The bus looked barely capable of motion, the seats shredded and a distinct smell of mule from some ghost along the isle. The Scouts did not have voluminous accounts right now, but they wouldn’t be Scouts without at least one trip into the woods this year. The driver ducked his head under drooping doors, throwing rucksacks into the darkness of the cargo cave. The driver avoided all eye contact and mumbled in cynicism. This bus might have been opulent once, back when the air-conditioning worked and the toilet flushed, back when the paint was bright, four decades ago.
In the office, up on floor 57, digital work is done, money is shifted electronically around the world. Who knows why and how. In the tall buildings the large amounts are moved. Mr Jackson watched the graph’s ascent, the graph is all. It has continued to climb since they resided in short buildings, back when a million was a lot of money. Tendrils spread now, from emptying offices to employees all over the country, yet the company’s phallus remains.
A black leather Eames chair creaked in seated agitation. Mr Jackson stared into the distance, in the general direction of unread books on a shelf in an ornamental library. He ponders a dip in the graph. There are rumours the old man’s health is on the wane, that buyers are circling. His son and heir is certainly uninterested in any nepotistic gift, he smokes the peripheral cash in the trickle down economy of family wealth in his feckless time. Looking at the chain, one link’s removal could change the game and rescue the company. So Mr Jackson plots a line in time and place.
The brakes hissed, the engine smoked and rattled as the bus pulled away. The driver honked a path through the heaving street. Excitement subsided into scrolling of phones and some light bullying. Two ginger kids threw balls of paper at a silent scout. One paper projectile bounced from the headrest and glanced off a leader’s ear. In retrospect, the kids found the leader’s reaction much more amusing than the stoic silence. The city fades and the suburbs arrive. White picket fences are a real thing.
Mr Jackson sat at his desk, staring at his phone, spinning a gold pen in his fingers, he arranged the consequences in his head, pushing morality down and away. Tomorrow morning at the driving range, before the sun rises, is where his uncle, Mr Whitlock will be alone.
It was still dark as Mr Jackson crunched through the carpark’s gravel in his Tesla. He parked away from the only other car in attendance, his uncle’s Maserati. Beyond members only, is owners only. His heart fluttered, moralities cry for attention, he attempted to quieten it while he pulled on his black leather gloves. The range floodlights cast a dark shadow upon the clubhouse, where he tiptoed through the lightless ink. Peering around the corner he looked for the glint of a swinging club, listened for the ping of a launching ball. But he found neither. ‘He must be getting another basket of balls, he must be by the machines,’ thinks Mr Jackson. He is not. Mr Jackson is too prepared not to kill this morning, his heart thumps in agitation, ‘Where is he?’ Daylight is coming as he walks the first fairway.
The bus waited for the road out of suburbia to clear. Workers dug through the tarmac as two cars were nose to nose, arguing over the meaning of red. Short angry men, emasculated by real workers, climbed back into their cars and begun untying their knots. In the bus, the driver wrung the steering wheel, trying to ignore the rising tide of frothing scouts.
Along the fifth fairway, the morning dew soaked through Mr Jackson’s suede boots. He thought of driving home till he spied a figure in the distance standing on the sidewalk. He had his back to him, but it was definitely his uncle. He walked towards him. As he got nearer, he could see he was miles away. His uncle staring off into the distance, out into the field opposite. So odd. Neither of them really noticed the bus making time along the arrow straight blacktop, till Mr Whitlock decided to step into it’s path.
It is a shocking sound that a body makes as it smashes against charging steel. Dozens of startled faces are pressed to the panes, glaring at the numb forlorn figure in the black coat and the black gloves.
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