As the priest left the altar and people started leaving the long blond-wood pews and heading down the aisle toward the front doors, Uchenna craned her neck to see if she could get any glimpse of Jimmy. She thought she saw somebody with a shell suit like his heading out the doors behind several adults wearing sweat suits very like it: but by the time she got to the door herself and had a chance to look around, that whole group of people was gone. Never mind. Gotta get home, get changed, get the lawn mower ready…
The first part of this didn’t take her long, and the whole time she was conscious of her Mam and Dad watching her with mild amusement at their suddenly go-getter daughter. But Uchenna didn’t let on—just sat down in her jeans and sweatshirt and ate a bowl of cereal, then headed out to the shed and pulled the mower out onto the grass, turning it over, as her Dad had shown her, to make sure it had enough cord wrapped around the spool underneath for the work they’d have to do today.
“Hey Chen!”
Uchenna looked up toward the driveway. There came Emer, running a little early as usual, wearing baggy cargo pants and a sweatshirt like Uchenna’s and carrying a plastic bag stuffed full of more bags. Behind her, a little further down the driveway, his hands in his pockets as always but looking around him innocently, was Jimmy. He glanced at the house as he came by—a little nervously, Uchenna thought.
“So we ready?” he said.
“Yep,” she said. “Let’s do it. Here—” She pointed him at the mower. “When you drag it, lean it on its front: that’s where the little wheels are. It doesn’t hover until you plug it in.”
In company—Uchenna carrying the bags and a rake, Jimmy trundling the mower along, Emer walking beside him, carrying the mower’s cord—the three of them started their progress around the circle.
The first stop was next door with the Powerses, whose three little girls were all in infants’ classes at Uchenna’s school: her Mam and Mrs. Powers let Uchenna babysit them sometimes in the afternoons between when school let out and when Mrs. Powers got home from work. But when Uchenna rang the front doorbell and Mrs. Powers opened the front door, the silence inside was surprising.
“Oh, hallo, Uchenna, but you’ve missed them, “ Mrs. Powers said. “Their dad took them out to the movies right after church.”
Uchenna grinned. “It’s okay,” she said, “I didn’t come over to play with them. Can we mow your lawn?”
Mrs. Powers glanced at the mower and at Jimmy and Emer, then smiled slightly. “How much are you charging?”
“Five Euros,” Jimmy said immediately.
Uchenna was astounded, not only that Jimmy was speaking out of turn like this, but that neither she nor Emer had thought about how much they were going to be charging. She turned around to stare at him. He just grinned back.
Uchenna looked back at Mrs. Powers. “Five Euro, huh,” said Mrs. Powers, in that tone of voice grownups sometimes used when they already had their minds made up about something and were trying to get you to break a sweat over it. “…Sure I guess that’s reasonable enough,” Mrs. Powers said after a moment. “You’re going to take the clippings away too, are you?”
Emer held up the bags and the rake.
“Well, aren’t you three organized,” Mrs. Powers said. “All right, go make yourselves busy. Ring the bell when you’re done.” She closed the door. “Jay,” they heard her saying to Mr. Powers, “isn’t that cute, the neighbors’ kids…”
Uchenna turned around to have a look at the front lawn, and also glanced around the circle at the houses’ driveways. “Let’s do the back first,” she said. “Then the front. A lot of these people went out for lunch or something after church and they’re not back yet—but some more will be when we’re finishing. Let ‘em have a good look at us being all helpful. And you —”
She gave Jimmy a look as they headed up the path from the Powers’s driveway and into their back yard. “What?”
“You were real quick about the money.”
“Good thing I was,” he said, “‘cause you hadn’t even thought about it.”
Emer giggled. Uchenna was a little annoyed, but this wasn’t the time to be showing it. She paused as they came into the back yard and saw what she’d been sure they’d see: eight million brightly colored kids’ toys scattered around in the long glass. “Come on,” she said, “we’ve gotta pick these up before we can start.”
