Ocotillo, California roasted beneath a harsh white sky striped with terror.
A hundred miles to the west, where ocean breezes pressed up against the slopes of the coastal range, it was cooler.
After the five men on the patio overlooking the eighteenth green finished their beers, they went downstairs to the edge of the parking lot to get their clubs.
The man they had seen who six putted the eighteenth was there. He bent over his bag of clubs and into one of its cluttered pockets tucked a wrinkled glove, dried out and crinkled, soiled and stained and long past its prime.
None of the five men who came down from the patio wanted to talk with him. But a brief conversation was unavoidable and its awkwardness ran so deep none of them saw the van pull up.
A hundred miles to the east, out in Ocotillo, California, the hot sky hissed.
