“Really?” Deborah asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “She can keep track of friends, socialize, study, read, play games, watch movies, listen to music. She will always be connected.”
“I don’t know,” Deborah said. “She’s still not really interacting with anyone. Not in the flesh anyway.” She had been spearheading the get-Riley-more-social initiative, planning the birthday party, inviting all her classmates, hiring a band, and signing Riley up for extracurricular activities, dance and softball and acting classes. Each one Riley would go to without a fuss, but after the second or third time she would inform them she didn’t want to return. Deborah would try to persuade Riley to stick with it, but Rusty would be the one who eventually relented, allowing her to withdraw back into her room. He knew it wasn’t good parental practice to let his child quit everything, but he was working on it.
“We’ll take it,” he said.
THE DAY OF THE BIRTHDAY party, they found Riley sitting in the bay window, reading a book. There wasn’t much of a view any more. Tall grass and vines blocked the street, casting a shadow in a place that had once glowed with natural light. This didn’t seem to bother Riley, though. She didn’t even look up when her parents entered the room.
“Hey there, sweetie,” Deborah said. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Don’t you want to join your friends?” Rusty asked. “They’re waiting on you.”
She shrugged. “Sure.” She lowered the book and stood to follow, but then stopped. “What happened with Mr. Lindsey?” she asked, meaning Gil. “I haven’t seen him in a couple days.”
Rusty had been expecting this. “Well,” he said. “He did something against the rules, so the police came and arrested him.”
“He broke the law?”
“Yes. He broke the law.”
“But that seems silly,” she said. “It’s his tree. Why can’t he cut it down?”
“Well, honey,” Gil said. “It’s against the law.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sometimes you just have to do what you’re told whether it’s silly or not.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know, sweetie. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense. You’ll learn that once you get older,” he said, even though he had a hard time understanding it himself. Everyone had applauded the new legislation when it was passed, heralding it as a beautification milestone. It was thought that outlawing private citizens’ ability to maintain their own personal property upkeep and outsourcing it to a single private contractor would reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, create a minimum standard of property maintenance, and allow consumers to keep more of their income, which, the theory went, would boost GDP growth through consumption. It passed through the legislature with bipartisan support with only a few naysayers. Everything had gone well at first. Dilapidated parts of the city experienced a rebirth. Older buildings were painted and repaired. Lawns were kept immaculate, green and trimmed. There was no trash floating along the streets, no graffiti defacing bridges. Developers, taking advantage of the beautification, expanded into areas that had once appeared risky. The economy surged. People seemed happier, jubilant even. But then eighteen months ago, three workers had been killed. They had been standing on the back of a trash truck when it malfunctioned, crunching them to death. The union went on strike, demanded higher wages, better benefits, and better equipment. The city couldn’t meet their demands. Council members, in a legislative oversight, couldn’t repeal the law without union consent, and the police, under direct threat from internal investigators, had to enforce the law and keep normal citizens from even mowing their grass. The result turned catastrophic as the city transformed into a wasteland. Buildings crumbled, streets were in disrepair, nature overwrought, wildlife clamored in, whitetails and bobcats and rattlesnakes. It seemed every day they would hear the crack of a rifle, echoing throughout the cityscape.
But how did you explain that to an eleven-year-old?
“But!” she protested. “But, but, but!”
“No buts. Go.”
He pointed to where the other children were waiting in the den. They milled around for a while, chitchatted about things important to them—what new shoes Kevin Durant was wearing, a new album by some teenaged pop star Rusty’d never heard of, their new uber-evil history teacher. They played games, balloon bull’s-eye and who am I and flour cake, all of which Deborah had discovered online. When it came time to open presents, Riley took center stage, wrapped boxes surrounding her like a fortress.
