07 - Of Mice and Men
The final three weeks of my summer business were taken up primarily by work at the Sunny Creek Golf Club at the west edge of town. Most of my clients didn't need much maintenance at this point, as the summer heat slowed their lawns' growth and kept them inside in the cool air conditioning of their homes, anyway. So I was able to focus on this one, large client. The club's maintenance team had suffered an unusual shortfall this summer due to an illness that effected two of their staff, and an unrelated injury, so they needed a few extra hands to help out. Craig and I were given charge of holes seven, eight, and nine of the Wooden Bridge course. We had to be respectful of tee times, so on days when the club was busy, we would squeeze in basic maintenance on some of my full-season contracts, then work at the club in the heat of the day, when the links were all but deserted.
All of this would have been much more pleasant, had the club's president not been the father of my arch rival in high school. Hayate Nezumi, a rather sickly looking mouse who always slicked his hair back and had a leering grin that turned the stomach of whatever victim that had the misfortune of conversing with him, was nothing like his father, Hiroshi. Hiroshi-sama was one of my brother's first clients, and was so impressed with both his and my work, that he had asked me specifically to fill in for the three absent grounds keepers. I had accepted before I remembered that his son would also be present, and almost wished that I had refused. I had to keep reminding myself that the money was good. But that also meant exposing Craig to Hayate.
The first day, we hadn't seen him all day, and Stu had joined us at the clubhouse bar near sunset to celebrate the contract and toast our good fortune, when our luck ran out.
We were discussing the trails leading out of our chosen destination in Zion when a wheezing voice came up behind me. I froze, chills going down my spine.
"Well, well, well! What have we here?" His smell preceded him as he lowered himself into the empty fourth chair at our table. "I don't recall my father opening club membership to brainless thugs. But then, we don't have an intelligence test, so I guess you might have slipped through the cracks, I suppose. I'll have to have a word with the new registrant staff. And look! You've got lackeys. Anyone stupid enough to hang out with you must be paid staff." Craig and Stu were both glaring, now, as he crooned, "Have you finally managed to make enough money raking leaves to hire a couple leaf monkeys?"
"Begone, Hayate," defended Stuart. "You know full well that Toby and I have been best friends for years."
Hayate feigned surprise, with a little gasp. "Oh! The baby weasel speaks! And why should I leave, Baby Stewie? Didn't you know, my father is president of the club now? I practically own this place! If anything, you're the ones who should get out. Your kind lower the atmosphere of the club so much."
"Our 'kind'," I interjected, "are what keeps your club looking so good. Your father hired me to fill in the staff absences on the grounds team. And Stu's family are, in fact, members." Immediately, I realized the mistake I had just made, as Hayate's eyes lit up.
"Oh! So you're staff. Well, Father put me in charge of the grounds team, so I'll be making extra sure that your grounds look super special." He leered at me, then turned to Craig, whose teeth were showing as he growled softly. "Maybe I'll have your thug fired and thrown out, though."
He paused as a chorus of Japanese came down the hall, and Hiroshi-sama came into view with two business contacts from Japan. He caught Hayate's eye and waved him over. But before Hayate got up from the table, he saw the environmental reports that Stu had brought to dinner. "Oh! You're going to go make ritual sacrifices again this year? Well, maybe I'll come watch. Father is taking his investment partners from Japan to Zion next month." He picked up the top report. "I think they were talking about visiting The Mountain of Mystery, too. I'll be sure we stop by. If you have time, that is."
As he slinked away to meet his father's associates, he dragged his tail across the table, spilling a water glass on to the reports. "Oops. Clumsy me." In the uncomfortable silence that followed, I lowered my head to the table with a soft bump.
Craig was the first to speak. "Who, or what, was that?"
"Our boss' son," I answered, my forehead still pressed on the now wet tablecloth. "And my worst enemy."
"You can see how he behaves," Stu explained. "He thrives on making other people feel small. Mister Nezumi is nothing like him, and actually likes Toby a lot. He seems not to be aware that Toby and Slick don't get along."
"Slick?" Craig pointed his ears at Stu.
"You see his hair? You hear his words? He's always been like that. Someone in Japanese class connected that 'Hayate' means 'slick', and told some classmates. The nick-name stuck, and spread around the school pretty fast. Even the teachers called him that, though never to his face."
"His dad has a lot of economic power around here," I conceded. "It wouldn't pay to earn his ire, by dishonoring his son."
Craig made a little fox noise, that I guessed probably indicated displeasure. "So what do we do, now?"
I considered this while a busser appeared with a towel to clean up the mess from the glass. Once he had finished, apologizing profusely, and disappeared, I answered.
"We do the absolute best job we can on the links, and hope to heck he doesn't figure out which ones they are. Because he'll probably try to sabotage our work."
"In the meantime," said Stu, picking up the tab despite our signaled protests, "let's go to the sauna and forget about him for a while. If nothing else, the heat will dry out these reports."