A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 (20 page)

Cici looked at Lindsay. Lindsay looked at Bridget. Bridget said, raising her voice to be heard above both the sound of wild barking and roaring engine, “Do you think he’s trying to steal it?”

Cici said, “If he is, he’s sure got a lot of confidence.”

Lindsay shouted, “Should we tell him about the yellow jackets?”

“Let’s find out who he is, first,” suggested Cici.

As the mower downshifted to skirt the poplar tree, the three women walked boldly out in front of it—after first dancing quickly away from the sheepdog in attack mode—waving their arms to get the operator’s attention. When he looked at them, Cici made a slashing motion across her throat, indicating he should cut the engine.

When the mower stopped, so did the dog, who tucked his tail and slunk back under the porch. They found themselves staring at a skinny, unsmiling boy with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip in a manner oddly reminiscent of James Dean. Wisps of smoke drifted around his ears.

Cici spoke up. “I’m Cici Burke,” she said. “This is Lindsay Wright and this is Bridget Tyndale. We own that lawn mower. And this lawn.”

He looked from one to the other of them unhurriedly, and with absolutely no sign of friendliness in his expression. He pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, drew and exhaled, and said, after a measured time, “Name’s Noah. Heard you needed somebody to do yard work.”

“Oh!” Lindsay exclaimed. Relief replaced the consternation on her face with such swiftness that she practically beamed. “Oh, yes, you’re right, we do. That’s great! We’re so glad—”

Cici elbowed her in the ribs. “Where are you from, Noah?” she asked pleasantly.

He drew on the cigarette, eyes narrowed. “Here.”

Bridget murmured, “What did you think Cici? That he was an out of town commuter?”

Cici tried again. “Who told you about us?”

His gaze was somewhere between insolent and disinterested. “You want me to mow your lawn or not?”

Lindsay returned Cici’s elbow in the ribs, her smile disguising a muttered, “
Of course
we want him to mow the lawn!”

Bridget offered helpfully, “How much do you charge?”

He spat. “Ten dollars.”

Bridget relaxed, smiling broadly. “Farley sent you! See, girls?” She spread her hands; problem solved. “Farley sent him!”

“An hour,” said the boy. His eyes, like his voice, were cold and flat.

Their smiles faded.

They looked from one to the other for a moment, visibly weighing their options. Bridget said, in a rather small voice, “Well, I suppose . . .”

But Lindsay held up a staying hand, her jaw set. She stepped toward the boy. “How old are you?”

He didn’t reply immediately. Then, without flinching, “Eighteen.”

Lindsay cast a look back over her shoulder to Bridget and Cici. If he was a day over fifteen they all would have been hugely surprised.

She said, “Have you got a high school diploma?”

He answered sullenly, “Don’t need one.”

“No,” she agreed, “I don’t suppose you do. Unless you want to make ten dollars an hour.”

He scowled at her, and she advanced on him.

“Do you know who makes ten dollars an hour in this county?” she demanded. “Medical transcriptionists, legal assistants, kindergarten teachers. People with high school diplomas
and
a certificate or degree. Library assistants, firefighters, EMTs—
they
make ten dollars an hour. And do you know why? Because they went to school, they worked hard, they studied, and they did not lie about their ages. Do you know what lawn maintenance people make?”

The anger in his eyes was almost overcome by curiosity. Perhaps he had never thought of himself as being in the “lawn maintenance” business before. “What?” he finally demanded, reluctantly.

“Six dollars an hour,” she replied, and he spat on the ground in disgust. “That’s well above minimum wage.”

His lip curled in a sneer. “I ain’t working for minimum wage.”

“Or you could try that burger joint out on the highway. I understand they’re paying six twenty-five an hour.”

His scowl was fierce as he took another drag on the cigarette. “Ain’t got no car.”

She shrugged.

“Eight fifty.”

“Six.”

“Eight dollars.”

“You got it,” she told him, and he looked smug until she added, “the minute you show me a high school diploma.”

His scowl was fierce. She didn’t flinch.

“How many hours?” he asked at last.

