Chapter 12

“There a call for you,” his mother cried from the foot of the stairs. “Come on. She’s waiting.”

Rigby put the top on the bottle of model plane dope and hurried down to the telephone. It was a Mrs. Rogers, one of his newspaper customers. She wanted him to come and cut her lawn since her son had been drafted, and she couldn’t find anybody to do the job. She sounded anxious, worried.

“Sure, sure, be glad to. You have a mower don’t you? OK, OK I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

‘What was that?” asked his mother as he sat and tied his shoes, his white Chucks.

“Nice lady, always pays on time, wants me to cut her grass. I forgot my name and phone number are on the receipts.”

“Do a good job,” said his mother as he hurried out. She smiled. It was the first time she had seen him excited about anything since Alan died.

It wasn’t a big lawn but there was a birdbath in the middle of the back yard and a bunch of flower gardens along one edge and a big holly tree in a corner so it took some careful mowing. And the grass was pretty high, like it hadn’t been cut for a month or so. Rigby raked it up into a pile in the driveway and Mrs. Rogers produced two big grocery-store bags that he filled. He had to recut some areas.

“You want me to trim around the gardens?” he asked her when he was done, dripping sweat and feeling pretty good.

She smiled and said, “No, no, I’ll do that. You did a good job. She handed him a five-dollar bill. “Thank you. Can you come back in a couple of weeks and do it again?”

“Sure, sure, but this s too much.” He tried to hand her back the money.

“No, it’s just right. The grass was much too high and you did all that raking. You keep it.” She smiled and closed the door.

Rigby put the five in his pocket and walked home, thinking. He knew that there were people who worked for a couple of dollars a day, maids and yard men, what some people called day workers, they got a couple of dollars plus what was usually called “car fare”- money for the bus or streetcar ... And he knew that soda jerks and store clerks seldom made five dollars a day. He had seen the help-wanted signs offering fifty cents an hour. Ford was paying five dollars a day to his factory workers before the war, the boy recalled reading that somewhere. Five dollars was a lot of money. He had worked for about an hour and half and it was hot and he did sweat, but five bucks, wow. It took ten or twelve days on the paper route to make that.

The next day, when he delivered the Star to the Rogers’ home, the lady was standing on the porch so he walked up and handed her the paper.

“Do you know the Sandersons?” she asked. “The folks next door.” She pointed.

“Uh uh,” he said. “They don’t subscribe.”

“Well she saw you out cutting my lawn, and she would like to talk to you about doing hers. She had a man but he got a better job or something. Anyhow, I told her I’d ask you.” She smiled.

“Thanks, OK,” Rigby said and he walked to the neighbor’s house and rang the bell.

“Ah, the grass cutter,” the lady said with a smile when she opened the door. “Just what I need. Will you cut my lawn and trim the walk for two-fifty? That’s what I paid the man who did it.”

“Sure, that’s fair,” said the boy. “Two-fifty, OK.”

“When can you do it. It been growing fast lately with all this rain. Oh, and I don’t own a mower; he had one.”

“Sure,” Rigby said, “tomorrow morning unless it rains again. That OK?”

“Yes, fine. I’m glad I saw you.”

“Me too,” the boy said with a smile.

He finished his paper route and took off his shoes. “Guess what, Mom?”

“You’re going to straighten your room.”

“Ha ha, Mom, no, I got a job, cutting a lawn on Elm. Can I use our lawnmower?”

“Sure. You might put some oil on it, maybe sharpen the blades. Hasn’t been done for a while. Your father used to do it every month I think. But now it’s your job, so oil it.”

Rigby found the file on the workbench in the garage and worked on the lawnmower’s blades that way he had seen his father do it and then oiled the wheels and reel thoroughly, putting several drops in every little hole he could find ... He then went back to work on his P-51, a project that had now lasted about six months off and on. He finished doping the fuselage, set it aside and suddenly remembered Alan. He had known what “dihedral” meant which kind of surprised Rigby. He had looked it up in the big dictionary in the school library. I wonder how that happened, that accident, what it felt like. Rigby shivered.

At supper his father asked about the lawn cutting. “You know, if you make enough money, you’ll have to pay taxes, income tax.”

“Really,” said the boy, “I didn’t think kids had to pay.”

“Ho, ho,” said his father with a smile. “Everybody pays and now they take it out of your pay before you get it; withholding they call it. Which reminds me, you don’t have a social security card, do you?”

Rigby frowned and shook his head.

“I’ll get you the form at work. You really should have one. Your mother does.”

The next day a man stopped Rigby up near the police station. “Got a minute?” he asked loudly as he came out on his porch to pick up his paper.

“Sure,” the boy said and trotted over to stand near the porch steps.

“Saw you cutting grass t’other day, down yonder when I was out walking the old dog. Like to make some money, do my lawn? I done ruined my myself, got a hernia somehow; gut pops out like a gopher.”

“Uh uh,” said Rigby, shaking his head. “That hill you’ve got out back, that’s too much for me.”

“Tain’t hard, got to mow it sideways. I’ll show you how. Come on, ain’t you a boy scout or something, always helpful?” He chuckled.

Rigby and the elderly man walked around to the back yard and looked at the terraced hillside. “See there, you jus’ push yer mower up an’ start at the top,” the man said, pointing, “go side to side. Gravity helps, honest. I’ve done it for thirty years, got a good mower, set high. Give’ya three bucks”

“Make it four. You’ve got a big yard.” It was a double lot with a big, overgrown Victory Garden in the side yard.

The old man stuck out his gnarled hand and Rigby shook it. “Good boy,” he said, “that’s OK, four dollars, that’s fair. Now what d’you think `bout old Rosey-velt running agin, huh?”

“Only president I’ve known,” said Rigby, smiling and remembering arguments at elementary school recess four years ago. “He knows how to do it.”