Lawn Boy

by Gary Paulsen

  And with my average brain and average grades I lead a pretty average life. When I was small I played with toys, made models. I sometimes still make models. I went through a massive video game phase and still like to play now and then. I like girls but can't talk to them. Not a word. I try to be nice to everyone, and polite to old folks, people over twenty or thirty.

  So there's nothing to explain what happened to me that summer. It's easy to say it was all just luck. But it's hard to believe there wasn't some kind of force behind it.

  After meeting Arnold, I wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do, but two days later, I mowed his lawn and he told me that he would buy me not thirty-five dollars' worth of some kind of stock but forty dollars', which was the original amount that I'd wanted for mowing his lawn. “You're right,” he said, “that's a fair price.

  “I bought you stock in a small company that makes coffins. They're just starting up and the stock is going for fifty cents a share.”

  “Coffins? You mean for dead people?”

  “Right.”

  “But I don't want any coffins.”

  “You're not going to get any. You're going to get eighty shares of stock in a company called the Memorial Wooden Container Corporation.”

  “Well, good. Because a coffin … that's more trouble than I need right now.”

  “Is something wrong?” We were standing on Arnold's front steps and he handed me some kind of hippie iced tea that tasted sweet but, he said, had no sugar in it. He studied my face.

  “Nothing, really. It's just that I'm getting more and more jobs. I can't do them all and I have to start turning them down.”

  “Supply and demand.” Arnold nodded. “It's groovy, man. The very nature of the concept of economic structure. You just need more mowers, more people, to meet the growing demand. The previous lawn service—before, of course, the unfortunate instance of the romantic … mishap—had a small crew of workers to handle the burden of all the lawns you're now working. You need to start distributing the wealth, dispersing the work. Far-out. It's beautiful.”

  “Well, it might be beautiful, but I can't do it. I don't know anybody—”

  “I might”—he held up his hand—“be able to help you with this.”

  “Help me mow lawns?”

  Even his smile looked round. “No. I'm busy. But I've done some investing for a man named Pasqual. He knows lots of people who are always looking for work. He's a good, reliable person, known him for years. Can you come back after dark?”

  “Well, sure, I suppose. Not real late because my parents want me in by nine. But …” Alarm bells were ringing in my head. “Why only after dark?”

  “Pasqual looks after his kids during the day. When his wife comes home from her job, then he goes to work.”

  “He mows lawns when people are sleeping?”

  Arnold shook his head. “No. He does other work that isn't so noisy. Trimming, fertilizing—that sort of thing. Quiet things that won't wake the neighborhood.”

  “In the dark?”

  “He wears a headlamp. Ingenious, really. I admire his creativity in the face of opposition. Entrepreneurship at its finest—there are no impossibilities, just hurdles to be overcome.”

  “Is it, you know, safe?” Kenny Halverson's uncle said he didn't like half the things he saw in the daylight and that there was a very good reason for being afraid of the dark. If we were supposed to be out in the dark, Kenny Halverson's uncle said, we'd be born with night-vision goggles on our heads.

  “Pasqual is honest, which is really what you wanted to know. And yes, he's safe. If you don't want to meet him, that's fine. Just keep your business at its present level. But if you want to expand, I think Pasqual can help you.”

  Five days earlier I had been wondering where I could find enough money for a bike inner tube and now I was considering how I could expand my business to distribute work and disperse wealth. I shook my head at how weird things had gotten and looked back at Arnold.

  “Okay. Let's talk to Pasqual.”

  “Groovy. I'll call him right now. We'll meet him tonight.”

  And so we did.

  “Hi,” he said. “Arnold says you want to talk to me about work.” Pasqual had the reddest hair I have ever seen in my life. My grandmother once told me, “You can always trust a redhead. They sometimes have mean tempers, to be sure, but they've usually got good hearts.” Of course, we were at a baseball game at the time and I'd asked her to help me figure out my favorite player's batting average, but I still thought it was pretty good advice and so I liked Pasqual right away.

  We were at Arnold's house. I had about twenty minutes before I had to be home. I had told my parents that I had to talk to people about new jobs and they'd extended my be-out time to nine-thirty.

  “It's nice that you've found a way to make some spare change,” Mom had said. “But aren't you working too hard?”

  I'd jammed my hands in my pockets, pockets that were crammed with, at that moment, something like three hundred and thirty dollars, and said, “I like the work. It's good to be out in the fresh air.” My parents are big on me spending time in the fresh air, for some reason. She'd smiled at me. “I'm so glad you're having such a good summer. I was a little worried things would be too quiet for you.”

  I decided to jump right into it with Pasqual since my time was short. “I have a lot of job offers I can't take because I'm working alone with only one mower. If I had help and maybe another mower …”

  Pasqual nodded. “How many jobs do you have waiting?”

  I thought. “I could probably have eight more. I don't really know how many might be coming along.”

  Another nod. “I understand. Tomorrow morning look for a small truck and a mower. A man named Louis will be driving. He's my … cousin. Tell him which lawns to cut. I'll come when it's dark and do what silent work is needed.”

  “How … Who do I pay?”

