BACKSWING

by Aaron Burch

Frank stood on my porch, beer in one hand and clapping the front door with the open palm of his other. Behind him, his truck jerked and hiccupped but he never looked back; I’d heard that old junkyard of a truck growling through the neighborhood so knew he was coming, had watched from the garage window as he pulled up, jumped out of the truck and barreled to where he stood now. I waited with slight amusement as he pounded and got frustrated at my absence until, finally, I pressed the remote and let the wall rise in front of me.

“Shit, man. I was starting to think you weren’t home.”

I’d just finished dinner, sitting alone in my car while Karen watched a movie in hers. Frank looked ready to go and I followed, was ready to leave before I even saw him turn into the driveway. I didn’t look back at my wife but could picture her curled up in her reclined passenger seat, her laptop balanced in her lap.

“The range, man. Let’s go hit the fucking range.”

I went back, grabbed my old clubs from the back corner and could hear Karen turning up the volume on her movie, trying to drown us out. I slowed down, waited for her to look up at me. Kept waiting all the way out the garage.

I threw my clubs in the back and Frank yelled to be careful, to be sure I didn’t scratch his clubs or anything. Mine weren’t anything special, an old mismatched set I found at a garage sale, but Frank thought the world of his. He treated them like his babies. I liked that I could throw mine around without worry, didn’t understand why Frank spent so much money.

I clicked the garage shut, snapped the remote to my side like to a utility belt.

“You in there working or something?” Frank asked, but didn’t look at me or wait for an answer. I hadn’t told him, hadn’t yet told anyone, that we’d all but moved into the garage, that this was how we were trying to work shit out. “There’s beer in the back. Grab one before they’re gone.”

I watched the garage close as we backed out and wondered if, while we were gone, Karen would go into the house or stay put. She hadn’t brought anything from inside the house to the garage, least nothing I’d noticed. I wondered if it was because she spent her time in the house whenever I was gone, or if she just didn’t need any of it. If she was making an effort to rough it just to be stubborn or what.

“I think I might have fucked shit up with Suzy,” Frank said. He tossed his empty behind my seat, grabbed another. I took a swig of mine and it was warm and stale but Frank didn’t seem to mind so I didn’t say anything.

I met Frank at a business seminar. Halfway through he’d looked at me and put his finger to his temple like a gun, triggered with his thumb. He dipped his head back a little and rolled his eyes up in his head. I didn’t know why he’d singled me out. I hadn’t thought I’d looked as bored as I was.

“You want to get out of here?” he’d asked. “Go hit some golf balls?”

“I’ve never played golf,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. All you have to do is hit the little fuckers as hard as you can,” he said. “No skill involved, just man up and slap the bitches around a little.”

I laughed and couldn’t find a reason why not. We grabbed our food and jackets and didn’t come back after lunch. I followed Frank to the range, borrowed some clubs from the shop. Frank had his set in his truck. Always be prepared, he’d said. We hit our way through a couple buckets of balls each, didn’t talk much else, and it was the most fun I’d had in months. I’d never hit a golf ball before but liked the motion of it, trying to mimic and adapt my old baseball swing. I’d grown up watching and playing baseball, to the exclusion of all other sports, but hadn’t held a bat since playing softball in college. I missed it—the sport itself, the camaraderie with teammates—but it’s hard to find nine friends to get together on a weekend outside of school or maybe church. It had been a long time since I’d hung out with someone other than Karen or another couple. Since I’d had someone who would say stupid shit without worrying about who it might offend, just to be funny. Racist jokes, sexist comments that weren’t even jokes, though he made them sound like it, all of it vulgar and, moreso, oddly relaxing. It felt a little like I was in college again and I enjoyed the immaturity, the being able to let go. Soon after, we were going to the range every Wednesday before work. Wednesdays were half-price before five. I told my boss that the seminar went great, I’d met some contacts and had set up a weekly morning meeting, and he was proud of my initiative. I never asked how Frank got away, always assumed he just showed up at work when he felt like it, left when he wanted.

“I think I fucked up,” he said again, shaking his head.

Frank was always fucking shit up with Suzy. More weeks than not, they’d had some big argument, arguments that led to knock-down, wake-up-the-neighbors, call-the-cops fights. His words. But they always blew over as quickly as they started. Most weeks he showed up at the range on Wednesday morning all happy-go-lucky. He’d tell me about whatever fight they’d had the previous week, how now they were better and happier than ever.

“I don’t know. Last week, my ex was in town for something for her job and she called me up. We hadn’t talked in a year, at least, and she says we should get dinner or something.”

“OK.”

“So I just tell the old lady I’m going out and I go. My ex, you know, she looks great. Better than I’d remembered and then, after dinner, I go back to her hotel with her. I tell her I don’t know if I should, but she keeps saying, one drink, what’s the harm.”

We arrived at the driving range, parked. The sun had set as we were driving and I could see the overhead lights of the driving range beaming strong. We’d never gone at night and the lights reminded me of a night game. One of Karen and my first dates had been to a baseball game. She’d never been to one before and I was scared she’d be bored and it would ruin the game for me but she loved it. We made a point to go at least a couple times a season every year after that and they were always the dates we looked forward to most, buying tickets as soon as they went on sale and marking it on the calendar months in advance. I suddenly realized we hadn’t been in the last season and a half, wondered how that could have happened.

