Spanning the Dandelion Queen

“…loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me…rats, I got two there. So that makes this one loves me, loves me not, loves me…” Ellie lay spread out on the grass, stealing glimpses of clouds between plucking pedals.

The greenskeeper had been watching her for a while, waiting for her to move. He still needed to mow the grass where she lay. The woman looked very content, smiling at the weed she was holding. He hoped the sound of the mower would scare her away, but it didn’t.

She had been laying there for at least two hours. While he had first seen her when he began mowing the golf course that morning, now she was in his way. He could go back to the clubhouse and grab a sandwich as soon as he finished mowing the strip on which she had strewn herself. His stomach grumbled.

All she needed to do was get up for a little bit, let him mow, and, heck, she could lie back down for the rest of the day. The course was closed today, so she wouldn’t have to worry about any golfers harassing her.

He still needed to do his job. His stomach grumbled even more.

He got off the mower, brushed off his pants, and walked over to her, preparing an impromptu plea for her to move.

She didn’t look like a member of Stratford Heights Country Club, much too young for that, not enough make-up plastered to her face either. Most of the club members, the official ones anyway, were in their upper 30s or older. She didn’t look a day past 21. If it came to it, he could officially kick her off for loitering and not being a member.

She was, in spite of the lack of make-up, definitely something to make a guy gawk. Her casually curly, lanky sunshine-blonde hair hung effortlessly on her shoulders and, in the wind, blew across her face, hiding her eyes yet enhancing the fullness of her lips. He thought she must have been rolling around in the grass earlier. Judging by the state of her attire, a red, semi-tight fitting, evening gown, he guessed she had spent last night there on the grass. Grass stains covered her arms, most of her legs, and the greater share of her gown, which was now torn in a couple of spots.

“Excuse me, miss? I’ve got to finish mowing here. If you could just…”

“…loves me, why doesn’t anybody like dandelions?” she interrupted him, indicating the one she was holding with yellow fingers. Half of the flower was plucked bare, the petals in a little pile next to her.

“What?”

The question caught him off guard. He glanced back at the mower to gather his thoughts.

“I asked you,” she got up and brushed herself off, revealing a few bruises across her forearms. “Why isn’t there a single person, around here anyway, that likes dandelions? What’s your name?”

The intensity of her stare as she gazed at him made him uncomfortable. It almost felt like he was intruding upon her, rather than the other way around.

“I don’t know, Mark? I mean, my name’s Mark,” he found he had to force himself to look at her. It surprised him, his hesitancy.

She was holding her hair away from her face, staining it yellow where she touched it. He saw that her eyes were an intense green, like a traveler’s conception of Ireland, although very bloodshot.

“I don’t know why people don’t like them, to answer your first question. I guess because they’re weeds?”

She sneered a bit and turned away from him.

“What makes a weed? As opposed to a flower? Is it because it’s unexpected? Uncultivated? Because it interrupts the sameness, the monotony?” she asked, gesturing at the grounds with her arms.

While he didn’t like to admit it, she had a point there. Granted, the only reason he killed the dandelions is because they confused the crappy golfers who couldn’t keep their balls on the fairway. The dandelions made the golfers lose their precious golf balls, or at least that’s what the club pro would constantly squawk at him during the spring months.

“We were at a party. I was, without a doubt, the prettiest one there. I felt like a queen,” she snagged about four dandelions in each hand and started to spin around.

Mark gave her a once over then immediately felt dirty about it. Even roughed up as she was, she was undeniably pretty. He wondered if there was something weird about the dandelions, in that her hair where she had touched it was like lemon peel yellow as opposed to how it was when he first saw her, the sunshine blonde.

He watched her spin around a bit in place, holding her arms up full of dandelions and then hurling them away from her. As she spun, he was surprised as it looked like more of her hair was turning lemon yellow.

Mark still needed to finish mowing the strip where she was standing. He sauntered back to the mower, sat down in the driver’s seat and started it up. He figured maybe the engine could intimidate her into moving. He only had a twelve foot wide strip about 20 yards long and she was sulking at one end of it. Mark mowed around her as best he could until he had a section six by six feet, where she was still spinning. That area seemed to have even more dandelions than before. Mark scowled and started to jerk the mower towards her, getting within two feet.

As she saw the mower come towards her, she instead plopped herself down right in front of it, and looked directly at him. She looked in no way intimidated at all and her eyes were completely void of any emotion. Mark found himself fidgeting and stopped the mower, stepping off the mower deck.

