The Caretaker of Lorne Field

by Dave Zeltserman

  “So what do you do as Caretaker?” she asked in a breathless whisper.

  He smiled then. Not the mean-spirited smile she had seen earlier, but something sad, maybe a bit whimsical. “I save the world everyday. Break my back doing it, too.”

  When she got inside she showed her pa the engagement ring and told him about the proposal.

  “It’s a nice-looking ring,” her pa said.

  “It’s old looking,” she said, pouting. Then forcing her voice to quaver with indignation, she added, “The nerve of that man. Proposing to me on the very first date. And the way he did it!”

  Her pa thought about it and showed a conciliatory smile. “Well, first off, that ring’s an antique. Probably worth a lot of money. And I wouldn’t be too hard on the boy about how he proposed. He probably don’t have time to do things otherwise.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He ignored the question, a weariness aging his large broad face. “You should think about marrying him, Lydia. He’s got a hard road ahead of him and could use the help of a good wife.”

  “Why should I even consider it with the low class way he treated me? And what’s so hard about his road? All he does is take care of a field!”

  He sighed, kissed her on the forehead and started to walk away. She yelled out to him, “Pa, you didn’t answer me. What’s so hard about taking care of a field?” All he did in response was wave a tired hand in the air before disappearing into his bedroom.

  Contrary to what she told her pa, she had pretty much already made up her mind to marry Jack Durkin. She was sick of waitressing; it was tough on her ankles and every night she came home with her feet all blistered and swollen. Besides, in 1979 eight thousand dollars a year was a good salary, better than what a lot of people made when you include having your home for free. It seemed like a good deal, one that she decided she couldn’t pass up. The next morning when Jack Durkin came to ask for her answer she told him she’d marry him, and Durkin, still frowning, nodded and told her he’d arrange the wedding. Three weeks later they were married.

  After they were husband and wife he showed her the Caretaker’s contract. The document was several hundred years old, and he was so earnest as he went over it that she almost burst out laughing. But she decided if he could play his part with this foolishness so could she, especially if it meant free housing and eight thousand dollars a year. Even though the contract forbade anyone but the Caretaker or his eldest son from coming within a crow’s flight (whatever that was?) of Lorne Field, she followed him one day and hid and watched as he walked up and down the field picking out weeds. When the canvas sack he carried was filled he dumped out its contents into a stone pit and continued with his weeding. After an hour of watching that, she got bored and headed back to their house with no interest in ever watching him at work again.

  For the first ten years or so of their marriage she had no real complaints, although she didn’t much care for her husband’s hardened attitude towards her three miscarriages, acting as if it didn’t matter because the babies would’ve been girls. And she didn’t like the fact that months before she found out she was pregnant with Lester he had acted all nutty, mumbling stuff about how if she didn’t have a boy soon he’d have to divorce her—that it was stated so in the contract. But other than that cold behavior on his part things were okay. More than just the house being free, people did things for them during those first ten years. Doc Wilson never charged for medical care, old man Langston who owned the local butcher shop gave them their meat for free, and others helped them out, too. Lewis Black came by and did free carpentry. Tom Harrold the same with plumbing. Ed Goodan for the electrical. There was little she had to pay for during those first ten years. And there were times when Jack, in his own gruff way, acted kind of sweet with her.

  About the time she was pregnant with Lester things started to change. Doc Wilson died and the new doc who took over started to charge them full price. Several years later when old man Langston passed the butcher shop on to his son, he made him promise to continue giving the Durkins their meat free. The son did for a while but after the old man moved down south he went back on his word. Over time most of those who’d been helping out were either dead or retired elsewhere, and the ones who took their places didn’t have the old generosity. Worse, she started noticing townsfolk looking at her funny, like they knew all about the scam she and Jack were running on them. Before too long the eight thousand dollar annual honorarium didn’t seem like much, even with the free housing—especially after Bert was born and they had two hungry boys to feed. The last few years they were barely able to scrape by. Pipes, water heater, furnace—something always seemed to need fixing in that old house, and she couldn’t afford to take the boys to the doctor anymore, let alone have their crooked teeth fixed. She had gotten to the point where she was just worn out from it. Hell, welfare would pay more than what they were getting.

