Still, the place remained, and remains, a town in certain, immutable ways. To this day, alfalfa plants are farmed on the eastern fringe for cattle to eat, and their shoots come up in local markets for salad ingredients or else midday snacks for children. You’d make a friend in kindergarten and shake his hand at your high school graduation. You felt confident in the possibility that one day his son and your son together would hunt lizards in the heat. In school, they would be, like their fathers were, guided to the military, the police department, the fire department, or the farm. Most girls, as far as you could tell, longed for marriage and motherhood from the start. They taught children or else studied nursing while they waited for the inevitable shift in priority. Of course, these were suggestions, and suggestions only. If you didn’t follow the suggestions, there was still a place for you. It just seemed a lot lonelier a place.
Maybe the biggest indicator of its town-ness was the attitude of its citizens. The townspeople looked at the incoming flux of city folk—many of whom happened to be brown—with a slant and baleful eye. They worried about the future of the town, which, as all townspeople understand, depends on the character of its community. They didn’t trust people who seemed, in ways both obvious and imaginary, so different. It’s true that these townspeople were what some might call bigots, or at least a group of people who didn’t like seeing things change. But they were also no monolith. Some might say they were persons, not a people.
That’s why stories happen. That’s why this story happened.
II. ONE WAY TO GET A JOB AT TWELVE
The father of a kid I knew at school: His last name was Reuter—pronounced like the word “writer.” On account of divorce, his son didn’t share the name, and saw his dad only on occasions like birthdays and lazy weeks during the summer. I saw Mr. Reuter more often. He happened to be my neighbor.
We lived on a block of tract homes. On each block stood an assortment of ten or twelve homes from two or three types. The blueprints had been flipped here and there, and garage doors were painted in different colors to give the illusion of variety. I mowed lawns and pulled weeds for houses that weren’t inhabited by children who otherwise would be doing that work themselves.
Mr. Reuter had seen me one weekend in March getting the lines just right on my own front lawn. I should say it took most of my strength to get the job done. Everything about me at that time (and let’s be honest: at this time, too) was light. I was a lanky boy with a small head on a thin neck. My heels never touched down when I walked. I used to have to jump and come down on the mower with all my weight to get the front wheels up so I could pivot around the tree in the middle of the yard. Maybe he saw me do it that day. He headed over from his driveway across Comstock Avenue while I heaved the bag of grass over the lip of the compost bin.
“Looks good, smells good,” he said. Mr. Reuter must have been around the same age as my dad, but he looked much older. He had a full head of hair, but it was white and thin, and each silky strand of it seemed pluckable without much effort. He wore a pair of glasses with gold frames and these black rubber tips on the ends that hung below his enormous earlobes. He’d lost some weight since I’d last seen him, since before his wife and Drew moved out.
“You want me to do yours?” I asked. Back then I was always looking for business.
“No,” he said, drawing it out like we were talking on a porch someplace. “I plan on getting rid of my lawn altogether.”
I wasn’t surprised. In my limited but obsessive time as a semiprofessional landscaper, I’d learned how difficult and expensive it could be to keep a lawn in the Mojave Desert. You didn’t have to do yards for a living—you could take a walk through the neighborhood and see how many of the houses had put in limestone or gravel where the grass had been. Some of the newer neighbors from the city chose to neglect their yards altogether, letting the grass turn yellow like giving up, and the dirt that the home had been built on in the first place got to peek its head out again, in some places anyway.
“I’ve seen others do it,” I said. “I guess that means I won’t be getting your business, then?”
“Well, that’s not entirely true. Not if you want it, that is.”
“What’s the job?”
“I need a digger, a man to loosen up the soil. I’d do it myself, but I’m a bit past my prime. You’re skinny, but I’ve seen you working the neighborhood. You’ve got heart.”
“Anything more complicated than a shovel?”
“No sir. I figure it’ll take the sixty-six pounds of you about six weekends, six hours a day, to make it happen. There’s money, of course.”
“How much?”
“How much do you get paid to mow?”
“Twenty,” I said. The truth was I got paid five dollars a mow. I added: “Plus tips.”
“Well, how about that,” he said. “By any chance, are you hiring?”
I wanted to laugh, but I figured he’d know I was lying if I did.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got trees coming in, is the thing. Big trees that’ll take up the whole yard. Half the cost is those guys coming in and prepping the land. I’m leaning on you for a discount. How’s fifty dollars for the project?”
Fifty dollars to a kid lands in that perfect range of inordinate yet fathomable, and has a lot of sway to make him do something without thinking too hard about it. I’d planned on continuing my negotiations, but the words “fifty dollars” spun me off my game. Immediately I agreed.
Mr. Reuter said his thanks and turned homeward. I finished unloading the mower’s bag, holding my breath as the loose dust and grass billowed out of the bin upon landing. I hooked the bag, infinitely lighter now, onto the mower again. From across the street, Mr. Reuter waved and smiled. Then he pulled on the red rope above his white head, lowering his garage door until it was shut.
