The Caretaker of Lorne Field

Chapter 2

Each morning Jack Durkin would make a quick walk through the woods bordering Lorne Field before starting his weeding. He never found any Aukowies growing there and didn’t suppose he ever would. Those suckers probably had to grow up straight, either that or they didn’t have sense to try to find a less obvious place to push up out of the ground -but you’d think after three hundred years they’d catch on that coming up into Lorne Field wasn’t doing them any good. Or maybe they just wanted to do it on their own terms, expecting to eventually wear down the generations of Durkins who weeded them out. He knew looking through the woods was a waste of time, but it had become a matter of habit with him so he performed his morning ritual and, as usual, found the area free of Aukowies.

Standing at the edge of Lorne Field he gazed out and saw thousands of the little suckers already pushing themselves up out of the ground, maybe two inches high already. Even at that height they could take off a finger if you weren’t careful. And if you were to trip and fall to the ground, they’d slice you to ribbons before you could get up. Aukowies grew fast, as much as a foot in one day. Come dusk they stop, almost as if they needed to rest for the night. Then the next dawn they’d start growing all over again.

There was no movement among the Aukowies. When they were that small they played possum and tried to act as if they were nothing but weeds. Most people looking at them would think they were nothing but an odd little weed. But Jack Durkin knew differently. If he squinted right, he could make out their evil little faces in their offshoots, and he knew those little pincers were more than thorns. He’d watch them wait until there was a wind, then pretend they were swaying in it, all the while really trying to wiggle themselves further out of the ground. They were clever little suckers, Jack Durkin had to give them that. Once they got to two feet in height, they wouldn’t bother with their act. At that size they’d be whipping about as if they were caught in hurricane gales, not giving a damn about keeping up their masquerade. Jack Durkin never let one grow that high, but he’d heard stories from his pa about it. According to his pa it took hours to subdue several of them that had gotten to that height, having to first throw boulders on top of them to pin them down.

According to the Book of Aukowies, eight days would be all one needed to mature and break free from the ground. One mature Aukowie would wreak havoc, a field of them would ravage the world in a matter of weeks.

The thought often struck him about what would happen if he ever got laid up in the hospital or simply dropped dead of a heart attack. At fifty-two it could happen. His family was of tough stock-which was one of the reasons the Durkins were awarded the contract in the first place-but the responsibility of weeding Aukowies took its toll. It had aged him well beyond his years. Lester came around later in life than he should’ve. The caretaker position should’ve been passed on to a first-born son a decade earlier. As it was it would be another four years before Lester would turn twenty-one, and until that happened, Jack Durkin would just have to hope that he didn’t suffer any major calamities or get hit by a bus or lightning or any number of other things that could lay him out. If he did, the end of the world would come soon after. He peered up at the sun for a moment, then went into the shed his great grandpa had built, took a canvas sack, a pair of leather gloves and a few gardening instruments from it and went to work.

Weeding the Aukowies was tricky. You had to make sure to keep your fingers away from their little pincers. Given a chance they’d spring to life and cut one off. You also had to be careful how you plucked them from the ground. Kind of feel your way to know which angle to pull at. When you did it right, and Jack Durkin almost always did it right, you’d pull out a thin root-like thing that ran a foot or so. He knew it wasn’t any root, not with the sickly-sweet smell he’d be able to catch a faint whiff of, or the shrill little death scream that he could hear when the air was perfectly still. If you pulled the Aukowie out wrong you’d only break it off at the stem leaving the root-like thing feeding what was left. It would still make a shrill little noise-to Jack Durkin it would sound more like a rage-filled cry than anything else, and next time it came up the stem would be tougher, thicker, and you’d better be all the more careful pulling the damn thing from the ground ’cause you wouldn’t get another chance after that. Durkin could sometimes go a whole season without pulling one wrong. When he did screw up, he’d mark where he made his mistake, then make sure next chance he had he’d pull the thing up right. As if his life depended on it.

After thirty-one years of weeding Lorne Field, he usually needed no more than a few seconds with an Aukowie, his hands deftly finding the right spot on the weed to grab, and almost instinctively knowing which angle to yank it so it slid out easily from the ground. Still, with thousands of these Aukowies pushing up, it would take him close to four hours to complete a full pass of the field. By the time he was done a second wave of Aukowies would be waiting for him. Maybe not as many as when he first arrived, but with the added fatigue factored in, his next pass would take close to another four hours. Add the same for his third and final pass. By then the Aukowies would be done for the night.

