One Fat Summer Read online

  I made it up Dr. Kahn’s gravel driveway in under nine minutes. 8:57 A.M.

  He was waiting for me on the porch steps and looking at his watch.

  “Two minutes late,” he said. He must be a high Basal. “I don’t like tardiness in a boy. See that it doesn’t happen again. You’ll work until 3:02 P.M.”

  “Yes, sir.” No point making a federal case on my first day. I hadn’t saved a baby or anything.

  “Follow me.”

  We walked around the back of the house past a swimming pool. The place was deserted. We walked into a toolshed that was as big as some of the cottages around the lake. It was dark and cool in the shed. Hanging from the walls, in neat rows, were rakes, shovels, hoes, pitchforks, clean and shining in the dim light. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. My father never let me use his garden tools, he thought I would break them or leave them out in the rain to get rusty. Just give me a good shovel and I’ll make the dirt fly. I felt excited. Dr. Kahn pointed toward a green motorized lawn mower. I had never worked a power mower before. At home we had a hand mower. It was rusty from all the nights I left it out.

  “You know how to operate this?”

  “Sure.”

  “Pull it out.”

  I dragged the mower out of the shed. It was much heavier than it looked.

  “Each morning, before you begin, you’ll clean the blade, and check the gas and oil.” He untied a length of rope from the handle, wrapped it around a cylinder on top of the motor, and yanked. The motor roared to life, the spinning blade sprayed grit.

  “Watch for stones, they’ll chip the blade. You’ll be responsible for damage.” He walked away.

  I pushed the mower to the front of the house. He hadn’t told me the direction in which I was supposed to mow—up and down the hill, the long way, or from side to side. My decision. My father was very fussy about my cutting in long rows. He hated it when I made designs or cut in squares, which he said wasted energy. I decided to cut from side to side, it made more sense than pushing the heavy mower all the way up the hill from the county road, then running down the hill after it.

  Cutting the first few rows was uncomfortable until I got my fingers just right around the rubber handlebar grips and figured out the best distance between me and the mower. If I was too close my belly banged against the handlebars, which hurt, and I couldn’t use my shoulders to push. If I was too far away I’d have to bend so far forward with my arms outstretched that my back ached.

  And then I got the right grip and the right position, and it was easy. What a job! A piece of cake. Ho, boy, I can do this in my sleep, like the Marinos knocking off laps. If I could swim the way I cut lawns, I thought, I’d be the city champ, too. This lawn will win prizes. Just back and forth, nice and easy, follow the lines of the last cut, straight as an arrow, watch for stones. You old devil lawn, you don’t have a chance against me and my green machine. I’m gonna cut you down to size, lawn.

  Power surged out of my chest and shoulders, through my arms, out my fingers into the green machine. Scraps of grass flew out from under the mower. My nostrils twitched with the beautiful stinging smell of fresh-cut grass. I felt like singing. So I made up a song, and sang it.

  Listen to the birds,

  The eagles and the larks,

  Saying good-bye, grass,

  Here comes Big Bob Marks.

  I felt terrific. What a great summer this is going to be. I’ve reached a decision, I’ve got a plan, don’t worry about me hanging around all summer feeling sorry for myself. I’ve got a job. I got it all by myself, nobody helped me. Well, almost all by myself. Wait till they find out about it. They’ll be proud. And they should be. Nobody ever cut a lawn like I’m cutting this lawn. By the time I’m finished with this lawn it’ll look like a wall-to-wall carpet. Smooooth.

  I’ve got a job. My own money. Seventy-five cents an hour, six hours a day, that’s four dollars and fifty cents. Five days. That’s twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a week. My own money. I’m rich. I won’t tell anybody for a while. One day I’ll go into town, buy some earrings for Mom, a belt for Dad; I might even get Michelle some perfume. I’ll write a note with that: For a sister who smells. When they ask me where I got the money, I’ll tell them I robbed a bank. A man has to do something with his life. I don’t find that amusing, Robert. Now, Bobby, we really appreciate these presents, but…

  And then I’ll tell them. That’ll get a smile out of my father. He’ll be proud of me.

