Desert Boys

by Chris McCormick

  “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.”

  A moment passed where neither of us said anything. Kids walked by in groups of two and three. He backed up.

  For some stupid reason, I said, “Thank you.”

  IX. ADDING THE FORMER MRS. REUTER TO THE “PESTER” LIST

  I added her in red because I assumed that Drew’s negative portrayal of his father stemmed from her own broken and cyclically reassessed misunderstanding of their relationship.

  Let him make up his own mind, I scribbled next to her entry.

  X. BACK TO WORK: A GUIDE

  That Saturday I headed across the street early in the morning. The sun had been up for less than an hour, but the heat started climbing without much of a wait. I held on to a yardstick I’d sneaked home from school, and took a look at the bigger side of the lawn to survey the extent of work that loomed ahead of me. Mr. Reuter had stopped caring for the grass weeks ago. By now, shaggy but burnt, the lawn looked like a field of wheat you might find behind a baseball fence someplace in the middle of the country. I could have turned and looked at the face of my house, but standing there in that yellow plot, holding this basic tool that was supposed to help me make some sort of difference, I felt suddenly that I was as far from home as I’d ever been.

  The garage door opened. Inside, Mr. Reuter held on to its red rope above his head. He said, “You’re early.”

  “I thought I could beat the heat,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said. “I remember when I first learned how impossible that is out here.” He looked around, past me. “You alone?”

  “I am,” I said. “Drew couldn’t make it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well,” I said, “he said he’s busy.”

  “Is that so?” he said again. He batted the red rope for some time. “His mother,” he managed to get out.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s my guess, too. Anyway, I’m about to measure the lawn.”

  “What a thing to say,” he said wistfully, as in a daydream. I thought he was upset with me for mentioning his ex-wife. But he was talking about something else entirely.

  “You expect the word ‘mow’ there, don’t you?” he said. “And your word—what was it, ‘measure’?—your word just takes its place so sneakily. ‘I’m about to measure the lawn,’ you said. What a thing to say.”

  “That is funny,” I said, not knowing how to respond. What was funnier, I thought, was that I was using a yardstick to measure the yard. I kept the joke to myself.

  “About Drew,” Mr. Reuter said, “you’re sure he’s not coming? Today, I mean.”

  “Mr. Reuter,” I said, leveling with him the way a man should level with another man. “Drew doesn’t trust you. He’s never coming back here, I think you should know.”

  “Well,” he said. He cracked his knuckles and let all the air out of his nose. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.” He pulled down on the rope until he disappeared.

  That last thing he said was true: In order to measure and carve out a near-perfect circle in a front lawn with the equipment afforded to me, you need patience. First you have to lay the yardstick along the border of the grass and the sidewalk. From the smaller side of the lawn, composed now just of dirt, collect a handful of small rocks, most of which will crumble in your hand if you make a fist over them. As you pivot the yardstick along the length of each side of the big lawn, place one of those soft rocks at every point for measuring purposes. Then do the math to figure that the yard spreads out just over fourteen feet wide and about twelve feet up to the house from the sidewalk. The paved walkway up to the front door changes the shape of the lawn to something a bit more geometrically complicated. Basically, though, you’re off to a good start. The next step would be to find the center of the lawn. There, step on your shovel a couple of times to mark an X. Use the yardstick again from the center to a number of equidistant points in different directions. Leave enough room to make arcs between those points to complete the circle. Keep using those soft rocks to mark your points. Gather more if you have to.

  Take a break for water. Drink just a little from the pitcher; leave plenty for later. Sing a dumb song you’ve made up: Thirsty from the sun, and work’s just begun.

  Now you’re ready to dig.

  XI. ON THE ACT OF FINISHING

  I can’t remember the last plunge I took with the shovel on that lawn. What I can remember is the first time I saw the end closing in on me. I laughed out loud. Nothing maniacal, just a single bark of joy escaped. I startled mysel
f with it. You can blame the heat or the overinflated importance of completion to a twelve-year-old kid with low self-esteem. Either way, I laughed, and kept digging until the digging was done.

  I went to the front door to bring Mr. Reuter outside. I knocked and waited. I rang the doorbell, looking over my shoulder at the circle of dirt I’d created. The circle wasn’t perfect from an aerial view, but its mistakes were subtle, and its positioning was centered well. Corners of yellow grass still hung around the circle’s edges. That was an easy fix, I figured, once the trees and their protective shade came into place.

