The Street I Mowed the Day I Got Home

A Better Yard Man

“Raymond,” she called.

He flinched. A grown man, fifty-some years old, in his big shined truck, and he flinched like a boy.

There is no sound on this earth like your mother using your whole name.

“Yes, Mama,” he said.

Grandma did not get up out of her chair. She did not need to.

She sat there with her hands folded and her chin up and she said it plain enough for every porch on Sycamore Street to hear.

“You can keep the money you already took. I gave it to you and I am not going to sit here and count it back.”

“But I have got myself a better yard man now.” She looked at me, and then she looked back at her son, and her voice did not shake one bit.

“This one does not charge his grandmother. And neither did your brother, when he did this whole street for these same ladies, back when you were young enough to remember it.”

That last part landed on Ray like a dropped tailgate. His face came apart for just a second.

I understood that she had reached all the way back and reminded him, in front of everybody, of the kind of man his little brother had been. The kind he could have been.

Nobody said anything. The cicadas sawed away. Somewhere a screen door creaked.

Ray put both hands on the wheel. He looked down the street one more time at all that cut grass, all those lines laid down straight.

All those old women in the shade who were not going to pay him another dime, and both of us knew it.

And then he did the only thing left for him to do, which was drive off slow. We all watched his clean truck go down to the stoplight and turn and disappear.

I thought that would feel better than it did. Brenda started clapping and a couple of the ladies joined in.

I held up a hand to stop them. I did not do it to run Ray off. I did it because somebody had to cut the grass.