The Caretaker of Lorne Field Read online

  Helen took a lazy drag on her cigarette and let the smoke tumble out her nose. Coolly, she said, “What if the town revokes his contract?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Contracts can be revoked, can’t they?”

  “I still don’t get you.”

  “It’s simple,” Helen said. “I don’t think too many people here like the idea of paying eight thousand dollars a year to have some dope pull weeds from a field out in the middle of nowhere.” She showed an apologetic smile. “Of course it could also mean you losing this house.”

  “Be a real shame to lose this house,” Lydia said, the muscles hardening along her jaw. “No cable TV, no air conditioning, plumbing don’t work half the time. Dank and cold in the winter, hot as blazes in the summer. Yeah, it would be a real shame.” She noticed her cigarette had burnt down to mostly ash and filter and stubbed it out. “How do you suppose I could get the town to do something like that?”

  “I don’t think it would be too hard. I’m sure most people wouldn’t be too happy spending our tax money like this, if they were properly reminded. I could start making some noise about it. Maybe you could inflame things yourself by going around town bragging about how easy you got it. You know, free house and money for doing nothing. I could raise the issue of canceling that contract at the next town council meeting.”

  A weariness showed in Lydia’s face as she considered her friend’s suggestion. The hardness around her mouth softened and her skin color paled to a dead fish color.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Helen covered one of Lydia’s bony hands with a large fleshy one of her own. “Lydia, honey, that’s just normal nervousness on your part. But if Jack’s given no other choice, he’ll land on his feet and get a real job. I’m sure in no time he’ll be making three or four times what he’s making now and you’ll be able to live a more normal life. So what do you say, honey, should I start the ball rolling?”

  Lydia’s small gray eyes seemed lost as she stared into a corner of the room. As if coming out of a trance, she looked back at her friend and shook her head. “Give me a few days to think about it,” she said.

  The four teenage boys had snuck into Lloyd Jasper’s vegetable garden and were loading a shopping bag with ripe tomatoes when the retired schoolteacher stepped outside, a scowl developing slowly over his heavily-lined face.

  “What the hell you boys doing back there!” he yelled out as he squinted in their direction.

  The four teenagers started running, the bag only half-filled. Sam Parsons tried holding four tomatoes against his stomach as he sprinted away. Two of them fell loose. He ignored them and kept running.

  “Don’t think I don’t recognize you!” Lloyd Jasper yelled out at them. “Tony Morelli, I see you. You too, Sam Parsons. And you other two, I know who you are! Don’t think I won’t be calling your parents!”

  Before too long the boys were out of earshot of the retired schoolteacher. They kept running until they reached the woods bordering Crystal Pond where they had stashed their bikes. Panting hard from the run, they caught their breaths and consolidated the tomatoes Sam Parsons and Lester Durkin carried off with the half-filled shopping bag Tony Morelli had under his thick arm. Morelli leered at Lester and said, “So Weedpuller, you still in on this, right? You’re not backin’ down ’cause we’ve been made by that old prick, right?”

  Lester’s mouth turned sullen. “Fuck you. I’m doing this. And quit calling me Weedpuller.”

  “You do this, you lose that name. Until then you’re Weedpuller. Right, Sam?”

  “Exactly.” Sam Parsons smiled nervously, his face flushed with perspiration. “Weedpuller does this with us, he gets a new name.”

  Morelli winked at Carl Ashworth. “You agree, too?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” Carl said.

  “Then what the fuck are we waiting for?” Morelli asked gleefully, a malicious gleam shining in his dark eyes. He pulled his bike off the ground and rode off, carrying the bag full of tomatoes. The other boys got on their bikes and followed. Morelli led the way along the dirt path around the pond, then across woods until they reached the road leading to the Caretaker’s cabin. As they rode past the cabin Lester lowered himself on his bike and tried to shield his face from view, hoping neither Bert or his mom saw him. When Morelli pulled onto the path leading to Lorne Field, he turned back to leer at his companions, then raced on until he pulled up to the edge of Lorne Woods.

