The Summer My Son Mowed Free

And then there was Brad.

Brad Kessler moved into the Corvins’ old place across from Mrs. Aldy about two years ago, and I will try to be fair to him, but I have thought a long time about how to describe Brad and the honest version is this: Brad is a man who cannot stand to watch somebody else get thanked. He runs a little side business, lawn care and gutters and odd jobs, out of a trailer he pulls behind his truck, and it is how he makes part of his living, and that matters to what happened, so remember it. Brad charged the old people on those streets to do their yards. Forty dollars a cut. Fifty for the bigger lots. And a lot of them paid it because they had no choice, forty dollars they did not have, out of a fixed check, because the yard had to be done and Brad was the only one doing it.

And then a twelve year old started doing it for free.

You can see it, can’t you. You can see exactly what that did. Mrs. Aldy called Brad and canceled. The Dahlbergs canceled. Gene Pruitt canceled. One by one, all up and down Sumner and Pratt and the little dead end where the widows live, Brad’s customers dried up, and every one of them told him the same thing, that the Bennett boy was doing it now and would not take money, and I promise you nothing on this earth eats at a man like Brad Kessler more than the words would not take money.

He came to my door in July. I remember it was July because the fireworks debris was still in the road. He stood on my porch with his hat in his hand doing a friendly face that did not fit right, and he said, real reasonable, that Tucker was undercutting him and putting a hardship on his family, and that maybe I could have my boy stick to a couple lawns instead of the whole neighborhood. And I said, as nice as I could, that Tucker was not charging anybody, so I did not see how a free favor to an eighty year old could be undercutting a business, and Brad’s friendly face slipped for just a second, just long enough for me to see what was underneath it, and he said, “There’s something not right about a kid working for nothing. People are gonna start asking why.” And he put his hat back on and he left.