  The last cigarette she lit had mostly burnt out. She took several last puffs from it and crushed it out in the saucer she used as an astray. She heard some scuffling noises behind her and turned and saw her two boys. Both were thin as string beans with alfalfa-like hair that seemed to shoot in all directions. Lester was seventeen and already over six feet tall. With the way Jack stooped, the boy appeared to tower over his father. Bert was thirteen and short for his age—barely topping five feet. Both boys physically took after her, Bert maybe more so than Lester.

  Bert scratched the back of his head as he yawned. Lester stared at her sullenly and sniffed. “Dad already left to pull weeds?”

  Lydia nodded. “You two boys want breakfast?”

  Lester rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah, that’s what we’re here for.” Bert joined her at the small kitchen table and flashed a good-natured smile. It tore her up to see either of them smile with the way their teeth looked, almost as if cherry bombs had gone off in their mouths leaving them twisted and crisscrossing over each other. It killed her that she couldn’t afford braces for her boys.

  “How’d you two like blueberry pancakes and bacon?” she asked. Lester, making a snuffling noise, said it was okay with him. Bert just smiled hungrily and rubbed his stomach. She got up and found the bacon, blueberries and eggs that she had hidden in the refrigerator behind a bottle of prune juice and a head of wilted cabbage. All she had to do was put things where they didn’t belong and her husband would never find them, lacking even that much imagination. She brought the items back to the counter, and along with some milk and flour, started mixing the pancake batter.

  Lester said sourly, “You know what nickname they started calling me yesterday? Weedpuller. It really sucks being in this family.”

  “Les, honey, I’m sorry. Just ignore them.”

  “Weedpuller!” Bert yelled out. “Ha!”

  Lydia shot him a look that silenced him, then went back to stirring the batter. After a long moment Lester asked if he was really going to have to become the Caretaker when he turned twenty-one.

  “No, honey, you won’t.”

  “’Cause I don’t want to do that. Spend all day pulling weeds like some retard.”

  “You ain’t going to have to.”

  “Dad keeps saying I will. That it’s in his stupid contract.”

  Lydia turned, her eyes hot enough to have ignited a can of gasoline. “That contract can go to blazes,” she said.

  Chapter 2

  Each morning Jack Durkin would make a quick walk through the woods bordering Lorne Field before starting his weeding. He never found any Aukowies growing there and didn’t suppose he ever would. Those suckers probably had to grow up straight, either that or they didn’t have sense to try to find a less obvious place to push up out of the ground —but you’d think after three hundred years they’d catch on that coming up into Lorne Field wasn’t doing them any good. Or maybe they just wanted to do it on their own terms, expecting to eventually wear down the generations of Durkins who weeded them out. He knew looking through the woods was a waste of tim
e, but it had become a matter of habit with him so he performed his morning ritual and, as usual, found the area free of Aukowies.

  Standing at the edge of Lorne Field he gazed out and saw thousands of the little suckers already pushing themselves up out of the ground, maybe two inches high already. Even at that height they could take off a finger if you weren’t careful. And if you were to trip and fall to the ground, they’d slice you to ribbons before you could get up. Aukowies grew fast, as much as a foot in one day. Come dusk they stop, almost as if they needed to rest for the night. Then the next dawn they’d start growing all over again.