“As many as you can work.”

He tossed the butt of the cigarette away and left it smoldering in the grass.

She said, “Well, you think about it.”

She turned and walked back toward the house, her fingers crossed in her pockets. She was almost to the porch before she heard the lawn mower start up again, and her face broke into a wide, self-congratulatory grin. “We’ve got ourselves a yard boy!” she exclaimed happily.

Cici gave a wry shake of her head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

And Bridget added uneasily, “I don’t know. He seems a little scary.”

“Not as scary as that crazy dog,” Lindsay pointed out, and Bridget had to agree.

Cici shaded her eyes, watching the lawn mower make a careful circuit around the overgrown flower bed. “Assuming he doesn’t just drive the mower on down the highway to that Burger Shack job,” she said, “it would be great if he could weed the flower beds and burn some of this brush.”

“Not to mention the boxwoods,” Bridget added, indicating the nine foot high shrubs that flanked the front porch.

“And when he’s finished with that . . .”

“I think this is going to work out just fine,” Lindsay decided smugly. And then she exclaimed, “Oh!” as she suddenly remembered. She whirled and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Watch out for the yellow jackets!” she shouted.

 

 

By the end of the day, the boy called Noah had mowed the entire front lawn and emptied eight bags of soggy clippings into the compost pile. At dusk, he solved the problem of the yellow jackets by the time-proven method of pouring gasoline into their ground nest and tossing a match in after it—a process to which the horrified women would have immediately and strenuously objected had they known about it before the fact. Lindsay paid him in cash for hours worked, and no one would have taken wagers as to whether they would ever see him again.

However, at seven o’clock the next morning the dog started barking and the engine started grinding, and he was back to finish the backyard. Cici made a few phone calls and discovered the boy’s last name was Clete, and that he came from what a social worker might have referred to as a “disadvantaged background.” His mother had died when he was a baby, and he lived in a single-wide on a half acre outside of town with his father who, Cici was given to understand from Maggie’s subdued tone, drank. This wasn’t much in terms of glowing recommendations, but there was some reassurance in knowing someone who knew him, and, Maggie insisted, he wasn’t a “bad kid.”

Bridget, who worried about how skinny he was, left orange juice and muffins on the back porch for him. Within the hour, they had disappeared. At noon she left two sandwiches, a bowl of potato salad, and a pitcher of iced tea in the same place, and was enormously pleased to find only empty dishes when she returned that afternoon to collect them.

Lindsay was feeling quite pleased with herself as she made her way down the freshly mown path to the dairy barn. The sky was a brilliant blue and the rain had brought with it a cool front that tasted faintly of autumn. It was the perfect day to work outside and, dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and work gloves, Lindsay was ready to start reclaiming the building that would one day house her art studio.

The wisteria that had seemed so picturesque when they had first moved into the house in the spring had overgrown the door, the windows, and roof, and was encroaching upon the stone slab of the entry. Tucking her hair up under her cap, Lindsay made a note to herself about what Noah’s next job would be as she ducked underneath the living canopy and pried the viny tendrils away from the door. The door squeaked on stiff hinges and scraped against the stone floor as she pushed it open.

For a moment she felt like one of those characters in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale, in which you simply
know
nothing good can happen to the protagonist once she or he has crossed the threshold of what will always turn out to be an enchanted castle. She did not remember the piles of rubble being quite so daunting, nor the debris on the floors quite so thick. Spiderwebs festooned the corners and she clawed at one that clung to her face. The two walls of windows, which had spread such a brilliant light over the building when they first had viewed it a year ago, were now clouded with a year’s worth of grime and, worse, obscured by the creeping fingers of green vines that cast slippery shadows across the floors and the walls. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, one of the shadows seemed to move, to actually slither across the floor. She stepped forward, kicking at a pile of leaves that had accumulated on the floor. The shadow scurried to a corner, formed itself into a coil, and hissed at her.

She didn’t scream at first, because she was too busy choking on her own breath, paralyzed by the hot-flash strobe of adrenaline that surged through her veins. But by the time she stumbled back out into the sunlight the scream had bubbled up through her throat and out of her mouth, and she didn’t stop there; she kept on screaming.