  “I receive half of what you get for the lawns that Louis and I do and I shall pay Louis out of that half.”

  “Half? I don't do anything and I get half?” I shook my head. “That doesn't seem fair. Shouldn't you get more?”

  Pasqual smiled, his mustache turning up at the corners and then down. “You take half because you are the boss. You found these jobs, and will find more. That's the way it's done.”

  “But it's too much.”

  Arnold coughed. It was the first sound he'd made since we'd started talking. “It can be adjusted later if you still feel that way. For right now, let's just come to an agreement to get the process rolling.”

  I shrugged. “Fine with me. I guess.”

  Pasqual held out his hand and we shook.

  “Louis and the truck will be here at Arnold's house in the morning. You leave the money with Arnold and he'll pay us.”

  And he was gone.

  Arnold and I worked out new prices, since Pasqual would be doing additional work. We also figured out a smaller percentage for me. I stood there for another minute thinking.

  “Is something wrong?” Arnold asked.

  I shrugged. “I don't really know what to do. I've got all this money and I don't want to have it around the house where my parents could find it….”

  “Will they steal it from you?”

  “Oh no, that's not it. I don't want to tell them about the money until the end of the summer.”

  “Why wait until then?”

  “I'm waiting for the right time. So it doesn't sound like I'm kind of bragging or something.”

  Arnold rubbed the back of his head, then his face. “Tell you what: if you want, I'll keep it here, invest it for you, the way we did with that first stock the other day. That way your money will make money while you earn more.”

  I had a good feeling that Arnold was honest, and smart about investing, so I gave him most of the money, keeping just enough for gas for the mower. He gave me a receipt.

  If I'd known what was coming I might have fired up the mower, stuck it in max-rab
bit, and puttputted all the way home to hide in my room.

  Two weeks passed.

  Fourteen days passed, three hundred and thirtysix hours flew by, twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes whistled past, twelve million ninety six thousand seconds roared away….

  Numbers, all numbers.

  And that's what happened to the time. It turned into numbers.

  In the beginning, I had a routine.

  I got up early, had some cereal before my parents even woke up, grabbed a gallon jug of water from the fridge and packed a bag lunch that I'd eat on the back of the mower while I was working (there was never any time to stop for lunch so I got good at eating and mowing), then left the house to start work. First, I checked the oil in the mower. Pasqual showed me how to do it and because it's an old engine, it needs a fair amount of oil. Then I added oil if I needed it, filled it with gas, and headed off down the street to Arnold's house.

  Where I met Louis, a thin man with a small pickup. For two weeks, we loaded my mower on a small trailer he pulled behind the pickup and headed to our latest jobs. And at the end of the day we went back to Arnold's and I would ride my mower home and fall into bed until the next morning.

  Louis and I were doing three lawns a day each with Pasqual coming to work in the evening and early morning to do edge work and cleanup. One night I stayed late to talk to Pasqual.

  “We can't keep up,” I said. “We're locked in to a ginormous number of lawns now, once a week, and I'm having to turn more people down.”

  “No.” Pasqual shook his head. “Don't turn away work. Soon the summer will pass, the grass will be gone, and the work will fly away. We must make our lives while the summer is here. I know someone— Benny. He has a truck and he'll come tomorrow morning. I have another cousin who can help me at night and others, if you get more jobs. But you must not turn work down.”

  And so I went on adding lawns. I kept track of them in a little notebook. Then I bought a larger one and wrote down the names, addresses and date mowed, so there was some order. Then I got jobs to do shrub trimming and pool cleanup and sidewalk edging and garage cleaning, and there were more and more people working away.

  One morning I arrived at Arnold's, putt-putting down the edge of the road on my grandfather's old mower, and there were four pickups and twelve people waiting there for me and I thought, My, Pasqual has a large family.

  And it was only the last week in June.

  But I really didn't think of much besides keeping track of the new jobs in my notebook and recutting the lawns that came due and collecting the money and handing it over to Arnold. He put aside my percentage and gave the rest to Pasqual when he came to work at night. Pasqual paid everyone else. Then I'd ride home to dinner with my parents, sleep and head off to work on my mower again.

  Once or twice Grandma came over for dinner. “I see you're making good use of that old mower. Which reminds me: Maggie Doyle and I are going to take a pottery class through the senior center this winter.” She nodded happily and reached for the rolls. Even in my exhaustion, I noticed the glance my parents exchanged over the salad bowl. “But don't work too hard.” Grandma smiled at me. “Is that grass in your hair?”

  I had grass everywhere. In my socks, in my cereal bowl every morning, on my toothbrush. My shoes were stained green, I couldn't smell anything but fresh-cut grass, and I dreamed about endless lawns and enormous piles of clippings. I found myself thinking about how to best lean into turns so that the mower wouldn't leave rough patches that needed to be trimmed by hand. I spent a great deal of time wondering if I could rig an umbrella to the mower to keep the sun off my face, not because I minded the heat but because when I squinted, I made the rows uneven. I dug through old copies of Sports Illustrated to look for pictures of major-league ballparks' outfields so that I could study the patterns the grounds crews left behind in the nap of the grass.

