Uchenna's Apples (13 page)

Her mother got a thoughtful look, while Uchenna started to break out in a sweat.
Don’t ask about him, don’t ask about him!
But finally her Mam said, “It’s that iPod, isn’t it?”

“Not just that, Mam,” Uchenna said, secretly relieved. “Other things too. But Mam, we want to get started as soon as we can! Tomorrow morning, first thing. There are a lot of people out here whose lawns could use a cut. It was so wet the past couple weeks, and now we’ve had some dry weather, all the grass is getting long—”

“And you want to make hay while the sun shines,” Uchenna’s Mam said. Uchenna couldn’t help smiling.

Her Mam thought for a moment, smiling a little too. “Well, we need to check it with your daddy: the lawnmower’s his department.”

“Check what?” her Dad said as he came down the stairs into the living room.

Uchenna explained. Her Dad looked thoughtful for a moment. “Flora?”

Uchenna’s Mam shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” she said.

“Well,” her dad said, “it’s lucky for you the lawn mower’s not the kind that you can hurt yourself with.” Theirs was a hovery type of lawnmower that, instead of blades underneath, used a rapidly-whipping nylon line to cut the grass. “What’ll you do with the clippings, though? There’ll be more than we can put in the composter.”

“Just dump them over the wall, I guess,” Uchenna’s Mam said. “That seems to be what the gardeners around here do…”

“Yeah,” Uchenna said, relieved: once again her Mam was saving everybody time by answering her own questions first.

“Well,” Uchenna’s Dad said, “since you’re so eager, you can start with our lawn. I have to admit it’s getting a little long out there.” He threw an apologetic-looking glance at her Mam. “Somebody’s been ignoring any power tool that doesn’t have a screen attached to it…”

“Okay!” Uchenna said. “Thanks, Dad! Thanks, Mam!” She ran out into the back yard.

In the Back Office, Emer was slumped on the couch and watching the TV, while Jimmy had found a stack of Uchenna’s comic books under some of the stuffed animals, and was standing there paging through them. As Uchenna came in, they both looked up hurriedly. “Come on,” she said, “they say it’s okay, but I have to mow the back yard first.”

“Great,” Emer said, “we’ll have something for the horses tonight!”

She and Jimmy followed Uchenna out into the yard, where Uchenna went over to the shed and struggled as usual with the sliding latch that opened the shed door. Inside, the mower took up most of the space that was otherwise occupied by rakes and gardening tools and cardboard boxes of stuff that had migrated out here from the house. Uchenna reached up to the hook where the mower’s long electric cord hung, passed it back to Emer, and then pulled the mower out backwards by the long hooped handle.

“And what’re we supposed to do?” Jimmy said.

“Take turns emptying the grass into bags,” Uchenna said as she pulled the orange-shelled hover-mower out of the shed. “See, when you run this, it stores all the grass up inside a basket under the hump on top. When it fills up, you take the top off, pull out the basket, empty it into the bag. Then you put it back and start over.”

“We should all get to take turns using the mower,” Emer said.

Uchenna glanced over her shoulder: her dad was watching them out the kitchen window. “Not while we’re back here,” she said quietly. “Wait till tomorrow, when we’re mowing somebody else’s lawn. You guys should watch and look real interested, okay?”

The others saw her glance at the window and understood what she meant. “Where does it plug in?” Emer said, picking up the plug at the end of the long orange cord.

“Over there by the edge of the patio,” Uchenna said.

Emer ran over to the capped outlet set into the outside wall of the house, flipped it open and stuck the plug into it. Uchenna threw the switch on the handle of the mower, and looked over her shoulder at Jimmy as the mower woke up. “Make sure you always stay behind me,” she said, “or at least three feet away on either side. That’s my Dad’s rule, so nobody’s feet get underneath there.”

“Thought these things couldn’t hurt you,” Jimmy said as Uchenna started pushing the mower along the edge of the flower bed near the wall.

