Desert Boys (7 page)

I argued that if he never said anything about himself, I'd never have a chance to listen.

“Without even knowing it, you're learning how to listen right now,” he said mystifyingly.

Eventually I gathered that he meant to compliment himself, that by speaking to my sister and me mostly in questions, by hardly ever telling us anything, he was showing us what a good listener looked like.

That's when I put him at the top of my “Pester” list.

I should add that the “Pester”/“Foster” lists were always changing. Coach Vierra, my gym class teacher, fell from the good side to the bad after he issued me a demerit for spitting on the blacktop. (The sizzling effect was something to see.) My sister, Jean—sixteen and impossible, most days, to locate—found herself on different sides of the list all the time, depending on whether or not I saw her that week.

This is a long way of saying Mr. Reuter was different. After hearing my mother's opinions of him (she'd spent some time reaching out to the former Mrs. Reuter, and had come back, like a journalist, with a version of the story), I'd put Mr. Reuter down in red ink, too. According to my mother's vague commentary, after all, this was a selfish bully of a man we were talking about, “the king of cutting corners.” But then he hired me for that job. Aside from Jean—who, because she was my sister, hardly counted—Mr. Reuter was the only person who'd ever made the transition from Pester to Foster on that list of mine. I made it out to be—someone breaking a pattern like that—a big deal.

IV. INSTRUCTIONS & INSIGHTS FROM MR. REUTER

In the driveway, Mr. Reuter held out a shovel. He had one hand on it, arm outstretched toward me. His other arm rested akimbo on his waist. I took the shovel with both hands and let the metal hit the cement.

“Hey,” he said, “don't let the spade touch anything it can't dig out. That means anything but grass, dirt, and shit. Got it?”

I lifted the shovel and held it horizontal. “Got it,” I said.

He went over the plan. The house, like every grass-having house on our block, had two front lawns: a bigger one separated from a smaller one by a driveway. The bigger side was three times the size of the smaller one, about 170 square feet. What he wanted was for the entire smaller side to be dug out and turned. He was going to fill that small side with cement, to extend the width of his driveway by five or so feet. That would take me a day or two, tops, he said, and we'd start there. The next step in the plan was to dig out a circle—ten feet in diameter—from the bigger side of the lawn. To the best of my ability, I was supposed to center the circle in the yard. I'd have to measure it and mark it off somehow. Then I'd get to digging.

The job seemed more complicated than what I'd signed up for, what with all the calculations. I told him so.

He scoffed. “You think I was going to give you fifty bucks to turn grass into mud? The money is for the precision.”

“I don't know,” I said. Fifty dollars wasn't as much as people made it out to be.

“The problem here,” Mr. Reuter said, looking me in the eye, “is that you're not used to being entrusted with things you could easily mess up. Is that true?”

It sounded true. I didn't think too deeply about it, and said yes.

“It's a shame. It's the death of a young man, not being given the opportunity to earn trust. The
opportunity,
you know? Just that. It's bigger than anything. Oh, you'll find ways to make fifty bucks here and there. That's not really what you want out of this. I can tell. It's not every day you get the chance to point at something you've done and say, ‘I could have ruined the shit out of this, but I pulled it off.' You don't think I could've—if I really wanted to—done this myself? Hell, it would've saved me a lot of time, not to mention the fifty. But I see you mowing lawns around the neighborhood, itching to make your mark on something. Grass, though, it grows back quickly, doesn't it? Not even a couple days later, all your work is invisible. It's gone. You're trying, and I give you credit for that. But this—” He grabbed the shovel's handle between my hands. “—this is permanent. You'll see.”

I asked if I could say something.

“Sure,” he said.

“I'll do it for seventy-five.”

V. SOME REALITIES OF MY FIRST DAYS DIGGING

It took two full days of digging to finish the smaller side of the lawn. I didn't really have a strategy. Starting in the middle, I stepped the shovel into the ground as far as I could (about two inches) and pulled. In layers, I moved back until I reached the perimeter.