  The other three boys caught up to him and they divvied up the tomatoes. Lester Durkin, Sam Parsons and Carl Ashworth all took off their shirts and used them as makeshift sacks to carry theirs while Morelli held onto the bag. Morelli pointed out where in the woods he wanted each of his co-conspirators to go. “You know how far it is to the field?” he asked Lester. Morelli’s round dark face was frozen in a heavy leer, but a wavering in his eyes betrayed his bravado. Lester shrugged and told him he had no idea.

  “You’ve never been there before?”

  “No. What made you think I would have?”

  “I don’t know. I would’ve thought your old man would’ve taken you sometime.” Morelli paused before showing a nasty smirk. “After all, he’s got to teach you how to pull weeds since you are the Weedpuller. But I guess you get practice pulling your own weed every night when you’re alone.”

  Lester tried shoving Morelli but didn’t budge him. “Quit calling me that!”

  “You try that again,” Morelli said, “and I’ll shove one of these tomatoes down your throat. Understand?”

  Carl Ashworth put an arm around Morelli’s thick frame and guided him to the side. “Come on, man,” Carl said, “this is going to be fucking awesome. Let’s just get to it.”

  Morelli glared menacingly at Lester before turning to Carl Ashworth and Sam Parsons. “Stay hidden until the signal, okay?” He hesitated for a moment, and then looked back at Lester, a tenseness momentarily weakening his smirk.

  “You’re sure the field’s this way?” Morelli asked.

  “That’s the direction my dad heads off every morning,” Lester said.

  With that the four of them ran into the woods, moving quickly at first, then slowing down as they crept closer to the field. Lester tried to keep low to the ground and hidden behind trees and rocks. After a while he could see the field and his dad in the middle of it. He tried keeping even closer to the ground as he edged forward, crawling to a thick oak tree sitting on the edge of the field. When he got to the tree he hid behind it, his heart beating like a drum in his chest, pounding so hard it felt like it was going to explode out of him. But the wild panic he felt at first was replaced by humiliation as he watched his dad walking up and down that field pulling weeds. He wanted to run up to his dad and pummel him for making him such a joke to his friends but he stayed where he was, tears flooding his eyes as he watched his dad work his way up and down the field, moving a little closer with each pass.

  When his dad was within ninety feet of him Morelli threw the first tomato. It whistled past his dad’s ear. That was the signal, and it brought a hail of tomatoes flying at his dad. One hit him flush in the jaw, another took his baseball cap off, a half dozen more hit him in the body. As the tomatoes splattered off him he almost tumbled over, then he turned to face them, his eyes dumb as if he had no clue what was happening. Furious over the ridiculousness of his dad, Lester started throwing his tomatoes, missing wildly several times before hitting his dad square in the nose with one. It almost knocked his dad off his feet but he recovered his footing and shook his fist in Lester’s direction.

  “You dumb asses!” his dad yelled, his face a bright red, partly from the tomatoes, mostly from blinding rage. “You’re violating the contract! Goddamn you all!”

  By then Lester was crying. Crying from the humiliation, disgust and fear. He could hear his friends laughing like hyenas as they took off back to their bikes. With tears streaming down his face, Lester ran after them.

  At firs
t Jack Durkin was too mad to see straight. Those juvenile punk bastards. Sneaking up on him like that to pelt him with tomatoes. This was how they were going to show their gratitude for him saving their sorry asses each day? This was the respect they had for him? And goddamn it, they violated the contract! Didn’t they know what they were messin’ with? All he wanted to do was chase them down and beat the living tar out of each and every one of them. Even after he wiped away the tomato all he could see was a thick red haze. When this haze finally lifted and he could see straight again, he took several steps towards the woods but stopped cold when he realized what was left of the tomatoes thrown at him were lying among the Aukowies.

  He turned and stared in horror, knowing the Aukowies were sucking the juices out of the tomato remains. In the dead still air, he was sure he could hear the slurping noises they made. For a long moment he stood paralyzed and watched.

