Night Shift(80)

That was when Harold Parkette leaned out of the screen door and vomited into the zinnias. The world went grey, and suddenly he realized he was fainting, had fainted. He collapsed backwards on to the porch and closed his eyes .

Someone was shaking him. Carla was shaking him. He hadn't done the dishes or emptied the garbage and Carla was going to be very angry but that was all right. As long as -she was waking him up, taking him out of the horrible dream he had been having, back into the normal world, nice normal Carla with her Playtex Living Girdle and her buck teeth -Buck teeth, yes. But not Carla's buck teeth. Carla had weak-looking chipmunk buck teeth. But these teeth were -Hairy.

Green hair was growing on these buck teeth. It almost looked like -Grass?

'Oh my God,' Harold said.

'You fainted, buddy, right, huh?' The lawnmower man was bending over him, grinning with his hairy teeth. His lips and chin were hairy, too. Everything was hairy. And green. The yard stank of grass and gas and too sudden silence.

Harold bolted up to a sitting position and stared at the dead mower. All the grass had been neatly cut. And there would be no need to rake this job, Harold observed sickly. If the lawnmower man missed a single cut blade, he couldn't see it. He squinted obliquely at the lawnmower man and winced. He was still naked, still fat, still terrifying. Green trickles ran from the corners of his mouth.

'What is this?' Harold begged.

The man waved an arm benignly at the lawn. 'This? Well, it's a new thing the boss has been trying. It works out real good. Real good, buddy. We're killing two birds with one stone. We keep getting along towards the final stage, and we're making money to support our other operations to boot. See what I mean? Of course every now and then we run into a customer who doesn't understand - some people got no respect for efficiency, right? - but the boss is always agreeable to a sacrifice. Sort of keeps the wheels greased, if you catch me.'

Harold said nothing. One word knelled over and over in his mind, and that word was 'sacrifice'. In his mind's eye he saw the mole spewing out from under the battered red mower.

He got up slowly, like a palsied old man. 'Of course,' he said, and could only come up with a line from one of Alicia's folk-rock records. 'God bless the grass.'

The lawnmower man slapped one summer-apple-coloured thigh. 'That's pretty good, buddy. In fact, that's damned good. I can see you got the right spirit. Okay if I write that down when I get back to the office? Might mean a promotion.'

'Certainly,' Harold said, retreating towards the back door and striving to keep his melting smile in place. 'You go right ahead and finish. I think I'll take a little nap -'Sure, buddy,' the lawnmower man said, getting ponderously to his feet. Harold noticed the unusually deep split between the first and second toes, almost as if the feet were well, cloven.

'It hits everybody kinda hard at first,' the lawnmower man said. 'You'll get used to it.' He eyed Harold's portly figure shrewdly. 'In fact, you might even want to give it a whirl yourself. The boss has always got an eye out for new talent.'

'The boss,' Harold repeated faintly.

The lawnmower man paused at the bottom of the steps and gazed tolerantly up at Harold Parkette. 'Well, say, buddy. I figured you must have guessed. . . God bless the grass and all.'

Harold shook his head carefully and the lawnmower man laughed.

'Pan. Pan's the boss.' And he did a half hop, half shuffle in the newly cut grass and the lawnmower screamed into life and began to trundle around the house.

'The neighbours -' Harold began, but the lawnmower man only waved cheerily and disappeared.

Out front the lawnmower blatted and howled. Harold Parkette refused to look, as if by refusing he could deny the grotesque spectacle that the Castonmeyers and Smiths -wretched Democrats both - were probably drinking in with horrified but no doubt righteously I-told-you-so eyes.

Instead of looking, Harold went to the telephone, snatched it up, and dialled police headquarters from the emergency decal pasted on the phone's handset.

'Sergeant Hall,' the voice at the other end said.

Harold stuck a finger in his free ear and said, 'My name is Harold Parkette. My address is 1421 East Endicott Street.

I'd like to report . . .' What? What would he like to report?

A man is in the process of raping and murdering my lawn and he works for a fellow named Pan and has cloven feet?

'Yes, Mr Parkette?'

Inspiration struck. 'I'd like to report a case of indecent exposure.'

'Indecent exposure,' Sergeant Hall repeated.

'Yes. There's a man mowing my lawn. He's in the, uh, altogether.'

'You mean he's naked?' Sergeant Hall asked, politely incredulous.

'Naked!' Harold agreed, holding tightly to the frayed ends of his sanity. 'Nude. Unclothed. Bare-assed. On my front lawn. Now will you get somebody the hell over here?'

'That address was 1421 West Endicott?' Sergeant Hall asked bemusedly.

'East!' Harold yelled. 'For God's sake -,

'And you say he's definitely naked? You are able to observe his, uh, genitals and so on?'

Harold tried to speak and could only gargle. The sound of the insane lawnmower seemed to be growing louder and louder, drowning out everything in the universe. He felt his gorge rise.

'Can you speak up?' Sergeant Hall buzzed. 'There's an awfully noisy connection there at your end -'