They didn’t see their first customers until almost eight in the evening. Dale Pelisse, aged nine, sat crossed-legged on the gravel worrying the hasp of an old cash box he had found in the shack. The convertible rolled to a stop at the ragged edge of the tarmac. A man and a woman were in the car. Even turned away from him, Dale could tell the woman was pretty. They seemed to be arguing. The man got out, gesturing violently before reaching into the back seat for his golf club. Dale watched him come towards the counter. Not many people drove Old Route 37. It disappeared over Bear Notch Mountain and continued towards Bayville and Stoperton, towns that were no more than names on a map. Dale had lived here his whole life without ever meeting anyone who had visited either place. Dale stood up as the man approached.

The man leaned his driver against the plywood counter.

“Gimmie a bucket,” he said.

Dale squinted up at the man. “Daaad,” he called. The man was close enough that Dale could tell he was a college student. He seemed to have two layers of skin. The top layer was tissue-thin, transparent in places, peeling in others and damp now with sweat. He had long bare arms covered with what looked like copper wire and wore a blue checked shirt over slacks that were double-pleated in the front.

All afternoon his father had been painting a sign to put up along Route 37 advising motorists that The Long Ball Driving Range was just ahead. When Dale called him, he carefully balanced the wet paintbrush on the edge of a piece of shingle. He wiped his hands on his work pants.

Dale watched his father pick up a wire basket of pale yellow balls and set them on the counter.

The man stopped pulling on a left-handed glove and stared at Dale’s father. “You must be joking," the man said. "That’s only two-thirds full.”

“You know, you’re right,” Dale’s father said evenly. “My mistake.” The last basket of golf balls lay behind the counter. It was half full. His father poured until he had topped off the man’s basket.

“You weren’t trying to cheat me, were you?” the man asked. It was then that Dale realized the man must be drunk or high on something.

“Honest to God, I wasn’t paying attention. Two dollars,” his father said. The more unpleasant the man was the milder his father became.

The man took a couple of dollars out of his billfold and threw them on the counter. They watched him pace along the row of covered tees. When he came even with the convertible he said something to the girl. Her arm rose in the air, slender and straight. She flicked her wrist dismissively. The man said something back then went along to the number seven tee.

Dale and his father had worked on the place every weekend since his father bought it. Even when they were together, they often worked in silence, his father sanding or painting as if a putting a coat of enamel on something cracked and peeling would transform the driving range into someone's amusement destination. To Dale, the driving range resembled the scrambled confusion of their rooms at home. A small pyramid of empty Pennzoil cans repeating the garbage piled on the trash can lid in the kitchen. A rubbery slab of dried latex paint echoing the dried puddle of ice cream on the floor of the living room. The heap of rags matching the laundry left in the basket. Dale labored for order and cleanliness even though it was futile. No matter how hard he worked, the driving range would always be shabby and rundown.

“Hey, Dale, go get some more balls around back.”

The storage locker was out behind the plywood shack where the tractor mower and Willis Jeep sat under the open sky. Dale popped the padlock, lifted the lid, and looked down into the empty well of the storage locker.

“You’re kidding,” his father said. Dale stood there. “I’ll clean the brush. We’ll go collect some more.”

Down at number seven the college student was hacking away. He sliced a few, hooked others, a few dribbled off the tee. Dale watched trying to mark those balls that went straight for collection. From time to time the college student would break off, walking over towards the convertible to say something to the girl. He heard her turn the radio up, drowning him out.

The Willis Jeep was second hand, the Army star still stenciled on its side. When it was time to go, Dale reached in to unlock the passenger side door.

His father climbed in behind the wheel of the Jeep. "Soon I'll let you drive," he said, pulling the clutch to begin the complicated sequence necessary to get the Willis started.

A year earlier Dale's mother had gone to Canada to visit her family. She kept calling Dale's father, postponing her return. Finally Dale made his father give him the phone. She told him she loved him and would be home "pretty soon." A few weeks later it would be "in time for Christmas." Later Dale hid behind the door and heard his father ask over and over "What did I do?" The question startled Dale. He had spent a lot of time wondering what it was that he had done to drive their mother away.

Then one night his father came home. His face was flushed, his eyes shining. Dale and his younger sister Linda were having waffles in the kitchen and their Dad told them to hurry up because he had something to show them. He said that afterwards, he'd take them to McDonald's. His father wanted something from them, Dale could tell, and it angered him the way his sister just went along, jumping down right away to run for the car. Dale scraped the leftovers into the garbage pail. It wasn't like their father to carry on, to make a big production, and Dale wondered if he wasn't trying to distract them from something else. He wondered if later his father was going to tell them their mother wasn't coming home.

A rutted lane took the Jeep down past the light poles, the Willis bucking and skidding over the rough ground. The previous owner, a Mr. Armenakas, a chubby Greek man with a scarf of gray whiskers, had clear-cut the trees for four hundred yards. Later Dale and his father realized no one hit the ball past three hundred. Quickly, the last hundred yards had reverted to scrub brush and bramble. Distance markers came at twenty-five yard intervals. They rode along close to the tree line and when they scared something up in the undergrowth, Dale glimpsed a flurry of dark wings. His heart skittered a moment and he moved closer to his dad on the seat.

