THE LAWNMOWER CLUB
The yellow and tan fugitive cougar pads through the white pine stand filtered by the faint light of dawn. The cougar defines liquid power and stealth, long as a freight train, with a yard-long upturned tail and fist-sized paws. His new territory seems like paradise except for the persistent thrumming of lawnmower engines on the other side of a swampy marsh beyond the stand of trees. The noise started in early May about two hours after dawn, every day, and never stops until two hours before sundown, six days a week. Sunday is quiet as deep forest.
The Wisconsin cougar escaped over an ice bridge from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the Northern Lower Peninsula just before the early Spring thaw. Food is no problem for the seven-foot long predator--an abundant supply of rabbits, woodcock, turkey, porcupines, raccoons, coyotes and deer--but the noise drives him crazy. The cougar could range deeper into the state land nearby, but the sure source of easily-stalked prey keeps him in place in this unfamiliar thirty-square mile territory, along with hopes two or three females are ranging nearby to consummate his biannual ten-day affair. (The decisions of a primitive brain.) The cougar hisses in the direction of the lawnmowers, showing its teeth and superb gum health (the last thought of the dental hygienist the cougar had partially digested in Wisconsin). He runs off across a dirt road, over an embankment, deep into the brush. The cougar feels harassed by the noise, and as an endangered specie, this is unlawful. He muses how the rebound of whitetails in North America has provided him with a sustainable life style.
The cougar lives in an abandoned landfill site two miles from the Lawnmower Club. He circles back, and uncovers a fresh deer carcass protected with deadfall limbs and leaf debris, a kill during the night, and eats hungrily, planning his next meal, still mentally disturbed from the noise pollution, feeling stressed deep inside his light-colored underbelly. Perhaps exercise will do him good. He takes a cat walk on the nature trail nearby, drinks algae-speckled water from a creek, then returns to his daybed in the landfill, stretches and yawns, then closes his green cat eyes for a nap. He dreams of noise abatement programs first, then during his twitchy rapid-eye-movement sleep, he pounces with fatal bites to the back of the necks of the lawnmower riders.
Waking from his mid-morning nap, it’s a normal day for Bill Zitzleberger. He stretches and yawns lazily in an old slider on his deck over the former golf clubhouse he now calls home watching the morning riders out on the fairways, drinking strong coffee, and reading captions from an old National Geographic about mountain lions (“Big Cat Initiative: Halting the Decline of Lions in the Wild”). He yawns, baring his yellow teeth and bleeding gums; finishes his morning feeding by separating the last bite of his bran muffin from its paper doily, then decides to take a walk for his health. He thinks about the magazine article and muses how a recolonization of mountain lions in Michigan could lead to managed sports hunting--a boon for the local economy.
A healthy eighty-five except for weight, he drags his 250-pound body over to the pole barn to check out a member’s antique lawnmower. For such a heavy man, his feet leave soft footprints in the sand. Zitzleberger is a shy man for his size, leads a solitary life, some would say a secretive life, as founder and general manager of the Lawnmower Club. He is seldom aggressive except towards occasional nuisances. Standing well over six feet tall and square-jawed, he looks like an aged Olympic wrestler, so fearsome, mothers pick up small children when he walks by. Teen-aged boys have been known to throw rocks at him. He moves into the pole barn quietly and slow, cat-like, taking the new member by surprise. You couldn’t say he is sleek, but has a graceful way of walking.
“Looks like a Scag,” he says.
“Yep, I’ve always had Scags, every model they ever made: Turf Tigers, Tiger Cubs, the Saber Tooth Tiger, and the Wildcat--that one was a great cutter.” He moves his hands lovingly over his steering wheel.
“Did you mow for a living?”
“No, like most folks I’ve met here, I lived to mow. I’m just a residential mower, but over time, I needed a commercial grade...needed to keep moving up, one model one make at a time, you know. Kept buying bigger properties for more grass to cut.”
“Sounds like you have lots of experience,” Zitzleberger said, looking directly at him with the eye lock of an aggressive animal, his large eyes out of proportion to his large body.
