The thing was sleek. Sleeker than anything he’d come across in the last fifteen years since his indoctrination in their use anyway. Standing there in the Sears & Roebuck off West 43rd, Wilton felt the pangs of long neglected memories come rushing back, so much so that he didn’t hear the sales assistant standing right next to him, repeating the question over and over again.
“Sir? Can I help you Sir? Sir?”
“Just looking...”
“Well, let me know if you need any...help…or, anything.”
“Sure...”
He hated the feeling of being somehow beholden to these people. After all, wasn’t it his prerogative if he wanted to stand there and just look at the damned thing? The third time in nearly as many minutes and he wasn’t sure if the sales assistant was aware of the fact. As the nineteen year old walked up the aisle, Wilton watched him turn back momentarily, obviously in order to make sure he wasn’t going to pocket anything. They start them too young these days and destroy any chance of a decent future... Maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe the kid was biding his time. It was summer after all, and anything that paid beat standing outside in the one-hundred degree heat.
Nothing was natural. None of it. Not the fact that he was standing there. Not the fact that he was being accosted by some punk half his age. Not the fact that in spite of it all, the world kept turning.
A conversation from the adjacent aisle swept over. A woman, about mid-40’s from what he could tell by the voice, was trying to buy some paint and giving the assistant a run for his $7.50 hourly wage in the staunchest of German accents.
“I was in here, do you understand? I was in here...when was it Smitty, two weeks ago? I was in here and your manager said--”
“Yes ma’am, as I said, the Swiss Coffee Interior paint was on sale...two weeks ago. When you were here...”
“It’s not now? He said it would be. He said…he told me that he would honor it you see, that the price would be what it was when it was on sale two weeks ago.”
“Yes ma’am, I understand but--”
“Where is he, eh? Where is...what was his name Smitty?”
Smitty didn’t answer.
“Mr. Balabas. That was his name. Balabas or Ball-Ass or something. Why don’t you go get him so we can get the paint and be home before dark.”
“I would ma’am, but today is his day off.”
“Day off? DAY OFF? He never said anything to me about any day off. You call him. I am the owner of an apartment complex and I have tenants moving in tomorrow and the apartment must be painted, do you see?
For half a second Wilton thought it would have had more impact if the woman had said she had a complex about an apartment. It would have worked just as well.
“Swiss Coffee is the only color I use and what’s more, I’ve bought…how many cans have we bought since we owned the building Smitty? Eh? How many?”
Smitty was apparently busy perusing a Black and Decker Firestorm Drill Combination or some other pressing matter.
“SMITTY, LISTEN TO ME! First him and now you? Whose side are you on?”
Smitty knew that to answer the question would only prolong the ordeal and continued in the belief that keeping quiet was the best possible option.
“My man, the man who paints the apartments buys the paint usually, you see? Pedro. His name is Pedro. You must have met Pedro. He’s in here practically every week.”
“I’m not sure--”
“How long have you been here, working I mean. Is this a summer job for you or something? Are you in high school? What is it you do when you’re not here? Something to keep your parents from going insane? You don’t understand, you see? I must have the paint and he told me he would honor the discounted price. Now…get him on the phone.”
“I’m sorry ma’am, but--”
“BUT? Shall we take our business elsewhere Smitty? Shall we?”
Smitty had apparently been caught unaware by another iridescent power tool he’d never own.
“Fine then. We’ll just go to one of those gargantuan home improvement warehouses where we won’t be treated like lepers. And you...you tell your manager that we won’t be back, understand? Neither will Pedro after he hears about this!”
Wilton watched the end of his aisle. He saw the woman, white haired with breasts large enough to be carried by a crane walk by, purse slung angrily in arm dressed in much the same fashion as her hair. Smitty staggered behind her as she made for the exit. She was exasperated, he was not. A second later and back came the sales assistant up the aisle.
“Can I--?”
Wilton raised a hand.
“Are you going for a record?”
“Sir? I don’t—“
“Of course you don’t. If you did, I’d already have one of these beauties bought and in the truck. I’d be on my way home if given the proper amount of time to decide, get it? Now listen, this is the fourth time you’ve asked me whether or not I need any help. I realize your manager isn’t around, but I’m not here to steal anything. I couldn’t carry one of these outta here if my life depended on it. The good news is, it doesn’t, so I’ll come find you when I’m ready. How’d that be?”
