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The sixth hole

Christopher Porter

    I always make my best decisions on sunny days. I don’t try to explain or understand why. It’s a fact. It took years before I realised this, but after I did, register my quirk that is, I saved making the most daunting commitments for the most beautiful weather.
    On the morning of February 18, it was a Friday, after two weeks of cold heavy skies, the sun broke through and came to earth with an alluring warmth. On this day I elected to murder him.
    I don’t want any of you to think this was a rash momentary - flash-in-the-pan choice. It was a consideration that had been lurking in the back of my brain for some time.
    I selected my thirty-ninth birthday, April 16^th, as the day for his death. Reasonable. That would give me time to prepare, arrange, gather what tools I needed and lock in a plan. I did not fool myself into thinking any of this would be easy. A ‘cakewalk’ as they say. I have watched enough crime shows to know what the police and their detectives can discern from basically fuck all. A strand of hair, a piece of chewed gum, a tire track in the mud or the more egregious camera recording. Videos were everywhere in the city now, so step one was to commit the act somewhere away from prying eyes. After a week of consideration, I elected to take him fishing. He loves to fly fish and I could coerce him there on my birthday. Sort of like a celebration. A wee present to myself.
    I know that ‘murderers’ don’t all need reasons for killing people. Some are a bit mad, deranged, sick, phsycopathic, stressed, as so on. Whatever bends their frame of reference. I’m not like that at all. I want to be clear on that. This would be my one and only foray into the business of slaughter, and the man I would kill in slightly less than two months deserved it. Let me assure you all of that. He bloody well earned his path to being a murderee. It was warranted, justified, he had entitled himself to his fate. Fact.
    Bear with me. This is my confession. I want to get it right.
    The man who will lose his life in fifty odd days was extremely wealthy. There was no reason for him to destroy and rip apart so many lives just so he could profit again and again. He was cruel and savage to anyone who got in his way and that included families who owned land he wanted, a shop he needed in order to complete some condo deal, a privately owned cottage he could turn into ‘four seasons’ spa and health center. He was belligerent and would crush people to get their deeds. Obliterate them.
    I knew all this, of course, but the final straw came one day at “The Club”. This type of man always goes to ‘The Club’, where they can bask in the adulation of like-minded members all of whom fork over twelve thousand dollars a year for membership fees. Fact.
    It was Friday afternoon, and I was a guest of one such member. We were sipping on Prosecco Monkey Forty Sevens, a drink I had never heard of but Dmitri, ‘The Clubs’ vaunted mixologist, assured us was delicious and poised to become the years top cocktail. It was served in tall stemmed glasses. Sitting behind us in an over-stuffed leather chair was my intended victim with three of his amigos. I overheard him telling the story of how he procured the land for his beloved golf club twenty years ago. The four hundred acres had been a farm that produced organic meats and veggies for many of the cities’ favourite restaurants. The farms owners also donated loads of fresh produce to the food bank and welcomed class trips to come and see a working farm, ride the ponies and visit their petting zoo. Every child was then encouraged to take home a basket of vegetables for their family.
    Because of the farms’ proximity to the city, and because it bordered the ocean on two sides my ‘target’ deemed it the perfect site for an exclusive golf course. But the owners would not sell. No matter how much he offered. So, he bought land next door and opened a gravel pit under a holding company that operated twenty-four hours a day. In the summer, great clouds of dust from the trucks blanketed the farm. When the site ran out of gravel, he trucked it in, then trucked it out to construction sites around town. He then installed mercury vapour lights around his gravel pit. Safety for the truckers the company said. Then he let loose cages of rats that romped through the crops causing complete devastation.
    The farmer and his family soon had no choice but to sell. They lost everything. The farmer became an alcoholic and died within the first year of losing his farm. After he related his story he sat back, sipped his twenty-year-old Lagavulin and graciously accepted the applause and ‘bravos’ from his fellow members.
    Oh, one more thing I should add before we go directly to the murder. This man also killed my mother. I can’t prove it, but I know he did. I’m sure you all know how that feels. Not being able to prove something I mean.