Riley ripped the paper off and tore at the cardboard boxes. She burst bubble wrap and dug through Styrofoam. But each time she came to the present, she looked disappointed. Inside would be a doll with braided blonde hair or an Easy Bake Oven or intricate Lego sets that depicted spaceships on the box. There was a bell to place on a bicycle’s handlebars and movies about princesses and Trapper Keepers covered in glitter and pink. She held them in her hand, her posture deflated, her mouth puckered, and she would lay them to the side in a neat, uniform pile.
“Thank you,” she mumbled to whomever gave her the gift.
Parents cast glances to one another, eyebrows arched in judgment. Ungrateful little shit, they seemed to say.
Soon, she got to the final gift, the gift from her parents. There was no way she would rebuff something so cool, so state of the art. By this time, Riley had lost most of her excitement, taking her time to dig her fingernails underneath the Scotch tape and pull it up slowly so as not to rip off part of the design. The iPad’s box was white and modern and pristine. The device was pictured on the front, with its silver casing and sleek, black touchscreen. Rusty held his breath. He waited for it: a smile, a gasp, a jaw dropped. But they never came.
Riley blinked at it, then laid it with the rest.
THE FIRST LAWN HAD BEEN mowed haphazardly. Rusty first noticed it when leaving for work. It didn’t look like it had been cut with a lawnmower or brush hog. Instead, someone had taken gardening shears to it, like someone had given the grass a haircut. Though it was a small lawn, it must have taken hours; the grass had been nearly three feet high. Most odd was the fact that there were no clippings lying in the street or in the yard. They had all been cleaned up, bagged, and taken elsewhere.
Rusty didn’t think much of it and headed off to work. The next morning, though, another lawn had been sheared. The next day, another one. The next, two more. Whoever was cutting the lawns was getting more efficient, getting better. The grass no longer appeared uneven, hastily sliced up, blades resembling a haircut gone awry. Now the cuts seemed even and straight. Care had been taken. Meticulous precision. Pride.
The police responded soon thereafter. They canvassed the neighborhood, interviewing all of Rusty’s neighbors to glean anything suspicious. A policewoman interviewed Rusty and Deborah. She had an odd appearance to her. Her face seemed inordinately asymmetrical. Rusty knew asymmetries to be present in all human bodies. His left arm, for instance, drooped about a half-inch longer than his right. But the policewoman’s asymmetries were more pronounced—one eye was much larger than the other, and rounder, like it was a perfect circle; her right bicep was mannish, her left dainty; and she had an exquisite left butt cheek, plump and curvaceous, the other basically non-existent. Truth be told, she nearly looked deformed.
Deborah offered her tea, but she declined. “Caffeine makes me a little jumpy,” she said. They convened in the living room. Rusty and Deborah sat on the sofa, their knees touching. Riley camped out in Rusty’s recliner. It was too large for her, and her feet couldn’t quite touch the ground.
“Tell me about Mr. Lindsey,” the policewoman said. Her name was Rebecca, the only cop Rusty knew who introduced herself using her first name. “Has he seemed imbalanced lately? Troubled? Stressed?”
“You mean besides what happened the other morning?” Rusty asked.
She nodded.
“No.” He look
ed to Deborah for assistance. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“Has he been complaining about the city? About the law?”
“Everyone complains about it.”
She nodded again, this time puckering her lips in frustration. Apparently she had received this same answer at his neighbors’ houses.
“Have you seen anything suspicious? Heard anything the past three nights that sounded unusual?”
Rusty shook his head. “All quiet on the western front.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“A Weed Eater or lawn mower or anything?”
“Nothing.”
The policewoman sighed. The investigation was going nowhere; that much was obvious. Not that Rusty had expected it to go well. He and the neighbors had been talking. None of them had a clue as to who was cutting the lawns, for what purpose, and whose lawn would be next. It seemed isolated to their neighborhood—coworkers and friends living in other parts of the city reported no such mysterious cuttings. It was as if their small, middle-class neighborhood had a vigilante in its midst.
Rusty had to admit it was pretty exciting.
“Please,” the policewoman said. “Give us a call if something arises. Anything at all. No matter how small.”
