Dave Zeltserman - The Caretaker of Lorne Field

“It smells bad,” Lester said, wrinkling his nose.

Jack Durkin nodded. “Yep. Those dead Aukowies been baking in the sun for a few hours now, getting nice and ripe. Wait till you catch a whiff of them when I set that pile on fire later. The smell alone will prove that these ain’t no weeds.”

“They look like weeds,” Lester said stubbornly, his eyes squinting and peering off at the field.

“You’ll think differently soon. Now grab that empty sack and follow me.”

Jack Durkin led the way back to the shed near the entrance of the field. “Your great great grandpa built this almost a hundred years ago,” he proudly told his son. “Solid pine. Probably be around another hundred years.”

Lester shrugged, didn’t seem too impressed. “How come one of the weeds is bigger than the others?” he asked.

“’Cause I needed to let one get that size.” Durkin stopped to wipe some sweat from his brow. He frowned deeply at the foot-tall Aukowie. “Son, you’re going to have to be extra careful around that one. When they get that big they can whip out at you like a rattlesnake, and trust me, they’re far more deadly than any snake.”

“Sure they are,” Lester muttered under his breath.

Durkin heard the crack, but showed nothing except weariness, and maybe a bit of tenderness, in his heavily-lined leathered face. “It’s true,” he said. “You’ll be seeing soon enough, son. When they get to two feet, they get much bolder. Then they’re like a rabid pit bull, flying all over the place trying to get at you. But at one foot they’re still dangerous enough. Hell, even at two-inches they can hurt you pretty bad.” He breathed in deeply and sighed. “Just keep your distance from that sucker when we go over to it.”

“Why are we going over to it?”

“So you can record it when I dig it out. You’ll see what an Aukowie really is then.”

Durkin opened the door to the shed and took out a spade for Lester to hold onto. He was going to need that spade later when it came time to subdue the foot-high Aukowie. He next retrieved Charlie Harper’s video camcorder that he had left in the shed for safekeeping. He struggled for a moment to hit the power button with his thick index finger, then handed the camcorder to his son. “You remember from last night how to use this, right?” he asked.

Lester rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I remember.”

Durkin ignored the insolence and said, “Since you didn’t wear work boots we need to stay off the field where they’re growing more than an inch, otherwise they’d slice your feet to ribbons. Follow me and don’t put your hands anywhere near one of them, okay?”

“Okay,” Lester muttered. He hesitated and asked, “How come you’ve been keeping your hand in your pocket?”

“I got careless earlier.” Durkin took his hand out and showed Lester the blood-stained handkerchief tied a few inches above his wrist. “You can never let an Aukowie taste human blood. Not even a drop. Don’t matter how big they are, they’ll go nuts if they do.” He studied his own arm and nodded slowly. “Looks like I don’t need to worry about bleeding on them anymore. Be careful, okay, son? You might think this is all one big joke right now, but it ain’t.”

Durkin untied the handkerchief from his arm and folded it back in his pocket. Blood had scabbed over his wound. He took his glove from his pocket, put it back on, then led the way along the edge of the field. When he got to where he had stopped his weeding, he told Lester to stand still.

“I was hoping today to start teaching you how to kill these things, but I can’t do it without you wearing gloves. These critters are tricky. You got to grab them just the right way and pull up at just the right angle. After a while you’ll get the hang of it. For now, though, watch me. Also, take a deep breath and listen carefully.”

Durkin waited until his son did as he was told, then he reached down and pulled a two-inch Aukowie from the ground. He turned his head sideways to look at his son.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

“The scream it made when I killed it.”

“Nope. I didn’t hear nuthin’.”

Durkin’s eyes and mouth weakened with disappointment. “You will eventually, son. Sometimes it takes practice. My pa told me it took him over a year before he started hearing it. Me, I started hearing it from the very first Aukowie I killed.”

“I dunno. I didn’t hear nuthin’.”

“It will just take some time.” Durkin straightened up and grimaced painfully as he worked a few kinks from his back. “We’re going to go over to that large one over there,” he said. “They’re longer than they look, so be careful.” He paused, smiling wistfully. “Can you see the face on it?” he asked.

“Nope.”

Durkin pointed out its eyes and mouth and horns. “You can’t see all that?”

“All I see are a bunch of leaves and vines.” Lester narrowed his eyes. “Maybe some thorns, too, but that’s all I see.”

“Sometimes it just takes a while, that’s all,” Durkin said with a heavy sigh. “You keep looking and you’ll see it.”

“Dad,” Lester said, “do you really believe all this?”

“What?”

“That these aren’t just weeds?”

“What have I been saying?”

Lester scratched his jaw, then scratched behind his ear. “I dunno. That’s all part of the act, right?”

“Son, you’ll be finding out soon this is no act.” Jack Durkin emptied out a lungful of air and sighed heavily. “Hand me that spade. And get ready with the camera.”

Lydia called Paul Minter’s office at nine o’clock and was told by his receptionist that he was in court and wouldn’t be back until after one. From that point on she sat at the kitchen table chain-smoking through half a dozen packs of cigarettes, all the while keeping one eye on the clock over the oven. At one o’clock she thought about calling again but held back. When the phone eventually rang it jolted her.

“Dorothy told me you called?” Paul Minter said.

“It’s one thirty-five. She told me you’d be back by one.”

“Things took longer than expected. What’s up?”

Lydia told him about her husband planning to make a videotape of the weeds. How he was planning to show it to the town.

Minter took the news quietly and finally asked, “Why does he want to do that?”

“Because he wants to prove to everyone that these things ain’t weeds.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

Another long silence from Minter’s end, then, “I don’t think this would be the best thing for us.”

“I didn’t think so either.”

“Who is your husband planning to show his videotape to?”

“Probably the local news station.”

Minter digested that and said, “No, that definitely would not be good for us.” Lydia could hear him coughing at his end, then spit something into a trashcan. When he came back, he asked, “Your husband doesn’t actually believe what’s in the book you showed me?”

“I think that damn fool believes every word of it.”

“This really isn’t good at all,” he said softly. He cleared his throat some more. “It’s one thing to have this quaint little fairy tale that everybody knows is only a fairy tale, it’s quite another to rub everybody’s nose in that fact…” He hesitated for a long moment. When he continued his voice was more controlled. “Did you tell your husband about our plans?”

“Of course not. You told me you’d talk to him after your plans were worked out.”

“That’s right, I did. How about if I meet with him later today. Do you think you can bring him over to the office this afternoon?”