“They won’t cut your foot off or anything, but if the cord snaps and flies off, you’ll get stung pretty good. Eames, look in the Back Office and get some plastic bags out of the drawer—”

The mowing took longer than Uchenna would normally have taken over it, since she was really aware of her Mam and Dad looking out the windows at them every now and then, seeing how she and the others were behaving. But it all went smoothly enough. It didn’t take Emer and Jimmy long to work out how to get the mower open quickly, empty it out, bag up the grass and get the mower going again. After an hour or so they were all warm and sweaty, but could look around with satisfaction at a lawn that had been very tidily mowed, and also at six Tesco shopping bags stuffed full of grass.

“So what now?” Uchenna’s mam said, wandering up the path from the house with a glass of wine in her hand, looking around admiringly at the yard. “I thought you were just going to put the grass over the wall. There’s no room in our composter, I looked the other morning…”

“There’s a composter up by the school,” Emer said. “It’s big, there’s plenty of room in it—”

“Well, as long as it gets recycled,” Uchenna’s Mam said. “And you’re—what was your name again?”

“Jimmy Garrity, Mam,” Uchenna said, once more marveling at how fast Emer could improvise. “He’s in third form.”

“Howya, missus,” Jimmy said. To Uchenna’s complete astonishment, he actually ducked his head a little to her Mam.

She smiled slightly. “Hello there,” Uchenna’s Mam said. “All right, you three… it’s getting late, you want time to get over there and back before it starts getting dark.”

“Let’s go,” Uchenna said. The three of them got busy putting the lawn mower back in the shed, coiling up its cord and hanging it up, and then picking up the bags of grass. They hustled out of the back yard with them, Uchenna waving at her folks as they went, and then headed out across the circle.

“It would’ve been easier if we could’ve just thrown ‘em over the wall,” Jimmy muttered.

“Wouldn’t have fit the story,” Emer said.

“And they really do have a composter over at school,” Uchenna said. “How do you
do
that? I never would have thought of that.”

“You made that up right then?” Jimmy said. “Hey, you’re a right ‘un.” He looked impressed.

Emer shrugged and smiled. “It’s not hard,” she said. “I try to think about what might happen ahead of time. Then I’m ready when stuff really does happen.”

The bags were surprisingly heavy. At the far side of the circle they paused, choosing their quickest route. “Down between those houses,” Emer said, nodding at the next circle, “hang a left into the side alley. Then out into the field—”

“What’s down there?” Uchenna said, mystified. “There’s no way over the wall there—”

“Got something better than that,” Emer said. And a few minutes later, Uchenna and Jimmy saw what she meant: for the wall at the end of the alley between the first two houses in the next circle was half knocked down.

They went to look more closely at it. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to drag some old rusty metal sheeting over the gap to patch it temporarily, but it could just be dragged aside. “Somebody rammed a car into it last night or the night before,” Emer said. “Trying to get into the next house’s back yard—”

Is this the same place my Mam was talking about?
Uchenna thought, with a shiver.
Wow, this is close. It could’ve been the Back Office. And I could’ve been sitting in it—
Nonetheless she pulled the scrap metal aside and peered through. “Come on,” she said, “we don’t have a lot of time. My Mam and Dad know how long it takes to get to school and back.”

They hurried along in the warm sun on the far side of the wall, having to shift the bags from hand to hand often: the narrow handles of the thin bags cut into their hands. “We need a wheelbarrow for this stuff,” Emer said under her breath as they went across the field, making for the next hedgerow.

“We won’t need it next time,” Uchenna said. “The people we mow lawns for won’t mind if we just throw stuff over the wall.”

“You
hope
they won’t,” Jimmy said. “And afterwards you’re still gonna have to come around the other side and pick the grass up to take it to the horses—”

They discussed the logistics of grass transport as they worked their way through the weeds and the grass to the field on the far side of the Condom Ditch. It was further than Uchenna had thought, even with the shortcut they’d just taken: she found herself hurrying now so that she’d have a few minutes with the horses before she had to start back.

As they made their way across the board that bridged the ditch, Uchenna saw the head of one of the black-and-white horses go up—one of the boy horse’s, she thought. Some noisy whinnying came from over that way as well.

“I think they’re starting to figure out that we bring them stuff,” Emer said as she hurriedly squeezed through the hole in the hedge, pushing her bag ahead of her.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said as he followed. “My Dad says horses are dumb about a lot of things, but food isn’t one of them.”

