Lawn Boy(12)

As early as sixth grade, Goble started distinguishing himself as an entrepreneur, trading in lunch tickets and selling his mom’s cigarettes to high-school freshmen, who lined up behind the bleachers before school. Sophomore year of high school, he somehow finagled the school into paying him five cents per tray for collecting lunch trays from the cafeteria and commons, then outsourced the job to Vic Burzycki for a penny per tray.

Goble always had a plan, always knew what he wanted, never lacked ambition or nerve. He was a worthy hero for little Mike Mu?oz, while he lasted.





The Usual Bullshit Okay, I blew it. What do you want me to say? I probably shouldn’t have kicked the bag of shit. I probably should have driven down to Jiffy Mart and asked for a plastic bag, even if I had to buy something. Then I probably should’ve gone back and cleaned up the mess and called it a day.


But I didn’t.

Dazed and numb with apprehension, I had neither the inclination nor the courage to go home with the bad news. So I took comfort where I usually took comfort: the library.

As kids, Nate and I spent untold hours in the library while my mom was at work. We ate bruised apples and crumbling saltines, napping on the quilted sofas. The library was the most stable thing in our lives, the only thing in the whole damn society that said to little Mike Mu?oz: “Here you go, kid, it’s all yours for the asking.” No matter that your ears were dirty and your hair was greasy. No matter that your mentally challenged big brother didn’t have much of an indoor voice or that he tended to throw books and pee on the bathroom floor and scare the clown fish shitless. At the library, a little ferret of a kid like me had a chance. The only currency he needed was a library card.

For two hours, waiting for Nick to get off work at Les Schwab, I scanned the fiction section for distraction. What I wanted was a book written by a guy who worked as a landscaper or a cannery grunt or a guy who installed heating vents. Something about modern class struggle in the trenches. Something plainspoken, without all the shiver-thin coverlets of snow and all the rest of that luminous prose. Something that didn’t have a pretentious quote at the beginning from some old geezer poet that gave away the whole point of the book. Something that didn’t employ the “fishbowl lens” or a “prismatic narrative structure” or any of that crap they teach rich kids out in the cornfields.

I wanted a book that grabbed me by the collar and implored me to conquer my fears and embrace the unknown. I wanted a novel that acted as a clarion call for the disenfranchised of the world. Not 250 pages of navel-gazing about the nuances of saddle making, topped off with some hokey epiphany. I wanted realism. Grit. I wanted my transcendence with grease under the fingernails and unpaid bills piling up on the countertop. Where were the books about me?

Maybe I should write the goddamn Great American Landscaping Novel. Why shouldn’t I have a voice? Just because I never went to college? Because I haven’t traveled the world or lived in New York City or fought in Iraq or done anything else of distinction? I suppose you could make a strong argument for any one of those. But I believe the world could use the Great American Landscaping Novel.

After all, most of us are mowing someone else’s lawn, one way or another, and most of us can’t afford to travel the world or live in New York City. Most of us feel like the world is giving us a big fat middle finger when it’s not kicking us in the face with a steel-toed boot. And most of us feel powerless. Motivated but powerless. Entertained but powerless. Informed but powerless. Fleetingly content, most of the time broke, sometimes hopeful, but ultimately powerless.

And angry. Don’t forget angry.

The problem, I soon came to realize, was that landscapers, especially unemployed ones, and cannery grunts and heating-duct installers didn’t have time to while away their days writing novels. They had bills to pay. Cars to fix. Disabled siblings to care for.

I finally picked up a handful of titles off the new arrivals’ rack, though none of them really appealed to me. One was a dystopian novel about a global pandemic with metaphorical implications. So was another. The last was by a woman named Hannah, who’d won a prize I’d never heard of and was billed as “a stunning meditation on race, gender inequity, and sexual identity.”

“MFA fiction,” said a voice.

I looked up to discover the same broad-shouldered librarian with the mop of dark, curly hair and the prominent Adam’s apple, who had recommended The Octopus to me. He was pushing one of those tan wheelie-carts loaded with recently returned books. Not your usual librarian, this guy, nothing like those formidable librarians of my youth, with their translucent nylon stockings. He was wearing a puke-colored sweater and a T-shirt that said BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT.

“I mean, the writing’s good,” he said. “Lyrical and all that. If it’s sentences you’re after. But so much of it just feels like affectation and craft to me.”

“Got any recs?”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something angry,” I said. “I like the last one you gave me—The Octopus. It made me want to put a brick through a window.”

“Ah, follow me, then,” he said.

He led me back to the fiction section and began running his fingers gingerly over the book spines. He picked out something called The Jungle by a guy named Sinclair.

“Is this guy dead?”

“Yes. You might’ve read it in high school,” he said.