Work hadn’t started. I hadn’t yet been paid a nickel. But already I felt it. That was the first time I sensed I owed him something.
III. SOME NOTES ON MY UNDERSTANDING OF ADULTS
Some children transcend their age with patience and understanding—an understanding that you have to go through this thing called childhood before anyone takes you seriously, before you’re empowered to drive change. I wasn’t one of those children. I was a child in every sense of the word, but mostly I was a child in that I felt nothing like a child.
At twelve, I felt both prepared for the simplicity of the average adulthood and eager to sense the nuances of a more complicated version, one I’d have much preferred to live. Already I’d divided those older than me into these two camps: Pester and Foster. These were actual lists I kept as a kid, written with red ink (“Pester”) and blue (“Foster”). And like all camps, they had their leaders.
Unfortunately for my parents, I’d placed them at the head of the Pester camp. Mom and Dad—full-time salespeople of clothing and furniture, respectively—would come home from work, make dinner, and speak exclusively in questions. They’d ask my sister and me about our days at school, what we had learned. Whenever we asked about their days at work, they’d say, “Work isn’t worth talking about.” I expected as much from Mom—like many immigrant mothers, she considered education and God the only worthwhile topics of conversation—but I kept hoping my dad would break. Once, when I said as much to him, he offered me a piece of advice. He said, “The greatest quality a person can have is to be a deep, genuine listener.”
I argued that if he never said anything about himself, I’d never have a chance to listen.
“Without even knowing it, you’re learning how to listen right now,” he said mystifyingly.
Eventually I gathered that he meant to compliment himself, that by speaking to my sister and me mostly in questions, by hardly ever telling us anything, he was showing us what a good listener looked like.
That’s when I put him at the top of my “Pester” list.
I should add that the “Pester”/“Foster” lists were always changing. Coach Vierra, my gym class teacher,
fell from the good side to the bad after he issued me a demerit for spitting on the blacktop. (The sizzling effect was something to see.) My sister, Jean—sixteen and impossible, most days, to locate—found herself on different sides of the list all the time, depending on whether or not I saw her that week.
This is a long way of saying Mr. Reuter was different. After hearing my mother’s opinions of him (she’d spent some time reaching out to the former Mrs. Reuter, and had come back, like a journalist, with a version of the story), I’d put Mr. Reuter down in red ink, too. According to my mother’s vague commentary, after all, this was a selfish bully of a man we were talking about, “the king of cutting corners.” But then he hired me for that job. Aside from Jean—who, because she was my sister, hardly counted—Mr. Reuter was the only person who’d ever made the transition from Pester to Foster on that list of mine. I made it out to be—someone breaking a pattern like that—a big deal.
IV. INSTRUCTIONS & INSIGHTS FROM MR. REUTER
In the driveway, Mr. Reuter held out a shovel. He had one hand on it, arm outstretched toward me. His other arm rested akimbo on his waist. I took the shovel with both hands and let the metal hit the cement.
“Hey,” he said, “don’t let the spade touch anything it can’t dig out. That means anything but grass, dirt, and shit. Got it?”
I lifted the shovel and held it horizontal. “Got it,” I said.
He went over the plan. The house, like every grass-having house on our block, had two front lawns: a bigger one separated from a smaller one by a driveway. The bigger side was three times the size of the smaller one, about 170 square feet. What he wanted was for the entire smaller side to be dug out and turned. He was going to fill that small side with cement, to extend the width of his driveway by five or so feet. That would take me a day or two, tops, he said, and we’d start there. The next step in the plan was to dig out a circle—ten feet in diameter—from the bigger side of the lawn. To the best of my ability, I was supposed to center the circle in the yard. I’d have to measure it and mark it off somehow. Then I’d get to digging.
The job seemed more complicated than what I’d signed up for, what with all the calculations. I told him so.
He scoffed. “You think I was going to give you fifty bucks to turn grass into mud? The money is for the precision.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Fifty dollars wasn’t as much as people made it out to be.
“The problem here,” Mr. Reuter said, looking me in the eye, “is that you’re not used to being entrusted with things you could easily mess up. Is that true?”
It sounded true. I didn’t think too deeply about it, and said yes.
“It’s a shame. It’s the death of a young man, not being given the opportunity to earn trust. The opportunity, you know? Just that. It’s bigger than anything. Oh, you’ll find ways to make fifty bucks here and there. That’s not really what you want out of this. I can tell. It’s not every day you get the chance to point at something you’ve done and say, ‘I could have ruined the shit out of this, but I pulled it off.’ You don’t think I could’ve—if I really wanted to—done this myself? Hell, it would’ve saved me a lot of time, not to mention the fifty. But I see you mowing lawns around the neighborhood, itching to make your mark on something. Grass, though, it grows back quickly, doesn’t it? Not even a couple days later, all your work is invisible. It’s gone. You’re trying, and I give you credit for that. But this—” He grabbed the shovel’s handle between my hands. “—this is permanent. You’ll see.”
I asked if I could say something.
“Sure,” he said.