  I’ll get Joanie a book of poems. Emily Dickinson. She loves Emily Dickinson. I can’t wait to tell her about my job. She’ll have a lot to say about it.

  Ouch. A small stone shot out from under the mower and bounced off my ankle. Watch those stones. I was just about to stop and rub my ankle, it really hurt, when I noticed that Dr. Kahn was watching me from the porch. Wouldn’t want him to know I ran over a stone.

  The sun was prickling the little hairs on the back of my neck. I could use one of those big white cavalry hats John Wayne wears in the movies. Captain Marks of the U.S. Cavalry, the only man who understands the Apaches. He grew up with them after his parents were killed in a wagon-train massacre. A renegade band has broken loose from the reservation, led by Chief Willie Ratface. They’re on the warpath, raiding settlements; nobody’s safe. And the colonel’s daughter is coming in on the next stagecoach to visit our desolate desert outpost. Captain Marks and his rough-and-tumble troopers, the dregs of the cavalry who’ll take orders only from him, will ride out and save her.

  Once I had a U.S. Cavalry hat. I had a complete U.S. Cavalry uniform with a holster belt that went around your waist and over your shoulder, and a metal cap pistol shaped like a six-shooter. My grandparents sent it to me for my birthday. The pants were blue with a yellow stripe down the leg. The jacket was blue, too, and had captain’s bars on the shoulders, and ribbons and shiny gold buttons. It was beautiful. But it didn’t fit. Not even the hat.

  I couldn’t button the jacket or zipper the pants or even get the belt around my waist. I never even got to play with the gun because my mother wanted to keep the set new so she could exchange the uniform for a larger size. But it was the largest size they made. I guess I was around eight or nine years old then. My father wanted me to keep it, he said it would give me an incentive to lose weight so I could fit into it. I wished they had given it away. Just looking at that uniform in its box made me feel so bad I ate more. One day when I was alone in the house I opened a box of Hydrox cookies and jammed them into my mouth, fast as I could, not caring about the brown crumbs spilling out of the corners of my mouth; just jammed in those cookies faster than I could chew them, swallowing lumps of cookies big as Ping-Pong balls that got stuck in my throat and chest until I choked and had to wash them down with cold milk. They still hurt going down, I felt every Hydrox Ping-Pong ball push through my throat and chest until it fell with a thump into my stomach. And still I couldn’t stop until I’d finished every cookie in the box, and then I had to lie down. My stomach had turned to concrete. I couldn’t move for hours until it was digested.

  I felt hungry. I looked at my watch. 9:42 A.M. That’s all it was. I’d been cutting only a little more than a half hour. How could time move so slowly? The world must have a low Basal Metabolism today.

  Keep cutting. Can’t stop. He’s watching me from the porch. My mouth got dry and my nose was filled with fumes from the gasoline engine, and every time I turned to start a new row, pain exploded in my wrists and shot up my arms into my shoulders. My fingers were numb, I’d never be able to pry them off the handlebar grips. My back hurt. My head hurt. My feet were very hot. I was sweating all over, even my knees and elbows were sweating. Each scorching drop of sweat rolled slowly down my chest and back like a scorching drop of acid burning out a furrow in my skin. If only I could take off my shirt like everybody else who cuts grass. But my pants weren’t buttoned, and, anyway, I never take off my shirt when people are watching.

  Everything was getting hazy. Trees swayed and t
here wasn’t even a breeze. The lawn began to move. It rippled. Everything was wavy; it was like looking at the world through a fish tank. The lawn began to roll like the ocean. I was getting lawn sick.

  And then the motor stopped. Just stopped dead. I hadn’t realized how loud the mower was, how its roar banged against my ears and clogged my brain, until it was suddenly silent and I heard birds tweet again and crickets chirp and the whoosh of traffic on the county road. Far away, a dog barked.

