Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [22]
“All right,” he said, “you’re old enough to mow the lawn now. You’re big enough to mow it, edge it, water it, and water the flowers. It’s time you did something around here. It’s time you got off your dead ass!”
“But I’m playing football with the guys. Saturday is the only real chance I have.”
“Are you talking back to me?”
“No.”
I could see my mother watching from behind a curtain. Every Saturday they cleaned the whole house. They vacuumed the rugs and polished the furniture. They took up the rugs and waxed the hardwood floors and then covered the floors with the rugs again. You couldn’t even see where they had been waxed.
The lawn mower and edger were in the driveway. He showed them to me. “Now, you take this mower and go up and down the lawn and don’t miss any places. Dump the grass catcher here whenever it gets full. Now, when you’ve mowed the lawn in one direction and finished, take the mower and mow the lawn in the other direction, get it? First, you mow it north and south, then you mow it east and west. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And don’t look so god-damned unhappy or I’ll really give you something to be unhappy about! After you’ve finished mowing, then you take the edger. You trim the edges of the lawn with the little mower on the edger. Get under the hedge, get every blade of grass! Then…you take this circular blade on the edger and you cut along the edge of the lawn. It must be absolutely straight along the edge of the lawn! Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Now when you’re done with that, you take these…”
My father showed me some shears.
“…and you get down on your knees and you go around cutting off any hairs that are still sticking up. Then you take the hose and you water the hedges and the flower beds. Then you turn on the sprinkler and you let it run fifteen minutes on each part of the lawn. You do all this on the front lawn and in the flower garden, and then you repeat it on the rear lawn and in the flower garden there. Are there any questions?”
“No.”
“All right, now I want to tell you this. I am going to come out and check everything when you’re finished, and when you’re done I DON’T WANT TO SEE ONE HAIR STICKING UP IN EITHER THE FRONT OR BACK LAWN! NOT ONE HAIR! IF THERE IS…!”
He turned, walked up the driveway, across his porch, opened the door, slammed it, and he was gone inside of his house. I took the mower, rolled it up the drive and began pushing it on its first run, north and south. I could hear the guys down the street playing football…
I finished mowing, edging and clipping the front lawn. I watered the flower beds, set the sprinkler going and began working my way toward the backyard. There was a stretch of lawn in the center of the driveway leading to the back. I got that too. I didn’t know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy. It was like everything in the world had turned to lawn and I was just pushing my way through it all. I kept pushing and working but then suddenly I gave up. It would take hours, all day, and the game would be over. The guys would go in to eat dinner, Saturday would be finished, and I’d still be mowing.
As I began mowing the back lawn I noticed my mother and my father standing on the back porch watching me. They just stood there silently, not moving. Once as I pushed the mower past I heard my mother say to my father, “Look, he doesn’t sweat like you do when you mow the lawn. Look how calm he looks.”
“CALM? HE’S NOT CALM, HE’S DEAD!”
When I came by again, I heard him:
“PUSH THAT THING FASTER! YOU MOVE LIKE A SNAIL!”
I pushed it faster. It was hard to do but it felt good. I pushed it faster and faster. I was almost running with the mower. The grass flew back so hard that much of it flew over the grass