He had walked back and forth length-wise three times across the field pulling out hundreds of Aukowies, hearing them all screaming shrilly as they died, when he came across what at first sight looked like a daisy. He stood disoriented for a moment, blinking and wiping the sweat from his eyes. He had never before seen a flower growing in that field of death, and the fact that one could actually survive out there buoyed his spirits. Actually made him feel good. He stared at it, admiring it, until he realized what he thought were petals were actually groups of pincers turned inside out.

Up to new tricks, you little bugger, he thought.

With the toe of his work boot he nudged the thing. It didn’t take the bait, though, staying perfectly still and maintaining its daisy-like camouflage.

Durkin crushed the Aukowie under the heel of his boot. He imagined the thing struggling now, but it had no chance. He reached down and got a good hold of the Aukowie by its stem. Feeling for the right angle to pull at, he lifted his foot and in the same motion yanked the damn thing as hard as he could. The root-like thing ripped out of the ground. He had the sense for a second of sniffing anti-freeze. More like he could taste it in the back of his throat. Durkin shoved the remains of the daisy-like Aukowie into his canvas sack.

“Ain’t nothin’ here but a bunch of weeds, huh?” he said bitterly.

A light breeze came up, and the Aukowies seemed to answer him by swaying to it. He could swear they were moving faster than they should’ve given the breeze that was blowing. Durkin knew the sound of his voice grated on these Aukowies. He knew it drove them crazy, and it took every bit of restraint they had not to react to it.

“What other tricks you got up your sleeve?” he yelled out, which made the Aukowies sway just that much faster, at least to his eye.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, “whatever you got it ain’t good enough. Just ain’t good enough, you dirty little buggers.”

He stood still for a moment to catch his breath. Then as the Aukowies’ swaying slowed a beat and became more in sync with the breeze that was blowing, Jack Durkin continued his weeding.

Lydia stood at the kitchen sink scrubbing the breakfast dishes. Both boys had finished eating and were out doing God knows what, but that was fine with her. They should be out having some fun, at least somebody in that house should be. A sour taste flooded her mouth as she thought how her life had become nothing but drudgery. Cleaning, sewing clothes, scraping by and most of all, worrying. Worrying about how she was going to juggle the bills coming in, how her boys were being deprived of what they deserved and how little she was able to have for herself. A knock on the back door shook her out of her dark thoughts. She left the sink to find Helen Vernon standing outside on the back porch.

“Thought maybe you could use some company,” Helen said through the screen door.

Lydia opened the door to let her friend in. “I’ll put on some coffee,” she said.

Helen Vernon was a few years older than Lydia but looked ten years younger. Chunky, with blond hair, rosy cheeks and a mouth that was too big for her face. She and Lydia had been friends since grammar school, and she was the only friend Lydia still had who came out to visit. Helen sat at the table while Lydia took a coffee maker out from one of the bottom cabinets. As far as Jack was concerned the coffee maker had broken months ago-at least that’s what she told him. Since then the only coffee she’d been serving him was an instant brand that tasted like watered-down mud, but when he wasn’t around she made a nice French roast for herself.

After she started the coffee brewing, she joined her friend at the table and offered a cigarette. Helen accepted and both women lit up. They sat silently for a minute as they inhaled deeply on their cigarettes and sent smoke spiraling up between them.

“I’m just so damn tired of this,” Lydia said.

Helen blew a stream of smoke out from the corner of her wide mouth. “You talk more to Jack about finding a real job?”

“Yeah, I talked to him until I was blue in the face.” She laughed bitterly, her thin lips curling with spite. “The damn fool has his contract. He’s out there saving the world everyday, don’cha know?”

“That’s what he says to you?”

“Exact words.”

The coffee had finished brewing. Lydia got up and poured two cups. She drank hers black while Helen filled hers a third of the way with milk and added several tea-spoons of sugar. Her eyes looked thoughtful as she sipped her coffee between drags of her cigarette.

“Maybe he’s been playing the part so long he believes it,” Helen said.

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is he ain’t giving this up. I’m near starving him to death and it don’t seem to matter. He’s going to go every day to that damn field to pick out those weeds. It don’t matter to him that his family’s living the way we are. I just don’t know what to do about it.”

“I still don’t know why you won’t divorce him.”

Lydia looked at her friend with exasperation. “How am I gonna do that? He don’t make enough to pay alimony. Where am I gonna live with my boys? Move back in with my parents? And what am I gonna do? I’m forty-six, my looks are gone, used up, and I got two teenage boys to feed and clothe. Nobody else for me to go to. The only way out is for that damn fool husband of mine to give up this foolishness and get himself a real job. I just don’t see that happening.”

Helen took a lazy drag on her cigarette and let the smoke tumble out her nose. Coolly, she said, “What if the town revokes his contract?”

“What do you mean?”

“Contracts can be revoked, can’t they?”

“I still don’t get you.”

