundays, he didn’t run. He went to church with his wife, like all faithful, God-fearing people should do if they don’t want to go to hell. (Sidenote: He really, really didn’t want to go to hell. He had seen enough Pauly Shore movies to know that hell was a dreadful, painful place and, quite obviously, not the place for him. He was hoping desperately to avoid it and to spend eternity in a more pleasant place – something akin to a time-share on Kauai.)
So Saturday was it – his only chance of running by the golf course on base at just the right time for golfers to be out there chasing and whacking their little balls. Another important piece of information that you should know is this: He was listening to Sia’s “The Greatest” via his earbuds. Blasting it, really, using it as aural fuel to coax his tired limbs to propel himself forward at something faster than a walk. Essential background: he was tired because a. his wife was out of town, b. his wife wasn’t really out of town, c. his dogs were loud, annoying, gas-emitting and spoiled, d. he had just done a heavy, beast-mode chest workout at the base gym.
Backing up a step, please realize, he wasn’t in the Air Force. Maybe that’s why he didn’t detect the errant, missile-like Titleist moving swiftly in his direction.
His wife, however, was in the Army. The U.S. Army, the one that serves and defends the U.S. with great courage and plenty of days off. That’s not a criticism, the part about days off. It’s a fact. They get everything off: New Year’s Day, MLK Day, President’s Day, Armed Forces Day, National Margarita Day, Groundhog Day, Grandparents Day, Cinco de Mayo, I-Think-We-Need-Another-Holiday Day… Sometimes they take off just for the hell of it. And the thing is, for all of these “holidays,” they snag an extra day. Three-day weekends for the average civilian become four-day weekends for military folks. That part of the job makes it a pretty good gig. The not-so-good part is getting shot at and blown up and maimed and chased and taken captive and tortured and dead. That’s the part that really sucks. But they do it because of the great holidays. NO, I’m kidding! They do it because they’re brave and because they care about our country and us, and because they are a bunch of badasses.
His wife was a badass. Not just any badass, she was a badass 1st Sergeant. First Sergeant Badass, many of her troops called her with respect, admiration, and hint of fear. He referred to her, lovingly, as his Beautiful Badass. And when she told him to get down, beat his face, and give her 50, you can bet, he sure as hell did it!
She was out of town training to become more deadly with an M-16. The Army called it Range Training. She called it “fun.” She enjoyed shooting stuff and she was quite good at it. The event was only for four days, but she had packed every bit of her camo gear – camo helmet, camo uniform, camo canteen, camo extra uniform, camo canteen belt, camo backpack, camo jacket, camo extra backpack, camo rain jacket, camo headgear, camo gloves – into her Jeep and driven the exhausting 25 minutes to the instillation where the training was taking place. (I use “instillation” here because to come right out and say Ft. Carson could most definitely get me “thump-thumped.” It really could.)
While Ft. I’m-Not-Supposed-To-Say-The-Name was officially out of town, it wasn’t that far out of town – as the 25-minute travel time implies. So the great news was that she would be coming home in the evenings. The not as great new is that, when she arrived at Carson (dammit, shouldn’t have typed that…too late now), she learned that she would not be allowed to return home in the evenings because this was a “field exercise” and even though she was a badass and a 1st Sergeant, she would be sleeping with all the other troops in a set of lovely but rather primitive and kinda crappy barracks.
Out of town, sleeping in a big open bay with a bunch of other women on cots or maybe real mattresses but definitely not Sleep Number beds with climate control, close enough to run home if she forgot her camo purse or camo mascara.
Which brings me to his dogs. I say “his” dogs but they were really “her” dogs. Sort of “his and her” dogs, but not really. They listened to her more because she gave them snacks, fed them scraps, and bought them doggie pillows and doggie blankets and doggie bandanas. She also put generous amounts of lavishly expensive wet dog food in with their dry-as-bones kibble. He, on the other hand, did not do any of this. He simply played with them, chased them around the house, barked at them enthusiastically, let them jump on him when he was trying to do sit-ups on the floor, took them for walks occasionally, and sometimes, when called upon, scooped their poop out of the yard.
When she was gone, like on this particular weekend, the dogs often became surly and quite ill-tempered. They groused about the house, complaining and huffing and eating plate after plate of nachos and drinking beer and belching and scratching themselves and generally acting like slobs. No, wait… that was him. What the dogs did was mope. They sulked. They fumed. They cried. They even, on occasion, howled mournfully, grieving the fact that she was dead. Any time she was gone for more than two hours, they were convinced that she had died. When she returned, they rejoiced, believing it to be a bona fide miracle – a resurrection.
Part of their moping and sulking and fuming involved actual fumes. The large one (and by large, I am, of course, alluding to a word that starts with an “f” and rhymes with “hat” but which is politically incorrect, emotionally insensitive, and is considered an insult by those who are, in fact, fat) especially, liked to signal his discontent by sending up great plumes of toxic gas. Somehow, the dogs were immune to it. Since their noses are supposedly seven times more sensitive than a human nose, the only explanation is that they had developed the ability to hold their breath for great and extended periods of time. They would simply lay there, like furry lumps, as though nothing was happening, while he was being gassed out of the joint.