“Look, I don’t know you, and you’re probably not a member of this club. At least, you don’t look like a member. But all I want to do is eat my lunch, okay? If you’re hungry, I’ll buy you lunch as well and we can talk more, but I just need you to move. So, could you let me finish my job?” he pleaded as he stood over her.

She gave him the green eyes again, but the green was not as intense as before. She held up another half plucked dandelion.

“But why are they considered weeds? Why do people want to kill them?”

Mark shuffled his feet back to the mower deck and sat down on the edge of it. The metal felt hard, secure.

“Look. I don’t care. I don’t care and, I really don’t want to know. All I know is I’m hungry and I want a break before I start on the back nine. Can you give me a break? Can you please move?”

Her hair didn’t have any of the alluring golden shine it had before and was now entirely a McDonald’s arches yellow. Her face also lacked the brightness it had when he first saw her. Mark checked to see if a cloud was overhead but the sun was still beaming down on both of them.

She turned her eyes back towards the dandelion she was holding, now shaking in her hands and spilling an occasional pedal.

“They kill dandelions, you know. Kill them because they stand out and appear to clash with the grass with their bright yellow heads. Why do they do that?” her words came out flustered, like she was being shaken.

“Please sit down, Mark,” patting the ground beside her.

Mark started to say something then realized the futility. The only way he would get a chance to eat something would be to have the girl he knew from the clubhouse steal him some food. He knew she could, and would. He grimaced as his stomach started doing flip-flops.

He parked himself next to her on the grass, sitting with his feet tucked underneath him. If necessary, he wanted to make sure he could get up quickly.

“My name is Ellie,” she said as she held up the dandelion so that the flower was where Mark’s eye should be, from her perspective.

“They killed him, you know,” she said quietly, glancing sideways from the dandelion.

“I thought you were asking me why they kill dandelions. Did you mean the other greenskeepers? Who’s him?” he asked.

He gave up trying to figure out what was going on with the girl. He resorted to just smiling awkwardly and nodding, like he did when his boss was laying into him.

“Loves me, loves me not,” she plucked away two more pedals.

She sounded calmer now.

“He proposed to me last night,” she smiled and let it fade. “I think it’s because people don’t like to see contrast. Bright yellow clearly contrasts green. They want everything, every lawn, to be the same. And they’ll go out of their way to destroy what they see as being different.

“He and I, we were different.”

She ran her fingers through her hair. Her fingertips, which were once bright yellow, were now gray. Where she touched her hair, the yellow changed from McDonald’s arches to faded road centerline paint.

“He loved me. How do they kill them, the dandelions? Spray chemicals on them? Have kids jump on them until they’re trampled? Get a whole bunch of people with golf clubs and heave off their heads?

“They raped me,” she brought her hands to her face, hiding it. As she lowered them he saw her face, like her fingers and now arms, were now a greenish-gray.

“Why do they do it? Why doesn’t anyone like dandelions?”

Mark froze, mesmerized by her hair now changing from the sickly shade of road surface yellow to storm cloud gray. He started to scoot back an inch, or two.

“I don’t know who you are. And I don’t want to know. Here, I get paid to mow grass, to me dandelions are just another weed. I’ve played ‘Mommy had a baby and its head popped off’ all the time when I was younger,” he paused.

“I’ve even showed other kids how to play it.”

“My name’s Ellie. I’ve told you that before, remember? To me, dandelions are like sunshine on a cloudy day in May, which can get kind of rare. I loved him back. Why don’t people like sunshine on cloudy days?”

Her eyes were now gray. She brushed her hand against her forehead, trying to keep her hair out of her eyes. Her hand caught a trestle of the now feathery white hair. The trestle came off in her hand. She looked at it, smiled, and held her hand up to let the wind carry it away.

“They always come back though. I think part of the reason why people don’t like dandelions is they can fly away. But…they always come back, always,” she held her dandelion out to him. “Here, take it.”

The dandelion was about to let its petals go. He took it from her fingers, being extra careful not to touch her. He tried to shelter the dandelion from the wind with his hands.

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“Hold it up to the wind, Mark. Don’t cover it up with your hands.”

He looked at the dandelion in his hands, then stared back at her. She was now entirely bald, wisps of her hair were flying in the wind. Her face and the rest of her skin were a dark grayish-brown.

“Let me fly away, Mark.”

He got up, brushed himself off and climbed back on the mower. By the time he had a chance to check, the dandelion he was holding was stripped bare. He caught the last petal with the corner of his eye, being whipped away by the wind. He looked back toward Ellie.

She was gone. Where she’d been sitting were now a few dandelions, some young and bright, others old and gray. Mark backed up the mower and headed back to the clubhouse. He was going to grab a quick bite and continue with his mowing.