Lawn Service - a short story by Beard Bates

Lawn Service by Beard Bates
  
It was the smell of freshly cut grass and the vapors of burnt gasoline that seemed to reconvene as conscious sensations as he rounded the corner, as he watched a young boy in nondescript clothing hoist a push-mower into the bed of a pickup truck.    

For as a family, that was all they did, just “cut grass.” There was also the weed-eating of brush lots, where all the hornets would arise and chase you until they found rotting fruit which they’d rather burrow inside. And his brother used to trap those hornets by quickly wrapping the fruit with cellophane, and we’d look through the clear plastic at the hornet as it rubbed its dome eyes against the transparent film. His brother would then throw those wrapped fruits against a wall as hard as he could, and then the hornets would either explode into freedom, or not.  And his brother Terrence was the first one to tell, and not only did he tell, but he spilled it all because he called the newspaper after becoming concerned about his little sister, the one Daddy had buried in the back yard. Of course, Daddy had never told anyone outside the family about his solution to the problem, and so Daddy and his sons just continued to cut grass, clear weed lots, watch hornets, and yet one day Terrence called the newspaper.  

He pulled onto the freeway and his memories could still smell the clipped grass, burnt gas, and everything around all that: which had once spoken “baby.”       

“But not a normal dead baby,” said the examiner who came to survey after Terrence had called. “So it was a buried baby who had no birth certificate, and you say it had a giant bump on its back?” Daddy also had once said that the baby had a gigantic bulge on its back like a mountain just waiting to erupt. And he frantically dug the hole after he had tugged the baby out from Mamma because it was a still-born, or so he said, but the brothers never questioned about the burial, the baby or the bulge, or anything. Dinnertimes were always the same, and only the exchange of glances held the unspoken stuff.    

He flashed his eyes upon the road while searching with his right hand through the clutter in the passenger seat, and for an instant the memories almost ceased, at least until he recalled Mamma, for the thing about Mamma was that she knew little about the world except that she was always pregnant, that the world was round, and also that it spun like a ball spins. She thought, “I am always pregnant and the world always spins.” He thought about how Daddy would wash his oily-hands, those hands where the vibration of a weed-eater had numbed his nerves, and how Daddy would pull the purple curtain to disguise the cluttered passage between the rooms and then lay his hands on Mamma, and that’s why she was always pregnant.  

The paper included interviews: “They used to cut my grass and blow the leaves off the sidewalks and driveway, and I always thought they were kind of odd…they always seemed a really close-knit group, you know, rather private.” Another woman remarked, “I was always concerned because all the children would work in the yard; my neighbor said that they were home-schooled, but I always wondered when any of the schooling occurred because they were always working.” Another: “The children were very friendly yet pretty strange, like the clothing they wore…they wore real bland clothing and looked like they had no friends: they had that look to them…”    

Out of the back window, the one where the duct-tape kept the top pane from falling into the bottom one, he saw the dirt flying over Daddy’s back, and Mamma was crying. “Mamma can we help you,” he said. He was only about 10 years old then. “NO, NO, just go to bed…back to bed,” and he remembers how Mamma was sprawled out on the bed. There were metal pans on the floor, the same ones Daddy used to change the oil. He could remember seeing the swirls in the oil as it drained from the mowers. And Daddy built the swing-set over top of the hole, and the little children could enjoy themselves. But the boy would just watch from the corner of the house, resting his shoulder against the chipping paint, realizing that they were smiling over top of a grave. He thought, “they don’t even know; it could’ve been anyone of them that was buried there, and Daddy never speaks about it, he just keeps laying his hands on Mamma.” Daddy wouldn’t allow the children to attend school because he always had a manner of speaking under his breath that made lazy the issues which needed to be discussed. Thus everybody was privately brooding, pondering, all hoping to deride his lips so sealed but through which his tongue would languidly roll out, as if he had no control over it, when he saw Mamma.     

He turned off at the exit, his right hand still fumbling in the passenger seat, casting quick glances to his right, and he remembered the one Memorial-Day weekend when relatives came from everywhere and cooked barbecue at their house. Daddy had tried to convince them that his aunt’s house, where the celebration had previously taken place, would be a much better location, yet her house was repossessed, and so Daddy was more or less forced to provide the meeting grounds, but when Uncle Darrell arrived with ribs and his dog, his dog immediately began rooting under the swing-set. Daddy fed the dog spare-ribs until her stomach must have been as full of bones as a big fish, and the poor dog lay down for the afternoon and then died the next week.    

And so Terrence sat in the lobby of the newspaper office for four hours after having told the woman everything he knew, and when five o’clock came, she said, “you must now leave, we’re closing.” And he confessed, “I’m scared that Daddy might do something to me.” “You still need to leave,” she said, and so Terrence went home because he surmised Daddy would have no way of knowing that the newspaper had heard about the baby. Terrence wondered whether they’d have a picture of the baby in the newspaper, a photograph just as he remembered seeing it, with that huge bubble on its back and yellowish eyes looking sick. But Terrence realized they couldn’t print a picture of the baby because no-one had taken a picture the night that Daddy had dug the hole. Terrence wondered whether they would at least include a drawing.    

Business died once the news hit the paper, and then when we’d drive through town, as we’d all be sitting in the bed of the pickup, old ladies and walking babies, all of them would turn their heads once, gawk, and then quickly turn away as if their eye contact gave us some advantage.    

He remembered having his hands wrapped around a bundle of wooden rake handles while the eyes fleetingly stared, but even the stares began to cease as time wore on, and eventually business returned to normal. An almost normal. Then he remembered lifting the second push-mower from the bed of the pickup, pulling to crank it, and Terrence was no longer around for he had decided to leave town and move a hundred miles away, and he was no longer in the landscaping business either. But Daddy never understood why business began to decline, or why Terrence just disappeared that afternoon, for Daddy never read the newspaper and he was away when the surveyor had come by. It was just lucky that way. But of course, Mamma knew about the newspaper. And the boy always wondered whether Daddy knew it or not; he just assumed that Daddy did not because Daddy seemed so complacent.  

He pulled into the sloping driveway and there was water running down the rain gutter. He saw his mud-covered toddler-son wallowing in a toy-truck-filled mire created by a running hose. The car-door opened and he stood up tall, placing his briefcase upon the hood, and while smiling at his son, who remained self-absorbed in the fantastic world hidden somewhere beneath the puddle, the grown-boy noticed that the grass was rather tall, and then all the memories were there, as if attached to the tip of each blade of grass, waving to him. And again he could smell it all. He disappeared behind the swinging front-door after having turned the faucet off so the yard would dry out.