“I just thought--”
“And see, that’s the trouble. I’m telling you, no, I’m giving you permission not to think about anything. Go smoke a cigarette or something.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“How can you sleep at night knowing Big Tobacco is spending millions to get your age group on board and still you refuse to step in line. You’re wound up tighter than a goddamned cuckoo clock.”
Not knowing what to make of the quick but incisively accurate psychiatric inventory, the assistant turned on his heel and was gone without further word.
He often had this problem with sales people. Didn’t matter where he was, they were on him within five minutes. He endeavored to stay as far away from Radio Shack (in particular) as possible for this very reason. Sure, yo gotyour free battery and all, but only after they put your entire family history into the computer and took yo in the back for a blood sample and maybe a hooty-too. He often had visions of people who, having no other means of comfort available to them opted to shop for electronics there just because they needed someone to talk to. He was convinced the theory couldn’t possibly be an illusion even though he hadn’t actually seen firsthand evidence. In the world of probabilities, it just made to much sense.
But, despite his wariness of that particular corporate sales environ, he was the point of permeation for overzealous sales people everywhere. Just two weeks prior, he’d been somewhere, the bookstore, looking at nothing in particular. Within three minutes of his arrival he was converged upon by one of the associates who’d asked, of course, if he needed assistance six times in as many minutes. Before the last straw had been placed ever so gingerly on the unsuspecting camel’s back, he wondered in passing if the state of customer service had suddenly reached a low of such epic proportions that businesses all over the country were trying to get it straight finally but were overshooting the mark. The incident had culminated in a visit by the local police who graciously and quite hurriedly escorted him to the street. When Wilton looked back inside the store, the girl, anxious as she was, stared back blankly, not understanding the sudden burst of furied expletives hurled her way in the moments prior. He’d turned down the street, suddenly remembering why he’d rather stay in his room most days.
The mower looked different sitting in the garage. He was aware, looking at it that Sears & Roebuck had somehow figured out how to make even the most mundane items appear to be works of modern art with strategically placed lights. He’d never seen one like this, it being the first he’d ever purchased himself. The last one, back in high school, had come from his Stepfather at the time, number Three of Six. He’d purchased a used one, and even though he’d never actually mowed a yard before, Wilton knew it was a piece of crap immediately. The clunky lines and caked grease on the cover didn’t help the fact that the thing was hard to get started and even harder to keep running. The blade was dull. The exit chute cover rattled even louder than the engine due to a broken spring, serving as the perfect medium for any small rocks (or large ones) to be blasted out only to ricochet off the stone walls or garage door and into his shins. The strip of high grade rubber, there for the protection of, (once again) small or large rocks, dangled perilously close to breaking off.
Wilton’s responsibility was to take care of the mower from the meager funds he earned by taking care of the yard. Ten bucks and the satisfaction of a job well done several times over. The Stepfather had decided, only after a deluge of showers stormed in on, slammed closet doors when the air-conditioner was running, lectures on the future and in-depth orations regarding the ways one avoided being what he called a “pussy,” to bestow this latest honor of responsibility for the yard. It wasn’t an honor that Wilton welcomed.
“See,” the Stepfather had philosophized, “my old man made me mow the yard, even in the winter when there was snow on the ground. I didn’t grow up to be a pussy and you won’t either if I got anything to say about it. Your Mother had her way she’d hve you painting flowers or some damn thing.”
The way Wilton saw it that day and every one thereafter was a lesson in irony, considering the story the Stepfather told any chance he got at the Tea parties thrown at the country club by Wilton’s Mother. Parties where the Sherry flowed freely, and where she usually ended up in the cloak-room with the Stepfather, frantically trying to help her find herself.