    Luring the man on a local fishing expedition was the obvious first hurtle to my plan. I would have to issue the invitation early because if he said no, then another arrangement would have to take its place. I wanted to make it simple, easy and short. An early morning expedition to the Mersey River because the trout were running with the possibility of spring salmon. Sounded good. I called his secretary, whom I had never met, with the invitation. I told her to tell him I was an old friend back in the city for a few days. I even offered to pick him up. She got back to me later that day on my burner phone. He would be delighted to join me. Could I pick him up at six A.M.? ‘Of course I could’, I replied. I tossed the phone into one of those horrid garbage bins behind a restaurant and checked my eyes in the rear-view mirror. Nothing there.
    Now that the hook was set, a little fishing analogy, I had work to do. My first step was to explore the river for easy access and privacy. Where my car would be out of view and within an easy walk to a pretty little fishing hole. If I was going to kill the man, it might as well be somewhere scenic. On my third day hunting for such a spot I discovered a meandering deer path that led to two giant willow trees thick with feathery leaves that hung over a back eddy in the river with thick forest on the adjacent bank. And it was only a thirty-seven minute drive from the city. I timed the journey just to be sure. I felt good about the spot and returned once a week to make sure it wasn’t frequented by anglers, which it wasn’t. Next, I had to figure out how to enact the killing itself and that was not easy. For example, the tried-and-true gun-shot to the back of his head was out of the question. Too noisy and it would give the police something to sink their teeth into. Like calibre, gun residue, powder burns, that sort of thing. I wanted to keep everything simple. Unexpected. Untraceable.
    I spent the following afternoons wandering the aisles of hardware stores and several of those huge building supply mega-stores. One thing they all had in common, and all had in stock, was the ubiquitous shovel. Simple. We all know how they work. And it would be virtually impossible to trace this common tool. I bought one with a wooden handle and flat blade. Not one of those pointy tipped variety that people use to dig ditches, more like the sort that gardeners use.
    I brought the shovel home and put it in my garage. I used an old grinding wheel and sharpened the blade, honed it as far as the cheap steel would allow.
    Next, I went to the dockyards and looked for an old piece of manila rope. Most of what I saw was colourful nylon braid but as you know, persistency pays dividends. At the bottom of a pile beside pier sixteen, I found just what I needed. A dark brown oil-stained chunk of hemp rope that was about thirty feet long. I took it to the river and hung it over a bough of the willow tree. I tied a loop at the end, like what a child would use to swing out into the water, then looped the other part around the trunk of the tree.
    It was now less that a week away from murder day. I began having problems sleeping. I would play the upcoming event over and over in my mind, thinking about all the variables that might go wrong. I had kept my plan simple, but when humans were involved, mistakes could happen.
    Two days to go. I checked the weather forecast. A light drizzle followed by a break in the sky, then a clear afternoon with temperatures hitting eighteen degrees. What could be nicer? I loaded an old Hudson’s Bay blanket that had been my mother’s, how apropos, into the trunk of the car along with my fishing gear and a box of salt, then went back to the house and opened a bottle of beer. I called three pals and invited them to play a round of golf with me on the day after my birthday. Early in the morning. First on the course sort-of-thing. It was my secret celebration. We could have brunch at Half Moon Café afterwards?
    What had I missed? Were there and ‘holes’ in the plan? Of course! The shovel. I drove back to the river with the implement and placed it beneath the willow then brushed leaves over it so it would be well hidden. The rope was swinging lazily over the water and I could hear a woodpecker banging away staccato rhythms somewhere in the forest. The echo was unnerving.
    I pulled around his circular driveway and parked in front of the great oak door at exactly ten minutes before six. He came out wearing an Orvis fishing vest with dozens of pockets, a Tilly hat festooned with hand tied fishing flies and a custom-made pair of Overstep fishing boots. How I hated this man. He always made the people around him feel like paupers. Insolvent mendicant serfs.