Frank rolled down his window and a chill blew in. The beginnings of fall, it was cooler out than I’d expected. I thought of our garage, how it would start getting colder in there soon. I wondered if it would be pessimistic of me to look into some kind of heating.

“I was trying to be good, man. I was.”

Frank dropped his left arm out the open window and underhanded his new empty toward a garbage can, missed.

I wasn’t sure why he was telling me everything. Frank always told me about he and his wife’s fights, explained their making up in detail, but never the instigations. The how or why, specifically, he might have “fucked shit up.” It felt weird hearing the back-story, the details, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Ask for more details, or if Suzy knew, or what.

“And Suzy found out?” I finally asked.

“Fuck no. And I ain’t gonna tell her. You some kind of retard? I’ll deny till I die, man. But she’s been asking questions, you know?”

I nodded some more, stared out at the field. There was a guy down on the end killing it, hitting balls farther than I’d ever seen. I watched him for a while, hypnotized, and thought of the times Karen and I had gone to games early to watch batting practice. She thought it was a little boring but it reminded me of going to games with my dad when I was little, getting there as soon as the stadium opened with my baseball mitt and a plastic box of cards to try to get signed.

“Fuck it,” Frank finally said.

“You ever go night golfing?”

“No,” I said.

“You’re gonna love this shit.”

Frank rifled through his golf bag, pulled out a package. He opened the plastic, tossed me a ball. I caught it, rolled it around in my hands. It looked like a bouncy ball: plastic and clear, though not quite see-through, with a hole drilled through the middle. Frank opened a package for himself, then got this quiet look across his face. He was still crouched down in the position to dig through his bag, and he started slowly bouncing on his toes. He looked up, out at all the open grass in front of us, but like he was looking somewhere out miles beyond it all. I wanted to say something, thought maybe that was all he was waiting for, but then he looked up at me, shook his face back into regular Frank, and said, “Glow balls. These are badass.”

He pulled a mini glow stick out of its wrapper and held it up to me. He bent it in two, shook, and it lit up fluorescent-green. Frank looked like a kid on the 4^th of July. He pushed the stick into the ball and placed the glowing orb on his tee, pulled his club back, and hit it as hard as he could. Even with a few beers in him, rushed, and trying to show off, he had perfect form. He’d often told me he’d been on his golf team in high school. He liked talking about how he could have gone pro. The one time I asked why he hadn’t, expecting some clichéd story—something about drinking or drugs or knocking up his old lady—he turned a hard stare out at the range and said, only, fuck golf.

The ball arced out into the field, a UFO or oversized firefly shooting through the night.

It did, as he’d promised, look badass.

“There he is,” Frank said, pointing out to the field, excited. The ball sweeper had appeared, collecting balls. When he rolled over one of ours, I tried following it into the machine, watching the flashing green get sucked up.

“Hit that fucker with one of these and it’s bonus points,” Frank said.

Frank swung back then forward, the ball perfectly on target but sailing high. I followed with my own attempt, focusing everything I could, and the ball hooked far left and I almost fell over. I’d only ever been able to pull the ball, despite all my coaches’ attempts to get me to spread it around. Frank folded over and laughed his face red.

“That’s some Funniest Home Videos shit right there,” he said as soon as he caught his breath.

“Fuck,” Frank said, rummaging through his bag. “Looks like we’re out.”

“Glow balls or beer?”

“Yes.”

“Shit,” I echoed. I hadn’t had half the beer Frank had, but still I could feel it starting to loosen me up.

“I might have something in the truck,” Frank said, and made for the parking lot.

I put a ball on each of our tees and hit them one after the other at the ball collector. I kept setting up two shots at a time, running back and forth between my tee and Frank’s. I’d barely thought about Frank’s leaving before he was back, a plastic shopping bag in one hand and another basket of balls in the other. He tossed me a beer from the bag and set the other five on the ground.

“Why do you have all this in your car?”

Frank opened the candy bag and spilled out glow sticks, the kind I remembered from Halloween and concerts.

“Just like I said, always be prepared. I’m a fucking Boy Scout, man.”

He took a pocketknife out of his back pocket, opened it up, and laid it on the ground. Grabbing three sticks, he bent them in half, shook until they glowed. He picked his knife back up and cut off the ends of each, upturned them over the bucket of golf balls and let the glow ooze out.

“Hand me a few more.”

I grabbed a couple more sticks from where he’d spilled the bag and handed them to him, and he repeated the process. Half a dozen sticks’ worth of slime poured over the balls. He picked up the bucket and swung and swirled it around. I remembered filling a bucket with water in grade school and swinging it in a circle, being amazed the water didn’t go everywhere.

“Voila!” he said. “Homemade!” He held the bucket out to me and I grabbed a ball, put it on my tee. I could feel the glowing residue on my fingers. I cocked my driver back over my head as far as I could, swung, and sent the ball flying out into the night, farther than I’d ever hit it.