As it happened, Noah had stopped the lawn mower to empty the collection bag. Bridget had stepped out onto the porch to try to tempt the dog with another plate of chicken livers. Cici was rinsing off a paintbrush with a backyard hose. So when Lindsay screamed, everyone heard it.

Bridget dropped the plate of chicken livers and ran toward the sound. Cici left the hose running and, slipping and skidding in the mud, raced around the side of the house. Even Noah, his curiosity aroused by all the commotion, sauntered toward the dairy barn.

They found Lindsay leaning against a cherry tree, gasping for breath and hugging her arms. “S-s-snake!” she managed.

Cici demanded, “What kind?”

And Bridget gasped, “Oh my God! Are you sure?’

To which Lindsay replied, “Of course I’m sure! Do you think I’d make something like this up?” She shuddered and answered Cici, “I don’t know what kind. It didn’t have an ID card. All I know is that it was huge!”

“What I mean is,” insisted Cici, “was it poisonous? Some snakes are good, you know.”

Lindsay groaned, closed her eyes, and sank back against the tree trunk. “And I was having such a good day.”

Noah, glancing at the huddled group of women, pushed open the door and eased inside. Three pairs of eyes followed him as though he were an infantryman preparing to launch a grenade. In a moment he returned, thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans, and spoke around the cigarette that dangled from his lips. “Rattlesnake,” he pronounced. “Big ’un. Wish I had my gun.”

Lindsay’s knees buckled. Bridget caught her arm to brace her. “Good heavens,” she said, eyes big.

To which Cici replied, “Farley! I’ll bet he’s got a gun!”

She raced to the house to call him.

Five minutes later, Farley roared up in his truck, slammed the door behind him, and strode toward the dairy barn with a shotgun under his arm and a determined expression on his face. Feeling like maidens in a comic horror film, the three women pointed toward the door of the dairy. “In there,” they cried, almost as one.

Farley stared down the door grimly, cocked the shotgun, and nudged the door open with his shoulder. Noah followed closely behind, his excitement almost—though not quite—disguised by his aura of slouching nonchalance. The women edged close behind—but not too close. They stood just outside the door while Noah pointed toward the corner. “There she is.”

Farley shuffled his weight, planted his feet, and raised the gun to his shoulder. Cici gripped Lindsay’s arm. Bridget clutched Cici’s hand. They all squeezed their eyes closed and tried not to squeal like girls at the huge
ka-boom
that seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet. When they opened them cautiously again, Farley was muttering beneath his breath, his face bright red. Over his shoulder, they could see ragged daylight pouring in through a hole the size of a doggie door in the far wall. The snake, still curled in the corner, rattled its tail ominously.

“Missed ’er a little,” commented Noah, deadpan.

Farley raised the gun again, and this time all three women turned away and covered their ears with their hands. Two concussive blasts later, Noah let out a triumphant, “Eeee-
haw
! You got ’er dead between the eyes!”

Farley shouldered his weapon and turned to the women. “Ten dollar,” he said,

Bridget said shakily, “I’ll get my purse.”

Lindsay said, “I’m going to be sick.”

Noah said, “What do you want to do with it?”

The three women stared at him wordlessly.

“Makes good eatin’,” said Farley.

“Indians used to wear the rattles around their neck,” added Noah.

Lindsay said, “I am seriously going to be sick.”

“You want ’em?” asked Noah.

“What?” Cici managed.

“The rattles.”

Cici glanced at the other two, took a breath, and said, “I think I can safely say—no.”

“Can I have them?”

Lindsay started toward the house on unsteady legs. “Is there any aspirin?”

Cici said to Noah in a tight, strained voice, “Help yourself.”

Noah pulled out a pocketknife and went to collect his prize. Farley repeated, “Ten dollar.”

“Um . . . right.” Bridget turned to follow Lindsay to the house. “My purse.” She stopped suddenly and turned back, looking dazed. “There was something I wanted to ask.”