Strong, Bad

Dad’s hedge was meant as a defense against the surprising number of poor golfers who would hook or slice those tiny white moons towards our house, but Dad’s little cedar trees just couldn’t grow fast enough. It was years before they even peaked their heads over our fence. Dad would be washing the dishes, say, and some white streak would disappear in the direction of the weed patch my parents once imagined would be Mom’s garden. Dad would curse, lean across the soapy water and try to spy through the fence’s low lattice crown the offending member of whatever group was walking down the fairway of the 11^th hole. “Fuck,” Dad would say and I would look up from my train set, or my TV show or, eventually, the book spread across my knees. “Fucking golfers,” Dad would say, or sometimes, “Fucking trees,” as if those cedars were doing something undignified, huddling behind the fence there or taking some unnatural amount of time to grow.

Of course, windows broke, too. The two bedrooms at the back of the house, regular victims of golf-ball attacks, became an unused office and a guest room that Mom would only allow guests in after dusk and from which, at dawn, young me would be tasked with chasing them by being allowed to play with my bin of noisy toys—a Fisher-Price musical instrument with interchangeable mouth pieces, a xylophone with a foul note, a Tickle-Me Elmo—otherwise kept on a high shelf in my closet. My parents had a sunroom built off the family room. It was a great cage constructed of mosquito screens and white-washed wood that saved the sliding doors from sudden, surprise shattering. I would tell you where I was each time each of the other back windows broke, but it happened so frequently that just the litany of events I could remember—a fraction of them—would bore you.

We’d hear our neighbours’ windows shatter, too, and if it was close enough Mom or Dad would get up and go check the basement windows or whatever windows they were far enough from that they could imagine having been the source of that sickening sound.

More often a ball would thump against the fence, its vertical wooden slats proving our finest defense against the threat of strong, bad golfers. I can’t say that we all always did it, but I think most of the time we would each, if we’d heard a ball contact wood, walk to the window and look out to see who came looking for their ball. When windows broke, the twosomes, threesomes or foursomes playing the eleventh would stick to the fairway, keep their eyes on the course and on their balls, especially whoever was hitting a replacement. I’d watch them from the office, from the guest room or, if the weather was nice enough and I was outside, nestled amongst the stunted cedars, my face pressed against the fence’s wooden slats. I could usually guess who’d done it—the person lagging behind everyone else, the person who would hit their next ball then pivot their head in a jerking, wild panic wondering where this missile would land, knowing it wasn’t where they’d intended. But the balls that hit the fence, we’d always know who hit those because they’d come cursing or shouting to their fellow golfers—“I think it landed here! Over there?! Got it!”—before either trying to play it where it lay, well out of bounds, or taking a stroke and walking it back past the paved path to drop it near the edge of the fairway. Very few of these fence hitters noticed us or our neighbours plotting repairs and revenge in the shadows behind our back windows.

When I turned 13, Dad bought me an air rifle. It was an unusual gift for a girl who’d never expressed an interest in shooting anything, who’d never even had a cap gun. I practiced from my window, trying to shoot the stunted, brown-spotted leaves off the heritage oak that the developers who built our subdivision had been forced by some historical or preservation society to work around. If a squirrel or something skittered out onto a branch, I’d put the gun down. Or if a car pulled onto our street.

Once, one of the neighbours—Mrs. Bartholdi, whose house was filled with replicas of the Statue of Liberty because her husband was a descendent of the French sculptor who’d designed it—spotted me from the front window of her house across the street. It was early May and still cold out so she put a jacket on over her housecoat. As she crossed the street Mrs. Bartholdi held the jacket closed with her hands. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her slippers.

I set the safety and leaned the gun up against my dresser.

