One Fat Summer (3 page)

Rumson Lake is round with an island in the middle. The island has trees and an abandoned wooden shack. I'd never been on the island, but a lot of couples went there at night to make out. At night you could see the light of campfires. When there's a full moon, you could see canoes and rowboats bobbing along the shore of the island.

This morning the only action around the island was Vinnie and Pete Marino swimming their laps. Each of them had a red inner tube jerking along behind, tied to an ankle by rope. In case of a cramp, all they'd have to do is grab the tube and paddle in. Even great swimmers can get a cramp and drown.

The Marinos became great swimmers because
their oldest sister, Connie, got polio one summer. She spent months in the hospital, and when she went home she had to wear a brace on one leg. The doctors said she would never walk normally again. Mrs. Marino prayed for her recovery every single morning, in church. Then one day Mr. Marino, a big tough guy who owns a cement company in the city, went to church and told God that all he wanted out of life was to dance with Connie at her wedding, and if God did that for him then God could do anything he wanted with him.

I heard this story from my parents who heard it from Mr. Marino at a Community Association meeting.

Well, Mr. Marino heard a voice telling him to take Connie to the waters. Mrs. Marino thought it meant some place with holy waters, like Lourdes, but Mr. Marino said it meant Rumson Lake. And for the whole next summer every member of the family took turns holding Connie in the water; and first she could only float, and then she could kick her bad leg a little, and by the end of that summer she was swimming. The next summer
she was walking by herself, and now she hardly has a limp at all. That was ten years ago.

Because of all that swimming, everybody got to be pretty good. Vinnie was the star of his high school team, and Pete was the city butterfly champion. There's another brother coming up who's supposed to be the best of them all. If I do become a writer someday, that'll make a good story for the
Reader's Digest.

I watched the Marinos for a minute. They glided through the water like sharks, fast and steady, their arms cutting the water with every little splash. A light breeze stirred the water, and the morning sun glistened on the small, silvery waves.

I felt really good striding around the lake on the county road. The breeze was in my face, and I swung my arms in rhythm with my legs. A couple of times I waved to truck drivers. They always waved back. Someday I might drive a truck, a big one, with my sleeves rolled up to my shoulders and a baseball cap pulled down over my eyes. Truck drivers have adventures. Jack Smith, who used to drive a laundry truck, once jumped out of his rig, ran into a burning house
and saved a baby. When he got back to the garage the foreman started yelling at him for coming late. The way I heard the story from Joanie, Jack just stared at the foreman; he never said a word about what had happened, just sucked on his cigarette like Humphrey Bogart until the foreman was finished yelling. Then he threw his cigarette on the ground, rubbed it out with the toe of his boot, and knocked out the foreman with one punch. What a man! The boss was watching and fired Jack on the spot. Jack just turned and walked away. The next morning, when the boss read in the newspaper what Jack had done, he drove to the trailer where he lived and offered him his old job back, with a big raise. Jack told him what he could do with his job. I heard somewhere that Jack Smith has his own business now. I've got that story filed in the back of my mind, too. It would make a good short story for
The Saturday Evening Post.

I reached Dr. Kahn's lawn at exactly 8:47 by my wristwatch. It was probably 8:48. My watch always runs a minute slow because of my metabolism. That's the speed at which your body burns up energy. Once I took a test called a
Basal Metabolism. I lay in a doctor's office for an hour breathing into a rubber mouthpiece connected by a tube to a machine. My nose was clipped shut. Afterward, the doctor said I had a low normal Basal Metabolism, which means my body burns up food a little slower than most other bodies. That's why I put on weight easily. The doctor made a joke about it. He said I could walk into a bakery, and if I took too deep a breath, I'd gain a pound. My father and Michelle have high Basal Metabolisms, which means they could eat a pound of cake and burn it right off. That's why they're always bothering me about my weight, they don't understand the problem. My mother is a normal Basal Metabolism, so she sort of understands. The doctor told her that I'd probably start losing weight sometime in my teens, so she doesn't make such a big fuss about it. She's had a few arguments with my father about my weight. She thinks he needles me about it too much. I think my father's sort of ashamed of having a fat son. He wants me to be lean and athletic like he is.

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.

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 there 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.