The Bike My Neighbor Backed Over
“He’s ten. He’s saving up for a bike. That’s all he’s doing on purpose.”
Don looked at me a long moment, and for the first time in eleven years I saw him not know what to say next. Then he turned around and walked back across Walnut Street, and I picked up my wrench.
I will admit I felt as though I had won something. I had not done a thing, you understand. My son had done all of it, with a bent wheel, without meaning to, and I was the one enjoying it.
That is worth knowing about me, for what came next.
Don hurt his back the following Monday.
Carol told Lisa over the hedge. He had been hauling forty pound bags of softener salt down out of the bed of that tall truck, and on the third one something let go. He was flat on the living room floor for two days and then in a recliner with a heating pad. The doctor in Mansfield said three weeks, at least, of nothing.
It had been a wet end of summer. By the next Saturday the Petrie lawn, which Don cut twice a week in diagonal stripes, was over the tops of your shoes and gone to seed along the walk. It was the only shaggy yard on the street. For a man like him it must have been like sitting in the window watching his own name get spelled wrong.
I noticed it. I will tell you exactly what I thought. I thought, good.
Ryan noticed it too.
He came to find me in the garage that Saturday around nine. He already had his work gloves on.
“Can I take the mower over to Mr. Petrie’s?”
I thought I had heard him wrong.
“Did Carol ask you?”
“No.”
“Did he?”
“No. But she can’t push it, with her knee. And it’s really long, Dad. If it goes another week you’ll have to rake it.”
“Ryan.” I put down what I was holding. “You do not owe that man one single thing. He owes you. He owes you a hundred and twenty dollars and an apology, and he has made it real plain you’re not getting either one.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you go cut his grass?”
He considered it. He scuffed his shoe on the concrete.
“He’s on my route,” he said. “He’s a customer.”
“Has he ever tipped you? One time, in two years?”
“No. Mrs. Petrie gives me a pop.”
“So?”
“So she can’t push it,” he said again, patiently, as if I were the one who was ten. “And he’s hurt. It isn’t about the bike, Dad. The bike’s a different thing.”
I opened my mouth, and I had it all ready. I was going to tell him about people who take advantage. I was going to tell him that kindness to a man like that gets read as weakness, that he would be laughed at, that some people do not deserve it. I had a whole lesson. I had been saving it up for him the way he had been saving quarters.
And I looked at my son standing there in gloves too big for him, and I heard what I was about to teach him. I was about to teach him to be a little more like Don Petrie.
“How much are you going to charge her?” I said instead.
He looked surprised. “Nothing. It’s not a job. It’s just until he’s better.”
“Then check the oil first,” I said. “And go slow. It’s going to bog down in that.”