The doorbell called through the house. I pushed my door nearly shut and sat beside it to listen to the conversation. Dad answered the door. Mrs. Bartholdi was upset, reasonably, but I was too young for her to demand to see me. Dad explained that it was an air rifle—nothing to worry about—and explained the simple rules they’d laid out for me: never point it at someone, make sure that any people around are aware that you are shooting. She wasn’t really reassured. Dad explained that I was a very good student, that I was kind, that I cried once when he’d had to set a mousetrap and wouldn’t look at the flypaper he hung above the garbage cans in the garage. Mrs. Bartholdi wanted to know what a girl was doing with an air gun anyway. Dad said, Now Mrs. Bartholdi, and, Wasn’t Annie Oakley a sharpshooter? I believe she was. Mrs. Bartholdi asked, Who’s Annie Oakley? Dad said, It just goes to show that women, girls, can do whatever they want. Mrs. Bartholdi expained that I could not point a gun towards her house and if I did it again she would call the police or if she saw me pointing a gun towards any place with people again she would call the police.

The door slammed. I was almost certain Mrs. Bartholdi had slammed it, but I took a few leaping strides to get to the window and try and read what had happened from her pace and body language. She leaped from our front lawn to the road inches below and without breaking stride whipped her head left then right to make sure no cars were coming. She hopped the curb onto her own front lawn, then snapped her head around to look up at my window and I nearly hit my chin on my dresser ducking to get out of her line of sight. When I dared look again, she was violently pulling budding plants from the garden beside her front walk, a dirty row of her green victims already lined up beside her.

“Erica?”

I flinched.

“Mind if I come in?” Dad was already half inside my room.

“You startled me,” I said.

Dad sat on my bed. I sat beside him. We both looked at my air gun.

“New rule,” Dad said.

“No shooting where people might be?”

“Only shooting out back.”

“There’s lots of people out there.”

“She,” Dad gestured towards the window, towards Mrs. Bartholdi, “can’t see you if you use the back window.”

Dad grabbed my air rifle and walked out of my room. I followed him.

Dad was mad about the golf club’s maple sapling, which was growing at a much more impressive rate than our cedars and would, once the cedars cleared our fence, continue to cast our evergreens in shadow for part of the day. Worse, the maple tree might manage to keep us and our windows safe before the trees Dad planted would and that would mean that the course designer’s or landscaper’s or whoever’s kindness and thoughtfulness not Dad’s would be the thing that kept Mom and me and Dad safe from the real threat of the golf balls and the exhausting state of alertness we lived in each daylight hour eight months of the year.

The little maple, its leaves a bright, translucent green in the sunshine, stood proud and vulnerable. Out on the 11^th fairway a man in yellow and black plaid plus-fours wiggled and swayed while he stared down his club at his ball. A woman in a broad brimmed hat and a man in an argyle sweater-vest watched the man in plus-fours. But there, looking at the lovely little maple, was Aaron Martin, a quiet guy in my grade 7 class who played saxophone in music and who had a black and lime neon fanny pack in which he kept a Game Boy that he played all lunch and between classes. He had a set of clubs hanging from a strap under his left arm.

The man in the yellow plaid looked towards the 11^th green then back at his ball.

Dad slid the window open.

Aaron looked up.

“Shit,” Dad said.

Aaron turned away from our house and away from the maple tree. I noticed that he didn’t have on his fanny pack.

Dad wiggled the screen a few times to clear it from the frame. I watched carefully, ready to help. Dad set the screen against the guest bed.

When we looked back to the course, Aaron was looking towards our house again.

“Okay. What are you staring at, kid?” Dad said. 

The man in the yellow pants struck the ball. Leaning to his right and holding his club in front of his face, the man watched his ball fly.

Aaron turned back to the game and started to walk away.

Dad lifted the air rifle to the window, closed one eye and sighted down the barrel.

The woman in the broad brimmed hat set down her clubs and walked up to her ball.

I tried to figure out at whom Dad was aiming. I saw his finger pull the trigger. I watched his brow twist up in confusion when nothing happened.

“The safety,” I told him.

He grunted.

“Not Aaron, please,” I said.

Dad looked at me. “Who’s Aaron?”

“Him.” I pointed. “He’s in my class.”

“Okay,” Dad said. He was aiming the gun again.

When he fired I watched the players for a response. Nothing.

“Damn it,” Dad said. He told me to go and get more pellets. By the time he’d loaded and gotten set again, Aaron was lining up a shot. Dad fired and missed again. He swore again. Then he asked me if I wanted to try.

