Everyday Lawn Care

Everyday Lawn Care

By John Raab

           Every morning I wake up before my alarm clock goes off because I have a lovely little rescued mutt named Harlow who incessantly whines just inches from my face, around 5:00 A.M. If I refuse to arise and walk her at that ungodly early hour, then I know a certain shitty aroma will soon waft my way. A wake-up turd. So, she has me well trained to take her out. I do not have her trained, she has me trained; some of my friends tell me it is still better than having a wife. Maybe someday I will find “The One.” Last Thursday, then, I threw on my sweats and walking shoes and took little Harlow on our morning constitution.

           She was her normal effervescent self: running, stopping, sniffing, stopping, peeing, stopping, and although she only weighs twenty pounds, she manages to drag my 10-times-her-weight body along and all over the neighborhood. She’s strong. As we walked down Woodrow Wilson Boulevard I cursed myself for neglecting to bring my flashlight as one of the streetlights was burned out which made the moonless morning as dark as Satan’s heart. I walked slowly and carefully in the pitch blackness as I have had enough of bruises and scrapes in my tender age of twenty nine due to sports, cycling, and tripping over Harlow. We were coming up to old man Bushman’s house, and of course Harlow decided to poop in his front yard, which happened to be in the darkest portion on Woodrow Wilson Boulevard. I did remember the blue, doggie doo-doo bags, and I knew we could absolutely leave no trace of the excrement on his finely manicured, and mow-striped lawn. Dick Bushman would somehow know it was my dog that did the offensive poo poo. I think he would even go to the lengths of having poop tested for its DNA. The lawn (in the daylight) looked like something out of one of the House and Garden TV shows’ series about phenomenal homes of the rich and famous, although our neighborhood was far from rich. Dick bushman kept the showcase lawn of the neighborhood.

           As I bent down to clean up the mess Harlow left, I heard sudden shouting.

           “Dick, you controlling bastard!” This from Fanny Bushman’s distinctive, smoky, alto voice. That same voice had harangued many a young person in her middle school science classes over the years including myself. She was tough, but fair

           “You fucking cunt! I never should have married you!” That voice obviously belonged to her husband, the evil yard lord.

           “I wish you hadn’t! I could have married someone who could have given me children!” she screamed.

           “Oh yeah, well I don’t know anyone who want to fuck you!” Ouch, what an angry low blow.

           At that point I heard a snap like a whip cracking, and I thought, ‘Either the Bushman’s are kinky, or someone just got popped.’ It was good to know, however, that people in their sixties still do it. Could that have been a gunshot, not a whip crack? No way, They were cranky, but not murderous.

           Harlow started barking, and I felt I had to move on and stop eavesdropping, especially since a porch light abruptly came on. We sprinted back home, and I decided it was none of my business anyway.

           It’s funny how serendipity works. Sometimes you will be thinking of a song from your childhood and then it comes on the radio, or you will wonder how an old friend you haven’t seen in years is doing, and then you read something about them in the newspaper, or you run in to them. Two days after the morning dog-potty walk I was thinking about the Bushmans when I ran in to Frank Fordham (an old classmate of mine who now drove a delivery truck for a living) at the grocery store. We talked for a while, and then he surprised me with a serendipitous question. “You live by our old science teacher Mrs. Bushman don’t you?” I let him know that I lived on the same block as her then I asked why he wanted to know.

           “Well,” he said. “I made an unusual delivery to her the other day. It is not often that I have to have a package notarized upon receipt. Fortunately they make us become notary publics for this job, otherwise we would have had to find one to witness.”

           “What the hell was it?” I asked.

           “Some really toxic powdered chemicals in a five gallon drum. I was happy to get it off my truck. I didn’t want to get my skin burned down to the bone if it broke open.”

           “Could that really happen?” I asked.

           “I don’t know, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Hey, she is retired from teaching, isn’t she?”

           “Yeah, I wonder…?”

           “You wonder what?”

           “Nothing. Hey it was good seeing you.”

           Two weeks later while taking Harlow for her afternoon walk I witnessed Fannie Bushman applying what I believed was the foulest smelling fertilizer with her green push spreader. Their normal pristine lawn looked like a shag carpet left outside from the 1970’s. It had never been so unkempt. After all, Dick Bushman was the most persnickety man in the neighborhood when it came to his lawn, and, I expect everything else in his life.  And why hasn’t he mowed? True to her nature, Harlow once again shit in the Busman’s yard in the same spot as two weeks earlier. I quickly bent over to wrap it up in the doggy doo-doo bag when Mrs. Bushman said, “Just leave it. It makes for a great fertilizer.” You could have knocked me over with a fairy’s kiss. “I’m fertilizing now anyway.” She cheerily said. “Maybe you noticed the smell.” I did.

           I had never seen a happier face on Fannie Bushman. “How’s Dick?” I asked.

           “Oh he’s underfoot, as always.” She grinned broadly as she replied.

           I just waved and walked on and wondered if she meant that literally.