The Wicked Lawn: A Gnoir Tale
By Justin
Robinson
You look at the lawn, what do you see?
A
bright square of green, bordered by riots of yellow, orange, and blue, like a
stove’s flame. After that, the high, tangled hedges. And then the fence, the
final barrier defining this lawn as its own entity, calling it inviolate.
I see
a wicked home of nasty deeds.
The
name is Periwinkle Bumblebee, and I look after Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s lawn when
she’s sleeping.
That’s
what gnomes do. You think lawns stay so cheerful and welcoming on their own? Without
us they’d be nothing but patches of thirsty dirt, covered in squirrels and
birds, and the only flowers you’d ever see would be painted on the side of your
teapot.
When
the sun goes down, we wake up. That’s when the work starts. We keep the grass
green and healthy. We keep the flowers blooming. We make sure the place is
welcoming to blue jays and finches, and keep pigeons and rats away. And we do
it all because that’s just what we do. It’s who we are.
Sometimes,
though…it’s not enough. Looking at my lawn, anyone could see what was
happening. Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s grass wasn’t as green as it used to be. The
flowers weren’t as bright. The hedges weren’t as full. I did my job, sure, but
it was just that. A job. Ever since the battle. I took another swig of nectar
to forget, but the memories were always there, ready to crowd in if I ever let
my guard down even a little bit.
I was
sitting on a decorative ceramic turtle, drinking nectar right out of the flower
like the lush I had become, staring out over the wicked lawn and waiting
patiently for another night to be over so I could turn back into plastic and
fade gently in the sun. I heard the rustling through the hedge—not near the
hole in the fence where I always heard rustling, even in my dreams, but across
the lawn, in the direction of the Mendozas’ lawn. They emerged from under the
fence single file, their conical hats bobbing and swaying, like windblown
blades of grass.
There
were eight by my count, though it took longer to see the ladies, whose hats
were a little less suggestive than those of the men. They were gnomes of
course, like me, and I could rattle off their names and lawns like that still
mattered. Their eyes were on me, glittering in the lights from the Christmas decorations
next door; Mr. Whigham still hadn’t taken them down. When they got close to the
border where the grass stopped, marked by the line of soil near the fence with
the sprouting orange poppies, they stopped and removed their hats one by one.
Their
brows furrowed, and several of them seemed much more interested in what was
going on with their feet than me over on my fake turtle.
“Screw
off,” I suggested pleasantly.
“Mr.
Bumblebee, please!” It was Heddleton Schnitzelface talking; he looked after the
Mendoza place. Schnitzelface was as close as we got to a leader, and he got
that distinction by having the whitest beard and the jolliest laugh. It wasn’t
the best method to pick your leaders, granted, but it was how things were done
when you were a gnome. “We need your help. All of us!”
“Why
me, huh? This place look like it’s in tip-top shape?” I gestured out at the
lawn, where the tips of the grass were ragged and gray-brown.
“You saved it once. Back when—”
I
don’t know if I heard the happy meows and ecstatic purring in my head or if it
was coming from the section of fence I never looked at now. “That was in the
past!” I took another swig of nectar. “That’s not me anymore. I’m retired. Just
me and my friend here,” I said, patting the ceramic turtle on the head.
“You
don’t understand, Mr. Bumblebee. The hedgehogs have... organized.” The
assembled gnomes murmured at one another, concerned about what was happening.
I
wasn’t about to take the bait. I was going to drink my nectar and stare over
Schnitzelface’s shoulder at the hummingbird feeder that had been empty for
weeks. Was a time I would have cleaned the crusted sugar from the spouts that
looked like plastic flowers and refilled it immediately. Back when I was a
different gnome.
Not
that this stopped Schnitzelface. He waited, mopping a powdery brow, and when he
saw I wasn’t gonna speak up, continued. “They started over at the Nguyen place,
then moved into the Keough lawn, then the Van Owens... and they won’t stop.” As
he named each family, the gnome in charge of that lawn bowed his or her head in
shame. “The hedgehogs say the hedges are theirs now. We have to give them
tribute!”
“Hogging
the hedge, huh?” I snorted.
They
nodded solemnly. I was busy drinking, so I couldn’t cut the old man off when he
declared, “You’re the hero of the Battle of Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s Flowerbed, No
Not the One Out Front, the One Under the Kitchen Window—”
It was
a long drink.
One
that I mostly spat out onto the dirt while sputtering, “That’s not me anymore!”
“You
have to be, Mr. Bumblebee. You’re our only hope.”