    True to the forecast there was a light fog-mist in the air as we followed the deer path to the water. He approved of my choice of fishing venues and thought we should see who owned the land around us. I told him I would perform a search on the title in the afternoon. The air was crisp, and smelled wonderful, of rich loam, decayed leaves and ozone. We cast our flies and I could feel my heart beating, my adrenaline buzzing through all the way to my fingers. I thought I would let him hook a trout before I killed him. A gentle kindness on my part. His last supper so to speak. When his rod bent and he became all alert, like a hunting dog spotting a pheasant, I backed up, retrieved the shovel and snuck up behind him. The trout jumped clear of the water and he spun up the slack as I smashed the flat end across the back of his head. The reverberation went right up my arm. He fell onto the muddy bank and dropped his rod. I pulled him just clear of the water, raised the shovel above my head and brought the sharpened end down hard on his neck. I could feel the neck bone crunch before the blade hit the earth. It went clean through. I grabbed his feet and slipped one through the loop in the rope then pulled the other end of it until his torso was hanging over the rushing water, blood gushing from the wound. I was not sure of how long it would take for the approximately five liters of blood to flow from a human’s body. My father had taught me how to field dress deer and this was quite similar. I knew it would be a good ten minutes for the blood to drain.
    I picked up his head, keeping his eyes facing the ground, and held it under the flowing river until my fingers were numb. I pulled it out and checked the incision. Then I doused it with salt to ‘cure’ the wound and stop any remaining blood from flowing. I repeated the process a few more times and laid his head on the blanket.
    The torso was barely dripping blood now. Slow deep red drops that mixed with the water then raced downstream. I untied the rope, laid the body on the blanket and sprinkled salt on his neck until it became a thick gooey mess. I rolled it into the stream and washed the bloody substance off, re-salted and rolled it in the blanket with its head.
    My work done, I loaded everything in the trunk and slowly pulled onto the road, heading in the direction of the sun, which I could see pushing its way through the mist. I slipped a C.D. into the slot and listened to Massive Attack as I headed to Old Out Bluff. I realized that I had a dead body in my car and wondered how many other people had experienced this peculiarity. Probably not many at all. It was at this point that a mixture of exhaustion and trepidation flooded me. I can’t say I was disappointed in myself, but I knew my mind would not allow rest for quite some time.
    I drove along the abandoned road to the lookoff, with its cracked pavement and broken faded yellow line to the edge of the cliff. After opening the trunk, I undressed him and threw him over my shoulder. I took him to the edge and threw him off. He landed just below the high tide mark. Perfect. Then I went to get his fishing rod and noticed the trout was still hooked on. It would make a perfect supper, so I twisted the barb from its mouth, wrenching away part of its lip, and threw it back onto his vest. I tossed his rod and the rope into the ocean but kept his head. I still had plans for that.
    At ten o’clock that evening, after a nice meal of rainbow trout, I burned his clothes and the blanket in the fire barrel in my back yard. Then I went to the golf club and drove along the former gravel pit road to where I could just make out the green for the sixth hole through the rows of poplar trees. I grabbed the spade and his head and went to work. I took me barely an hour to complete my job, including the theft of a golf cart which I left in the middle of the fairway, tipped on its side. A little ruse to fool the police.
    Jon, Lefty, Mike and I assembled at the first tee with our clubs and hit our first drives at exactly seven thirty when the club opened. The grass was covered in dew so when our balls landed, they left little trace marks on the fairway, like crabs do on a beach. We raced after them in two rented carts, pals out for a contest but mostly for fun.
    By the sixth tee off I was ahead by two strokes. Lefty, who got his nickname because he always left something behind, not because he was left-handed, pulled four cold beers from his bag and passed them around.
    “Cheers Mason, Happy Birthday!”
    The sixth hole was a short par three and arguably the most beautiful setting on the course with an elevated green overlooking the ocean. The sun had risen over the sea and burned off the dew making the lawns an intense hue. Verdant. We all hit strong irons but mine was intentionally short. Mike hit a pitching wedge from the rough and I watched it bounce on the green, then disappear. I was the last to chip on and when I walked up to the putting surface my three friends waved me back.
    “Mason, hold on a second. You don’t want to come up here.”
    “Your just afraid I’ll put this in for par,” I laughed.
    “Mason, it’s your father.”
    I walked toward them while scuffing my putter on the turf. They lined up so I could go no further. Looking at the hole, between their legs, I saw my father’s neck buried up to his mouth facing the cup, a golf ball resting against his teeth. Mike’s shot had almost found the hole. I wondered if they thought his entire body was buried beneath his head. That would have been interesting. I knelt on the green, bowed my head and covered my eyes, relieved that my task was complete. I hoped Mother would be proud of me.

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