  Beyond the yard I saw my own house. Its grass had become overgrown in my time across the street.

  My knocking turned violent. In the window, I could see Mr. Reuter’s shadow pacing back and forth. I yelled his name. I said, “I know you’re in there!”—which, because I’d heard it so many times in movies and TV shows, came out flawlessly. Finally I moved around to the driveway, where the pitcher, now empty, sat on its oil stain. I waited for some time, a good amount of time. I kicked the garage door. A car passed while I did it.

  XII. THE CLOSEST I’D EVER BEEN TO A FISTFIGHT (UPDATED)

  I saw Drew at school the next week. I went over to him at lunch and said, in front of all his friends, “You were right. Your dad is an asshole.”

  He punched me in the eye.

  XIII. THE FLOTILLA LANDS ON COMSTOCK AVENUE

  Before giving up, I tried Mr. Reuter a few more times with no success. Some weeks passed. In that time, I’d explained the black eye to my parents by saying a girl at school had accidentally opened a door in my face. Even my mother, the amateur journalist, was too embarrassed for me to ask any follow-up questions.

  Then came the trucks. They rolled in on a windy Saturday morning. There were three of them, white dump trucks with blue block letters: WATTS LANDSCAPING. Each had been loaded with sod and landscaping accessories, including a number of boulders and bags of what I found out later were decorative wood chips. A group of Mexican men, five in all, parked the trucks at sharp angles at Mr. Reuter’s house. They worked in an assembly-line sort of way between the trucks and the front lawn. Cars took care to move slowly past the equipment, which created a sort of barricade around the driveway and into the street. Some of the drivers even pulled over to investigate further the work that was being done.

  The curiosity spread. As the hours passed, a fleet of neighbors emerged from their homes to witness the transformation of Mr. Reuter’s yard. My own parents, if they hadn’t been working, would have been among them. I imagine that some of the witnesses must have worried that the Mexicans, yelling their Spanish at each other between heaves, were moving in.

  As for me, I chose to watch from my living room, parting the blinds with my fingers.

  The next day, my parents left again for work, and—wouldn’t you know it?—the trees arrived. Three huge supplanted palm trees rolled in on the towed trailers of a new armada of white trucks followed by green-and-yellow John Deere machinery. This time, the news spread even more quickly, and neighbors and passersby came together in the street. Even I had to go outside to watch. People who had heard about the activity the day before also came, anticipating more action today. What you had then was a group of people from all over town, the largest assembly I’d seen of them, and yet the only sounds came from the machinery.

  A John Deere drilled a hole within my circle for each tree. Another, with an extended mechanical arm, plucked one of the palms from its trailer bed and hinged it toward the hole. The machine tilted its pull on the tree until, slowly, accompanied by the eerie creaks of the pulley, the palm stood upright in the air. It hung there for a moment like a specter, swinging perilously in the wind, and the people beneath it had no choice but to fear and worship. Carefully, the machine lowered the bulbous root of the tree beneath the ground. This process was repeated twice more, and each time it happened, the crowd held its breath as the tree, like some monster, stood unaided for the first time. We half expected a roar from the trees, and when—as the workers began to hose down the bark—no roar came, we ourselves supplied it.

  XIV. THE TALLEST TREES IN THE ANTELOPE VALLEY

  They still own the record. The tallest of the three clocks in at over fifty feet. You can see them from the 14, if you’re riding through the high desert: Three pineapple tops watching over everyone on the east side of town.

  I ended up telling my dad one night about my involvement in their planting. He came to me after I’d snapped at my mother, and asked very seriously why we weren’t so close as we’d been when I was younger. The question was a simple one, and he said it with this grainy, soft voice like I’d never heard. We were in my bedroom. I sat on my bed, and he’d chosen to sit on the carpet. It’s amazing how powerful that memory is for me, a grown man sitting on the floor, asking for something he felt was important. He wanted to understand why things had changed. I didn’t have my complicated Pester/Foster analyses at hand, so I just said, “I don’t know.” Then I felt as though I owed him something more, so I told him the story.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you your money.”

  But he wasn’t listening. It wasn’t about the money.

