Lawn Boy Returns: Chapters 14–19

The Abrupt Termination of Proven Liabilities, with Some Pain

“Look,” he said, “just think about it. I’m havin’ a few buddies over later ta, you know, hang out. Whyn’tcha come on out ta the rig, meet everyone, get some grub, and we can talk business?”

As I drove up to my house on my lawn mower, I saw that our driveway and most of the front yard were packed with rusted-out pieces of automobiles. It looked like a junkyard—no, a tailgate party for a really bad demolition derby.

Loose dogs were milling around. I was horrified to see that one of them was eating a child—but it turned out to be a doll. The dogs were peeing too, and Pasqual would probably burst into tears when he saw what these mangy beasts had done to his beautiful grass.

After a few loud minutes of people cursing, car motors grinding and backfiring, everyone had gone.

The Perils of Free Enterprise

As for me, hearing myself say it all out loud, one horrible fact after another, was almost too much. Even having resolved the Zed thing, and working as I was to fix the Bruiser situation, I felt like there were just too many problems. It would take a million years to make everything quiet and smooth like before.

“I’m sure it’s just a matter of explaining to the right people,” Mom said.
How could they be so serene and matter-of-fact about these disasters? Had I told the story right? My parents should have freaked out. That was what I was doing.

So I went to the garage to sit on my lawn mower. Only I was too riled up to sit. I kicked the tires and I pounded the seat.

I climbed back on the lawn mower to study the...proverb, I guess you’d call it. It sounded familiar. It sounded like Grandma.

Had Grandpa been trying to tell me to run away to sea? I hoped not, because I get seasick really easily and, from what I hear, boats seem to require endless repairs and maintenance, and I was already at the edge of my performance envelope making sure the lawn mower had enough gas and oil. I’m just not machine oriented.

I wiped it down, making sure to remove clods of dried mud and clumps of grass from the undercarriage and chipping the dried dirt off the pictures of the rabbit and the turtle. The lawn mower had seen better days, but in the dim light of the overhead bulb in the garage, it seemed to glow.

The Theorem of What Comes Next

I started to count the days until we could get back home and I could start school. I didn’t even mind the prospect of facing trig.

I was getting better at translating Grandma-speak and asked, “Was this Grandpa’s too?”
“Yes. Your grandpa loved ice cream. He always said no one ever matched his vanilla kumquat recipe, which just goes to show that wooden shoe trees don’t help a bit when it’s time to vote.”

The Axiom of Shifting Paradigms

The Axiom of Shifting Paradigms

“I thought you’d be angry with me. Or disappointed,” I told him.
“Not at all. I blame myself, if you want to know the truth. I kept forgetting you were only twelve and I put responsibilities and obligations on you and made you vulnerable to all sorts of issues and problems that would break a grown man. I just got so caught up in the beauty of the system and how groovy it was all working out.”

“I thought you’d be angry with me. Or disappointed,” I told him.
“Not at all. I blame myself, if you want to know the truth. I kept forgetting you were only twelve and I put responsibilities and obligations on you and made you vulnerable to all sorts of issues and problems that would break a grown man. I just got so caught up in the beauty of the system and how groovy it was all working out.”

"...Pasqual and the rest of the crew and Joey Pow and the office staff all invest with me. I’ve been conservative, in this market, but even so they’re not hurting for additional sources of income on top of salary and wages.”

“In the heat of the moment, I forgot to tell you that she had given me forty dollars to invest awhile back, and, well, luck with investments sure does run in your family. We’ve turned that modest amount into quite a little nest egg. Nothing along the lines of what you’ve made, of course—that would be impossible. But enough so that she can have some fun.”

“Oh, and speaking of Joey: He found out that you found out that Zed had threatened your grandmother. He was very upset that his sponsor had been worried and, suffice it to say, Zed’s threat has been terminated.”
“Just the threat, right? Joey didn’t, you know, actually...terminate...Zed?”

“What about the audit and the frozen assets?”
“I told you that Lindy and Savannah were the best in the business. They made those problems disappear. We’d always kept impeccable books, and once the situation was laid out in full for the tax office, we were A-OK.”

“Am I still rich?”
“Yup. And your parents and I set up a trust fund. You can’t touch it for any reason, not even to give it away, until you’re twenty-five. The money is safe and making interest for you. Plus, there’s the college fund. And your retirement plans. All immutable—that means you can’t change them. And untouchable.”

“Then, of course, that sell order didn’t go through and there was a merger and so you were, at that point, worth something in the neighborhood of four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
“And change,” we said together.
“Right.”