“It’s simple,” Helen said. “I don’t think too many people here like the idea of paying eight thousand dollars a year to have some dope pull weeds from a field out in the middle of nowhere.” She showed an apologetic smile. “Of course it could also mean you losing this house.”

“Be a real shame to lose this house,” Lydia said, the muscles hardening along her jaw. “No cable TV, no air conditioning, plumbing don’t work half the time. Dank and cold in the winter, hot as blazes in the summer. Yeah, it would be a real shame.” She noticed her cigarette had burnt down to mostly ash and filter and stubbed it out. “How do you suppose I could get the town to do something like that?”

“I don’t think it would be too hard. I’m sure most people wouldn’t be too happy spending our tax money like this, if they were properly reminded. I could start making some noise about it. Maybe you could inflame things yourself by going around town bragging about how easy you got it. You know, free house and money for doing nothing. I could raise the issue of canceling that contract at the next town council meeting.”

A weariness showed in Lydia’s face as she considered her friend’s suggestion. The hardness around her mouth softened and her skin color paled to a dead fish color.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

Helen covered one of Lydia’s bony hands with a large fleshy one of her own. “Lydia, honey, that’s just normal nervousness on your part. But if Jack’s given no other choice, he’ll land on his feet and get a real job. I’m sure in no time he’ll be making three or four times what he’s making now and you’ll be able to live a more normal life. So what do you say, honey, should I start the ball rolling?”

Lydia’s small gray eyes seemed lost as she stared into a corner of the room. As if coming out of a trance, she looked back at her friend and shook her head. “Give me a few days to think about it,” she said.

The four teenage boys had snuck into Lloyd Jasper’s vegetable garden and were loading a shopping bag with ripe tomatoes when the retired schoolteacher stepped outside, a scowl developing slowly over his heavily-lined face.

“What the hell you boys doing back there!” he yelled out as he squinted in their direction.

The four teenagers started running, the bag only half-filled. Sam Parsons tried holding four tomatoes against his stomach as he sprinted away. Two of them fell loose. He ignored them and kept running.

“Don’t think I don’t recognize you!” Lloyd Jasper yelled out at them. “Tony Morelli, I see you. You too, Sam Parsons. And you other two, I know who you are! Don’t think I won’t be calling your parents!”

Before too long the boys were out of earshot of the retired schoolteacher. They kept running until they reached the woods bordering Crystal Pond where they had stashed their bikes. Panting hard from the run, they caught their breaths and consolidated the tomatoes Sam Parsons and Lester Durkin carried off with the half-filled shopping bag Tony Morelli had under his thick arm. Morelli leered at Lester and said, “So Weedpuller, you still in on this, right? You’re not backin’ down ’cause we’ve been made by that old prick, right?”

Lester’s mouth turned sullen. “Fuck you. I’m doing this. And quit calling me Weedpuller.”

“You do this, you lose that name. Until then you’re Weedpuller. Right, Sam?”

“Exactly.” Sam Parsons smiled nervously, his face flushed with perspiration. “Weedpuller does this with us, he gets a new name.”

Morelli winked at Carl Ashworth. “You agree, too?”

“Fuck, yeah,” Carl said.

“Then what the fuck are we waiting for?” Morelli asked gleefully, a malicious gleam shining in his dark eyes. He pulled his bike off the ground and rode off, carrying the bag full of tomatoes. The other boys got on their bikes and followed. Morelli led the way along the dirt path around the pond, then across woods until they reached the road leading to the Caretaker’s cabin. As they rode past the cabin Lester lowered himself on his bike and tried to shield his face from view, hoping neither Bert or his mom saw him. When Morelli pulled onto the path leading to Lorne Field, he turned back to leer at his companions, then raced on until he pulled up to the edge of Lorne Woods.

The other three boys caught up to him and they divvied up the tomatoes. Lester Durkin, Sam Parsons and Carl Ashworth all took off their shirts and used them as makeshift sacks to carry theirs while Morelli held onto the bag. Morelli pointed out where in the woods he wanted each of his co-conspirators to go. “You know how far it is to the field?” he asked Lester. Morelli’s round dark face was frozen in a heavy leer, but a wavering in his eyes betrayed his bravado. Lester shrugged and told him he had no idea.

“You’ve never been there before?”

“No. What made you think I would have?”

“I don’t know. I would’ve thought your old man would’ve taken you sometime.” Morelli paused before showing a nasty smirk. “After all, he’s got to teach you how to pull weeds since you are the Weedpuller. But I guess you get practice pulling your own weed every night when you’re alone.”

Lester tried shoving Morelli but didn’t budge him. “Quit calling me that!”

