Fifty Degrees Below

The food in his paper sack was making him hungry, so he turned east and walked into Rock Creek Park, following a path that eventually brought him to a pair of picnic tables, bunched at one end of a small bedraggled lawn. A stone fireplace like a little charcoal oven anchored the ensemble. The muddy grass was uncut. Birch and sycamore trees overhung the area. There had been lots of picnic areas in the park, but most had been located down near the creek and so presumably had been washed away. This one was set higher, in a little hollow next to Ross Drive. All of them, Frank recalled, used to be marked by big signs saying CLOSED AT DUSK. Nothing like that remained now. He sat at one of the tables, opened up his food.

He was about halfway through the calamari when several men tromped into the glade and sat at the other table or stood before the stone fireplace, bringing with them a heavy waft of stale sweat, smoke, and beer. Worn jackets, plastic bags: homeless guys.

Two of them pulled beer cans out of a paper grocery bag. A grizzled one in fatigues saluted Frank with a can. ‘Hey man.’

Frank nodded politely. ‘Evening.’

‘Want a beer?’

‘No thanks.’

‘What’s a matter?’

Frank shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’

‘Yar. There ya go.’

Frank finished his calamari and drank the offered Pabst Blue Ribbon, watching the men settle around him. His benefactor and two of the others were dressed in the khaki camouflage fatigues that signified Vietnam Vet Down On Luck (Your Fault, Give Money). Sure enough, a cardboard sign with a long story scrawled in felt-tip on it protruded from one of their bags.

Next to the three vets, a slight man with a dark red beard and pony-tail sat on the table. The other three men were black, one of these a youth or even a boy. They sat down at Frank’s table. The youngster unpacked a box that contained a chess set, chessboard, and timer. The man who had offered Frank a beer came over and sat down across from the youth as he set the board. The pieces were cheap plastic, but the timer looked more expensive. The two started a game, the kid slapping the plunger on his side of the timer down after pauses averaging about fifteen seconds, while the vet usually depressed his with a slow touch, after a minute or more had passed, always declaring ‘Ah fuck.’

‘Want to play next?’ the boy asked Frank. ‘Bet you five dollars.’

‘I’m not good enough to play for money.’

‘Bet you that box of squid there.’

‘No way.’ Frank ate on while they continued. ‘You guys aren’t playing for money,’ he observed.

‘He already took all I got,’ the vet said. ‘Now I’m like pitching him batting practice. He’s dancing on my body, the little fucker.’

The boy shook his head. ‘You just ain’t paying attention.’

‘You wore me out, Chessman. You’re beating me when I’m down. You’re a fucking menace. I’m setting up my sneak attack.’

‘Checkmate.’

The other guys laughed.

Then three men ran into their little clearing. ‘Hi guys!’ they shouted as they hustled to the far end of the site.

‘What the hell?’ Frank said.

The big vet guffawed. ‘It’s the frisbee players!’

‘They’re always running,’ one of the other vets explained. He wore a VFW baseball cap and his face was dissolute and whiskery. He shouted to the runners: ‘Hey who’s winning!’

‘The wind!’ one of them replied.

‘Evening, gentlemen,’ another said. ‘Happy Thursday.’

‘Is that what it is?’

‘Hey who’s winning? Who’s winning?’

‘The wind is winning. We’re all winning.’

‘That’s what you say! I got my money on you now! Don’t you let me down now!’

The players faced a fairway of mostly open air to the north.

‘What’s your target?’ Frank called.

The tallest of them had blue eyes, gold-red dreadlocks, mostly gathered under a bandana, and a scraggly red-gold beard. He was the one who had greeted the homeless guys first. Now he paused and said to Frank, ‘The trashcan, down there by that light. Par four, little dogleg.’ He took a step and made his throw, a smooth uncoiling motion, and then the others threw and they were off into the dusk.

‘They run,’ the second vet explained.

‘Running frisbee golf?’

‘Yeah some people do it that way. Rolfing they call it, running golf. Not these guys though! They just run without no name for it. They don’t always use the regular targets either. There’s some baskets out here, they’re metal things with chains hanging from them. You got to hit the chains and the frisbees fall in a basket.’

‘Except they don’t,’ the first vet scoffed.

‘Yeah it’s a finicky sport. Like fucking golf, you know.’

Down the path Frank could see the runners picking up their frisbees and stopping for only a moment before throwing again.

‘How often do they come here?’

‘A lot!’

‘You can ask them, they’ll be back in a while. They run the course forward and back.’

They sat there, once or twice hearing the runners call out. Fifteen minutes later the men did indeed return, on the path they had left.

Frank said to the dreadlocked one, ‘Hey, can I follow you and learn the course?’

‘Well sure, but we do run it, as you see.’

‘Oh yeah that’s fine, I’ll keep up.’

‘Sure then. You want a frisbee to throw?’

‘I’d probably lose it.’

‘Always possible out here, but try this one. I found it today, so it must be meant for you.’

‘Okay.’