The Crash of Hennington. Patrick Ness
being able to please the woman he adored by entering lifelong celibacy for her, but dumber things have been done in the name of love. When graduation day arrived, he and Diana hugged platonically. Before he set off on his first assignment less than twenty miles away in urban Hennington, he went with her to the docks in the Harbor, from where she was to set sail for her assignment, across the ocean on the entire flip side of the world map. They waved as the ship set to sea, her long hair tangling wildly in the wind, his beard catching flecks of sea foam. As she disappeared over the horizon, Jarvis realized how easy it would be to keep his vow of chastity. The only woman he ever loved was receding thousands of miles away, and Jarvis’ desire receded with her. He had heard that sex was overrated anyway – sweaty, sticky, brief, and ultimately depressing. He tucked away his tired, sad, and sore heart, telling himself he could probably get more joy out of gardening.
In this, he was entirely correct, though the measure of his joy was not reflected in the bounty of his garden. He had long since accepted that his fingers were many shades away from green, but that didn’t stop him from celebrating small victories: a tomato large and red enough to be edible; a double-digit strawberry harvest; blueberries that didn’t make the church children vomit. He had once managed an avocado and parsnip pie for an after-church potluck that the Widow Jesslyn Mitcham had even called ‘tart in the best sense of the word'. This morning, he was on his knees, trying to coax a clutch of basil leaves into taking root. The man at the greenery had told him that basil was the best seasoning to use for the summer squash he anticipated (hoped hoped hoped for) in a month or two. Coincidentally, basil had been on sale that day, so Jarvis had purchased a few cuttings to try to grow in his garden.
—You can do it. Here’s some water to make the ground lovely and moist, and these little blue pellets will make you grow green and tasty. You’re going to love it out here. It’s a beautiful place, if you’d only make that little bit of effort.
—Father Kingham?
Jarvis sat upright and stared down at his basil in surprise.
—Am I interrupting?
Jarvis swung around and looked up.
—Mrs Bellingham! Of course you’re not interrupting. For a minute there, I thought my basil was talking to me.
—Oh! I say!
—Or would that be ‘my basil were talking to me'? No matter. What can I do for you this fine, warm, beautiful day?
—Do you have a few moments, Father?
—Always.
He motioned her inside the church to his office and sat her in a chair opposite him across his desk.
—What’s on your mind?
She gave a slightly embarrassed little frown.
—It’s kind of silly, Father.
—Coming from you, Mrs Bellingham, I highly doubt that.
—That’s very kind, Father, but, well …
—You can feel free to tell me absolutely anything, sister. Not only do you have my strictest confidence and good faith, you’ve also got a legal system that says that I never, ever have to tell anyone.
Mrs Bellingham smiled.
—All right, then. How can I begin? I’m not a superstitious woman, Father.
—I’ve always admired your levelheadedness.
—But lately, I’ve been having these dreams. She paused.
—Dreams, Sister?
—Well, one dream in particular, but over and over again.
—Is it an especially bothersome dream?
—Yes, to be frank. She paused again.
—Why don’t you tell me your dream, Mrs Bellingham? And take your time.
—If you insist. And she told him.
—The secret is all in where you place your feet.
—Mm-hmm.
—If you get them square with your shoulders, then step a little bit apart, you can just let your center of gravity carry the swing away from you.
—You don’t say.
Thomas Banyon pulled another drag on his cigarillo as he waited for Armand Odom, President and COO of Odomatic Incorporated, purveyors of fine dried and canned meats, to just shut up and take his fucking swing already. They had been at the fifteenth tee for nearly ten minutes while Odom shifted and wiggled and realigned and rebalanced and talked and talked and talked. Thomas was letting the prick win, currently by all of two strokes, and Odom had got it into his head that Thomas should be the beneficiary of his own obviously superior skills and knowledge. Thomas held the smoke in his lungs. The things you went through to get a new customer.
—See, I think your problem might be that you’re rushing it, pushing yourself to just hit it as hard as you can without first getting the feel for your tee.
—Interesting.
—I mean, we can talk more about your putting problems when we get to the green, but remember, putting doesn’t matter if you can’t get there first.
—Makes perfect sense.
Thomas closed his eyes and dragged again on the narcotic-spiced cigarillo. They were made specially for him by a shady agribusinessman from over the border and contained a delightfully mild narcotic formed when one particular species of beetle laid its eggs on the leaves of one particular species of shrub, of which shrub the shady agribusinessman owned every single known specimen. When the beetle eggs hatched, the grubs would, in an action apparently unique in the natural world, attack and eat only the stems of the fern, causing the leaf to fall to the ground whole, beetle-egg husks still attached. The husks decomposed as the leaf dried up, igniting a most unusual chemical reaction that resulted in a dried fern leaf with black speckles. These leaves were then gathered by trained harvesters, mixed with regular cigarillo tobacco, and then hand-rolled in zero-humidity humidors into slender, smoke-able sticks. The whole process cost an obscene fortune, but the results were exquisite: a smoke that elated without cloudiness, relaxed without lethargy, and painted the world pink without painting it red. Thomas received them gratis. The shady agribusinessman, whose name was Dylan or Declan or some D name Thomas always forgot and preferred not to know anyway, recognized a good retailer when he saw it, and Thomas was the best retailer of shady agribusiness products in all of Hennington. The wholesale boxes of Maria John, posh, itch, Brown Dog, and katzutakis arrived like clockwork every fortnight, along with a fresh box of TB’s Special Blend.
—Now watch where my arms are when I bring the club back. Can you see how I’ve only got my elbows just slightly crooked? And look where the head of the club is.
Thomas kept his eyes closed.
—I see.
It was worse at the green.
—Your approach wasn’t bad, but did you see where I placed mine? I purposely hit it long to take advantage of the slight incline.
Thomas had purposely hit his own ball short to take advantage of a subtle groove he knew rested just below the hole. Now, he would have to shank even that. He blew smoke out of his mouth and reinhaled it through his nose. Odom missed his putt, sending it wide.
—See, I pushed it, just like you do the tee shots. That’s what happens when you rush. Goddamnit!
Thomas was going to have to three-putt a one-meter shot to keep this moron in the lead. He wondered whether it was possible to miss the hole that many times without looking drunk or blind. He picked up his ball and pocketed it before Odom could complain.
—I’ll give you the hole. Why don’t we call it a day and get some