  Why did it stop? Did I break it? The sweat turned cold on my skin. I have to start it again. The rope was still on the handlebars. I tried to remember how Dr. Kahn had started the engine. Wind the rope around the cylinder, and pull. I had trouble opening my hands, they were locked into hooks around the grips.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dr. Kahn step off the porch and start down the lawn toward me. My hands slowly opened. They were red and swollen. I wrapped the rope around the cylinder, and pulled. The motor whined, and died. I tried again. This time, nothing.

  I heard his slippers slapping against his heels. I pulled with all my might, lost my balance, and tripped over the mower. I could have just stayed there, sprawled out on the lawn, my face in the sweet grass. But he was coming and I jumped up.

  “You’re out of gas,” he said. The shotgun eyes blasted right through me. He unscrewed a little cap on the side of the motor and stuck his finger in the gas tank. It came out dry. “A gas mower runs on gas. Did you know that?”

  “Yek.”

  “The gas is in the shed. And don’t forget the funnel.”

  The hill seemed steeper now, it was like climbing a mountain. A very steep, short mountain. I was much closer to the porch than I thought. I hadn’t cut all that much grass.

  I felt better in the shed, soothed by the coolness and the darkness. I found a gallon can of gasoline and a funnel. Outside again, the heat slammed into me like a wall of hot wet cotton. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I could hardly breathe.

  “Is this job too tough for you?” Dr. Kahn had followed me up.

  “Nnnnnnn…” It was the best my stuck tongue could do.

  “What was that?”

  “Wa’er. Nee’ a glath wa’er.”

  “There’s a spigot on the side of the house. You’re not to go inside.”

  I stumbled toward it. A water hole in the desert. Or a mirage. Until I touched the rusty handle, I was sure it would disappear. The water wasn’t cold and it tasted like metal, but I drank it out of my hands until I thought my belly would burst.

  I staggered back down the hill, burping. Even with the funnel, I spilled some gas on the lawn. It took four hard yanks, but the green machine roared back to life.

  Cut on, and on. And on. Back and forth, side to side, watch for stones, keep a neat row.

  I wanted to stop. Just leave the machine and go home. Nobody at home knew I had a job so nobody would know I quit. This is torture. Who needs it? I’m walking on burning needles. My blisters have blisters. Hammers banging on my shoulders. Electric jolts in my wrists. I can feel every inch of me, and every inch of me hurts. Just stop and walk away.

  A long black car swept down the driveway, stopped and honked. Dr. Kahn stuck his head out the window, yelled something at me, then drove down to the county road and out of sight.

  I could leave now.

  You’ve got to do it, Captain Marks. You’re the only one who can make it through the renegades to Fort Desolation and bring back the Regiment. We’re counting on you.

  And then suddenly I didn’t hurt anymore, and I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. All I could do was go back and forth, back and forth, and sometimes I ran into the bushes along the side of the lawn, the sharp thorns snagging on my sleeves and whipping at my chest and scratching the back of my hands until blood bubbled up in the thin red lines, and twice I stepped into holes and fell down and stones clattered against the whirling blade and bounced off my legs, and when the mower ran out of gas again I filled it and yanked it back to life and pushed on, and on, and I stumbled along like I was drunk.

  “You call this mowing a lawn?”

  I was halfway between the porch and the county road. I had cut half the front lawn, what was he talking about? I followed his long, quivering finger up the hill. The lawn was a mess. I had missed hundreds of tufts of grass. Most of the rows were squiggly light green snakes lying among darker green patches of uncut grass. The work of a crazy drunken lawn mower.

  “I call this a disgrace.” He lifted the mower and examined the blade.

  “You must have gone out of your way to find every stone on the lawn. Look at the chips on the blade. I’ll have to get another one. Cost at least four fifty.” He shook his head. “That’ll be subtracted from your wages, of course.”

  He looked at his watch. “Well, it’s after three o’clock. Tomorrow you’ll do it all over again. What did you say?”

  I hadn’t said a word. I turned away so he couldn’t see me cry, and I stumbled down to the county road.