He’d been in the Navy during World War II, and for all accounts, the only combat he’d seen happened one day down at the docks while his ship was in port somewhere in Spain. Port Isabel from what he claimed, but Wilton never checked the map. He figured it was more likely stateside and the Stepfather only said Spain because he thought it added a bit of the Hemingway-esque allure to the story. At any rate, as the waves rolled in, the edges of his ship and the adjacent ship would rise up simultaneously and come within four or five feet of touching hulls. On the day in question, the Stepfather’s ship had been forced to remove the walkway used for boarding since the movement of the ship was too great to hold it steady. So, the Stepfather and several other crew members, finding themselves at the end of the weekend of liberty and needing to get back before muster, decided that it would make more sense to try jumping from the opposite ship onto their ship once the hulls met up again. The going was tenuous from the start. Petty Officer Patrice McIlhenny went first and ended up breaking a thumb on the foredeck after landing. He’d made it across just fine, but when he got up to get a rye in the NCO’s Mess, the door caught him by surprise and cracked his thumb between the second and third joints. After several others made it across to the other ship without too many broken bones, it came time for the Stepfather to give it a go. He trotted back to start running and as soon as the two ships dipped down and away from each other, he ran towards the edge as fast as he could. The closer he got to the point where he was to jump across, the closer the ships came to each other. Just as he was about to reach the last ten feet before jumping, everything went horribly wrong. As the two ships were waning with the last series of waves, a tugboat hauling a large tanker filled with oil was crossing over the ensuing series of waves, which thereby cancelled their force. By the time the final wave reached the edge of the ships hull, there was nothing but foam and the ships quickly separated from each other. The Stepfather, already in full stride and unable to stop decided with his steel trap (according to him) that the best course of action would be to go through with the stunt after all. He did, and would have made it with one more step. He floated through the air, arms outstretched to catch the side of the ship opposite, but missed. Had it not been for the tooth that was broken in half upon hitting the edge of the hull, he always said, he might not have lived. He was awarded an Overseas Combat Medal for the little stunt as it turned out the tugboat was being run by a self-proclaimed fascist spy whose apparent intent was to slam the barge of oil into the two ships. He was unsuccessful due to drunkenness.
Every time Wilton heard the story and the ensuing giggles perpetrated by the undersexed and overpaid housewives, he thought that Mother Nature must have been playing some cruel trick on him. It had to be revenge for all the times he’d gone on what Timothy McClaren called ‘frog hunts’ when in his early teens. Though he never killed any himself, neither did he report the horrible brutality of McClaren’s sadistic practice of hanging the poor things by their hind legs with pieces of wire to bake until dead in the hot sun. It wasn’t until Wilton got into high school that he suddenly realized he’d probably been watching the initial stages of what would one day be a serial killer. At least, that’s what all the books said. The thought that he’d survived the encounters several times over filled him with a sense of confidence not too many high-schoolers could muster. He felt this way until he met the Stepfather.
The inspection of the yard was an altogether tedious process. Before calling the Stepfather outside once the yard was finished, Wilton was required to pre-inspect the entirety of the property to ensure he didn’t end up wasting the Stepfather’s precious time I front of the Playboy channel. Invariably these pre-inspections were not precise enough and it was only after three lashes with the buckle-end of the Stepfather’s belt across the hamstrings that Wilton was allowed to correct whatever technical deficiencies there were in his care of the yard. The subsequent attempts to get it right would have been impossible but for the fact that, while an old worn out piece of shit lawnmower, the travesty was in fact one of the very first models to have its own drivetrain, which of course meant that one didn’t have to force the mower over the grass. In fact, when it was on full-bore, you could barely makes the turns it would go so fast.
The inspection would commence once the Stepfather emerged from the house with his prized stainless steel ruler in hand. He always made it a point to comment on the fact that he found them to be a minimum of two millimeters per inch more accurate than the wooden ones. Besides, he would say, it was a style choice.
First, he would check to ensure the grass was uniform and of the proper height from root to top of stem of 2 inches. The two foot square he usually used as a basis for the rest of the lawn changed with every inspection. Next he would get down on his belly in order to check two things. First, the level height of the grass across the expanse of the yard, ensuring there were no blades missed. Second, if when he got up there was anything on his shirt, gravel, grass clippings, dirt, the entire cleanup had to be done again. The entirety of the edging had to be no more and no less than 2 inches in any spot, both by width and by depth. The Stepfather would check this by taking the ruler around the edge of the yard in various spots. There were no times that the inspection resulted in a finished job, except for the last cutting of the Summer of 1987.
