Chris McCormick - Desert Boys

Let him make up his own mind, I scribbled next to her entry.

X. BACK TO WORK: A GUIDE

That Saturday I headed across the street early in the morning. The sun had been up for less than an hour, but the heat started climbing without much of a wait. I held on to a yardstick I’d sneaked home from school, and took a look at the bigger side of the lawn to survey the extent of work that loomed ahead of me. Mr. Reuter had stopped caring for the grass weeks ago. By now, shaggy but burnt, the lawn looked like a field of wheat you might find behind a baseball fence someplace in the middle of the country. I could have turned and looked at the face of my house, but standing there in that yellow plot, holding this basic tool that was supposed to help me make some sort of difference, I felt suddenly that I was as far from home as I’d ever been.

The garage door opened. Inside, Mr. Reuter held on to its red rope above his head. He said, “You’re early.”

“I thought I could beat the heat,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “I remember when I first learned how impossible that is out here.” He looked around, past me. “You alone?”

“I am,” I said. “Drew couldn’t make it.”

“Is that so?”

“Well,” I said, “he said he’s busy.”

“Is that so?” he said again. He batted the red rope for some time. “His mother,” he managed to get out.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s my guess, too. Anyway, I’m about to measure the lawn.”

“What a thing to say,” he said wistfully, as in a daydream. I thought he was upset with me for mentioning his ex-wife. But he was talking about something else entirely.

“You expect the word ‘mow’ there, don’t you?” he said. “And your word — what was it, ‘measure’?—your word just takes its place so sneakily. ‘I’m about to measure the lawn,’ you said. What a thing to say.”

“That is funny,” I said, not knowing how to respond. What was funnier, I thought, was that I was using a yardstick to measure the yard. I kept the joke to myself.

“About Drew,” Mr. Reuter said, “you’re sure he’s not coming? Today, I mean.”

“Mr. Reuter,” I said, leveling with him the way a man should level with another man. “Drew doesn’t trust you. He’s never coming back here, I think you should know.”

“Well,” he said. He cracked his knuckles and let all the air out of his nose. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.” He pulled down on the rope until he disappeared.

That last thing he said was true: In order to measure and carve out a near-perfect circle in a front lawn with the equipment afforded to me, you need patience. First you have to lay the yardstick along the border of the grass and the sidewalk. From the smaller side of the lawn, composed now just of dirt, collect a handful of small rocks, most of which will crumble in your hand if you make a fist over them. As you pivot the yardstick along the length of each side of the big lawn, place one of those soft rocks at every point for measuring purposes. Then do the math to figure that the yard spreads out just over fourteen feet wide and about twelve feet up to the house from the sidewalk. The paved walkway up to the front door changes the shape of the lawn to something a bit more geometrically complicated. Basically, though, you’re off to a good start. The next step would be to find the center of the lawn. There, step on your shovel a couple of times to mark an X. Use the yardstick again from the center to a number of equidistant points in different directions. Leave enough room to make arcs between those points to complete the circle. Keep using those soft rocks to mark your points. Gather more if you have to.

Take a break for water. Drink just a little from the pitcher; leave plenty for later. Sing a dumb song you’ve made up: Thirsty from the sun, and work’s just begun.

Now you’re ready to dig.

XI. ON THE ACT OF FINISHING

I can’t remember the last plunge I took with the shovel on that lawn. What I can remember is the first time I saw the end closing in on me. I laughed out loud. Nothing maniacal, just a single bark of joy escaped. I startled myself with it. You can blame the heat or the overinflated importance of completion to a twelve-year-old kid with low self-esteem. Either way, I laughed, and kept digging until the digging was done.

I went to the front door to bring Mr. Reuter outside. I knocked and waited. I rang the doorbell, looking over my shoulder at the circle of dirt I’d created. The circle wasn’t perfect from an aerial view, but its mistakes were subtle, and its positioning was centered well. Corners of yellow grass still hung around the circle’s edges. That was an easy fix, I figured, once the trees and their protective shade came into place.

Beyond the yard I saw my own house. Its grass had become overgrown in my time across the street.

My knocking turned violent. In the window, I could see Mr. Reuter’s shadow pacing back and forth. I yelled his name. I said, “I know you’re in there!”—which, because I’d heard it so many times in movies and TV shows, came out flawlessly. Finally I moved around to the driveway, where the pitcher, now empty, sat on its oil stain. I waited for some time, a good amount of time. I kicked the garage door. A car passed while I did it.

XII. THE CLOSEST I’D EVER BEEN TO A FISTFIGHT (UPDATED)

I saw Drew at school the next week. I went over to him at lunch and said, in front of all his friends, “You were right. Your dad is an asshole.”

He punched me in the eye.

XIII. THE FLOTILLA LANDS ON COMSTOCK AVENUE

Before giving up, I tried Mr. Reuter a few more times with no success. Some weeks passed. In that time, I’d explained the black eye to my parents by saying a girl at school had accidentally opened a door in my face. Even my mother, the amateur journalist, was too embarrassed for me to ask any follow-up questions.

Then came the trucks. They rolled in on a windy Saturday morning. There were three of them, white dump trucks with blue block letters: WATTS LANDSCAPING. Each had been loaded with sod and landscaping accessories, including a number of boulders and bags of what I found out later were decorative wood chips. A group of Mexican men, five in all, parked the trucks at sharp angles at Mr. Reuter’s house. They worked in an assembly-line sort of way between the trucks and the front lawn. Cars took care to move slowly past the equipment, which created a sort of barricade around the driveway and into the street. Some of the drivers even pulled over to investigate further the work that was being done.

The curiosity spread. As the hours passed, a fleet of neighbors emerged from their homes to witness the transformation of Mr. Reuter’s yard. My own parents, if they hadn’t been working, would have been among them. I imagine that some of the witnesses must have worried that the Mexicans, yelling their Spanish at each other between heaves, were moving in.

As for me, I chose to watch from my living room, parting the blinds with my fingers.

The next day, my parents left again for work, and — wouldn’t you know it? — the trees arrived. Three huge supplanted palm trees rolled in on the towed trailers of a new armada of white trucks followed by green-and-yellow John Deere machinery. This time, the news spread even more quickly, and neighbors and passersby came together in the street. Even I had to go outside to watch. People who had heard about the activity the day before also came, anticipating more action today. What you had then was a group of people from all over town, the largest assembly I’d seen of them, and yet the only sounds came from the machinery.

A John Deere drilled a hole within my circle for each tree. Another, with an extended mechanical arm, plucked one of the palms from its trailer bed and hinged it toward the hole. The machine tilted its pull on the tree until, slowly, accompanied by the eerie creaks of the pulley, the palm stood upright in the air. It hung there for a moment like a specter, swinging perilously in the wind, and the people beneath it had no choice but to fear and worship. Carefully, the machine lowered the bulbous root of the tree beneath the ground. This process was repeated twice more, and each time it happened, the crowd held its breath as the tree, like some monster, stood unaided for the first time. We half expected a roar from the trees, and when — as the workers began to hose down the bark — no roar came, we ourselves supplied it.