It was a notorious spot, even though no wind could touch this sheltered green. The eighteenth hole, “That Damn Hole,” as the grownups dubbed it, downright perverse in its difficulty, ruining many a perfect game. Or so our parents swore.

We’d go there on warm nights. Drink stolen beers from our dads’ garages or pilfered gin from our moms’ liquor cabinets. We’d ramble the Island Club course, playing half-assed games, making up our own rules, until we made it to that final hole. And there, drunk, we’d mimic our fathers’ voices, our mothers’, find evidence of their frustrations—divots in the grass, confettied scorecards, even the occasional club tossed into the nearby woods, one nine iron up a tall pine. A month it seesawed on a high branch. Or we’d sprawl on the green and look at the stars, talk bullshit about the future, smoke some college brother’s weed. 

And nearby, in the shadowy water hazard, we felt eyes watching us.  

One Friday night on the eighteenth hole, Becks Stinson got in a fight with her boyfriend, Cory Weathers. She’d been fuming all evening, and finally confronted him, said she’d heard from her best friend, Rachel Cruise, who heard it from her cousin Tyler, who was at a party on the mainland, that Cory was two-timing her with some public school slag, a Tina or Tiffany Something-or-Other. 

Cory was all denial, but that didn’t stop her from snatching his half-full bottle of stolen Crown Royal. 

“Gimme that, Becks!”

She shimmied out of reach and, smirking, sauntered to the water hazard. 

“Becks.” Cory, drunk, tried to stand. She dangled it over the water. “Don’t.”

But Cory was an asshole, so we all secretly wished Becks would. 

And she did, pouring the entire bottle into the hazard.

 “My tribute,” she said.

Next afternoon, at the Stinsons’ neighborhood cookout, Herb Greenblatt regaled the parents with the miracle of his 6:30 AM game: “I could never sink it, that hole. But yesterday, it was the perfect shot, like something aligned my swing, directed my ball. Straight in!” Herb’s flushed three-martini face had a beatific glow we believed. And we knew: he’d been touched.

But our parents just nodded, smiled, a few said, “Oh, right, Herb,” and added a backslap or nudge, but since no one had actually seen Herb’s miracle, none of them believed him. 

It wasn’t until Bill Weathers had a similar hole-in-one, witnessed by Brant Petersen, that the magic became real. The two men told the story in turn, like an old married couple, at the Hendrix bridge-and-poker party. Next week, Brant got his own hole-in-one. “I visualized the shot, and it was like I just replayed it, what I saw in my head,” he told John Muller as he returned a pair of hedge clippers he’d borrowed for six months. 

One success after another was recounted, so by the time Honey Cruise had her hole-in-one, frankly, the dads took it as old news. Rachel Cruise said this was evidence of sexism, that a woman’s shot didn’t count as much as a man’s. So, flushed with a thermos of screwdrivers, she and Becks made six consecutive hole-in-ones, divided between them. “Hail the spirit of the course!” Becks said, laughing. And this time it was Rachel who took Steve Hendrix’s bottle of Absolut and poured it in the hazard. “Tribute,” she said. 

Becks was hot, but we were all in love with Rachel, so after that night, the ritual was born. Like priests finishing the communion wine, we always saved something for the water hazard. “And it can’t be shit,” Reagan Cruise added. “It has to be the good stuff.” And since she was Rachel’s little sister, we all had to agree. 

Then, Fourth-of-July Weekend, there came a new hazard: the alligator. 

In South Carolina, alligators are common, in rivers and creeks, as roadkill, and yes, even in water hazards on golf courses. And there’s the story of Christy’s dad, John Muller, chasing one down his driveway with a broom. When our parents were kids, their parents took them to the Huntington State Park alligator pond. The Cruises have footage of Honey standing next to her mom as the two of them toss slices of Wonder Bread at a pile of alligators two feet away. Rachel laughed at what shocking shit that was.

Sometimes, when the alligators in the hazards got too aggressive or someone’s small dog disappeared, the club management would have them removed. Someone from the county SCDNR office, or someone affiliated with Coastal College, or sometimes a private company would do it. One Saturday, Barton and Honey Cruise, Herb Greenblatt, John Muller, Brant Peterson, and Bill Weathers were all playing a tournament game, and when they reached the eighteenth hole, there, on the green, sunning himself, was a fourteen-foot alligator. Even for here, that’s big. At least a thousand pounds. Laying out right in front the hole. So while Barton, Herb, John, Brant, and Bill debated calling the club house to suspend the game in compliance with tournament rules, Honey took her shot. Her ball sailed in a perfect arc, Platonic geometry, straight into the hole. She turned to the men. “I see no reason to suspend play.” Barton, Herb, Brant, and Bill managed to sink theirs in two, but John scrubbed it. Per tradition, he threw his club into the woods for us to find later. 