“Nice,” Frank said, quietly nodding his head, and I felt proud.

The sweeper kept switchbacking across the field, picking up balls and I watched Frank wind up and hit one ball after another at it. I remembered why we were here, his confession in the parking lot. I looked over at Frank and wanted to let it all out, tell him about all of my and Karen’s problems which I’d been keeping bottled in. I wanted to tell him how I’d assumed she’d had an affair with this guy, Jeremy, but I couldn’t make myself, certain that I’d only believe she was lying if she denied it but also knowing I wouldn’t be able to handle it if she confirmed. How I couldn’t move on but I couldn’t forget about it; everything we did reminded me of this guy. When she wanted to rent an old movie, I couldn’t shake the idea that he’d recommended it, or we’d go to a new restaurant and I couldn’t help but think she’d found it while out with him. I was sure Karen knew I wanted to ask, but she wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t first so this cloud of silence just loomed overhead. I started telling her about my “lunch dates” with my coworker Amie, even though we’d really only gone out once. When she got jealous, I grew brave enough to actually start initiating the lunches that I’d been talking about.

I wanted to tell Frank all about Amie because I hadn’t been able to tell anyone else. I wanted to smile and tell him how much I loved watching her laugh. How she had these rings of red hair that perfectly framed her face, and the more we hung out the more I wanted to curl my hands into that hair, run my fingers through and play with it in my palm, see if it would bounce like a Slinky. How I wanted to take her to a baseball game, and how that made me feel guiltiest of all. And then one day, eating outside on a bench after grabbing sandwiches from the deli down the road from our work, I watched Amie laugh and thought of Karen and how I’d been jealous for the last six months, and leaned in like a kiss. I watched her close her eyes and tilt her head and realized I hadn’t gone in for a first kiss in years. Before our lips touched, my face already felt warm. I could feel the stickiness of her lipstick and how thin her lips were, pressed into mine, not good or bad but just different from Karen’s. I pulled away and watched her hold her eyes closed, a smile on her face. It was the smile that I liked seeing when we flirted, but better, and I leaned back in and cupped her cheek with my hand and pressed my lips into hers again.

That night I started a fight with Karen over something small on our drive home from dinner. By the time I pulled into the driveway, neither of us had spoken for ten minutes, but when the door closed behind us and I turned off the car, everything felt better. Like, somehow, the garage was our safe haven, a kind of “base.” We sat in the parked car and talked and then went inside and curled together in bed. The next time we fought, we moved to the garage again, hoping to recreate our previous results, and it worked, and then we started spending more and more time in the garage, unable to do anything but fight elsewhere. And now, now we weren’t even talking in the garage, both of us eating in our own cars and watching movies on laptops, but afraid what might happen if we returned to the house.

“Frank,” I said. I drunkenly rubbed at my face with my hands and it felt like a slug had crawled across me. I couldn’t see myself but could guess what it looked like. I wanted to tell him how fucked up it was living in the garage because I couldn’t just address the issue and Karen was too stubborn to do anything but go along with it. But when he turned and looked over his shoulder, I said, “Check this out,” and drew two lines under my face like eye black. I grabbed my club and held it over my head. I gave a little yell and thought of one of my favorite baseball cards: Bo Jackson breaking a bat over his knee after a strikeout.

Frank looked at me and laughed, raised his own club in the air in support.

I bent down, grabbed a glow stick and Frank’s knife. I snapped the stick, shook it up, cut off the end, and spilled it all over my hands. I rubbed my hands together and then up and down my club, gripped it tight like the sticky green was pine tar. Without thinking, I started running, sprinting out toward the sweeper. As soon as I was in striking distance, I swung as hard as I could, swinging through the air instead of down; I stepped into it and everything and it felt just like playing homerun derby in my backyard growing up. My club bent on contact, elled, but I kept swinging, beating it into the machine. I could hear the guy inside yelling What the hell over and over, but Frank’s laugh, echoing out toward me from our tees, was so hard and loud I let it wash out everything else. I didn’t turn to look but I could imagine him folded over, laughing. A loud ping echoed through the night every time I connected. It felt good, hearing that sound, feeling my arms swinging and swinging. The machine drove away but wasn’t fast enough and I chased, extending my arms, big full baseball swings into the thing. My driver bent again, into a z or a lightning bolt, and I thought of Roy Hobbs and his homemade bat from that lightning-felled tree, the lightning bolt he branded into it himself. The Natural had been one of the first movies Karen and I had watched together, neither of us having seen it in a decade, at least, but both remembering it fondly, and it had more or less directly led to our baseball dates. I kept at it, swinging and chasing, until the club finally snapped and broke and my body burned from exhaustion. I sat down, cross-legged and breathing heavy, and the sweeper finally dove away, out of reach and unscathed. Under the bright lights, I couldn’t see the golfers at the tees but noticed the absence of balls sailing through the air. A part of me hoped they would tee up, start swinging again. Try to hit me like we all had the sweeper. I probably would have.

by Aaron Burch