Surface Tension Read Free Page A

lawn. Dad says it's okay, and Mr. Richardson thanks him and says, “Got my kids coming down today to help get this cottage in order. Can't have it looking so rundown.” He gestures over his shoulder at the cottage, which is perfect in every way.
    He goes inside, takes off his church suit, puts on his sweatpants and a T-shirt, and starts mowing his whole lawn.
    He mows it every Sunday after church. He's like sixty or something. He does it the same way every time. He starts in the corner near the woodpile and mows diagonally across the lawn. He mows around the trees and under the clothesline all the way up to the edge of our property, then pushes the lawn mower all the way back to the edge of his house. It's a big lawn, and if I were him and I owned a big house like he does and my own business, I'd pay someone to mow my lawn. I don't know if he likes doing it or if he's just a cheapskate, but he does it himself every Sunday.
    We finish our pancakes and bring everything back inside. Mom washes the dishes in one half of the sink while Dad rinses them and I dry them and put them away. There's only three of us, so we don't really have too many dishes and it doesn't take long. I sit at the kitchen table with my copy of
Animal Farm
and look out the side window.
    Mr. Richardson gets finished with the mowing and rolls the lawn mower back into the garage. Mike, the oldest, drives in first. He drives a black pickup with a V-8 engine. He's also got a sweet-ass purple speedboat with a 200-horsepower outboard motor and a girlfriend named Eliza with blond hair, but he doesn't have them with him today.
    Mrs. Richardson comes out and gives Mike a hug and then goes back inside. Mr. Richardson shakes Mike's hand like they're business partners, and Mike goes into the garage and gets out the grass collector. The lawn mower doesn't have a bag on it, so the cut grass gets spread across the lawn. Mike rolls over Mr. Richardson's diagonal lines with the grass collector and then empties the grass into a huge pile on the edge of the creek.
    Joe shows up next. The middle one. He's just got a littlehatchback with nothing special about it and a girlfriend named Danielle, who's short with black hair and wears glasses. Joe's cool because he plays guitar in a band, but he's much quieter than Mike. He's usually either reading or practicing guitar, but today is a workday, so he gets the ladder out of the garage and pushes it up against the house and starts cleaning out the gutters. Our gutters have little trees growing in them.
    Mary, the daughter, shows up last in her little red Volkswagen Beetle. She's got blond hair and blue eyes, but no boyfriend that I've ever seen. She gets a bucket of paint out of the garage and touches up some of the trim around the house.
    They take a break for lunch and go inside, and I grab my book and go down to the beach to see if I can hear anything. They're all sitting on the screened-in porch talking and laughing. I can't see them because it's dark in there and sunny out here. Mike and Joe are making fun of Mary.
    I just sit and listen to them from over on our little part of the beach. I sit in a folding lawn chair and pretend to read about the pigs.
    After a while, the men come outside and I can hear the sound of metal clanging against metal. I guess they got enough work done for today, because Mike and Joe are playing horseshoes and drinking beer. I get up out of my chair and go up behind the woodpile so I can see them better.
    There's two railroad spikes in little pits about forty feet apart, and Mike and Joe stand on either side of the one that's farther away from me and throw the horseshoes toward the one that I'm hiding close to. I guess you're supposed to throw the horseshoe and get it around the spike. I think you get a point for getting it close too. You must, because why else would they say “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”?
    Both guys are pretty good. They hit the spike on both of their throws.