The answer was no, but I took the gun anyway. Once I’d loaded a pellet, I used the sill to steady my hand and I sighted the man in the sweater-vest. He was preparing to chip out of a bunker near the green. I fired as he raised his club up. I’d meant to hit his arm, but he’d drawn that up and back exposing his side. I watched the club fly out of his hand and straight up in the air. He yelped as he sat down heavily in the sand, clutching his ribs. He was checking the air around him, trying to divine the source of his pain. I was laughing. Dad was hooting as quietly as he could and shaking my shoulders. When Aaron looked towards our open window we both stopped. The man in the plus-fours and the woman with the broad-brimmed hat were laughing and teasing the shot man who was now moaning and brushing at his clothes like whatever had stung him might be stuck in there.

It must have been in May or June because I remember being in school a day or two later and one of our teachers asking us to write about what we had planned for the summer. Aaron mentioned that he was hoping to do much more golfing, so at lunch I had a reason to go up to him and ask about the sport. I even mentioned that I lived near the golf course and he asked, “Like, in those houses along the . . . Which hole is it?”

“The eleventh.”

“Yeah, the eleventh. My Uncle Murray got stung there, in the sand trap. Do you guys have trouble with bees or hornets or wasps or something?”

“Oh yeah,” I lied. “It’s bad.”

Shooting Aaron’s Uncle Murray was a terrible thing to do, really, and someone could have really been hurt. What’s that, “You’ll shoot your eye out,” thing from A Christmas Story or whatever, with the Red Rider BB Gun? Believe me, there were times when I thought about that. But shooting golfers became a thing between Dad and me. When Mom was out. I was always careful to avoid aiming near people’s eyes and only fired at golfers’ heads when they were turned away. Dad started calling me Annie or Miz Oakley, even around Mom, and he bought me a target and insisted that practice in the back yard or in our unfinished basement so that the nickname made sense, but also so I could get better. I did of course. Like, I missed in that first year, obviously, but not often. Then for my next birthday, my 14^th, Dad got me what was essentially a BB gun equivalent of a sniper rifle and my success rates went way up. We kept stats and stuff. A bit embarrassing really, but Dad was proud of me and that was nice. A bond, you know.

And in our defense, it did feel like we were owed something by the golfers, so there was that.

The cedar trees eventually grew too tall, which was good for our windows, but bad for sport. Like if when I came home from school to visit, Dad and I wanted to shoot, we had to go up on the roof to do it. We did that a few times, lying flat on the side of the roof facing our small road, our backs to Mrs. Bartholdi’s house. I think that was what did it, what stopped us—the possibility that after all our years of clandestine shooting our neighbour would make good on her threat to call the police if I was caught. So we stopped.

Dad and I had a few hard years of sitting around and looking at each other wondering what to do to replace the shooting. Wondering what hobby we could share.

We took up golf.

Toronto, May 2016

Emoji sequence: Kate Sheppard

Story: Lee Sheppard

This One Time (Part 1 of at least 2)

 You put the camera beside the wooden stand with the heart motif your mom gave you, which you used as a bedside table, and you lay down holding the Betamax cassette with most of your footage, holding it over your chest. The phone rang. You let it ring a few times before you decided to pick it up. “Yeah. Hello.”

It was your best friend asking you if you got your day, trying to persuade you to take some time for yourself, to meet up and go swimming. You covered your eyes with your hand and projected a picture of that onto your shadow-blackened palm. Swimming? Yes. Sure. Good idea.

The fruit bowl on the counter was also from your mother. It had a pregnant woman with full breasts and a hairy vulva scratched into the ceramic inner surface. The pear you lifted from the woman’s belly was ripe and juicy. You wiped your mouth on the sleeve of your second favourite hoodie. You’d given your favourite hoodie to your ex- —your again ex- —who was studying music in Montreal, who had read the script for the video you were now shooting and criticized it and planted some snaking, invasive vine in your gut that was choking your confidence.

Your bike’s back tire was flat so you fished four dollars worth of dimes from your change pile, two for your left pocket and the ride there, two for your right and the ride back, then walked to the station, your pockets heavy and jingling. The sound when you put your left pocket’s worth into the fare box was a chinkling cacophony.

