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Tips for Better Golf
November 29, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Class, Status | by davidbdale | 3 comments
Long before the godsend that is the golf cart, the caddies were on borrowed time. Their insinuations on topics irrelevant to our game rubbed us the wrong way. Yet, we might be employing them still if we hadn’t discovered Tips for Better Golf, a cheap pamphlet, badly written and sloppily typed, repeatedly xeroxed until it was barely legible, apparently distributed from caddy to caddy by hand, presumably a joke. Its advice to golfers includes the following: Caddies work for tips, not for hearty handshakes, your warm thanks, or advice on how to write a college application. No, it’s not your imagination: the courses you prefer are not congenial to cultural minorities. At most clubs, you will encounter the ethnic “other” only at curbside, at tableside, or in the parking lot. At the more exclusive courses, an attendant may wash your clubs at the end of your heroic round. Do not take it personally if he polishes your club heads by spitting on them. Empty your mind of conscious thought as you address the ball: it will not improve your game to consider the hundreds of acres of virgin timber the developer bulldozed to produce this grassy diorama with its little flags. The golf course is as much a nature preserve as your home aquarium is the sea. Don’t fool yourself that you’re getting any exercise. It is also bad form to complain to people who do real work about any injuries you may sustain. While it’s true that what you paid for your round could feed a Polynesian family for weeks, it’s unlikely they would have gotten the money anyway. If you are lucky enough to find your balls on the fairway, be thankful you still have them. Pick them up and go home. Remember to tip your caddy.
Copyright ©1999
Killer Ending
November 24, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Brother, Death, Grave, Horror, Kill, Killer, Murder, Mystery, Novel, Sibling, Violence | by davidbdale | 16 comments
If ghosts could kill themselves, they would. They long to be either here or there. Bodiless but not yet dimensionless light, they darken like shadows the houses they lived in. My dead twin brother finds ways to tell me he’s still half-with us, and I more than half believe him. Ghost stories have it all wrong. Rattling chains aren’t threats or warnings; they’re diplomatic feelers from the nearly departed. So far, he’s dropped hints about the gun I helped him buy, about his accidental death, and about the novel he was writing, but not enough to pull it all together. With my clean record, my legitimate ID, and a photo of the face we share, I secured a license to arm ourselves against what I never knew, but it helped him sleep, and so it helped me, too. He’d gotten it in his head that his foot was diseased, or menacing in a way that his chapter drafts don’t specify. In the garden at dusk, he aimed down the barrel with single-eyed intensity, fired one shot, and severed the pinkie toe, then laughed at what he called my much ado. He got it in his head that we were triplets next and aimed at me in turn, calling me the one in the middle before he fired. Lonely as Adam, I dug a hole that seeped a bit and laid him in damp earth, then filled it alone. I meant to write that it pains the ghost to haunt the living, but it doesn’t ring true. This note I found in his own hand, which looks so much like mine, bears no hint of anguish or remorse. There is no twin, it says, the novel has always been mine, and who will bury you now that you’ve killed me?
Copyright © November 24, 2006
Very Short Novels 