“You try that again,” Morelli said, “and I’ll shove one of these tomatoes down your throat. Understand?”

Carl Ashworth put an arm around Morelli’s thick frame and guided him to the side. “Come on, man,” Carl said, “this is going to be fucking awesome. Let’s just get to it.”

Morelli glared menacingly at Lester before turning to Carl Ashworth and Sam Parsons. “Stay hidden until the signal, okay?” He hesitated for a moment, and then looked back at Lester, a tenseness momentarily weakening his smirk.

“You’re sure the field’s this way?” Morelli asked.

“That’s the direction my dad heads off every morning,” Lester said.

With that the four of them ran into the woods, moving quickly at first, then slowing down as they crept closer to the field. Lester tried to keep low to the ground and hidden behind trees and rocks. After a while he could see the field and his dad in the middle of it. He tried keeping even closer to the ground as he edged forward, crawling to a thick oak tree sitting on the edge of the field. When he got to the tree he hid behind it, his heart beating like a drum in his chest, pounding so hard it felt like it was going to explode out of him. But the wild panic he felt at first was replaced by humiliation as he watched his dad walking up and down that field pulling weeds. He wanted to run up to his dad and pummel him for making him such a joke to his friends but he stayed where he was, tears flooding his eyes as he watched his dad work his way up and down the field, moving a little closer with each pass.

When his dad was within ninety feet of him Morelli threw the first tomato. It whistled past his dad’s ear. That was the signal, and it brought a hail of tomatoes flying at his dad. One hit him flush in the jaw, another took his baseball cap off, a half dozen more hit him in the body. As the tomatoes splattered off him he almost tumbled over, then he turned to face them, his eyes dumb as if he had no clue what was happening. Furious over the ridiculousness of his dad, Lester started throwing his tomatoes, missing wildly several times before hitting his dad square in the nose with one. It almost knocked his dad off his feet but he recovered his footing and shook his fist in Lester’s direction.

“You dumb asses!” his dad yelled, his face a bright red, partly from the tomatoes, mostly from blinding rage. “You’re violating the contract! Goddamn you all!”

By then Lester was crying. Crying from the humiliation, disgust and fear. He could hear his friends laughing like hyenas as they took off back to their bikes. With tears streaming down his face, Lester ran after them.

At first Jack Durkin was too mad to see straight. Those juvenile punk bastards. Sneaking up on him like that to pelt him with tomatoes. This was how they were going to show their gratitude for him saving their sorry asses each day? This was the respect they had for him? And goddamn it, they violated the contract! Didn’t they know what they were messin’ with? All he wanted to do was chase them down and beat the living tar out of each and every one of them. Even after he wiped away the tomato all he could see was a thick red haze. When this haze finally lifted and he could see straight again, he took several steps towards the woods but stopped cold when he realized what was left of the tomatoes thrown at him were lying among the Aukowies.

He turned and stared in horror, knowing the Aukowies were sucking the juices out of the tomato remains. In the dead still air, he was sure he could hear the slurping noises they made. For a long moment he stood paralyzed and watched.

Those damn fools, he thought. Didn’t they know they’d be feeding these Aukowies? With good reason the contract don’t allow food to be brought onto Lorne Field. Goddamn reckless fools!

He snapped out of whatever trance he had fallen into and quickly touched his face, then checked his fingers to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. According to the Book of Aukowies, human blood drove Aukowies wild with desire and made them grow like crazy. With some relief he saw that the only wet sticky stuff dripping from his face was juice from the tomatoes. He grabbed away from the Aukowies whatever tomato pieces they hadn’t absorbed yet and made a note of which ones had most likely feasted on the tomatoes. He focused his weeding efforts on them. They were already stronger and tougher than they should’ve been at that height. He had to be more careful with them, first pinning them under his foot, then digging around them so he could get a better grip of their root. He was amazed at how much thicker they had gotten and how much more muscle he had to use to pull them out of the ground, but eventually he got them all.

When he was done he picked up his baseball cap. A large rip had split it. Scowling at the cap, he shoved it into his back pocket, then scoured the field to make sure all the tomato pieces had been picked up and that no nourishment was left behind for the next wave of Aukowies.

Standing there, he felt exhausted. He touched his nose and winced. His hand shook as he moved it down to his jaw and felt how hard and swollen the area was where he’d been hit. Damn those punk kids to hell, he thought. The whole incident left him worn out and tired. His knees buckled a bit, his legs feeling as if bags of wet sand had been tied to them. All he wanted to do was to lie down somewhere and take a nap. He looked out at the remaining section of the field that still needed weeding, and then back at the rest of the field already showing new Aukowies sprouting out. Sighing heavily he lifted his sack over his shoulder and continued with his day’s work.