“I think I can make a lawn look better than the next guy--I take good care of the blades and the deck. Mostly I just like the ride. Can you believe they’re making remote control mowers now?” The man had obviously spent a lot of time in the sun: his face and arms are covered with sun damage and scars from melanoma surgery.
“Well, I’ve heard remotes are good for steep hills and ditches,” Ziztleberger replies, “ but I like to haul tail on an incline myself...I’d rather die than use a weed eater.”
“You’ll see. I’m not at the end of my mowing career,” the new member says, “someday I plan to get the 61-inch Scag with a 26 horse power Kawasaki--maybe used if it looks like new and the compression test is okay.”
“Well, check the maintenance records,” Zitzleberger says. “Make sure you have the receipts, especially for new parts. Lawn mower parts are required in two instances: one of them is for simple use of the machine; the other is the result of hurt. You need to know the difference. You can’t hurt machines--you need to treat them as well as people...better than people.”
“Sure enough.” The two men achieve a beginner’s level of mutual respect.
“By the way,” Zitleberger says, “seeing as how you’re a new member, I just want to share my philosophy about this place. Even though this is no longer a golf course, I want it to look good--green, lush, well-kept. I’ll expect you to keep your shift, keep your balance on the seat, avoid spinning your tires, and if you do dig in to muddy spots or standing water, let me know so we don’t make it worse. And let me know about sprinkler heads...I have some boys who can replace them...I just need to know.”
“I think you’ll like my mowing style,” the new member said. “I’m a good chopper, and keep the clippings cleaned from under the deck. I started out with a push reel mower when I was a kid, then in 1955, bought a Briggs and Stratton on a Cooper aluminum deck (back when they built ‘em in the USA)--used the engine to run my son’s Go-Kart. My son ran it into a creek. My son drowned, but I fished out the engine (it was under water nine hours hydro-locked) but it still runs on the first pull--still have the owner’s manual, too. Then fifty-five years ago, I moved up to a 1962 Toro Reel with a Wisconsin engine. I know it’s an art form--like the other people here. I have a thing about cut grass. Mowing is a journey with no destination.”
Zitzleberger relishes his life of freedom. Every day, except Sunday, the same. Mowers arrive at first light to mow for a total of twelve hours in two-hour shifts. For $10,000 a pop plus annual dues of $5,000, the mowers mount their riding machines in the pole barn (formerly used to house golf carts), and mow their assigned fairways in two-hour shifts. With twenty-seven holes and two mowers per fairway one day per week, his total membership has reached capacity: 324 mowers. Bill can’t believe his good fortune--his whole world perpetually filled with the smell of cut grass, the hum of engines, and the sweet fumes of lawnmower gas and oil. From his slider on the second floor deck of the clubhouse, he can see ten members raising little dust clouds sitting fixed on their mowers, looking straight ahead like the terra cotta warriors of a Chinese emperor.
Bill walks from one end of the vast pole barn to the other. A membership in the lawnmower’s club includes storage. Every model and make of lawn tractor sits in neat rows from one end to the other: front-mounted engine models with side discharges, zero-turn radius mowers with rear-wheel steering, big rear baggers, and heavy-duty tractors.
In the beginning, the members wanted to have meetings to make rules. Pembrook, who liked to mow in a tweedy sports coat with arm patches, canvas hunting pants and high-laced boots while listening to Bach on a headset, complained about Finnegan who enjoyed going shirtless while he smoked a large black cigar. Finnegan was hairy as a bear, especially his back, and he carried a large fly swatter with him and slapped them away as he drove. Custer, on the other hand, preferred to mow barefoot in his pajamas with a wide-brimmed straw hat. Other issues arose: proposals for standard bench settings for cutting height, safety training and protective gear, arguments between baggers and non-baggers. The last straw: someone proposed a social membership for non-riding walkers. Zitzleberger shut down the meetings, only allowing one every five years, hoping he would die before the next one.