Mr. Reuter spent most of the time inside the house. At the beginning of each day, he placed a full pitcher of water and a cup on an oil stain in the driveway. The first day, I drank all the water in a couple of hours. When I got thirsty again, I went to the front door and knocked. Mr. Reuter answered, holding the telephone to his ear with his shoulder, carrying the holder and its wires around with him. With a look of disappointment—his glasses seemed to sink lower the unhappier he got—he took the pitcher from me and said he'd bring more water out in a bit. I went back to work. He never showed up with more water. Some time later I took a break, crossed the street, and drank as much water as I could from home. In a strange way, I came back with a feeling that I'd failed. I hadn't made that pitcher last, and had to run home for help. The next morning, when I saw that a full pitcher of water had once again been placed on the driveway, I made a point to drink nothing more.

As I worked, so did the heat. In the desert, the idea of spring was a myth from another culture. It went from winter to summer like flipping a coin, and it seemed as though I'd lost the toss. The heat turned the saliva in your mouth and throat to mush. Your skin turned white until the burn settled in, some hours later. You'd go home after work and cling your lips to the mouth of the tap the way two animals might kiss, chugging water until your stomach ached with it. Still somehow you'd piss only once a day, this orange urine that came out smelling like the heat itself, liquefied.

The clouds came and went in clumps, leaving spots of shade here and there on the pavement. From time to time, the garage door opened upward like a salute, and Mr. Reuter would walk out, barefoot, careful not to stand on a sunny spot of the driveway. He'd say something like, “Progress,” or else, “You're getting it.” Then he'd hop from spot of shade to spot of shade until he was back inside the garage, pulling closed the door. These tiny moments of encouragement had an enormous effect on me. More than once I thought the heat was too much, or the work was too much, or else the money was too little, and then Mr. Reuter would say his little something, and I'd go right back to work, doubtless in my efforts.

I distinctly remember thinking, going into the job, that my mind would be free to wander while I worked, and that I might imagine some extraordinary thoughts to express to those adults on my “Pester” list—thoughts that would create in them a doubt in their belief that I was unable to change things without their help. But the truth was that nothing, not a single memorable moment of reflection or imagination, sprouted from or arrived at my head during my hours digging up that lawn. In every rare moment I caught myself thinking, the thought happened to be about the work in front of me. When I told Mr. Reuter about my surprise, he said, “That's called pride, and that's a great thing.” He taught me to laugh in the face of anyone who called physical labor “mindless” work.

A part of me already knew that. My father spent his entire life working, after all, and I'd never considered him a mindless man. But I wondered why he refused to talk about work. Boredom, maybe, but a lot of people say “boredom” when what they really mean is shame.

VI. MR. REUTER ASKS A FAVOR

When I finished turning up the dirt on the smaller side of the lawn, I allowed myself a minute to admire my work. There had been spots in the middle (my first attempts) that looked uneven, and I'd gone back to make them flush with the pavement. Since the lawn and driveway were at an angle from the house down toward the sidewalk, it was tricky to get the leveling just right. But I'd done it.

After a few knocks on the front door, Mr. Reuter emerged from the house. He saw the work I'd done, and put out his hand for a shake. I took it, the first earnest handshake of my life.

“You're exceeding expectations,” he said.

My fingers twitched at the praise. That would have been enough to keep me working with pride, but he went one step further.

“In fact,” he said, “I think you've earned yourself a raise. One hundred dollars seems more fair for this kind of work, wouldn't you say?”

I tried to keep the face of someone who'd earned something and knew it. But I must have said thank you for every extra dollar he'd just offered me.

“You just keep it up now, all right?”

“Yes sir,” I said. “I'll do even better.”

“I'm sure you will,” he said.

“See you on Saturday,” I said. “And thanks again.”

“Saturday, yes,” he said.

I started back across the street. He called after me.