  Those damn fools, he thought. Didn’t they know they’d be feeding these Aukowies? With good reason the contract don’t allow food to be brought onto Lorne Field. Goddamn reckless fools!

  He snapped out of whatever trance he had fallen into and quickly touched his face, then checked his fingers to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. According to the Book of Aukowies, human blood drove Aukowies wild with desire and made them grow like crazy. With some relief he saw that the only wet sticky stuff dripping from his face was juice from the tomatoes. He grabbed away from the Aukowies whatever tomato pieces they hadn’t absorbed yet and made a note of which ones had most likely feasted on the tomatoes. He focused his weeding efforts on them. They were already stronger and tougher than they should’ve been at that height. He had to be more careful with them, first pinning them under his foot, then digging around them so he could get a better grip of their root. He was amazed at how much thicker they had gotten and how much more muscle he had to use to pull them out of the ground, but eventually he got them all.

  When he was done he picked up his baseball cap. A large rip had split it. Scowling at the cap, he shoved it into his back pocket, then scoured the field to make sure all the tomato pieces had been picked up and that no nourishment was left behind for the next wave of Aukowies.

  Standing there, he felt exhausted. He touched his nose and winced. His hand shook as he moved it down to his jaw and felt how hard and swollen the area was where he’d been hit. Damn those punk kids to hell, he thought. The whole incident left him worn out and tired. His knees buckled a bit, his legs feeling as if bags of wet sand had been tied to them. All he wanted to do was to lie down somewhere and take a nap. He looked out at the remaining section of the field that still needed weeding, and then back at the rest of the field already showing new Aukowies sprouting out. Sighing heavily he lifted his sack over his shoulder and continued with his day’s work.

  Chapter 3

  Jack Durkin’s day usually ended at seven, but it wasn’t until eight o’clock that night he finished his third pass of the field and emptied the sack into a stone pit behind Lorne Field, adding to the small mountain of Aukowies picked earlier that day. Kerosene wasn’t needed. Just throw a match on the Aukowie remains and they lit up as if they’d been soaked in gasoline. The contract required him to watch them burn, so after setting a match to the remains, he stood and watched the flames shoot skyward. After the fire died out he gathered up the ashes, mixed them with lime and buried them. Then he headed home.

  At a quarter to nine Durkin stepped through his front door, too bone-tired at first to do anything but glare angrily at his wife. He would’ve fallen over when he took off his work boots except he was able to throw out his right hand and grasp the wall and keep himself on his feet. Lydia’s color paled to a dead white as she watched him.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, her voice unusually brittle.

  He shot her a withering look, then hobbled past her and collapsed into a worn imitation-leather recliner that had been patched up in places with duct tape.

  “You ain’t going to tell me what happened?” Lydia demanded, a hot white anger chasing out whatever concern she had felt moments earlier.

  “Get me a bucket of hot water first,” Durkin said. “My damn feet are swollen to twice their size.”

  “Oh, no! You tell me what happened or you just sit there and rot! I’ve been worrying half to death the last hour!”

  Durkin stared at her, his mouth moving as if he were chewing gum. Finally, whatever internal dialogue he had been engaged in ended and his lips closed, his eyes livid.

  “You want to know what happened?” he forced himself to say. “I’ll tell you what happened. Some punk kids violated the contract, that’s what happened. They nearly got me killed. And not just me, this whole goddamn world too.”

  “How’d they do that?”

  “How’d they do that? By violating the contract, that’s how.” Jack Durkin gripped the armrests of his chair and pulled himself up so he was sitting straight. His leathery tanned skin looked waxen as waves of indignation rolled through him. He could barely sit still he was so mad. “Those damn fool kids snuck down to Lorne Field, that’s how.” Hurt and embarrassed, his voice trailed off into a hoarse whisper as he added, “They threw tomatoes at me, goddamit. They threw tomatoes at me.”

