The Week We Mowed Every Yard by Hand

Tuesday

Tuesday we started at seven. We did nine yards. I will not tell you about every one of them, because by the fourth they all started to feel like the same yard, the same handle, the same stripe turning back on itself.

But I will tell you that at almost every house, somebody came out.

An old man in Orrville whose yard I had cut for five years walked out with a glass of iced tea and asked where the big machine was.

“In the shop,” I said.

He looked at the red push mower, and at me, and at my son across the yard.

“Huh,” he said, and that was all he said, but he stood on his porch and watched us the whole time, and when we left he gave Jarrell a ten-dollar bill.

At the bigger country place on the township road, the woman of the house brought us out sandwiches on paper plates without asking if we wanted them.

We ate them standing up by the trailer, and I have never in my life had a better ham sandwich.

That evening, just after supper with the sun still high over the barn roofs, the phone rang.

It was my ex-husband. Jarrell had texted him on Monday, I found out later, without telling me.

“I’m at a truck stop in Oklahoma,” he said. His voice was low.

“Headed to Laredo with a load that has to be there Thursday. Jarrell told me about the mowers. He told me what Dorothea saw.”

“I’m handling it,” I said.

“I know you are. You always did.” He was quiet for a second, and I could hear the big diesels idling behind him in the lot.

“I didn’t know, Cam. I want you to know I didn’t know a thing about it.”

“I believe you,” I said, and I did. Whatever else he is, he has never lied to me about anything that mattered.

“I can’t get home before Saturday,” he said. “When I do, I’ll handle it at my house. You have my word on that.”

He cleared his throat. “Tell the boy I’m proud of him.”

“Tell him yourself on Sunday,” I said. “He’ll want to hear it from you.”

What I did not know that Tuesday was that Dorothea’s bridge club met at her house that afternoon, the same four tables of ladies who have been meeting on Tuesdays since some of them were young brides.

And I did not know that she had told every one of them, between hands, exactly what she had watched from her kitchen window on Saturday afternoon.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning, before we had even loaded up, a car pulled into my gravel drive.

It was one of the bridge ladies, a retired teacher from Smithville whose yard is on my Thursday list. She had her checkbook in her hand.

“Dorothea says you need money for your carburetors,” she said. “I’m paying you a month ahead. Four cuts at forty. Don’t argue with me, I taught for thirty-four years and nobody ever won.”

I did not argue. I took the check, and she patted my hand twice and drove away, and I stood in the gravel holding a check for a hundred and sixty dollars and trying very hard not to cry in front of my son.

By noon there were five more. Some came by the house. Two met us at their own yards with checks already filled out.

One of them had written “for the carburetors” on the memo line in careful schoolteacher cursive.

Six customers, a month ahead, a hundred and sixty dollars each. Nine hundred and sixty dollars.

With what I had in the bank, it covered Burl’s whole bill with a little room left, and I drove it to his shop at lunch.

Burl took the money and looked at it for a long second. “I’ll have them back Monday,” he said.

“I ordered the kits on Monday anyhow. I figured you’d come through.” He handed me a receipt. “Bridge club?”

“How did you know?”

“My sister plays at the third table,” he said, and went back to his bench.

Wednesday was also the day my work boots gave out.

I had bought them three summers ago, and they had been held together with hope for a while, but at the sixth yard the sole on the right one split loose at the toe and flapped when I walked.

I wrapped it with duct tape from the truck and finished the day that way.

By the time we got home, the tape was shredded and I had a blister on my little toe the size of a nickel.

We did nine yards that Wednesday. That made twenty-three for the week. Eighteen to go and two days to do them in, and every one of the eighteen was growing.