Desert Boys by Chris McCormick Page A

and garage doors were painted in different colors to give the illusion of variety. I mowed lawns and pulled weeds for houses that weren’t inhabited by children who otherwise would be doing that work themselves.
    Mr. Reuter had seen me one weekend in March getting the lines just right on my own front lawn. I should say it took most of my strength to get the job done. Everything about me at that time (and let’s be honest: at this time, too) was light. I was a lanky boy with a small head on a thin neck. My heels never touched down when I walked. I used to have to jump and come down on the mower with all my weight to get the front wheels up so I could pivot around the tree in the middle of the yard. Maybe he saw me do it that day. He headed over from his driveway across Comstock Avenue while I heaved the bag of grass over the lip of the compost bin.
    â€œLooks good, smells good,” he said. Mr. Reuter must have been around the same age as my dad, but he looked much older. He had a full head of hair, but it was white and thin, and each silky strand of it seemed pluckable without much effort. He wore a pair of glasses with gold frames and these black rubber tips on the ends that hung below his enormous earlobes. He’d lost some weight since I’d last seen him, since before his wife and Drew moved out.
    â€œYou want me to do yours?” I asked. Back then I was always looking for business.
    â€œNo,” he said, drawing it out like we were talking on a porch someplace. “I plan on getting rid of my lawn altogether.”
    I wasn’t surprised. In my limited but obsessive time as a semiprofessional landscaper, I’d learned how difficult and expensive it could be to keep a lawn in the Mojave Desert. You didn’t have to do yards for a living—you could take a walk through the neighborhood and see how many of the houses had put in limestone or gravel where the grass had been. Some of the newer neighbors from the city chose to neglect their yards altogether, letting the grass turn yellow like giving up, and the dirt that the home had been built on in the first place got to peek its head out again, in some places anyway.
    â€œI’ve seen others do it,” I said. “I guess that means I won’t be getting your business, then?”
    â€œWell, that’s not entirely true. Not if you want it, that is.”
    â€œWhat’s the job?”
    â€œI need a digger, a man to loosen up the soil. I’d do it myself, but I’m a bit past my prime. You’re skinny, but I’ve seen you working the neighborhood. You’ve got heart.”
    â€œAnything more complicated than a shovel?”
    â€œNo sir. I figure it’ll take the sixty-six pounds of you about six weekends, six hours a day, to make it happen. There’s money, of course.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œHow much do you get paid to mow?”
    â€œTwenty,” I said. The truth was I got paid five dollars a mow. I added: “Plus tips.”
    â€œWell, how about that,” he said. “By any chance, are you hiring?”
    I wanted to laugh, but I figured he’d know I was lying if I did.
    â€œLook,” he said, “I’ve got trees coming in, is the thing. Big trees that’ll take up the whole yard. Half the cost is those guys coming in and prepping the land. I’m leaning on you for a discount. How’s fifty dollars for the project?”
    Fifty dollars to a kid lands in that perfect range of inordinate yet fathomable, and has a lot of sway to make him do something without thinking too hard about it. I’d planned on continuing my negotiations, but the words “fifty dollars” spun me off my game. Immediately I agreed.
    Mr. Reuter said his thanks and turned homeward. I finished unloading the mower’s bag, holding my breath as the loose dust and grass billowed out of the bin upon landing. I hooked the bag, infinitely lighter now, onto the mower again.