The Street That Watered at Six
He never owned a sprinkler system in his life. He thought they were for golf courses and banks.
What he did was get up at a quarter to six, every morning from May to September, put on a blue terry cloth robe my mother had bought him at Penney’s, pour a cup of coffee, and water that lawn by hand. Thumb over the end of the hose. He never bought a nozzle either.
And he waved.
He waved at the paper boy and the milk truck. He waved at men he liked and men he did not. He waved at a fellow named Stan across the street who owed him forty dollars for eleven years. When I was a kid I asked him why he bothered waving at Stan.
He said, “It’s hard on a man to stay sore at somebody who’s glad to see him every morning. I’m not doing it for Stan. I’m doing it to Stan.”
Stan paid him the forty dollars the week I graduated high school. Brought it over in an envelope. They fished together until Dad’s knees quit.
I put the sprinkler system in myself eleven years ago, the spring after we buried him. Fourteen heads, three zones, a timer in the garage. I dug every foot of that trench with a rented machine and a bad back. I told myself it was progress.
I had not stood in that yard at six in the morning one time since.
“Where’s Dad’s robe?” I asked.
Nancy stared at me.
“Cedar chest,” she said finally. “Under the afghans. Why?”
“Because mine’s got a hole in the elbow,” I said, “and I’m going to be seen in it.”
Sunday morning I was on the property line at six o’clock sharp.
I want to be exact about where I stood. My father set a steel pin at that corner in 1974, and it is still there under the bluegrass if you know where to press your heel. I stood fourteen inches on my side of it. Robe, slippers, a cup of coffee in my left hand, the green hose in my right.
And I was careful. I want that on the record too. I kept the water low and I kept my back to his driveway. In all the weeks that followed, I never put one drop on that Cadillac. Not a mist. If the wind came up out of the south, and in Kansas it will, I turned and watered the other way until it quit.
That was the whole point. The man said the water bothered his car. Fine. Now the water had a person attached to it, and the person was being very considerate.
At 6:20 his front door opened.
Carl played nine holes at Carey Park every Sunday with a 6:50 tee time. He came out with his golf shoes in one hand and his keys in the other, and he got four steps down his walk before he saw me.
He stopped.
I raised my coffee cup about as high as my ear.
“Morning, Carl.”
He looked at the hose. He looked at the robe. I watched him try to work out what he was being accused of.
“What is this?”
“Watering.”
“At six in the morning.”
“Best time for it. You lose half of it to the heat if you wait.” I moved my thumb and sent a nice soft fan over the dead strip by the walk. “My system’s down.”
That landed. I saw it land. His jaw went sideways.
“Are you trying to make a point?”