FIRST, IT WAS A PAIR of rain boots. Then it was a jacket. Next was a wool beanie. Lost, Riley explained. She didn’t have a clue as to where they ended up. Initially, Rusty didn’t give it a second thought. She was a child after all, and weren’t children prone to losing things? After that, Rusty found mud caked in her room, right underneath her window, dried into the fibers of the carpet. He found a tear in a sweater she hadn’t worn in months, it being much too warm for such a garment. He found a ski mask tucked underneath her bed, a blade of grass sticking out of one of its eyeholes. Her fingers, he noticed, had calloused. She appeared tired. Purple bags floated underneath her eyes like half-moons. She slept in later on the weekends. Dirt lined her fingernails. Her skin had been stained red from clay.
“You don’t think it’s her, do you?” he asked Deborah as they sat in their bungalow’s breakfast nook one Sunday morning, sipping coffee and eating day-old donut holes.
“No,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“But the sweater. The mud.”
“She’s probably sneaking out to go see friends. I used to do that. They’re probably TP-ing someone. Or going to see a boy she has a crush on. She’s not a criminal.”
“Riley? Sneaking out to go see friends? A boy? Our daughter?”
Deborah sipped her coffee, popped her lips after she swallowed. “Our daughter is not a criminal.”
“Okay. Okay. Then how do you explain what’s going on?”
Deborah wiped her fingers on a dishtowel and then on her jeans. Her fingertips appeared to still be sticky, however, the donut glaze reflecting the sunlight shining through the bay window. Outside, Indian grass waved in the breeze like spectators at a football game. Before, Rusty had taken great pride in his lawn. It had been immaculate, so pristine he could’ve placed a putting green out there. Now, though, it resembled a forest, uninhabited by civilization. It was wild. It was native. It drove him nuts.
“Like I said,” Deborah continued, “It’s probably harmless. All kids sneak out of the house at some point. It’s nothing to worry about.”
He had half a mind to assist the vigilante; however, the private contractor had negotiated stiffer and stiffer penalties into the legislation for offences, going so far as a three-year prison sentence for mowing your own lawn. It would’ve made Rusty laugh if it wasn’t so serious. Instead of fixing their initial debacle, the city council had made matters worse. The proof of it was living right next door to him. Gil, having made bail, was back at home after his incident, but he faced a trial in a few weeks determining his fate. Caught with a chainsaw, it seemed likely he would face jail time.
A minor had never been charged before. If his daughter was the vigilante, she could be taken away by the DHS, sent to a juvenile detention center. He wouldn’t be able to see her for months, years even. It was unthinkable.
“We should talk to her.”
“You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” Deborah said.
“Am I?” he asked. “Does she not maybe show anti-social behavior? You said so yourself.”
Deborah slammed her open palm against the glass table. “Stop it!”
Startled, Rusty spilled some coffee in his lap. He yelped and jumped out of his seat and tried to wipe away the scalding liquid, but he could still feel it burning. He unbuckled his belt and shimmied his way out of his pants in an attempt to make the blistering pain go away. The flesh was pink and turning red, the skin somehow seeming thinner there than the surrounding areas. Just as his pants fell around his knees, Riley walked in. Without saying a word, she closed her eyes, then walked blindly out of the room.
SHE SNUCK OUT AT ABOUT 1:30 a.m. It was dark out, the moon covered by clouds, making it difficult to see. A ski mask covered her face, her hands were gloved, a backpack was flung over her shoulders. She seemed more like a spy than his daughter, which surprised Rusty. So careful, so inconspicuous. She’d always seemed more dazed to him, lost in her own little world. Not now, though. She had practiced this. She had done this before.
