Golfing

The golf cart rustled boom through the wet night over mist heavy leaves of grass and soil, thick and solid, sodden deep.

My brother hung his leg out of the bulky frame of spot welded steel and beige plastic, a heavy driving wood across his lap, and a beer-piss brown bottle frothing mildly in his fist.

I was driving, eyes locked to the darkness, a twist in my gut chasing our path before us. My brother laughed for both of us. I strained my senses into the night.

The rattle of the rust-caked spring suspension screeched like a bat in the dark, and I could feel in my ears the undulations of the land; a stand of skinny trees to our right, a small building, probably restrooms, some way on our left, and a dip, a soft sudden dip directly in front of us.

For a moment, we flew, and my hands on the wheel were blind to the ground. For a moment, the game was still on, my brother howling our triumph, leaning from our careening vessel like a sailor hiking out beneath too strong a wind. Wheels spun helpless beneath us. Sand trap. Deep embankment and a wall of earth. Our nose would bury in the wet grit, scrape a trench that would bury our momentum. Sand trap. Graveyard.

No time to brace. No time to bail. Only a moment.

The golf cart went from 20 to parked in a spray of sand and a shriek of bending metal. My death-grip slipped and my chest slammed and my ribs bent against the unyielding steering wheel. My brother was gone, but I could hear him laughing in the dark.

--
Hail! to the Star of the Morning,
Bane of the stars of night,
Who failed to capture all glory,
Who fell from the peak of their flight.
--
On my back, the stars peak through gossamer. My brother laughs still, and dew soaks my clothes.