  5

  I don’t remember walking around the lake. Car horns kept warning me off the road back to the sandy shoulder. The road shimmered and heaved in the heat. Twice I stopped to throw up, but nothing came out. I saw the sign, Marino’s Beach Club and Snack Bar, and staggered right up to the serving counter.

  “Wa’er? Pleath?”

  Connie said, “You got to be kidding. You want water, go jump in the lake.”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” A big bronze chest with a St. Christopher medal hanging between huge muscles loomed up. “You Michelle’s brother?”

  “Yek.”

  “Connie, get him some water.” Big hard arms grabbed me around the chest and dragged me to a picnic table under the shade of a beach umbrella. “Your sister’s been looking for you, she drove past here twice. Connie!”

  “I only got two hands, Peter.”

  “Since when? C’mon, this boy needs water.”

  “M’okay,” I said.

  “You’ll be all right, just a little heatstroke. You’ve been running or something? Heavy fella like you shouldn’t run in this weather.” He held a cup to my mouth while I drank. “What happened to your hands? Cat scratch you up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come with me.” He helped me around the back of the snack bar shack to a small room. “Here you go.” He lowered me on a cot and opened a first-aid cabinet.

  Connie came in with more water and some big white pills. “Salt tablets,” she said. “Make you feel better.”

  “Thanks.”

  Pete poured alcohol on the back of my hands.

  “It stings.”

  “A man can take it. So you’re the famous kid brother. Just lie down now. That’s it. You know who I am?”

  “Pete Marino.”

  “The one and only.” He grinned. “So. What really happened to you? The Rummies work you over?”

  “No…I…I was running. I fell down.”

  “Hey, you can tell Peter the Great. Look, it happens to every summer kid at least once. Even happened to me.”

  “What happened?”

  “About four, five years ago. I was your age. They caught me alone on the other side of the lake and gave me a pounding. Must have been eight of them, the whole Rumson gang. I went back with my brother Vinnie and a couple of his friends and we cleaned ’em out. They haven’t bothered a Marino since.”

  “Why do they beat up summer kids?”

  “Who knows? They’re crazy.” He whirled his finger near his head. “The whole lake, all this land around here, used to belong to the Rumson family, but they’re so dumb they lost it. Hey, listen, I better get you home.”

  “I can make it.”

  “It’s a long walk.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “Are you kidding? C’mon.” He helped me up and led me outside. He was holding me up more than he had to. People playing in the water and lying on the beach turned to look at me. I felt foolish. “Connie! I’ll be right back, I�
�m going to drive Bobby Marks home.”

  “We got people waiting to rent boats.”

  “You got two hands. You told me so yourself.” He opened the door of a white pickup truck. I had seen it before, it was famous around the lake. The doors and roof and bed of the truck were covered with red lightning bolts on which was lettered, in blue script, THE MARINO EXPRESS. He had to boost me up into the cab I was so tired and sore.

  He jerked the truck out of the gravel parking lot onto the county road, but once he was on the road he drove slowly, like he was leading a ticker-tape parade. All along the lake, girls and boys, kids and old people, waved and yelled his name. A lot of people noticed me in the truck. I felt good about that.

  He turned up our hill, and I said, “You can let me off anywhere,” but he just grinned and said, “Door-to-door service.” Michelle was just getting out of our Dodge when we pulled into the driveway. Pete jumped out almost before he stopped.

  “Marks residence?”

  “Pete! What are you doing here?” Michelle looked happy and scared at the same time.

  “Special delivery.” Pete danced around the truck. He was barefoot. He opened the door and hauled me out, and even though I could walk he made a big show of half-carrying me to the lawn. “Think you can make it the rest of the way, big fella?”

  “Where’d you find him?” asked Michelle.

  My mother came out of the house then, her eyes wide, and she started toward me with her arms out. I didn’t want a big scene in front of Pete, so I used my last ounce of energy to run past her and go inside. Through the window, I saw Mom glance at Michelle and Pete, who were standing very close talking. Then she came inside.

  “Are you all right?”

  “M’okay.” I felt like all the blood and water had run out of my body. My bones had turned to rubber. I was hot and cold at the same time.