Lawnboy Read Online Free PDF

folded her arms over her chest, frowned. “Fucker,” she mumbled.
    “Fucker?”
    “You heard what I said.”
    “Keep talking like that and I’m going to leave you right here.”
    “So leave.”
    It came as unexpectedly as a fish in a flooded street gutter. I glanced to my right and saw William sitting in his parked car, with newspaper and coffee cup. I didn’t think he was looking at me. He was simply another office worker spending his break in his car. The intensity of my argument with Jane diminished. I wasn’t scared or sick or excited. I’d known this moment would come, but I never thought it would be so dull. My vision went runny; my words sounded stupid in my mouth. I might have been sitting on the mucky bottom of the bay. I glanced again, the car was gone, and I was afraid.
    Why the hell hadn’t I said hello?
    We didn’t speak for the longest time. A long train of motorcycles paraded past us down the street. When I looked back at Jane, her eyes were fixed upon a dead patch of grass. “What’s up?” I said finally.
    “I don’t know. I was thinking about Mr. Hovnanian.” She tried to laugh a little, embarrassed. “Don’t ask me why. Remember that stuff about the eclipse?”
    “Sure.”
    It wasn’t so long ago: our tenth-grade class sitting before the TV, watching the total eclipse sweeping across North America. It was terribly, horribly beautiful, the quality of that darkness—birds falling silent, streetlights trembling on. Liquidy fires jetted around the rim. Then, just when the sky went dark and the corona shivered, Mr. Hovnanian switched off the set. “What makes you think that wasn’t a hoax? How did you know that that wasn’t a computer image, fabricated to drum up ratings?”
    For weeks Jane seemed to take it personally, ineffably sad about the whole matter.
    I said, “Is something wrong? You don’t seem like yourself.”
    “Why am I thinking of tenth grade, for God’s sake? What’s gotten into me?”
    We stared at a fallen tangelo while the heat crept into our scalps.
    ***
    I couldn’t sleep. I felt something simmering in my body, a slow cooking, spreading up through the stem of my torso, then prickling, exploding in my throat like salad oil. I wanted to molt, I wanted to cut away the baggage of my skin. I kicked the wet covers off the bed, threw on some clothes, and left the house. I was going to walk it off. I was walking through developments, through people’s backyards in the dark, over culverts, canals, retention basins. Hours had passed. I passed airport runways with their raucous blue lights, sanitation plants vast as cities, signs fizzing and sparking, arrows pointing in all directions. Two towns over, the boat factory was working overtime, and the junky hot smell of plastic lingered in the atmosphere. A storm threatened from the Everglades, then receded, pushing the humidity even higher. I took off my shirt and roped it around my waist. I decided to walk and walk, possibly to the Keys, possibly to the Card Sound Bridge, until I finally got rid of this feeling.
    Hours later I was standing in William’s front yard. I expected the lawn to be overgrown, ruined, bits of scale and dollarweed eating at the turf. But no. It looked even better than before. Moist, lush. I knew it: William had found another Lawnboy. I had lost him for good. I fumbled for some broken shells and started tossing them, one after another, at the glass of the window: ping ping ping ping.
    Was I ready to give myself over to desire?
    I knew myself too well: hyped up, charged, I’d lose everything. I saw myself fretting, always looking for something other, something better, something outside myself. I saw myself utterly alone in the world, a gleaming wasp inside a bright orange hive, alone with my anguish and raging hot need, and who’d be there to still me?
    Was there anyone else at that moment who knew the pressure and potential of changing everything? I raised my hand and linked myself up with him, the