Harold looked around and saw the lawnmower man’s mechanized familiar advancing through the door.
Behind it came the lawnmower man himself, still quite naked. With something approaching true
insanity, Harold saw the man’s pubic hair was a roch fertile green. He was twirling his baseball cap on
one finger.
‘That was a mistake, buddy,’ the lawnmower man said reproachfully. ‘You shoulda stuck with God
bless the grass.’
‘Hello? Hello, Mr Parkette -‘
The telephone dropped from Harold’s nerveless fingers as the lawnmower began to advance on him,
cutting through the nap of Carla’s new Mohawk rug and spitting out brown hunks of fibre as it came.
Harold stared at it with a kind of bird-and-snake fascination until it reached the coffee table. When the
mower shunted it aside, shearing one leg into sawdust and splinters as it did so, he climbed over the
back of his chair and began to retreat towards the kitchen, dragging the chair in front of him.
‘That won’t do any good, buddy,’ the lawnmower man said kindly. ‘Apt to be messy, too. Now if you
was just to show me where you keep your sharpest butcher knife, we could get this sacrifice business
out of the way real painless. I think the birdbath would do. . . and then -,
Harold shoved the chair at the lawnmower, which had been craftily flanking him while the naked man
drew his attention, and bolted through the doorway. The lawn-mower roared around the chair, jetting
out exhaust, and as Harold smashed open the porch screen door and leaped down the steps, he heard it –
smelled it, felt it – right at his heels.
The lawnmower roared off the top step like a skier going off a jump. Harold sprinted across his newly
cut back lawn, but there had been too many beers, too many afternoon naps. He could sense it nearing
him, then on his heels, and then he looked over his shoulder and tripped over his own feet.
The last thing Harold Parkette saw was the grinning grill of the charging lawnmower, rocking back to
reveal its flashing, green-stained blades, and above it the fat face of the lawnmower man, shaking his
head in good-natured reproof.
‘Hell of a thing,’ Lieutenant Goodwin said as the last of the photographs were taken. He nodded to the
two men in white, and they trundled their basket across the lawn. ‘He reported some naked guy on his
lawn not two hours ago.’
‘Is that so?’ Patrolman Cooley asked.
‘Yeah. One of the neighbours called in, too. Guy named Castonmeyer. He thought it was Parkette
himself. Maybe it was, Cooley. Maybe it was.’
‘Sir?’
‘Crazy with the heat,’ Lieutenant Goodwin said gravely, and tapped his ‘Schizo-fucking-phrenia.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Cooley said respectfully.
‘Where’s the rest of him?’ one of the white-coats asked.
‘The birdbath,’ Goodwin said. He looked profoundly up at the sky.
‘Did you say the birdbath?’ the white-coat asked.
‘Indeed I did,’ Lieutenant Goodwin agreed. Patrolman Cooley looked at the birdbath and suddenly lost
most of his tan.
‘Sex maniac,’ Lieutenant Goodwin said. ‘Must have been.’
‘Prints?’ Cooley asked thickly.
‘You might as well ask for footprints,’ Goodwin said. He gestured at the newly cut grass.
Patrolman Cooley made a strangled noise in his throat.
Lieutenant Goodwin stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘The world,’ he
said gravely, ‘is full of nuts. Never forget that, Cooley, Schizos. Lab boys says somebody chased
Parkette through his own living room with a lawnmower. Can you imagine that?’
‘No sir,’ Cooley said.
Goodwin looked out over Harold Parkette’s neatly manicured lawn. ‘Well, like the man said when he
saw the black-haired Swede, it surely is a Norse of the different colour.’
Goodwin strolled around the house and Cooley followed him. Behind them, the scent of newly mown
grass hung pleasantly in the air.