Stephen King – Night Shift – The Lawnmower Man
THE LAWNMOWER MAN
In previous years, Harold Parkette had always taken pride in his lawn. He had owned a large silver
Lawnboy and paid the boy down the block five dollars per cutting to push it. In those days Harold
Parkette had followed the Boston Red Sox on the radio with a beer in his hand and the knowledge that
God was in his heaven and all was right with the world, including his lawn. But last year, in mid-
October, fate had played Harold Parkette a nasty trick. While the boy was mowing the grass for the last
time of the season, the Castonmeyers’ dog had chased the Smiths’ cat under the mower.
Harold’s daughter had thrown up half a quart of cherry Kool-Aid into the lap of her new jumper, and
his wife had nightmares for a week afterwards. Although she had arrived after the fact, she had arrived
in time to see Harold and the green-faced boy cleaning the blades. Their daughter and Mrs Smith stood
over them, weeping, although Alicia had taken time enough to change her jumper for a pair of blue
jeans and one of those disgusting skimpy sweaters. She had a crush on the boy who mowed the lawn.
After a week of listening to his wife moan and gobble in the next bed, Harold decided to get rid of the
mower. He didn’t really need a mower anyway, he supposed. He had hired a boy this year; next year he
would just hire a boy and a mower. And maybe Carla would stop moaning in her sleep. He might even
get laid again.
So he took the silver Lawnboy down to Phil’s Sunoco, and he and Phil dickered over it. Harold came
away with a brand-new Kelly blackwall tyre and a tankful of hi-test, and Phil put the silver Lawnboy
out on one of the pump islands with a hand-lettered FOR SALE sign on it.
And this year, Harold just kept putting off the necessary hiring. When he finally got around to calling
last year’s boy, his mother told him Frank had gone to the state university. Harold shook his head in
wonder and went to the refrigerator to get a beer. Time certainly flew, didn’t it? My God, yes.
He put off hiring a new boy as first May and then June slipped past him and the Red Sox continued to
wallow in fourth place. He sat on the back porch on the weekends and watched glumly as a never
ending progression of young boys he had never seen before popped out to mutter a quick hello before
taking his buxom daughter off to the local passion pit. And the grass thrived and grew in a marvellous
way. It was a good summer for grass; three days of shine followed by one of gentle rain, almost like
clockwork.
By mid-July, the lawn looked more like a meadow than a suburbanite’s backyard, and Jack
Castonmeyer had begun to make all sorts of extremely unfunny jokes, most of which concerned the
price of hay and alfalfa. And Don Smith’s four-year-old daughter Jenny had taken to hiding in it when
there was oatmeal for breakfast or spinach for supper.
One day in late July, Harold went out on the patio during the seventh-inning stretch and saw a
woodchuck sitting perkily on the overgrown back walk. The time had come, he decided. He flicked off
the radio, picked up the paper, and turned to the classifieds. And halfway down the Part Time column,
he found this: Lawns mowed. Reasonable.
776-2390.
Harold called the number, expecting a vacuuming housewife who would yell outside for her son.
Instead, a briskly professional voice said, ‘Pastoral Greenery and Outdoor Services. . . how may we
help you?’
Cautiously, Harold told the voice how Pastoral Greenery could help him. Had it come to this, then?
Were lawn-cutters starting their own businesses and hiring office help? He asked the voice about rates,
and the voice quoted him a reasonable figure.
Harold hung up with a lingering feeling of unease and went back to the porch. He sat down, turned on
the radio, and stared out over his glandular lawn at the Saturday clouds moving slowly across the