  Lydia’s jaw dropped open. She stood gaping at him, and all at once burst out laughing. She doubled over as tears of laughter streamed down her face. She almost collapsed to the floor she laughed so hard, her small bony hands holding her stomach.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  She nodded, her body still convulsing too much for her to say anything. Durkin’s lips pressed into thin bloodless lines as he watched his borderline hysterical wife. Gasping for air, she said, “You bet I find that funny. Boys throwing tomatoes at you almost killed you, huh? And that almost killed off the world? Jesus, is that funny. Thanks, I needed the laugh.”

  “One of them tomatoes almost knocked me off my feet.”

  “And that would’ve killed you?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. ‘You ain’t worth wasting my breath on. Now get me that bucket of hot water for my feet!”

  “Get your own bucket. And there’s macaroni and cheese on the stove. You can get that for yourself too.”

  Lydia walked out of the room laughing to herself, weaving as if she were drunk. Durkin sat fuming, too angry and tired for several minutes to do anything other than sit where he was. Gritting his teeth and with his arms shaking he pushed himself to his feet. He took a crippled, hobbling step towards the kitchen, stopped, and instead turned and headed towards the basement door, moving as if he were walking barefoot on sharp stones. A narrow wooden staircase led to an unfinished dirt basement, the ceiling low enough that he had to crouch as he moved around down there. Using a flashlight he found the two stones along the back wall that he was looking for. With a little bit of muscle he slid them out. Behind them was a wooden box that held the contract for the Caretaker of Lorne Field. Durkin brushed off his hands and took the contract out of the box. He tried to read it with his flashlight but was squinting too much and couldn’t make it out. He put the box back into its hiding place and replaced the stones. Grimacing from the pain radiating through his feet, he gingerly held the vellum paper by its edges and headed back upstairs. Once he was out of the basement, he hobbled to the head of the staircase leading to the second floor and bellowed for his two boys to come downstairs. Bert emerged from the boys’ bedroom and asked him what he wanted.

  “Get my reading glasses from my night table drawer, and get your ass down here.”

  Bert nodded and disappeared into his parent’s bedroom. He reappeared a minute or so later grinning stupidly and holding a pair of glasses. Before he could take a step down the stairs, Durkin stopped him, asking him if he knew where his brother was.

  “Lester’s watching TV.”

  “Tell him to get his ass down here, too!”

  Bert disappeared again. Durkin heard his younger son tell Lester that he was wanted dow
nstairs, then heard Lester complain that he was busy watching one of his shows and to tell dad he’d be down later. Durkin yelled out for Bert to tell his brother that unless he wanted to watch TV standing up and holding an icepack to his bottom he’d better do as he was told, ’cause if he had to go upstairs that’d be the only way Lester would be comfortable enough afterwards to watch anything. Even though both boys heard what was yelled, he heard Bert repeat it to Lester, then Lester complaining and bitching and moaning about it all the way to the top of the stairs. When his older boy saw him, his eyes went blank and his mouth formed into a small hurt oval. He asked what was so important.

  “I want you two boys down here now,” Durkin ordered brusquely. “I got something important to say to both of you.”

  Bert good-naturedly raced down the stairs, but Lester grumbled as he walked down them, moving as if he were as exhausted as Durkin felt. Durkin couldn’t help feeling a pang of regret that the boys’ births hadn’t been reversed. Even though Bert was small-framed, he would’ve made a fine caretaker, but Durkin had his doubts whether Lester was of the proper material.

  Well, the boy will just have to grow into it, Jack Durkin thought solemnly. If he didn’t, God help us all. He moved back to the recliner and sat, trying to hide from his boys how damned tired he felt. After Bert handed him his reading glasses, Durkin told him to fetch him a bucket of hot water and Epsom salts for his feet, then directed Lester to get him a plate of macaroni and cheese and something to drink. “Afterwards you two take a seat on that sofa. I got something important to say to the both of you.”

  Bert raced into the kitchen. Lester continued to grumble to himself, hands shoved deep into his pants pockets. Durkin sighed to himself as he watched him. This was going to have to change. Somehow that boy was going to have to develop the right attitude. He slipped his reading glasses on and read through the contract until he found the clause he was looking for. Grimly he reread it. It was as he thought.