After a quick pause, she headed west down their street. She kept a slow and steady pace, stopping every dozen or so feet to take in her surroundings. Due to the overgrown lawns, he followed at a safe distance, careful not to let the crumple of the underbrush give away his position. At the end of the street, she turned north. She stayed low to the ground, darting next to a privacy fence. She continued on in this way for another block, then turned into an empty lot. Rusty hid about forty yards down the street behind some garbage cans. Only her head popped up above the weeds, a dark bulbous shadow absent of features. Waiting for her looked to be several more bulbous shadows, six by Rusty’s count. The shadows appeared to be looking at Riley’s new iPad—a luminous glow emanated from their center, and in a heated discussion, their heads bobbed, ponytails shaking feverishly.
He waited for a while. He counted to twenty, then seventy, then a hundred. Getting impatient, he almost blew his cover and walked over to the empty lot to tell his daughter to get her crap together and go on home. But then grass clippings sprayed into the air and fell back to the ground like confetti during a ticker-tape parade.
He was right! It was Riley cutting all those lawns. And she had accomplices.
Using shears and an antique push lawn mower, they mowed the empty lot in less than three hours. It was remarkable, really. They coordinated without much communication, each responsible for a particular piece of the lot. When they were finished, they planted a sign that simply read: “Brought to U by Anonymous.”
RUSTY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO do. He contemplated confronting her before they got back home, demanding some sort of explanation. He would do it, like a father should, feigning anger, although, if he was honest with himself, he was more afraid of the consequences if she got caught. He also considered telling Deborah, asking for her input before confronting Riley, but she would just deny the whole thing.
No. Best to confront her now.
He stayed behind the trash cans, not wanting to approach her in front of her accomplices. After they were finished, they convened out in front of their handiwork, and one reached into a backpack. He had tried to keep Riley in his sights during the night, but he had lost her soon after they began working. He was pretty sure this little girl was Riley as she pulled out what appeared to be the iPad he’d given to her for her birthday. She turned around, faced her work, and snapped a photograph. After some congratulatory hugs, the group dispersed, with Riley heading towards Rusty alone.
As soon as she reached him, he placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, dropping her backpack. When she looked up at Rusty, her eyes were like polished marble. She turned to run, but before she could get away, Rusty grabbed her arm.
The picture she had just taken already had more than 100 likes.
At home, he parked Riley in the living room. She had a defiant look on her face. Her feet dangled just above the carpet, mud caked around the soles of her shoes. She looked like she had when she was much younger, four or five maybe, when he had forced her to share with her cousins or made her stop sitting so close to the television. Basically, it was a look that said, “as soon as you turn your back, I’m going to do it again.”
“What were you thinking?” Rusty asked. He knew he should be more delicate, understanding, but he was pissed. “And don’t give me any of this ‘I don’t know’ bull crap.”
“I don’t know.”
“What did I just say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You broke the law, Riley. Do you understand that?”
“Are you going to tell Mom?”
Riley wasn’t worried what her father thought. He did not act as the disciplinarian in the house. Deborah did. He’d been relegated to a figurehead role, authoritarian in name only. This hurt more than he cared to admit.
“Mom is the least of your worries.”
She crossed her arms and sank back into the chair.
“Seriously, Riley. You could go to jail. They’d lock you up, and you’d never be able to see us.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Riley, please listen to me.”
She hopped of her chair, her mud-soaked shoes squishing into the carpet. “I am, Daddy,” she said as she kissed him on the forehead.
THE MOWING DIDN’T STOP. IF anything, it became more frequent. It had even spilled out of Rusty’s immediate neighborhood. Some were a few miles away. Three or four or five would be cut per night, in different parts of the city, all of them signed “Anonymous.” A movement had begun. Not all of these crimes could have been committed by these six preteen girls. That would’ve been impossible. They had sparked something, and it was not going away.
The nightly newscasts began to take notice. Investigative journalists searched for clues. The police asked for anyone who might have any tips to contact them immediately. Graffiti popped up, some in support of Anonymous, others opposed. The striking workers called them anti-union vigilantes, scabs and worse. Frustrated citizens called them harbingers of commonsense justice. People fought in the streets over it. The entire city seemed about to explode. Riots appeared to be imminent.
Five Hundred Poor Page 6