Honey’s was the only hole-in-one that day. 

Word spread about the massive but docile alligator, so our parents continued their play around it, and we continued our drinking and tributes. At night, the alligator disappeared from the green, became only red eyes. A sloosh through the water, an idea in our minds. 

And the luck of the green began to spill over, beyond the eighteenth hole. 

Joseph Greenblatt was accepted to Princeton, despite those SAT scores.

Steve Hendrix got a small part in a series shooting in Charleston.

Incredibly, Cory Weathers sold his app, and he and Becks got engaged. 

***

It was senior year soon or college, and plans were being made. We were all busy, the fall in sight. Meanwhile, our parents played on, and the successes on the green continued until one Saturday, the alligator blocked the hole. Its massive shovel head swinging from side-to-side, hissing like an angry radiator, the flag broken by its tail. 

Bill Weathers called club management. 

By the time the removal service arrived, a crowd had gathered, despite Reagan Cruise reminding us all how an alligator can travel up to thirty-five miles per hour on land. John Muller brought beer. Herb Greenblatt, martinis. 

Doug, the Alligator Eliminator, or so his truck said, had the right equipment, but we didn’t know him. Despite his khaki uniform, his cheeks were shadowed and his eyes red-rimmed. He managed to leash the alligator, then surprised us when he straddled it and banded its jaws and legs. Our beast, leviathan of the course, was reduced. Fourteen feet long? Maybe it was only ten. Still, phones went up, recording the capture, snapping pictures, and once the alligator was banded, it was Bill Weathers who asked if he could get a picture with it, and that’s when a tumble of requests came and the crowd surged. They pushed in as the alligator eyed them in sullen defeat. When Brant Peterson put his son Timmy astride it for a picture, I felt the air shift, and the alligator seemed to shrink even smaller, eight feet now. People knelt beside its lashed jaws, took selfies next to those dimming eyes. When Doug the Eliminator seemed to grow impatient, Barton Cruise opened up his wallet and offered him a roll of twenties for another fifteen minutes.

This was when Becks started to shake and cry, and Rachel Cruise, red-faced, yelled at the crowd she was going to call someone.

But who could she call?

***

Not long after, the housing crash came. More than a few families had to move. Eventually, the golf club shut down. The management’s last act was to turn a blind eye to those left in the neighborhood who decided to search the water hazards and nearby ponds and shoot any alligators they found. Bill Weathers and Brant Petersen, both missing mortgage payments, had a scheme to sell the hides. But between the two of them, they’d only ever skinned squirrels. They split the alligators’ stomachs, not realizing you always split a gator at the top, because the skin on the stomach is the most valued part. A month or two later, the Petersons packed up their Land Rover and drove away from their mortgage. The house keys were found in the garage, on Brant’s work station. In a corner was a pile of useless skins.

The bad luck spread like blood in the water. We heard Timmy Petersen spent two weeks in the hospital, an allergic reaction to a jellyfish sting. Joseph Greenblatt got kicked out of Princeton, supposedly for cheating, and Steve Hendrix’s series got cancelled. Cory Weathers lost his app deal, and he and Becks broke up. Rachel Cruise left for California, only to be carjacked and shot in Tulsa. 

I got a job at a Quick Stop just outside our neighborhood. I doubt I’ll be going to the university, now that my parents are split. Dad and I live in a little efficiency apartment. We eat microwaved lasagna off TV trays. Some nights, after getting off work, I drive down to the course, the manicured greens all turned into meadow. I sit in the tall grass on what used to be the eighteenth hole, drinking beers lifted from work and thinking about what to do. Lately, I’ve been bringing extras to pour into the hazard, wondering what it might take to turn my luck, some bigger sacrifice to bring back the god of the eighteenth hole to direct me along my perfect arc, that Platonic geometry, my perfect shot. 

[C. O. Davidson’s work has appeared in PseudoPod (Episode 826), Vastarien, Cemetery Gates, Georgia Gothic, Generation X-ed, and Hard to Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic.  She co-edited Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable, and is a founding member of the Atlanta Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. She serves on the board at Broadleaf Writers. She lives in Georgia with her novelist partner and their clowder of beloved cats.]