  There was no movement among the Aukowies. When they were that small they played possum and tried to act as if they were nothing but weeds. Most people looking at them would think they were nothing but an odd little weed. But Jack Durkin knew differently. If he squinted right, he could make out their evil little faces in their offshoots, and he knew those little pincers were more than thorns. He’d watch them wait until there was a wind, then pretend they were swaying in it, all the while really trying to wiggle themselves further out of the ground. They were clever little suckers, Jack Durkin had to give them that. Once they got to two feet in height, they wouldn’t bother with their act. At that size they’d be whipping about as if they were caught in hurricane gales, not giving a damn about keeping up their masquerade. Jack Durkin never let one grow that high, but he’d heard stories from his pa about it. According to his pa it took hours to subdue several of them that had gotten to that height, having to first throw boulders on top of them to pin them down.

  According to the Book of Aukowies, eight days would be all one needed to mature and break free from the ground. One mature Aukowie would wreak havoc, a field of them would ravage the world in a matter of weeks.

  The thought often struck him about what would happen if he ever got laid up in the hospital or simply dropped dead of a heart attack. At fifty-two it could happen. His family was of tough stock—which was one of the reasons the Durkins were awarded the contract in the first place—but the responsibility of weeding Aukowies took its toll. It had aged him well beyond his years. Lester came around later in life than he should’ve. The caretaker position should’ve been passed on to a first-born son a decade earlier. As it was it would be another four years before Lester would turn twenty-one, and until that happened, Jack Durkin would just have to hope that he didn’t suffer any major calamities or get hit by a bus or lightning or any number of other things that could lay him out. If he did, the end of the world would come soon after. He peered up at the sun for a moment, then went into the shed his great grandpa had built, took a canvas sack, a pair of leather gloves and a few gardening instruments from it and went to work.

  Weeding the Aukowies was tricky. You had to make sure to keep your fingers away from their little pincers. Given a chance they’d spring to life and cut one off. You also had to be careful how you plucked them from the ground. Kind of feel your way to know which angle to pull at. When you did it right, and Jack Durkin almost always did it right, you’d pull out a thin root-like thing that ran a foot or so. He knew it wasn’t any root, not with the sickly-sweet smell he’d be able to catch a faint whiff of, or the shrill little death scream that he could hear when the air was perfectly still. If you pulled the Aukowie out wrong you’d only break it off at the stem leaving the root-like thing feeding what was left. It would still make a shrill little noise—to Jack Durkin it would sound more like a rage-filled cry than anything else, and next time it came up the stem would be tougher, thicker, and you’d better be all the more careful pulling the damn thing from the ground ’cause you wouldn’t get another chance after that. Durkin could sometimes go a whole season without pulling one wrong. When he did screw up, he’d mark where he made his mistake, then make sure next chance he had he’d pull the thing up right. As if his life depended on it.

  After thirty-one years of weeding Lorne Field, he usually needed no more than a few seconds with an Aukowie, his hands deftly finding the right spot on the weed to grab, and almost instinctively knowing which angle to yank it so it slid out easily from the ground. Still, with thousands of these Aukowies pushing up, it would take him close to four hours to complete a full pass of the field. By the time he was done a second wave of Aukowies would be waiting for him. Maybe not as many as when he first arrived, but with the added fatigue factored in, his next pass would take close to another four hours. Add the same for his third and final pass. By then the Aukowies would be done for the night.

  He had walked back and forth length-wise three times across the field pulling out hundreds of Aukowies, hearing them all screaming shrilly as they died, when he came across what at first sight looked like a daisy. He stood disoriented for a moment, blinking and wiping the sweat from his eyes. He had never before seen a flower growing in that field of death, and the fact that one could actually survive out there buoyed his spirits. Actually made him feel good. He stared at it, admiring it, until he realized what he thought were petals were actually groups of pincers turned inside out.

  Up to new tricks, you little bugger, he thought.

  With the toe of his work boot he nudged the thing. It didn’t take the bait, though, staying perfectly still and maintaining its daisy-like camouflage.