  XV. THE LAST TIME I SAW MR. REUTER

  He’d lost his hair. I hardly recognized him. I saw him only for a moment—I was coming into the house late one night, much later than my curfew. I was expecting a fight when I got home. And before I turned from the sidewalk toward my door, a light came on across the street. Mr. Reuter stood on a short stepladder, arms shaking above his bald, bespectacled head, installing what I found out later to be a motion-sensor light on the rim of his garage. I’d been under the impression, like others, that maybe he’d moved away. It was a shock to see him bald—it was a shock to see him.

  This was a couple of years after the trees had been planted. In that time, rumors had spread that Mr. Reuter was ill and had spent the last of his money creating a living barrier between his house and the rest of the town in an attempt to die in peace.

  I crossed Comstock Avenue that night. It must have been January because you could see ice gathering over the windshields of parked cars. He stood on that stepladder and I didn’t want to startle him. From a short distance, standing barely in the driveway, I asked if he needed help.

  MY UNCLE’S TENANT

  My mother’s brother Gaspar owned a scattering of apartments and trailer parks in Los Angeles County. His drinking—vodka, mostly, from a bottle with an Armenian label I should’ve learned to read by now—brought out the gossip in him. At my sister’s engagement party, before she and Patrick called off the wedding, Uncle Gaspar cornered me and shared a story that took place at one of his trailer parks, the one in my hometown. “My tenant,” he said, “a long time back. More of an employee, actually. Name was Phil. Told me ev-uh-ree-thing.”

  “I know Phil,” I said cheerfully. I was putting on that exaggerated enthusiasm you put on when someone you care about has had too much to drink and wants your attention for an unspecified amount of time. I said I knew Phil, but what I meant was this: When I was thirteen, this gangly white man who could pass for anything between twenty and forty occasionally accompanied Gaspar to my house. My uncle, who lived with all the other Armenians an hour away in Glendale, every now and then spent a weekend in the desert to check on his properties. Sundays he’d swing by our house on the way back to the city, and a few times—maybe a total of four or five Sunday evenings—he’d bring along this kid, this man, whose name I’d forgotten until my uncle breathed it, vodka-drenched, back into my life.

  I began to remember how my uncle would sit on the floral sofa alongside my mother, and how Phil would settle into my father’s favorite red chair. As far as I can remember, my father and my sister were never home during one of these visits. It was always just the four of us, Phil and Gaspar and Mom and I, and all we did was talk and eat, eat and talk. One topic of discussion I remember was the unresolved election between Bush and Gore—Phil wanted to lea
ve the country if one, I can’t remember which, came out the victor—which is how I knew these visits occurred when I was thirteen.

  Phil’s baggy clothing underlined the gaunt, ghostly look he already had. He would shovel my mother’s cooking so belligerently into his bony face that he reminded me of a character in one of the novels I was reading at the time, a man who had been rescued many days after a shipwreck. As for me, my job was to get a fire going in the fireplace, and I’d kneel on the bricks, stuffing swaths of paper towels or newspaper or catalog pages into the nooks and crags of the logs. I’d strike a few matches until the fire finally caught and the smell of woodsmoke filled the house. I’d brush the soot from my pants and wash my hands. Then I’d collect my payment, a small dish of desserts my mother had baked and arranged for our guests—one or two honey-dripping pieces of rolled baklava, maybe, or a few powdered khurabia cookies—and sit on the hardwood floor, devouring the sweets and watching the fire I’d made consume everything and anything I allowed it to.

  That Uncle Gaspar had forgotten I’d met Phil—on numerous occasions—didn’t surprise me. Those visits happened, after all, a long time ago. Plus, Gaspar had just tried to light the filtered end of his cigarette. I knew then he would tell me the truth. This far down the bottle, he couldn’t invent a story to save his life.

  * * *

  Not often, my uncle said, but sometimes, a person would ask Phil what it was that he did. And by that they usually meant, how do you make your money, how is it that you earn a living. His response wouldn’t exactly fill him with pride: hired help, here and there, painting houses or else moving lumber with Jim, most of the time out of work. “You’re only twenty-one,” Jim reminded him. In fact, Jim had been reminding Phil of his age with the word “only” in front of it for years—only seventeen, only eighteen, and so on. Phil wondered how much longer the word “only” would apply. But for now, he supposed it was true. He was only twenty-one. So despite the fact he hadn’t offered as meaningful an answer as he’d have liked, the question—what do you do?—didn’t tug at him too bad.