  But mostly the work cycle took over and I kind of missed the bigger picture.

  Until one morning I putted to work and there were five pickups and more people all with mowers and bags and rakes….

  About then Arnold and I sat down and he said, “It's inefficient to have you all meet at my place every morning, and besides, the neighbors are starting to wonder why so many people congregate here.”

  So we decided to send everyone directly to their job sites from their homes and I'd go around with Louis in his truck and supervise and collect the money to bring back to Arnold, who would give Pasqual his share and put mine in my account that was in his name.

  And it was then, that first time that Louis and I drove around, that I began to see that what was happening was bigger than just a few people running around mowing lawns.

  It was raining. This was the first day all summer it had rained hard enough to stop work. It was now July and I had ridden my ten-speed—yes, my old one, though I had bought a new inner tube—over to Arnold's house.

  Arnold had made the hippie tea that was sweet without sugar and I sipped it while we dragged out the notebooks. I had left all the paperwork at his house because it would have been too hard to explain to my parents. There were now five three-ring binders. And in fact I knew almost nothing about it myself—it had all been a kind of blur.

  “It's all just too, too groovy,” Arnold said, putting his tea down. “Free-market industry and capitalism at their best. It's like watching a really good documentary about business. Far-out.”

  “I don't know what we're doing,” I said. “Not a clue. Except that we're cutting a lot of grass and I'm not getting much sleep. And this morning my mother said she was forgetting what I look like.”

  “It's lucky we got a rain day.” We were in Arnold's screened-in porch and he had spread the notebooks out on a large round picnic table. “It gives us a little time for you to catch up and see the beauty of what you're doing.”

  The rain was hammering down, almost deafening, and I found myself liking it. I used to hate rain in the summer because it ruined vacation time. Now I thought rain was beautiful.

  “We'd better start with an overall view of the lawn-cutting phase of your operation.”

  Oh yes, I thought—let's start with that. Like I knew anything. Like I would have an operation with phases.

  “Currently, you have fifteen employees.”

  I stared at him. “That can't be right.”

  He nodded, smiling. “Surprising, isn't it? Technically I guess Pasqual is more of a partner. And really, they are all partners in a way—they share the income from their work with you, the company head.”

  “Fifteen?”

  He nodded again. “Now, the truth is they earn their living because you found them work, and that brings up a second consideration of this phase of your operation.”

  “Fifteen people work for me?” I wished he would quit talking about my “operation” and its “phases.” It was starting to sound like General Motors or something.

  “Yes. And that should lead you to consider your responsibility as a business head. You owe your employees that consideration.”

  “Well, sure. If there's fifteen people working for me I should consider them. But I don't know what you mean specifically.”

  “Well, think of this. They're seasonal workers. When the cutting is done they're no longer employed by you. A responsible employer should set aside some of his income, a percentage, to give them a bonus when the season ends to ease their transition into other forms of employment.”

  “I should? I mean, yes, I guess I should. How does that work?”

  “Well, first let's look at your personal gross income from lawn cutting, shall we? It's really the only figure that counts for this aspect of your operation.”

  “Of course.” Aspect, I thought. First phases. Now aspects. Of my operation. I'm twelve years old and I have aspects.

  “Well, for reasons we'll cover later, taxes are going to take a hefty bite, and you have some small expenses—gas for your mower, oil, that sort of thing. I kept track of those items in
this expense notebook. Then there's my fee. I'm taking five percent across the board, for this and the market work, just to simplify things, rather than work on a sliding scale. All right?”

  Oh my, yes, I thought. Let's keep it simple. I felt like I was drowning in aspects and phases. “Good? I mean, I guess it is … good. Sure, good.”

  “So, before taxes, my percentage, and expenses, you grossed out at just over eight.”

  “Eight what?”

  “Eight thousand dollars.”

  “Eight thousand dollars?”

  “Yes. Of course, like I said, that's gross, and your net won't be anywhere near that. I think you should perhaps set aside a pretty good chunk for employee relief—perhaps twenty percent. At this stage. Naturally that will go up as they earn more. They'll appreciate it when the season ends.”

  I had this sudden memory of when I was nine years old. Back then I thought that someday I might be a professional basketball player. This in spite of the fact that I'm fairly short and can't make a basket to save my soul. But I thought when I was nine that if I just had the right ball, a true professional ball made by Spalding, I would/could be good enough to be a professional player when I grew up. The problem was that the ball was expensive. There was no way my parents could spend that kind of money on one measly basketball, and I couldn't find a way to get enough money on my own. So I wound up with a cheap ball and (I thought) no chance at a professional basketball career.

  How many balls could I buy with eight thousand dollars? Eight thousand dollars. I was only three years older now than I had been then. True, it was a big three years. But after just three years I could afford all the Spalding basketballs I wanted.

  I was rich.

  Rich.

  What a strange word that was; it didn't really mean anything in itself. Rich. Short for Richard? Why does rich mean having tons of money? How many Spalding balls could I buy, really, with eight thousand dollars? Say they're twenty dollars each to make it simple. Five balls for a hundred dollars. Fifty for a thousand dollars. Four hundred. I could buy four hundred Spalding basketballs….