The Marine Who Mowed Elm Street

By noon, every yard on Grandma’s block of Elm Street was cut, front and side, sidewalk strip and all. Nine yards.

Some of them were rough, and I would need to come back with a sharper blade. But they were cut.

I pushed the mower back up Grandma’s driveway and parked it by the shed.

I was soaked through and covered in grass clippings to the knees. Grandma was still on her porch. She had refilled her tea.

My uncle comes on Saturdays at noon. Grandma had told me that over coffee, without my asking. He comes at noon, cuts the yard, and stays for a sandwich if she makes one.

At five after twelve, his white Ford pickup came down Elm Street pulling a small flatbed trailer with a riding mower strapped to it.

He slowed down at the corner by Mr. Ortman’s. Then he slowed down more.

I watched him look at the yards one at a time. Mrs. Weber’s. The Hendersons’. Mrs. Kopp’s. Mrs. Fisher’s.

He pulled up in front of Grandma’s and sat in the cab for a while with the engine running.

Mrs. Fisher came out onto her porch with a pitcher of sweet tea and two glasses. Across the street, Mrs.

Kopp came out onto hers with her own pitcher. Neither of them said a word. They just stood on their porches and poured.

Rick got out of the truck. He is a big man, like my dad was, with a farmer’s tan and a polo shirt with the name of his lot on the pocket.

He looked at me standing by the shed in my PT shorts, and he knew.

“Hey, Tyler,” he said. “Welcome home, bud. When’d you get in?”

“Last night, Uncle Rick,” I said. “Around eleven.”

He looked at the yard. He looked at the stripes. He looked at Grandma on the porch with her glass of tea. “Mom,” he said, “what’s going on?”

My grandmother set her glass down on the porch rail. She stood up, slowly, the way she has to now, with one hand on the arm of the chair. She smoothed the front of her housedress.

“Ricky,” she said, in her Sunday voice, clear enough for Mrs. Fisher and Mrs.

Kopp and anybody else on Elm Street to hear. “I’ve got a better yard man now. And he doesn’t charge.”

Nobody said anything for what felt like a full minute. A sprinkler was going somewhere down the block. Mrs.

Kopp’s screen door creaked in the breeze. Rick stood there by his truck with his keys in his hand.

I didn’t say anything either. I had promised her I would not make it a fight, and I meant to keep that promise.

I just stood by the shed and let him look at me, and I looked back.