“I’ll do it for seventy-five.”
V. SOME REALITIES OF MY FIRST DAYS DIGGING
It took two full days of digging to finish the smaller side of the lawn. I didn’t really have a strategy. Starting in the middle, I stepped the shovel into the ground as far as I could (about two inches) and pulled. In layers, I moved back until I reached the perimeter.
Mr. Reuter spent most of the time inside the house. At the beginning of each day, he placed a full pitcher of water and a cup on an oil stain in the driveway. The first day, I drank all the water in a couple of hours. When I got thirsty again, I went to the front door and knocked. Mr. Reuter answered, holding the telephone to his ear with his shoulder, carrying the holder and its wires around with him. With a look of disappointment—his glasses seemed to sink lower the unhappier he got—he took the pitcher from me and said he’d bring more water out in a bit. I went back to work. He never showed up with more water. Some time later I took a break, crossed the street, and drank as much water as I could from home. In a strange way, I came back with a feeling that I’d failed. I hadn’t made that pitcher last, and had to run home for help. The next morning, when I saw that a full pitcher of water had once again been placed on the driveway, I made a point to drink nothing more.
As I worked, so did the heat. In the desert, the idea of spring was a myth from another culture. It went from winter to summer like flipping a coin, and it seemed as though I’d lost the toss. The heat turned the saliva in your mouth and throat to mush. Your skin turned white until the burn settled in, some hours later. You’d go home after work and cling your lips to the mouth of the tap the way two animals might kiss, chugging water until your stomach ached with it. Still somehow you’d piss only once a day, this orange urine that came out smelling like the heat itself, liquefied.
The clouds came and went in clumps, leaving spots of shade here and there on the pavement. From time to time, the garage door opened upward like a salute, and Mr. Reuter would walk out, barefoot, careful not to stand on a sunny spot of the driveway. He’d say something like, “Progress,” or else, “You’re getting it.” Then he’d hop from spot of shade to spot of shade until he was back inside the garage, pulling closed the door. These tiny moments of encouragement had an enormous effect on me. More than once I thought the heat was too much, or the work was too much, or else the money was too little, and then Mr. Reuter would say his little something, and I’d go right back to work, doubtless in my efforts.
I distinctly remember thinking, going into the job, that my mind would be free to wander while I worked, and that I might imagine some extraordinary thoughts to express to those adults on my “Pester” list—thoughts that would create in them a doubt in their belief that I was unable to change things without their help. But the truth was that nothing, not a single memorable moment of reflection or imagination, sprouted from or arrived at my head during my hours digging up that lawn. In every rare moment I caught myself thinking, the thought happened to be about the work in front of me. When I told Mr. Reuter about my surprise, he said, “That’s called pride, and that’s a great thing.” He taught me to laugh in the face of anyone who called physical labor “mindless” work.
A part of me already knew that. My father spent his entire life working, after all, and I’d never considered him a mindless man. But I wondered why he refused to talk about work. Boredom, maybe, but a lot of people say “boredom” when what they really mean is shame.
VI. MR. REUTER ASKS A FAVOR
When I finished turning up the dirt on the smaller side of the lawn, I allowed myself a minute to admire my work. There had been spots in the middle (my first attempts) that looked uneven, and I’d gone back to make them flush with the pavement. Since the lawn and driveway were at an angle from the house down toward the sidewalk, it was tricky to get the leveling just right. But I’d done it.
After a few knocks on the front door, Mr. Reuter emerged from the house. He saw the work I’d done, and put out his hand for a shake. I took it, the first earnest handshake of my life.
“You’re exceeding expectations,” he said.
My fingers twitched at the praise. That would have been enough to keep me working with pride, but he went one step further.
“In fact,” he said, “I think you’ve earned yourself a raise. One hundred dollars seems more fair for this kind of work, wouldn’t you say?”
“You just keep it up now, all right?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “I’ll do even better.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said.
“See you on Saturday,” I said. “And thanks again.”
“Saturday, yes,” he said.
I started back across the street. He called after me.
“One more thing,” he said. He tugged at the black rubber tips of his glasses, moving the frames up and down until they sat on his nose just right. “You still see Drew from time to time at school?”
His son was a seventh grader—a year ahead of me. I’d seen him at lunch from a distance, but we hadn’t spoken since he moved. We knew each other only from having lived across the street—we used to play with his wrestling action figures. Once he moved, our friendship changed. That’s how kids have relationships with people sometimes—they’re based on situations. Sometimes that’s how adults have relationships, too, but that’s a different story.
“Yeah,” I said. “I see him.”
“Oh, good. I’ve got a favor to ask of you.”
Still in the mode of praises and raises, I was in no spot to decline.
“Ask him to come help out with the digging. Your money won’t get divided, I promise. I’d ask him myself, but his mother won’t let me speak to him without her on the line, and she’d put a stop to it before he’d even get the chance. You see what I’m saying?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “That’d be great.”
“Saturday, then,” I said.
“Saturday. With Drew, maybe?”
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