Besides this, all three of the dogs snored like sailors… or construction works… or whoever it is that really snores like mad. Even if he had a Sleep Numbers bed (which he did not), sleeping with them in the same room would have been worse than sleeping in any barracks. Orthopedic comfort was not the issue. What he needed was a gas mask and a set of industrial earplugs. He had neither.
Which brings me to heavy beast mode. To be completely honest, two of the words in that phrase are misleading. Namely, heavy and beast. While he worked out often and his wife accused him of being a genuine gym rat, he did not lift heavy weights and had little or no resemblance to a beast, no matter his mode. He was a reformed runner – having progressed from a walking (or rather, running) skeleton to a moderately muscular gym skeleton – and try as he might, he couldn’t bench more than 90 pounds. In fact, 90 pounds just about broke him in half.
The reality of the situation is that while his wife was kinda in town and kinda outta town and his dogs were log-sawing gasbags, he hung around the gym for the women. Just kidding! His badass wife would kick his ass if that was the case. No. He actually wanted to build a chest that would make Arnold say, “I’ll be back” or “Hasta la vista, baby,” or some other well-worn phrase the former actor, former governor might choose to emit. He wanted to build a chest that would make Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson say, “Just bring it,” and also convince DJ to actually look at his audition video for NBC’s Titans.
I think, in the best interest of this particular story, we should just give the guy a break, acknowledge that, while kind of a weakling, he tries, and compliment him on his “heavy beast mode chest day” (wink-wink).
Anyway… that’s why he was tired.
And that’s why, as he listened to “The Greatest” and appreciated the “swole” (that’s a word: google it) in his pecs, and felt the morning breeze rustling through his hair, he never stood a chance against the golf ball.
It probably went something like this: retired General So-and-So steps up to address the ball, shakes his saggy butt a couple of times to settle in, wiggles his wrists, gets the feel of the club, gazes at the ball, gazes down the fairway, envisions a 395 yard drive, tells himself that even though he’s old, he can still send it and also that his new club will destroy that freaking ball, and he does a test swing at 50% speed, another, another, wiggles his saggy butt, envisions, silently trash talks the ball, steps up, gazes, envisions, silently trash talks, recoils and….
Shanks the crap out of it. It’s the world’s greatest shank. A shank to end all shanks, causing the ball, which was just sitting on the tee, quietly and innocently minding its own business, to shoot off like a rocket – not down the fairway, as predicted and envisioned and encouraged via profane trash talk, but at a severe 90-degree angle. It zips almost supersonically sideways, narrowly missing General So-and-So’s golf buddies and causing them to duck and swear as it streaks with laser-like accuracy directly toward some poor idiot who’s running down the sidewalk.
From his perspective, it went like this: Sia singing, “Oh-oh, I got stamina.” And him thinking, “Yes, I’ve got stamina.” Glancing right, seeing golfers. Sia: “Oh-oh, I got stamina.” Him: “Damn right, I’ve got stamina. I’m freaking tired because my wife is kinda out of town and because those damned dogs kept me up with their snoring and farting and I want to stop running and walk because that chest workout was crazy heavy-beast mode, but… I’ve got stamina. I wish Sia would give me a little of that stamina… What kind of idiots play golf anyway…?”
And then it comes. Not from the front, but from the side – “whoosh” – from the golf ball he didn’t even know was there. Except it didn’t go whoosh. It didn’t do anything, made no sound, provided no warning. The only thing he heard was the sound a Titleist number 3 makes when it impacts a human skull bone at approximately 150 MPH, give or take a PH. And that sound, in case your wondering, is very similar to the sound an aluminum baseball bat makes when it makes clean, solid contact with a baseball. In other words: plink!
He heard the plink, which, inside his head sounded kind of like “THUD!”, but he also heard Kendrick Lamar telling him: “Ay, I am the truth. Ay, I am the wisdom of the fallen..”
Coincidentally, he thought it was the voice of Jesus, who also calls himself “the truth.” And on cue, as Lamar said “fallen,” he fell. Collapsing, he missed the next couple of verses. Also, consciousness was quickly deserting him. But he did hear this: “Ay, I work hard, pray hard, pay dues…”
After that, no more Lamar. No more Sia. No more breeze. No more tired. No more pecs. No more golfers. No more anything except a floating sensation and a tremendous view of the Front Range and especially Pikes Peak, as he rose into the sky, thinking: I work hard. I pray hard. I pay dues, like HOA dues, which is a big crock of crap, because I think they spend it on whatever the hell they want to – probably big parties for the HOA board where they do shots of Patron and dance to Flo Rida’s “Zillionaire.”
And his one final thought: I should be okay in this next section of life or death or whatever it’s called – this after-thing. I should be okay. Because I’m on Peterson Air Force Base and she’s on Ft. Carson Army Base and…
Thump-thump!