On the far side of the hedge, the horses were now walking toward them with slow deliberation—and the Mammy Horse was in the lead. “Come on,” Uchenna whispered, feeling freaked out again as the sheer size of the Mammy impressed itself on her, “empty it all out for them, it’s not like they’re going to eat it out of the bags!”

All three hurriedly emptied the grass out on the ground. The horses behind the Mammy Horse hung back a little, as if wanting her to make the first move. As Uchenna and the others backed away, the Mammy Horse walked over to the piles of grass, put her head down, sniffed at one of them, and without more than a second’s hesitation, started to eat.

“Yay!” Emer said, and did a couple of very restrained little bounces of joy as the other horses moved up to have some grass too. More or less by accident, Uchenna and Emer and Jimmy had spread the bagfuls of grass out in a line rather than dumping them all in one heap: and the horses now moved up to that line, sorted themselves out side by side without too much pushing or shoving, put their heads down and ate.

“They’re all so hungry,” Uchenna said, already feeling less happy than she had when the horses first started eating. The Mammy Horse was already almost halfway through her pile of grass, and what had seemed like a lot—at least while Uchenna was carrying it—now seemed very insufficient. “They’re going to be done with that in about ten minutes!”

“Maybe a good thing,” Emer said, “since that’s when we have to go back.” She looked at the horses as they concentrated on their food. “They’re going to need four or five times this much.”

“Four or five lawns, you mean,” Jimmy said. “You’re going to have to get started early.”

“What do you mean ‘You’re?’” Uchenna said. “Too late for you, you’re part of this now! Anyway, I thought you wanted to make some money.”

“Well… yeah…”

Emer was looking around them now, her eyes on the nearby train line. “Chen,” she said, “come on, your mom’s going to be wondering where we are pretty soon…”

“Okay, okay!” Uchenna said. She had a last look at the horses, who were still happily eating: though the Mammy Horse had now finished her pile of grass and was helping the boy horse next to her eat his. “At least they have some water in those puddles over there,” she said. “But what happens when that runs out?”

“Don’t think it will, not right away anyway,” Jimmy said, peering over to the other side of the field. “See where it’s coming from? There’s a busted pipe leaking water down the bank from along the track. Probably something to do with the train station. But you can see where it’s leaking.” He pointed.

Uchenna could just make out a faint slight movement of water down a little gully into the field from the pipe he was indicating. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess they’re okay for today and tomorrow, then. Who ever heard of anything around here getting fixed on the weekend?”

“Chen—!”

“Yeah, okay,” Uchenna said. Emer was already halfway back through the hedge: Jimmy followed her.

“So when should we meet and start mowing those five lawns?” Jimmy sid when they were back across the Ditch. “Or finding out who’ll let us mow them?”

“Have to be after second Mass,” Emer said promptly. “No point in being too early. Nobody’ll be up, and after that, everybody’ll be in church.”

Uchenna nodded. “Okay,” she said, “how about around twelve-thirty, then? That gives all the people in the circles around us time to get back and be having lunch, or late breakfast.” She grinned. “Just the kind of time when nobody wants to think about going out and mowing the lawn.”

Jimmy laughed. “Okay,” he said. “My Mam and Dad always go out with the relatives after Mass, they won’t mind if I stay home. Don’t like going out with them anyway, it’s all just talking and drinking.”

“Right,” Uchenna said as they made their way hurriedly back across the weeds and stony ruts of what she was now beginning to think of as the Field of Dead Shopping Trolleys. “Eames?”

“No problem,” Emer said, “I can do that time.” Though Emer went to school with everybody else and did the same religious instruction everybody else in school did, her mom was something called a Christian Scientist, and so she didn’t have to go to Mass and could sleep late every Sunday. This made her the secret envy of a lot of her classmates—though Uchenna had stopped teasing her about it, because Emer was really bored with the whole thing.

“Great,” Uchenna said. “So don’t forget, wear work clothes! I’ll get together all the plastic bags that my Mam hasn’t recycled yet. We’ll do all the mowing first and leave the bags someplace outside the wall—then come back here after the mowing’s all done.”

There was a little more discussion of how to work around everybody’s parents; then they got to the knocked-down wall again. “I’d better get straight back,” Uchenna said. “Let them think the good-girl thing is really stuck on me today. Eames, you coming with?”