Mark M Bulmer

Everyone absolutely loves the eighteenth green.

Loves in a crazy way.

As you approach, should you walk, the left fairway extends in a slow and subtle curve around the green. It doesn't capture and it doesn't surround. Some, a few announcers, have used the word 'encapsulate' in their descriptions.

Crowds in their hundreds of thousands have gasped upon first sight.

Players, on their way to tee off, have paused to admire.

They are fools.

The eighteenth is a pox of a filthy slut whore.

Were my child to bring the eighteenth home for introductions, I would shoot it in the face until my clip was spent then beat upon the remains with the empty pistol.

The eighteenth is where I saw Cecil fucking my wife for the first time.

Caught it, did you?

The first time.

Yes, they were a few feet into what golfers called 'the trees'. Yes, at least four foursomes had passed without a complaint.

I wasn't even playing golf. I was just there to meet a client. She heard the activities, glanced over, and rolled her eyes. I glanced over and rolled my eyes as well.

She didn't see me, but I saw.

There were more times.

There were eleven more times.

The seventeenth green, mind you, is gorgeous in the most sublime way.

It starts from the fairway. It assumes you walk rather than cart.

It opens before those approaching as the goddess of wrath.

The alley is tight and edged with unpleasant greenery. Should a ball enter, the golfer had best abandon it.

The green is a curving surface seemingly designed to make golfers pull the hair from their heads. Two feet too far, even with tremendous backspin, and the ball is rolling towards the trees. Two feet too short, loaded with follow, the ball sinks into the drink.

Do not hit to the right of the green.

The bunker to the right of the green faces the eighteenth hole, but in a strange way.

Were you to settle in and be fully ready to wedge your way out of the bunker, you'd look up … and it would be there.

The eighteenth.

Not dominant. Not powerful. Not supreme.

There.

It called. It beckoned with a soft, seductive voice.

It promised things a human mind cannot express or understand.

It tempts with tremendous power.

Few land in the right-side bunker on the seventeenth.

It is the most perfect spot for Cecil's ashes.

I dumped him atop the sparkling sand. The grey and black and ugly white marred the beautifully raked buff.

He was ugly.

He was as ugly in the sand as he was in life.

Look, Cecil. Look at the eighteenth.

She will be there soon.