On the subway train, you sat down beside a sleeping black man with a shining navy-blue jacket and a black hat with the Trinidad and Tobago flag embroidered into the brim. Under the seat across from you was an envelope sealed with a heart sticker. You got up, took a step across the rocking car, put your hands on the seat and got down on your knees. It was a smaller than average envelope and it was addressed to ♥David♥. You sat back down and held the note for a while. You wouldn’t open it, though, in part out of respect for whatever intimate confessions it contained, but also because your grandparents, maybe—or maybe your parents—always impressed upon you that it was a federal offence to open someone else’s mail. There was a booth that the conductor—or were they called engineers?—sat in at one end of your car. You approached it to knock and to hand him or her the envelope, but the door was open and the small room was empty. You left the envelope on the seat. Later, you imagined that the driver’s name might be David and that made you smile.

The Athletic Centre was closing as you walked up to the glass façade. Somebody your age, some trainer in training wearing white shorts, a blue golf shirt and a whistle on an orange lanyard mouthed the word, Sorry, to you as they locked the door, then stood off to the side and waited for the people who were finishing up their workouts to come to be let out. You could see the pool where the director of your program was doing laps in a bathing cap, his remarkably abundant body hair flattened against his back and forearm skin like careless shading from the pencil of a high school art student drawing Bigfoot.

Your best friend arrived and apologized for being late. You explained the situation.

Giant rocks had been installed around the shallow decorative pool at the centre of the campus. You and your best friend changed into your bathing suits behind one of these rocks. Your friend wasn’t worried that the only things that ever swam in this pool were seagulls up from the lake, wasn’t at all worried about being caught. Your hands were shaking.

The water was cold. Your friend stepped in with mock seriousness, exaggerated movements, tight lips, wide-open eyes and raised eyebrows. You laughed. When your best friend put their hands together and dove in, skimming the bottom of the shallow pool before starting a lap of front crawl, you joined out of solidarity and out of joy. 

Once around the pool was enough, though. You both got out, cold and laughing, and hurried back behind the rocks where you had left your clothes. You got dressed, your right pocket jingling.

You decided to get a drink at a karaoke bar just west of Bathurst Station. Pat’s house was nearby, so you and your best friend agreed to knock on Pat’s door. Pat answered holding a putter and wearing yellow and black plaid plus fours. The pants had been Pat’s grandfather’s, Pat explained, and the putter had been Pat’s aunt’s. You could see golf balls on the carpet between Pat’s couch, a hand-me-down from Pat’s mom or dad, and Pat’s TV, which had been given to him by a neighbour who was upgrading.

“I’m teeing off tomorrow at eleven sixteen,” Pat explained.

“You’ll need to practice more than putting,” your best friend said.

You abandoned the karaoke plan. Your best friend knew a golf course in a valley just north of Pat’s place, so you all got into Pat’s Lincoln Continental, which had been Pat’s Uncle Henry’s.

You lay your head over the top of the back seat and watched out the rear window as streetlights streaked past.

Pat parked on a residential street and your best friend led you through someone’s backyard. Their porch light came on and you flinched. Your best friend reassured you that whoever was inside would just think it was a raccoon passing by. The three of you hopped the short fence then navigated down the treed slope of the ravine, Pat’s golf clubs rattling together as you descended.

There was a creek at the bottom of the hill and you all had to take off your shoes and socks to cross the stream. You and your best friend had to roll up your pants, but Pat’s plus fours were the perfect height. On the other side, once you got up the bank and crossed the path, the grass was so nice on your feet that you didn’t bother putting your shoes back on. Your best friend stayed in the creek as Pat put down the clubs near the tee box and you walked around the fairway.

Your best friend came out of the tiny river with two handfuls of balls. One was cracked and covered in algae. You grabbed it, but it slipped easily out of your hand and made you laugh. Your best friend dropped the rest onto the tee box and grabbed a club—a seven iron—out of Pat’s bag. Pat was getting a tee for your best friend when your best friend brought the club back and swung it at the ball. A large piece of sod drifted up then dropped over the edge of the raised tee box. You got the divot and put it back where your best friend’s club had torn through the surface. As you were using your foot to flatten the grass, Pat was trying to explain to your best friend about using a tee. Your best friend saw you nodding and said, “Of course you know about golf too.” Class could be a sensitive topic for your best friend.