  Durkin crushed the Aukowie under the heel of his boot. He imagined the thing struggling now, but it had no chance. He reached down and got a good hold of the Aukowie by its stem. Feeling for the right angle to pull at, he lifted his foot and in the same motion yanked the damn thing as hard as he could. The root-like thing ripped out of the ground. He had the sense for a second of sniffing anti-freeze. More like he could taste it in the back of his throat. Durkin shoved the remains of the daisy-like Aukowie into his canvas sack.

  “Ain’t nothin’ here but a bunch of weeds, huh?” he said bitterly.

  A light breeze came up, and the Aukowies seemed to answer him by swaying to it. He could swear they were moving faster than they should’ve given the breeze that was blowing. Durkin knew the sound of his voice grated on these Aukowies. He knew it drove them crazy, and it took every bit of restraint they had not to react to it.

  “What other tricks you got up your sleeve?” he yelled out, which made the Aukowies sway just that much faster, at least to his eye.

  “Yeah, well,” he muttered, “whatever you got it ain’t good enough. Just ain’t good enough, you dirty little buggers.”

  He stood still for a moment to catch his breath. Then as the Aukowies’ swaying slowed a beat and became more in sync with the breeze that was blowing, Jack Durkin continued his weeding.

  Lydia stood at the kitchen sink scrubbing the breakfast dishes. Both boys had finished eating and were out doing God knows what, but that was fine with her. They should be out having some fun, at least somebody in that house should be. A sour taste flooded her mouth as she thought how her life had become nothing but drudgery. Cleaning, sewing clothes, scraping by and most of all, worrying. Worrying about how she was going to juggle the bills coming in, how her boys were being deprived of what they deserved and how little she was able to have for herself. A knock on the back door shook her out of her dark thoughts. She left the sink to find Helen Vernon standing outside on the back porch.

  “Thought maybe you could use some company,” Helen said through the screen door.

  Lydia opened the door to let her friend in. “I’ll put on some coffee,” she said.

  Helen Vernon was a few years older than Lydia but looked ten years younger. Chunky, with blond hair, rosy cheeks and a mouth that was too big for her face. She and Lydia had been friends since grammar school, and she was the only friend Lydia still had who came out to visit. Helen sat at the table while Lydia took a coffee maker out from one of the bottom cabinets. As far as Jack was concerned the coffee maker had broken months ago—at least that’s what she told him. Since then the only coffee she’d been serving him was an instant brand that tasted like watered-down mud, but when he wasn’t around she made a
nice French roast for herself.

  After she started the coffee brewing, she joined her friend at the table and offered a cigarette. Helen accepted and both women lit up. They sat silently for a minute as they inhaled deeply on their cigarettes and sent smoke spiraling up between them.

  “I’m just so damn tired of this,” Lydia said.

  Helen blew a stream of smoke out from the corner of her wide mouth. “You talk more to Jack about finding a real job?”

  “Yeah, I talked to him until I was blue in the face.” She laughed bitterly, her thin lips curling with spite. “The damn fool has his contract. He’s out there saving the world everyday, don’cha know?”

  “That’s what he says to you?”

  “Exact words.”

  The coffee had finished brewing. Lydia got up and poured two cups. She drank hers black while Helen filled hers a third of the way with milk and added several tea-spoons of sugar. Her eyes looked thoughtful as she sipped her coffee between drags of her cigarette.

  “Maybe he’s been playing the part so long he believes it,” Helen said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is he ain’t giving this up. I’m near starving him to death and it don’t seem to matter. He’s going to go every day to that damn field to pick out those weeds. It don’t matter to him that his family’s living the way we are. I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “I still don’t know why you won’t divorce him.”

  Lydia looked at her friend with exasperation. “How am I gonna do that? He don’t make enough to pay alimony. Where am I gonna live with my boys? Move back in with my parents? And what am I gonna do? I’m forty-six, my looks are gone, used up, and I got two teenage boys to feed and clothe. Nobody else for me to go to. The only way out is for that damn fool husband of mine to give up this foolishness and get himself a real job. I just don’t see that happening.”