It took them less time than they’d taken to mow the lawn yesterday: they were beginning to develop a method. At first Uchenna mowed and Jimmy helped keep the mower cord from getting tangled or in the way of the mower (which was always a problem): Emer raked up clippings that the mower didn’t suck up into its basket, and emptied the basket into the plastic bags when it was full. Then they would change jobs partway through, though there was always a little squabbling over who got to push the mower—possibly the easiest and coolest job, though keeping the mower going in a straight line had its challenges, especially when you suddenly realized you were about to run over some toy that had been hidden in the grass. The whole business took them about an hour: and though they were all hot and sweaty when they were finished, Mrs. Powers looked really pleased with them—she’d apparently been watching out one of her back windows. She came out when they were finished and gave them two Euro each.
“Uh, but I said five,” Uchenna said.
Mrs. Powers smiled at her. “Hard to divide five by three,” she said. “I mean, you can do it, but think about making change! No, you deserve it. Go on with you. And thanks!”
They headed down the Powers’s driveway, grinning at each other in satisfaction. “At this rate,” Emer said, “we’ll be done by three.”
And it looked as if they might. The next couple of houses along either had their own mowers or didn’t need their lawns done: but over in the next circle, the people in the house with the broken wall needed theirs done, and didn’t mind paying six Euro: “Two for each of us…” Uchenna said, and the guy who answered the door nodded and smiled as if this made perfect sense. This time the work went even faster, because the yard in back had a lot of flower beds and less grass. “Maybe even by two thirty…!” Emer said as she came back from putting the bags of grass on the outside of the wall, where they would pick them up later when they were done and it was time to feed the horses.
“Maybe!” Uchenna said. She was becoming less concerned about how fast things happened, and more concerned about the six Euro in her pocket. It’s gonna take a while before I could afford an iPod doing this, she thought. But it’s not about the iPod. It’s about the Mammy Horse…
They trundled along to the next house that had a car in the driveway—they’d been skipping the ones that didn’t, since everybody here had a car. Jimmy was grousing a little, since it was his turn to drag the mower, and the tiny size of its wheels made this an annoying job. Emer was teasing him about his complaining as Uchenna made her way up the path through the weedy, overgrown lawn. She went up the steps and rang the doorbell.
After a long pause an oldish lady answered the door. Over her dress she was wearing a wraparound navy-blue housecoat of the kind that some old people around here still put on when they were cleaning. She frowned at the three of them, and Uchenna immediately got a bad feeling about her. The lady had one of those faces that looked like it hadn’t smiled in a long time.
“So what is it?” the lady said.
“We’re mowing people’s lawns,” Uchenna said. “Six Euro for both the front and the back. Would you like us to do yours?”
The woman looked closely at Uchenna, as if there was something wrong with her eyes: then past her. “That fall off the back of a lorry, did it?” said the neighbor.
Uchenna looked at the neighbor: but she wasn’t looking at Uchenna, or the mower—she was looking at Jimmy. He was meeting her eyes with a scowl.
“It’s my mower, missus,” Uchenna said.
Mrs. Housecoat kept that suspicious look trained on Jimmy for a couple moments more, then turned it on Uchenna, as i
f suddenly seeing her in a new light. It wasn’t an expression that Uchenna particularly liked. “Is it indeed.” She turned her attention back to Jimmy. “Better make sure it stays that way, then.” She blew out an annoyed breath. “No, don’t need the lawn mowed, thanks very much.” And she shut the door, and left all of them looking around them at a lawn that was half a foot high, well starred with dandelions going to seed and endless other weeds.
“Idiot,” Emer said under her breath. Uchenna was still working out what had just happened. But Jimmy had no doubts. “Dumb bint,” he said, turning his back on the house and walking away. “I knew this was going to happen.”
“What?” Uchenna said as they headed away toward the next house.
