MAY 17, 2019 – Yesterday was our lawnmower’s first outing of the season. I poured fresh gasoline into the tank, pressed the choke button nine times, pulled the starter cord just once, and VRROOOOM!
With such luck I imagined being the starting pitcher of the season opener, at home, throwing my first pitch; a 98.7 MPH fastball right down the middle for a big swing and a miss—so big I could feel the wind all the way to the mound.
The fans roared.
As I returned to reality and pushed the mower back and forth across the yard, my mind wandered to a time decades ago when every week a guy named Guy mowed our lawn.
Guy’s last name was “Bengtson,” and we always referred to him by both names as if they were one, as in “Guybengtson.” He wore work boots, denim overalls, a light blue long-sleeve cotton shirt, and on particularly hot, sunny days, a big, broad, straw hat. He owned few teeth, and after he finished mowing, my sisters and I chased around with our lips curled over our teeth, and imitated his most popular phrase: “I tell you what, mishush, I tell you what,” which is how he prefaced every remark to Mother.
Just before Guybengtson arrived to mow, Mother sent me out to the yard to collect sticks, since the old oak trees shed lots of twigs. “Guybengtson likes to mow grass, not sticks,” she told me. “Sticks aren’t good for his lawnmower.”
Guybengtson’s lawnmower was so old it had a wrap-around starter cord, which he tied to the handle. The mower, along with a gas can on which only a few flecks of red paint remained, were hauled around on a rickety trailer. The trailer was hitched to Guybengtson’s ancient car, but the car was not always the same ancient car. Periodically, Guybengtson appeared in an old car different from the one of a few weeks before and announced to Mother that he had “bought a new car.”
From what Mother determined was a safe distance, I watched Guybengtson do his work and marveled at how he could make our lawn look so fresh and new.
At the end of his weekly mission, Guybengtson rested out on the back steps of our garage. I joined him and watched curiously as he rolled his own cigarette.
Guybengtson lived in a small, isolated shack on the edge of a cornfield just east of town. Whenever we drove past, someone in the car would point out the unpainted hovel. I wondered what Guybengtson had done all his years; where he’d started life; how he’d wound up in that house; how he’d gotten into the business of mowing lawns. One sad day a few years later, however, I was to learn only how Guybengtson’s life had ended.
Soon after Dad arrived home from work, I overheard him say to Mother, “Yeah, terrible. Lit up a cigarette next to a gas pump and boom! That was the end of Guybengtson.”
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