Wilton had re-edged the yard twice, made an entire pass with the mower thrice and vacuumed the driveway and other cement areas four or fives times. He was relatively certain that this time he would be done. The sky had since grown dark and the families up and down the block and in the cul-de-sacs and coves were gearing up for Round Three of their ritualistic Sunday Night Fights; the peace of church and feelings of good will all but forgotten with the thoughts of Monday morning’s commute to wherever it was those people worked.
He came outside, cloth napkin jammed into pants as he sucked at the remnants of roasted chicken from between the cap of his long since broken tooth. Wilton remembered distinctly what that piece of chicken looked like as it dangled right next to the dissimilar halves of the famed tooth. The sucking noise he made was complimented by an occasional spit between words.
“I hope for your goddamned sake this is the last time I gotta come out here and do this,” the Stepfather said over the low rattle of the lawnmower. He’d get upset anytime Wilton turned the thing off before the inspection was done. Said it was a sign of arrogance.
It had been a long day. Wilton exhaled.
“So do I. I’m fairly sure it—“
“Oh? Is that right? You’re fairly sure?”
The Stepfather hesitated a moment before continuing. He stepped forward and held out his left hand, palm up.
“Hand it over…”
Wilton reached into his back pocket and pulled out the stainless steel ruler the Stepfather was so fond of. He slowly handed it over, feeling the cork base running along the edge of his finger. The Stepfather yanked it from him, moved to a section of the lawn near the driveway and knelt down.
“Let me tell you something boy, I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re out here ‘til the early morning light, understand? It’s gonna get done it’s gonna get done right or else.”
Wilton stood there listening to the low clatter of the mower engine as it began to sputter. A moment longer and the sound stopped as the engine ran out of gas.
“Better go fill that friggin’ thing up again. There’s at least forty blades just in this one section here that are sticking up bright as day.”
The Stepfather looked at Wilton as he looked down at the mower, then, reluctant, defeated, pissed, reamed, he pushed the machine into the garage and refilled it while the Stepfather went into a tirade about responsibility and what happens when it isn’t held up. Wilton heard none of it since it was a repeat. As he moved the now full mower back onto the lawn, the Stepfather walked behind him, lightly tapping I on the head wit the edge of the stainless steel ruler. Wilton ignored him and went to start the engine. The thing gave him trouble though and after five tries, the Stepfather stepped up and tried himself. It started immediately. He stood there, looking at Wilton, knowing he had him beat. It was the last straw, the last sewer, the last vestige of any hope for the then 18 year old. He spoke.
“You’re so worthless. Can’t even start the damn thing…” He threw the ruler into the grass where it stuck upright, just in front of the mower, then moved around to Wilton’s right side and whispered right in his ear, “You’re lucky your Mother’s here, otherwise…”
With that, Wilton slowly put the mower in gear. Just as the Stepfather was passing at an angle to the opening of the mower where the grass came out, Wilton’s hand slipped on the gear and it lurched forward suddenly.
There was a high pitched revving of the engine as it found traction, followed by a loud kerchunk! as the mower’s dull and cracked blade made contact with the stainless steel ruler. The engine died almost as immediately as the metal object was sliced in two and both haves were immediately ejected from the chute on the right side of the mower. There was a thwack of what sounded like bone. Wilton looked over the top of the mower and suddenly realized he’d run over the ruler. He turned to look at the Stepfather who wavered a moment, then fell face first on the grass. Wilton ran to where he was and saw a dark pool of what looked like oil oozing from all directions where his face was pressed into the two inch deep grass. When Wilton turned him over he saw where the ruler half had buried itself a full three inches deep into the frontal lobe of the Stepfather’s skull. Checking for a pulse he found there wasn’t one…
Years later, the house had gone to his mother. She’d passed away, and now it was his. He hadn’t mowed the yard himself in the years after the accident, but rather, had the locals take care of it for him. The problem was, he wasn’t terribly fond of the job they did, which necessitated the purchase he now stood pondering in the garage. Not to mention that once the local high school kids who mowed the place for him caught wind that some guy had died on the front lawn they didn’t want anything to do with it whatever.
The Yard of the Month contest had long since been done away with in the neighborhood. Wilton never won no matter who mowed. Sometimes he wondered if it had to do with the accident. It was true, despite his life, the man had been well liked there. ‘Some golfer’ they’d said at the funeral.
Now, it was just a matter of mowing the yard for himself.
THE END