“That.” Jimmy nodded his head back toward the house behind them. “She’s callin’ all the neighbors right now. Tellin’ them, look out, one of them knackers is around tryin to see where your stuff is, whether your windows are locked, have you got a gate on your back yard and could somebody get through it real quiet in the middle of the night? Just another scam. Don’t let ‘em in your yard to scope you out, you’d be an idiot—”
“Oh, come on,” Uchenna said. And indeed, at the next house, which belonged to people Uchenna knew, her dad’s friends the Johnsons, they had no problem: mowed the lawn, collected their fee, and headed on around the circle. But at the fourth house, and the fifth, and the sixth, something seemed to have gone wrong, despite the fact that their lawns were raggy and really needed tidying up, despite the fact that those people knew Uchenna well. Suddenly excuses were everywhere. It was too soon to mow the lawn after the recent rains, or it was too late: one family’s dad had just put lawn feed down and it was too soon to mow, another house’s dad was going to mow it himself (though Uchenna knew for a fact that they didn’t have a lawn mower and borrowed it from neighbors, and was sometimes very late about returning it. But every time somebody came to the door to talk to the kids, they looked at Jimmy before they came up with these excuses.
“It’s ‘The Valley of the Squinting Windows’ all over again,” Emer muttered as they headed into the next circle.
The reference was to a story they all had to read in school, about a small town where the neighbors all endlessly peeked out the curtains and spied on each other, and did nothing else of any use whatsoever. Uchenna wasn’t willing to agree at first. But when they next went to old Mrs. DeWolfe’s house—Mrs. DeWolfe, who knew and liked Uchenna, and gave her cake even when she came visiting without her Mam—and who now stood at the door looking out on a lawn that badly needed mowing, and said, “I don’t know, dear,” while looking at Jimmy—it was more than Uchenna could bear.
“What’s the matter?” Uchenna said, for they only needed this one house to have made the five “mows” that were their goal for the day. “You’d think we had the plague or something. We just want to mow your lawn!”
“Yes, well—” Mrs. DeWolfe looked uncomfortable, like an adult debating whether to explain sex to you. “You want to be, you know, careful, about who you’re around with—”
Uchenna had been getting angrier and angrier about this all afternoon. “That’s what everybody said about my kind here,” she said very quietly, though she wanted to shout it, “not so long ago.”
Mrs. DeWolfe looked stricken. “Oh but dear,” she said. “That’s entirely different, you know—” Her voice went as quiet as Uchenna’s. “It’s not like you’re not local, you live here, you own a house, but—”
“If you have to have a house to be a good person,” Uchenna said, “then I guess Jesus is in trouble, because He just wandered around the place all the time: didn’t He say He didn’t have anywhere to lay His head?” She turned away, very angry. What is the matter with people?! Mrs. DeWolfe, you have so blown it with me!
“Never mind,” Uchenna said to Emer and Jimmy at the bottom of the walk, steaming past them. “We’ve got enough. Let’s go get rid of the grass.”
They made their way back to Uchenna’s to drop the mower off. By the time they got back, Uchenna had calmed down a little: she was able to shout in the door when they got back, “We’re done, Mam, we’re going out for a while now!—” without sounding like she wanted to kill somebody.
“Okay, sweet…” said the voice from the living room. Uchenna shut the door and headed down the driveway after the others. Emer was already heading for the next circle and the hole in the wall: Jimmy was behind her, head down, still looking furious.
On the other side of the wall they glanced at the first batch of grass Emer had left there. “Let’s go get the furthest ones and bring them back first,” Emer said. “These closer ones we can save for tomorrow, so we won’t have to go so far on a school day.”
They went back to where the furthest bags had been left and each picked up two of them: then made their way back through the field and across the Condom Ditch. As Uchenna pushed through the hedge, she saw the Mammy Horse’s head come up from where she’d been nosing the ground: and she walked straight toward Uchenna, casual but obviously expecting lunch.
They emptied out the bags on the ground, and the horses were shortly eating hungrily. Uchenna’s hair was all soaked with sweat: she wiped more sweat out of her eyes for the twentieth time since they’d started the trek across the field. It was unbelievable how heavy two bags of grass were. “At least they were still here…” she said.