He was looking back over his father’s shoulder when he heard the clap of a club hitting a ball. He tried to follow the ball’s progress but the cab was encased in protective heavy gauge wire. It was hard to see much of anything. Dale turned back towards the fairway and that was when he noticed the grass for the first time.

“Dad, you didn’t cut the damn grass.”

“Don't say 'damn.'”

"You can't find them when the grass is long, " Dale complained.

"There wasn't time," his father said.

"You painted the sign," Dale pointed out.

It seemed to Dale's father like he never did anything but disappoint his son. In the light of the dash there were hard lines forming around the boy's mouth. "I regret he's seen me falter," he had said to the school counselor after everything happened. You need to make decisions as a family, the woman had told him.

At the two hundred yard marker, his father asked Dale, "You think we're far enough?"

Dale looked around. "I guess."

His father cut the wheel to the left and traveled out a little ways. He stopped.

"Cease fire," Dale's father said into the microphone and the words came out of a speaker by the Jeep's radiator. That's what you say, the Greek had told them. "If you want to see them hit a lot balls, drive back and forth in front of the tees," the Greek had added.

Dale pulled himself towards the windshield so he could see better. The sun had gone down behind Bear Notch Mountain.

"The car's gone," Dale said.

There was no one standing on the tee of number seven. "Did they both leave?" his father asked.

“No,” Dale said. "I see him. He's out by the road."

Maybe she went for food," Dale's father said. Dale looked at him.

"Just keep the Jeep between you and him," his father said.

Dale took off, crouching low, searching with his eyes and trailing his hand along the ground, feeling for the hard knob of the ball. He came upon a cluster of them, first one, then another and another, all within fifteen feet of each other. As he worked, the Jeep drove along parallel to him. When he had collected five or six balls, he circled back and dropped them into the basket in the back of the Jeep. The night-lights would come on any moment, but until then, it was difficult to see the balls, even though they were a sickly greenish-yellow. Dale tore at the long grass with his fingers. It was thick as seaweed in places and wound around his wrist. Every time he bent over, the blood went to his head.

It was frustrating and he said out loud, “God Damnit,” half to himself, half to his father in the Jeep. Dale hated golf, hated golfers. Hated their silly shoes and the way they posed after taking a shot, like they had done something everyone should pay attention to. Thinking he felt a ball underfoot, he kicked at the spot. He was getting angry. Suddenly, when he stomped his foot, a ball was right there under his instep. He started to fall, but caught himself.

When he wheeled around to confront his father, he saw that he was lifting the mic to his lips. Dale glanced back. The college student was back at the tee, addressing the ball.

"STOP!" his father shouted. The sound from the speaker was all distorted. The high beams flicked once, then twice more. Then time seemed to slow down as Dale heard the metallic crack of the club crushing the ball. He didn’t have time to duck. He was standing out in the open. He was so certain the ball was going to hit him that he turned his face away. What might have been a half second later the ball ricocheted off the roof of the Jeep. He ducked just as the air was filled with a faint zinging reverberation.

Dale's father thought he lost consciousness when the ball hit the Jeep. When he looked out the windshield the night lights had come on. He watched Dale stand up. The ball would have killed him.

He was out of the Jeep running towards his son. The light was everywhere, pushing against the trees. The boy stood alone on the empty field, arms at his side. The weird thing was that he looked so relaxed, like he hadn't noticed what had happened. He went to sweep his boy up into his arms but as soon as he touched him the boy seemed to snap out of it.

“NO!” Dale said, and he wrenched away. He pushed back with the heel of his palm. Dale's father kept coming. He had to get the boy to the Jeep, but Dale kept pushing him away. Finally, he tried to fold him in his arms.

Again Dale lashed out, punching his father. "Stop. Fucker!" Dale had never used that word before. His fists were clenched. He hammered his father's chest. "Fucker." And again, "Fucker."

The tighter he held on, the more frenzied the punches. Now he was striking with both fists, swinging his whole torso. "Fucker. Fucker."

In the end he had to pick the boy up and carry him to the Jeep. Later he remembered glancing back to see the college student at the tee, club cocked at his hip, staring out at them, as if he were proud of his shot.

He clutched Dale, pinning him against the hood. The boy was sobbing, his body convulsing. He held the boy as tightly as he could, heard him cry, "Why couldn't you get her back?"

He tried to soothe the boy, stroking his hair and finally whispering, "Can you find a way to forgive us?"

Dale didn't say anything and his father waited for his breathing to slow. He held his son at arm's length. The boy's face was swollen and he used his thumbs to wipe the tears off his son's cheeks.

They looked up when the overhead lights seemed to flicker, dimming then flaring, bending from yellow to green in a long weakening shudder.

When they glanced back at the driving range, the college student was gone.