Bruce Blake - Yardwork

Tim made a special trip to buy the shovel he used to bury the nameless man. It was easy: an older lady in a blue vest directed him to the proper aisle without a second thought. A fifteen-year-old buying a spade doesn’t raise concern in anyone; it’s not like purchasing a gun or a hunting knife, though a shovel could be as deadly. But the shovel didn’t kill the man, Tim merely used it to dig holes to put bits and pieces of him in, a task for which it was made.

In the end, his father’s garden shears finally killed the nameless man.

The man probably had a name, everyone did, but Tim didn’t care to know it, didn’t ask or wonder about it. The moment he found the man sleeping in the shed, recovering from the abuse of whatever substance he’d imbibed to put him in that state, Tim decided the less he knew about the man, the better. If the need to call him anything arose, maybe it would be ‘opportunity’.

When Tim opened the shed door, it creaked on its rusted hinges like it always did. Autumn sun streamed in, splashing across the rough surface of the poorly-laid cement floor. Dust motes stirred and spider webs shimmered. In the rafters, the remnants of a nest poked out over the edge of an unpainted beam, but no birds lived in it anymore, he’d taken care of them in the spring, their tiny, brittle bones long since carried away by neighbourhood cats. The rake hung between two spikes Tim’s father drove into the wall a couple of years ago in an attempt to keep things tidy. The man lay curled on the floor below it.

“Hello?” Tim stood in the doorway, his shadow falling across the floor, touching the prone man. “Mister?”

No answer. He took a step closer and the smell hit. Besides the shed’s usual smell of must and fertilizer, he caught a whiff of the acidic stench of fresh puke, and beneath it, shit. Tim put his hand over his nose and mouth, blocking the smell.

“Are you all right, mister?”

The man didn’t so much as twitch. Tim held his breath, listening. Yes, there it was: the slow rhythm of his breathing. Alive — not in good shape, probably, but alive. Two more steps brought the boy halfway across the shed, his eyes adjusting to the poor light. The man lay on his side, facing the wall, a tattered overcoat on his shoulders. The feet protruding from beneath the long coat wore boots wrapped with duct tape to hold them together.

A shiver of excitement stirred in Tim’s chest.

“Tim, are you going to rake those friggin’ leaves or what?”

A lawn chair on the deck provided Tim’s father an ideal spot to situate himself — beer in hand — to watch his favorite sport: his oldest son doing yard work. Tim poked his head out of the doorway to make sure his old man hadn’t gotten up to see about the hold up. He hadn’t, of course. It would take a lot more than impatience for him to put down his beer and remove his ass from the plastic cushion of the recliner-chair.

“Sorry, Dad. I knocked over the recycling. Just got to clean it up and I’ll be right out.”

His father grunted, took another swig of MGD, and grabbed the newspaper from where it lay on the deck beside him, using the delay to browse its pages for fodder for tonight’s dinner table diatribe. Tim went back into the shed and crossed to the rusted steel shelves his father installed as part of the clean up job. On the first three shelves, a variety of gardening tools and implements — many of them unused — lay arrayed in orderly rows awaiting their opportunity to shine while his father’s worn spank mags stuffed the bottom shelf full. He easily found the length of rope and roll of duct tape for which he searched. Finally, his father’s fastidious nature — a disposition only displayed in the interior of the shed — came in handy.

The man was passed out and unlikely to awaken for a while. Tim knew this because he’d seen his father in a similar state enough times, but he crept toward the man anyway, taking no chances. He crouched at his side, pulled out a strip of tape and used his teeth to tear it off the roll, then spit the gluey taste out of his mouth. The smell of the man threatened to overpower him as he leaned in to press the piece of tape over his mouth: puke and shit and booze. His finger brushed the stubble of the man’s cheek; it scratched against his hand. He jerked away.

Still no movement.

Tim unwound the loop of rope as he wondered what would happen if the man heaved again with his mouth taped closed. Would it kill him? Or did only rock stars die choking on their own vomit? This man was clearly not a rock star, so maybe he’d be okay. It’d be better if it didn’t play out that way, but what the hell. He knotted the rope around the man’s ankles, using two fingers to grip the ragged hem of his pants and lift his leg as he wound it around then tied it off. The other end of the rope he snaked behind an exposed stud and fastened the man’s wrists, effectively hog tying him to the wall. The man let out a snort while Tim wound the rope around his wrists, halting the teen’s breath and stopping his fingers mid-knot, but it turned out to be no more than a snore.

Tim finished the job, stood and took a step back to admire his work. He’d learned a lot in the two months he’d stuck in boy scouts before they kicked him out for lighting things on fire. The man wouldn’t be able to free himself of those knots. He didn’t remember which was which — sheepshank, square knot, fisherman’s knot — it didn’t matter, as long as they held.

“Tim, what the fuck are you doing in there? These leaves aren’t going to rake themselves.”

“Coming,” he shouted back trying to sound like the enthusiastic, helpful son — an act he always put on though not always convincingly. He stared at the man for a few seconds, excitement and anticipation swirling in his stomach, tingling his limbs. His dick stirred in his pants the way it did when he broke the twittering birds into pieces, the way no female ever made it stir.

“Do I have to come in and drag you out?”

A dose of scalding rage doused Tim’s arousal. The man shifted a little and farted: a long wet sound making Tim grimace. He grabbed the rake from its place on the wall before the odor found his nostrils, then planted a solid kick in the man’s lower back, imagining his father lying bound on the floor instead of some homeless man.

The man still didn’t move.

Tim purposely abandoned the rake in the middle of the lawn so he’d have an excuse to go back into the shed after dinner. His father wouldn’t let one of his precious implements — precious, though he never used them himself — remain outside overnight. Rust belonged on shelves and hinges but deserved no place on a man’s tools.

“What’s going on with you?”

He raised his eyes from his half-eaten dinner where he’d been log-rolling limp asparagus from one side of the plate to the other and looked at his mother. The corners of her mouth tugged up into the sad half-smile: the closest she managed these days to an expression of happiness.

“Nothing,” Tim said fidgeting to the other corner of his chair for the hundredth time. “Just enjoying dinner, Ma.”

To punctuate his statement, he popped a chunk of over-cooked roast into his mouth, chewed it with visible effort, then followed it up with a fork full of lumpy mashed potatoes.

“Don’t patronize your mother,” his father grumbled behind the sports section. “Eat your fucking dinner.”

Tim fought to keep from fidgeting right off his chair, occupying himself with thoughts of what it would be like for the man to wake and find himself bound. He played it over and over in his mind, a different scenario each time as he struggled to finish the almost-inedible meal. First, he pictured the man terrified, eyes wide and staring, screams bulging the duct tape sticking his lips together. Then he imagined him angry, thrashing against the ropes, banging his head on the wall in an effort to get free. Finally, Tim pictured the man delighted, happy the boy had played right into his trap.