You smiled. “My Mom was very good.” And you used to caddy for your grandfather. And you went to golf camp. And you were on your high school team for a season.

You grabbed the one iron out of Pat’s bag. Pat grabbed a driver and handed you some tees. The three of you all set up shots and drove balls down the dark fairway. When you were done the pile from the river, Pat pulled out some extra balls and you hit them into the dark, too.

The three of you were out collecting the balls when a golf cart rounded a bend by the green and its headlights swept past you. You ran for your shoes by the tee box, the cart gaining on you. You saw Pat gather the clubs into the golf bag then run towards the stream.

It felt like the golf cart was right behind you as you ran up the hill towards the tee box, grabbed your shoes and headed down the hill, across the path and down the bank of the little river. You didn’t have time to roll them up, so your pant legs got wet and this was maybe what distracted you, prevented you from noticing that you were headed towards the outside curve of a bend in the stream where the water was deeper and the bank was a steep, eroded five feet tall and obscured by hanging, delicate tree roots. When you noticed, you panicked and turned around to see the golf cart on the path beside the river. You noticed that one of people in the cart had a flashlight that they were using to sweep the river so you took off your glasses and held them above your head with one hand and held your shoes above your head with the other hand and you submerged yourself in the water. At first you left your glasses and your shoes above the water, but you realized that if the people in the golf cart saw your shoes and your glasses they would see you, so you pulled them under too.

You counted to twenty before you cautiously emerged, nose and mouth first. Without your glasses, the moon was a bright blur. Your ears drained of water as you allowed your head upright. The golf cart’s engine, distant now, buzzed more quietly than the sound of the water running its gentle course. You put your glasses on and looked for the cart in the distance, but saw no one, not even your friends.

Your shirt was heavy. Water drained from the toe of your shoe. You slipped as you climbed the muddy bank and you went back into the water to clean your pants.

You put your wet shoes on because you didn’t want to hurt your feet on your climb out of the ravine. Each step landed with a squelching squish and your pants’ wet denim was rubbing you uncomfortably.

The fence you had hopped to get into the ravine seemed higher from this side, so you walked along it, hoping to find some easier way over when you discovered a gate. It opened with a squeak and you flinched. You were careful to close and latch the gate before you walked through the back yard. This time when the motion-sensor light went on, you scurried to the edge of the yard and rushed along the perimeter. 

Your best friend and Pat were waiting by Pat’s car. You were soaked. Your best friend laughed. Pat seemed more sympathetic. You explained what happened.

Because your bathing suit was still wet, you sat in the back seat naked and shivering under your towel as Pat drove you home. 

You carried your wet pile of clothes through your front door and into the apartment. Your roommates were asleep, most likely, or maybe still out. You hung your pants and shirt over the curtain rod and by the time you were finished brushing your teeth, small, brownish pools were forming on the edge of the tub below the lowest points of fabric.

That night you dreamed you were in some finished basement using twenty homemade mallets to euthanize twenty golden retrievers with the help of a person you knew you were married to. The process was easier than you imagined, easier than it should have been. When you woke you felt sad. Who was this dream person? Then you were upset, mostly because you realized you should be.

Not that you had long to be upset. You were meeting people at ten at another friend’s parents’ place and you had to get your gear and yourself there. That shooting day you drank too much coffee and you felt more behind than usual, which maybe wasn’t annoying anybody, but you felt like it was, so when you lost the tiny change purse you used as a wallet for everything but your change, you didn’t even bother looking for it and you tried not to think about it, but when Tiffany, this girl in your class who was your producer on this project, came up to you with this pink and worn thing and was like, “Chad found this in the bathroom,” you took it and you barely choked out, “That’s mine,” and had to forget about saying, Thank you, because you would have started to cry.

Still, that night before you collapsed into bed, you called your best friend and told them, “Thank you for last night.” And when your best friend tried to brush off the compliment and started telling you about Pat’s day of golf, you said, “No, seriously, I appreciate it. That was just what I needed.”

Toronto, ON, October 2015

Emoji sequence: Rhya Tamasauskas, co-founder of Monster Factory, writer and artist.

Story: Lee Sheppard

Note: This is part one of at least two stories. Couldn't get all of Rhya's emojis into this one story.