A few days later, some rich old men were playing golf on their exclusive country club’s course in Indiana…the one Gary had been talking about. One of them, Gene, snorted at his caddy, who was daydreaming at the moment.
“Jeff!” Gene growled at the young man. “Get out of dreamland and get me my putter!”
As Jeff looked through Gene’s golf bag, he said (not softly enough), “Little kids should be playing here, not grumpy old men with too much money.”
“What?” Gene snapped.
“I think you heard me fine,” Jeff said, looking Gene straight in the eye.
“It’s your job to be my caddy, to give me advice on how to play and give me my clubs immediately, not to give me lip! Do you understand?!”
“Yes, but you can try being a little nicer, too, old man. We workers have feelings too, you know.”
“Do I have to report you to the country club, you insolent little bastard?”
“I’ll speed things up for you, you stuck-up rich cunt! I quit.” Jeff gave him the finger along with the putter, then started walking off.
“I’ll make sure you never work as a caddy again, you little shit!”
“Good,” Jeff said as he kept going.
“Smart-ass kids these days have no respect for the elderly,” said the man Gene was playing against. “He’ll need all the help he can get finding a job in this economy.”
“You’re goddamn right, Roger,” Gene said, then got into position to putt his ball into the hole. “Those working-class lowlifes are way beneath us.”
But just as he was about to tap the ball, the ground began shaking.
“What the hell?” Roger said. “Since when do we ever get earthquakes in this area?”
The shaking didn’t stop. In fact, it got worse. Instead of being afraid, though, Gene just got angry with the inconvenience of it all.
“Goddammit, when’s the shaking gonna stop?” Gene grumbled. “I’m surprised my ball hasn’t fallen off its tee.”
“Yet,” Roger added.
“Oh, shit!” Gene shouted as he saw it finally fall off. “It’s rolling away!”
“Oh, my God!” Roger yelled as the shaking was getting really bad, causing them both to stagger.
The two men were no longer able to keep their balance. They fell on their asses. Their golf cart went on its side. Other golfers were yelling in shock at the worsening quake, staggering and falling, too.
Then Gene and Roger, still lying on the ground, looked down at the grass just by them. The ground was cracking open. The two men gasped.
Gene’s ball fell in the widening opening.
A few seconds later, so did Gene and Roger, screaming the whole time as they went down.
Their bodies smashed against the rocky walls inside, then their screaming stopped forever.
Several other rich golfers fell in screaming, too, their screams also being silenced soon after.
Shocked Jeff was frozen in fear, after having also fallen to the ground and lying there, as he saw his two bosses fall to their deaths, swallowed up in the earth.
I may not have liked the two of them, he thought, but I wouldn’t have wished that on them. I wouldn’t have wished that on my worst enemy.
Then he looked down at the grass, now that the earthquake had ended and the cracks had closed up.
He saw a woman’s beautiful, smiling face in the shadows between the grass blades.
“What in the flying fuck?” he whispered to himself. I’m not high. Why am I seeing that? he wondered.
Gary wasn’t anywhere on the grass to see her face, but he was in the staff building, in his brother’s office. They all felt the quake, Gary having just finished chatting with his brother about the thunderstorm and the sea storm, as well as the dreams, and putting up with his brother’s sneers and derision about Gary’s pagan interpretations of what had happened.
The beginning of the quake stopped his brother’s laughing.
The continuing—and worsening—of the quake replaced his laughing with bodily trembling.
They both needed several minutes to calm down once the shaking ended.
“Do you believe me now, Cam?” Gary asked.
“You think a goddess caused this quake?” Cam, who’d had both shared dreams but forgot all about them, said. “Look, I’ll agree that this was scary, what just happened, but I’m not about to lose my ability to reason, Gary.”
“Suit it yourself, Cam,” Gary said. “But I can guarantee you that more mayhem is going to come, and to more rich people like those old farts out there. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cam said. “Sure. Pray for me, won’t you?”
“I will, Cam. But it will be up to you to change your attitude if you expect to survive what’s coming.”
“Oooh!” Cam walked out of the room laughing, if nervously.
“If you’re not going to worry about yourself, you can worry about your clients, Cam!”
Though his brother was certainly worried about his clients, especially the families of those who had been swallowed up in the earth, he didn’t show such concern to Gary by closing the hallway door behind him.
Gary just sat on a sofa in the room and let out a big sigh.
“What the hell am I going to do?” he whispered to himself. Cam is never going to listen to me. He’s such an arrogant asshole, but he’s my brother, and I love him. His sympathies lie completely with the rich bastards to patronize this country club. All he cares about is the money this place makes, the profits he shares with the boss. He’s gonna die with all of them when the gods finally do their thing. How am I going to save Cam?
Infinite Ocean 