The Greens Keeper

The sun comes up and filters through the pine trees and fog joining the cold morning wind in an assault on my eye balls. I'm cruising out to the first green, a mower in the trailer hitched to the back. I am a greens keeper. Franz Liszt composes a symphony in my ears. I imagine he is 5 nanometers tall standing in a microscopic concert hall in an invisible city in a tiny world bound up inside the Ipod hanging around my neck.

I see a coyote looking confused, skittishly pacing the green in front of me. I whistle. Come here boy, I say. He squats on the green and poops.

Three deer walk gracefully through the creek later in the day. Their tracks are in every bunker on the back nine. I rake them out, wishing I could go barefoot in the sand.


*Later, after work*

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM

Someone is beating on my back door. I gather my tired limbs off the couch and answer the door. My landlord is standing there, a vein on his forehead throbbing violently.

"You guys had a god-damn fire last night! Now I told you I want no fires, you hear. You damn kids. Now this ain't right. I've told the neighbors that if they see you starting a fire they are to call the cops."

I blink. Is this happening?

Yes Mr. Landlord. Sorry. It won't happen again.

"It better not you son of a bitch no gooder."

Hum. I close the door and recollect the last 2 minutes of my life. Was I just reamed-out by an eighty year old man with an anger problem for having a barbeque in the backyard the night before. I didn't even plan the thing. I just made an appearance to be neighborly.

Here is what happens with dysfunctional communicators. They start accumulating emotional energy as they shuffle over life’s carpet in socked feet. The charge of energy grows bigger and bigger and forms a pulsating orb the size of a large medicine ball which pushes down on their shoulders and scratches their neck like a bothersome turtle-neck sweater. When they can't take the burden anymore they unload it on someone else. Usually a non-confrontational nice guy like myself.

This, I decided, was what really happened at the back door if I could look into the eleventh dimension. Mr. Landlord, in a crouching position, wearing a kimono and a head band, pressed his wrist together and conjured a green fireball. He then channeled all his frustrations (his failure as a father, his sexual impotence, his greed, etc.) directing them at my heart. He shot the green fireball at me and hit me right in the gut sending me flying backward in slow motion.


I have had a bad day ever since my encounter with my demon landlord. It is against the law to shoot people with arrows and bullets and tranquilizer darts, but apparently it is completely acceptable to shoot them with poisonous emo-balls.

I should become a super hero called The Green’s Keeper. I’d wear a green leotard and a have a utility belt filled with hoes and shovels. I’d roam the earth, beating up bitter grouchy old Sith landlords.