“One more thing,” he said. He tugged at the black rubber tips of his glasses, moving the frames up and down until they sat on his nose just right. “You still see Drew from time to time at school?”

His son was a seventh grader—a year ahead of me. I'd seen him at lunch from a distance, but we hadn't spoken since he moved. We knew each other only from having lived across the street—we used to play with his wrestling action figures. Once he moved, our friendship changed. That's how kids have relationships with people sometimes—they're based on situations. Sometimes that's how adults have relationships, too, but that's a different story.

“Yeah,” I said. “I see him.”

“Oh, good. I've got a favor to ask of you.”

Still in the mode of praises and raises, I was in no spot to decline.

“Ask him to come help out with the digging. Your money won't get divided, I promise. I'd ask him myself, but his mother won't let me speak to him without her on the line, and she'd put a stop to it before he'd even get the chance. You see what I'm saying?”

“Got it,” I said.

“Great,” he said. “That'd be great.”

“Saturday, then,” I said.

“Saturday. With Drew, maybe?”

“Maybe,” I said.

VII. THE WATCHER, WATCHED

Memory is more a play than a book, a play in which the character of you is one of many. You piece together the furniture and the school halls and the people using details (some true, some unwittingly borrowed from other moments in your life, or the lives of others) and your imagination. Then you get to watch. You
watch
your memories, don't you?

And the watcher knows—especially if the watcher happens to be a townie—that he is not the only one doing the watching. His stories, then, involve a great deal of the looming anxieties stemming from that quintessential doom-knowledge found in towns: That always you are being seen, that always you are being judged. Not by some force above the clouds, but by other people. And unlike in a city, where a person knows he may be seen by any number of people at any point in the day, this is a different sort of doom-knowledge. It's the knowing that those who see and judge you are inevitably people who, in some way,
matter.
They're people who know you or your family, or else the person with whom you're interacting. They're people you've let down in the past. They're people who may have gone
out of their way
to watch you mess up.

I was aware that my involvement in Mr. Reuter's plans hadn't gone unnoticed. I'd looked up from my shovel's blade from time to time as a car rode past. Every once in a while, I'd catch the eyes of the driver, or else the passenger. Sometimes there'd be that millisecond of recognition, and maybe even a reflexive wave from inside the car. One of those drivers or passengers must have been curious about my working on this particular man's lawn. (My mother wasn't the only one talking about him.) One of them must have seen the two of us talking near the mound of dirt I'd assembled near the green compost bin. One of them must have said something to a person who mattered to the story, because when I went to school after that conversation with his father, Drew Zelinski (formerly Drew Reuter) cornered me in the hallway.

VIII. THE CLOSEST I'D EVER BEEN TO A FISTFIGHT

I was small, I think I've mentioned. Drew happened not to be. His shoulders had spread away from his center like the geological birth of a valley. Only it happened overnight. Not two years before, when we sat on his front lawn screaming the names of wrestlers, we were about the same size. Something had changed for him, and before I remembered how this newfound strength might be used against me, I admit that it gave me great hope for my own physical potential to burgeon. (I'll point out again that it would never happen for me.) He slid his thumbs behind the straps of his backpack and jutted out his elbows. With my backpack against the wall, I asked as casually as possible, “Are you about to hit me?”

“Are you going to keep being friends with my dad?”

“No,” I said. “I'm just working on his yard. For money.”

“He's a piece of crap,” Drew said. “He's a liar. Don't fall for it.”

“I'm almost done with the job,” I said. “He said he's getting some trees.”

“It's all a lie,” Drew said. “He makes things up. He's full of shit.”

The urge to defend Mr. Reuter came unexpectedly. I disassembled it, thinking of my vulnerable position.

“Look,” I said, “I'm almost done with the job.”

“Go ahead and finish it,” he said. “You don't know him like I do. He only hired you because he thought we were still friends. He thought I'd come over to hang out with you. Trust me. Those trees aren't on their way. That money isn't on its way. He makes every-fucking-thing up.”