He
knew that was the final entreaty, and knew I wasn’t going to say anything. The
gnomes filed out across the lawn. I watched them go, trying to shut out the
purring now rumbling through my head. I threw the flower down and stalked along
the border of the hedge. They didn’t know what I lived with every day. They
just knew I was the guy. That guy. When
the cats were pooping in Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s flowerbed, no not the one out
front, the one under the kitchen window, I was the guy who solved the problem.
And I
had to live with what I had done every day. The glassy eyes. The splayed
bodies. The happy purring.
“And
where do you think you’re going?”
Two
fat hedgehogs lounged against the fence, right by a newly dug burrow into the
yard. My yard. One of the hedgehogs pushed off from the fence to waddle over
while his friend resolutely chewed on a dandelion stem. The lead hedgehog got
right up into my face, giving me a whiff of grass-breath. “Don’t you know where
you are?”
“On my
lawn, last I checked,” I said to him.
“Your
lawn. Hear that, Professor Cuddles?”
His
friend chuckled. “Sure did, Bitsy Pookums.”
“No,”
said Pookums, “this is our lawn. We’re
generous, though. You can keep living on it. We mostly want the hedges.”
“And
if I say no?”
Professor
Cuddles moved up next to his friend, and both of them loomed over me like a
tubby eclipse. “Don’t say no. We’re coming tomorrow and setting up shop here. And
as long as you stay smart, nothing on you has to break.” Professor Cuddles
punctuated his friend’s threat by packing a furry fist into his paw. They
stared through me for a couple seconds, making sure I understood the gravity of
my situation. Then Pookums turned and waddled back for the burrow. Professor
Cuddles did a fake lunge, and even though I stayed as still as I do in the
daytime, he still chased me with a mocking laugh.
Alone
on the lawn. Alone for good. And letting Mrs. O’Clanrahan down. That hedge was
hers, not the property of some pudgy mafia. I couldn’t help it. My eyes went to
the flowerbed. No, not the one out front, the one under the kitchen window. The
snapdragons were coming in nicely, a splash of yellow against the crisp blue of
the house. Wasn’t too long ago that flowerbed was nothing but a swatch of dead
dirt.
And then
I was there. Seeing it again and again. The few plants that could manage poking
resolutely up from the dirt, others trampled or worse. Every cat in the
neighborhood coming under the fence to do his business in that spot. Killing
everything that tried to take root. Nothing Mrs. O’Clanrahan could do about it.
That
was where I came in.
I
tried everything to keep the cats out. I seeded the flowerbed with sharp rocks.
I covered the sides with any number of plant extracts. I tried physically blocking
the cats. Nothing worked. They pawed the rocks away. The ignored the extracts. They
jumped over me or knocked me down.
And
Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s flowerbed suffered for it.
And I
suffered for it, too.
At
wit’s end, I wandered the neighborhood until I came to the Taylor house. Mrs.
Taylor was an older lady who collected cats, though none of them were among the
ones who had turned Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s flowerbed into a litterbox. I saw why,
and as soon as I did, the solution was right there.
The
horrible, monstrous solution.
The
next evening, I had waited at the entry to the fence where the cats got in. The
first one, a big orange tabby, was already coming in to do his unholy business
on Mrs. O’Clanrahan’s snapdragons. He paused at the gap, sniffing it. Then he
scraped his cheek over it, again and again. Soon another joined, a Siamese with
eyes as blue as the bug zapper hanging from the Mendoza porch. She repeated the
same ritual. Soon six cats were happily rolling around on their backs, rubbing
against the hole. Their eyes were glassy, their purrs rattled through the yard.
I had smeared the hole with catnip. I was their pusher. Their dealer.
I
turned away from the hole, trying to forget my crime. But they were still
there, coming to get their fix. Every night. That was the price of Mrs.
O’Clanrahan’s snapdragons.
My
soul.
But I
still had a little bit left. A little bit of my soul to spend. And I’d do it,
for Mrs. O’Clanrahan. Because that’s what it means to be a gnome. That’s what
it means to love the lawn so much it tears you up inside until there’s nothing
left.
The
next night, I waited by the burrow. And they came. Bitsy Pookums and Professor
Cuddles and a bunch of their hedgehog friends. But then they saw what was
waiting for them: a half-dozen cats, all playful and happy, ready to have some
squeaky-toy fun with the new residents. Baked out of their minds on Mrs.
Taylor’s catnip.
“Whose
lawn is it now?” I asked them.
“This
ain’t over, gnome!” Bitsy Pookums shouted, shaking his furry little fist as he
and his friends retreated into the burrow.
“I
know,” I murmured. “It’s never over.”
I told
the other gnomes what to do and they did it. Maybe some of the cost came out of
them. I don’t know. All I knew was that the lawn took its due, no matter what. And
I knew that the lawn was a wicked home of nasty deeds.
But it
was also mine.
-FIN-
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