“Yeah,” Emer said, dusting herself off: like the others, she was well sprinkled with bits of mowed grass.
They all stood there a while and watched the horses eat. Though it was satisfying, it didn’t reverse Uchenna’s feelings about some of the things that had happened that afternoon. “Hey,” she said to Jimmy.
He looked at her, his hands in his pockets, his head a little down again.
“She was an idiot,” Uchenna said. “I’m really sorry.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Happens every day,” he said wearily. “Better hope we got enough grass today to last till tomorrow or so… ‘cause you’re going to get a lot more of Mrs. Housecoat tomorrow after school, and I don’t think you’re going to mow five more lawns while I’m around.”
Emer was looking at him sadly. Then she caught herself, and her face went neutral again. “If nobody comes and feeds these guys tomorrow,” she said, “or nobody besides us, I think we’d better call somebody. The ISPCA or something. They can’t just be out by themselves, especially when she’s like she is…”
She nodded at the Mammy Horse, who was eating her way steadily through one of the spilled-out piles of grass. “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “It’s got to be real soon for her…”
A few more moments of silence passed, broken only by the steady munching of horses. “Oh feck,” Uchenna said, “I forgot to bring them more apples.”
“We’ll go see Mr. Mallon tomorrow,” Emer said. “He’ll know who to call.”
Uchenna nodded. “That sound right to you?” she said to Jimmy.
He looked at her in surprise.
“You were smart to think of the money,” Uchenna said. “You’ve been a good part of this plot. You get a say.”
Jimmy nodded almost as if this was something he’d expected. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” And then he snickered. “Be funny to go see the Old Man without getting in trouble first.”
They watched the horses a while more, then turned and headed back through the hedge and across the Condom Ditch. “It’ll be a shame,” Emer said, “when the ISPCA or whoever owns them comes and takes them away. This has been kind of fun.”
“Yeah,” Uchenna said. “Oh, here—” She reached into her pocket while they were still well out of the view of any house and pulled the money out, divided it up amongst them. “We got something out of it, anyway.” She glanced back over her shoulder and thought she caught just a glimpse of something pale: the Mammy Horse’s head, maybe? And the thought, She might be gone tomorrow, and I won’t know what happened with her and her baby… actually hurt when it occurred to her.
“We could
keep doing the mowing thing, though…” Emer said.
“Too much work!” Jimmy said.
“You’re just a skiver,” Emer said.
Uchenna slowed down, looking over her shoulder again, as the other two went ahead, slagging each other off. Why am I sad? It’s just some horses. But they had become more than that somehow, and Uchenna couldn’t understand just what, or how.
She turned again. Emer and Jimmy hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t behind them: they were halfway down the field already. Uchenna let out a long breath and ran after them.
*
Uchenna was up late that night, finishing the homework that she hadn’t done earlier in the weekend. Fortunately it was mostly reading, and a lot of the material was online. She started wishing, though, that she hadn’t left it until dark: for some of the details about the old holiday of Samhain were kind of creepy.
It was a harvest feast, but also a feast of the dead and the spirits of death. Meals were set out for the dead souls, grain was locked up so that the more malicious ghosts couldn’t hurt it, and there were sacrifices. Some of them were of horses. In fact, horses came into the Samhain stories in a number of places. One website full of the history of the feast said that horses were supposed to be messengers between the world of the living and the world of the dead, bearers of gifts to the good or revenge on the bad: and these horses, Uchenna noted a little uneasily, were usually white. The Celtic goddess of horses, Epona, had also been one of those who also went back and forth between the worlds, and Samhain was one of those times when, for her and other strange beings, the passage was supposed to be easier than usual. Things slipped through the cracks in the world, demons and imps and mean-tempered sprites: and before the pumpkin came along, people carved turnips into little weird-faced lanterns to try to frighten the nastier spirits away. The Irish Hallowe’en was not the jolly trick-or-treat kind that had been gradually arriving from America, full of cackling humorous witches on broomsticks and goofy carved jack-o-lanterns. It was much older, much darker, more haunted.