Lawn Boy(15)

“Uh, hey, Freddy,” I said, stepping into the living room. “What’s up?”

Before Freddy could reply, my mom emerged from the kitchen with a glass of weak orange juice for him.

“We found a renter,” she said. “Freddy’s gonna be renting the guest cottage.”

“You mean the shed?”

“I mean the guest cottage.”

“Where’s he gonna keep all his pornos?” I said.

“Hey now,” Freddy said.

“Mom, what am I supposed to do with the lawn mower and all my tools?”

“We need to prioritize, Michael.”

“But somebody will steal my shit.”

“No one wants a dirty old lawn mower, sweetie.”

“She’s right, little man,” says Freddy. “Nobody wants to mow their own lawn nowadays.”

“Shut up, Freddy,” I said.

By the next morning, I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. I could hear Freddy out in the kitchen talking to my mom. I didn’t feel like reading anything angry, so I picked up one of the dystopian novels, which didn’t do much for me. So I picked up a twentieth-century short-story anthology instead and started reading a story by this old British gasser, W. Somerset Maugham. It was exactly the kind of long-winded thing you’d expect from someone named Somerset. I was actually sort of relieved when I was interrupted by a call from an unidentified number.

“Miguel, is Tino. ?Qué onda, vato? I got a job lead for you, man. You know who is Vandermeer?”

“No.”

“Rocindo’s brother work on his crew. They doing big jobs—business parks. One of their guys got his foot ran over by a backhoe yesterday.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, is not good. He gonna be out of work for six weeks. But now Vandermeer need a guy with a lawn mower and truck. They need a guy like yesterday, so you gotta call right away, ese. Oh, and don’t tell my cousin I called you. He trying to get the job for his nephew.”

“Thanks, man—I mean gracias. I owe you one, ese.”

“Is no problem, amigo.”

I called Vandermeer, and he seemed okay. He said if I showed up with my mower at 1:00 p.m. at the Seaboard Building in Winslow, he’d give me a shot, at least for the day. And all Mike Mu?oz ever asked for was a shot.

So I cleaned up my mower before I packed it in the truck. I even hosed the truck down and gave her a coat of wax. I wore my clean green pants and my green sweatshirt, and brought along my ear and eye protection, just to look legit. I loaded up my edger and my rake and my weed whacker. I didn’t even ask the guy how much he was paying, because it didn’t matter. The truth is, after twenty fruitless job applications, I would have mowed a lawn for free, just to win back a shred of my dignity.

Well, you can probably guess what happened as soon as old Mike Mu?oz got a little wind behind his sails. Yep, the old crash and burn. My truck gave out about a half mile past the bridge. It wasn’t the usual lurch and stall. This time it was electrical. Everything quit at once. Coasting at two miles per hour, power steering locking up, I found enough shoulder space to pull over across from the Methodist church, right in front of one of Doug Goble’s realty signs.

I actually prayed. Or maybe begged is the proper term. I beseeched God: Please throw me a crumb here. Let this be a loose battery cable. I’ve still got twelve minutes to get there. I turned the ignition over again. Nothing. I popped the hood and checked the cables. I jiggled some wires and tried to work a little voodoo with the distributor cap. I tapped the alternator a few times like it might be sleeping. Then, purely as an act of faith, I patted the hood after I closed it. Climbing back in the cab, I buckled my belt and, with another prayer on my lips, turned her over again.

Nothing. I must have turned the ignition over thirty times. And the whole time Doug Goble leered at me from his realty sign like the smuggest jack-o’-lantern you ever saw. Yes, opportunity finally came knocking and left a burning bag of shit on my front step. The irony is not lost on me.

Well, I didn’t even bother calling Vandermeer, though I probably should have. I couldn’t call my mom, because she had enough problems. And there was no way in hell I was leaving the mower. Freddy, though he was ostensibly a grown man, did not own an automobile, nor could he operate one to my knowledge. Otherwise, he’d probably be living in it—instead of our shed. As for the truck, I didn’t have AAA, and I couldn’t afford an eighty-dollar tow. So I emptied the glove box, unscrewed the plates, and using the stubby blade of my Leatherman, pried off the VIN by the rivets.

Sometimes you gotta walk away, even if you’ve got nowhere to go.

A few fun facts: It’s about three and a half miles from the Seabold Methodist Church to Suquamish, and there are no fewer than six Doug Goble realty signs along that stretch. If you position a weed whacker and an edger just right, you can get them to rest on the bar of a push mower reasonably well, and you can balance the gas can on the motor as you trundle the whole mess along the shoulder of the highway in your green sweatshirt in eighty-degree weather. If looking at the expressions of passing drivers is your thing, you can expect anything, from the bemused grin, to frowning contempt, to the smart-assed grin of some guy throwing a Pepsi can at you. I got one sympathetic look from a Mexican guy in a shitty truck with a lawn mower in back, who was probably headed toward Vandermeer.