Zitzleberger returns to his slider and reclines while eyeing the large computer screen showing the GPS location of all the mowers represented by little red rectangles, two working the far edges of each fairway. He loves the new cloud-based farm management software a salesman sold him. He tracks all the field activities: the moisture content of each area, the topsoil and subsoil pH, and detailed logs of what was done on each fairway: de-thatching records, re-grassing projects, organic fertilization, weed, insect, and varmint control, sprinkler maintenance, and damage repair areas (no longer caused by cart tracks, ball marks, golf shoes, or temper tantrums of thrown clubs). He has come along way since the big crisis two years ago. He thinks how close he came to having Gloria Fitting lock him away in a zoo of a nursing home.
Two years earlier, Zitzleberger sizzles a steak on his back patio grill, as a social worker walks into his backyard with the results of her independent living assessment. Gloria Fitting is skinny as a bean pole, her dark brown hair swept back in a bun. Even though she is only twenty-three, she looks like an old woman. She wears an oversized sweater and tight slacks with jogging shoes, making her body nearly unobservable other than her long-nosed face. She hunches over slightly and looks as if she is about to be attacked by a wild animal.
Looking down at her clip board, she reads, “Mr. Zitzleberger, we have determined you are no longer fit to live here alone: you scored below acceptable limits on ADL’s.”
“What the hell is an ADL?”
“Activities of daily living--you are behind in paying your bills, you can’t prepare food properly, (looking at his mismatched button holes and sagging pants) you can’t dress, (looking around the premises) and your housekeeping is unsatisfactory. I also discovered you don’t pay your bills in a timely fashion.”
“You just came at a bad time--I’m having a black-tie dinner party tomorrow night--too bad you’re not invited, because you have no idea how I can pull this place together when the need arises...and as far as the bills go, I’ll have to talk with my accountant (he lied like a dog)...and while I’m at it, I’ll tell him to rehire the maid (another lie) and my personal shopper (a third lie).”
Ignoring his response, Gloria Fitting goes on: “You need to move down to Mallard Pond where people can look after you properly. We already have a room for you with your name on it. The Friendship Bus will be here tomorrow morning to pick you up, and some church people will come over and move some of your stuff, but not too much, because there’s not much room...at your age, you don’t need much room.” Zitzleberger suspects his children are behind this, called Social Services on him, because he forgets to send birthday cards.
“What about this steak?” he says. “If grilling a steak isn’t independent living, I don’t know what is? And what about if I want to have sex?” (Ziztleberger enjoys shocking young innocents.)
“Mallard Pond has a special room...”
“So you’re moving me to a whorehouse?”
“You can’t stay here any longer--it’s not safe.”
“Who says?”
“I’ve reviewed your ADL with my supervisor, and we both agree an intervention is required.”
“Who’s going to mow my lawn?” he says. “Tell me that!”
A widower, Zitzleberger has no mate, and his estranged family lives in remote regions of the country. He fills his days outdoors--mowing in the summer, raking leaves in the fall, plowing his dirt road in the winter, yard cleaning in the spring. “You have to have a reason to keep living,” he says. “Put me in Mallard Pond, and I’ll die in a matter of weeks,” he snarls like a big cat trapped in the corner of a cage. His eyes look wild underneath his untrimmed eyebrows, his brow furrowed, stray coarse hairs sticking out from his nose and ears. His fists clench and his back hunches up like he might ponce on the skinny, young social worker.
“Mr Zitzleberger, you don’t have a social network. Without close daily connections with other people, you’ll die sooner here, than living in a place with supportive ties. I studied all about this in school--your increasing frailty correlates with dementia, depression, and heart failure. The only thing you have going for you is continence and the ability to bathe--are you still okay in those departments? I took your word for those activities on the survey--didn’t actually observe...”
“If you want to observe me...”
“Won’t be necessary...you need to moved to Mallard Pond.”
Waking from his mid-morning nap, the cougar ranges out for a morning snack. The roosted turkeys are coming down from the treetops, feeling safety in numbers, supported by their social network and keen vision. It’s just too easy, the cougar thinks. He decides to chase a runner--much more sporting. Blood, bone, feathers, and flesh. So tasty. He would like to bring his prize home, but he has no one to care for, he’s a lone ranger alone in the wild. Independent living is all he knows. If he only had someone to provide for, it would give his life meaning. Subsistence, he thought, all I do is subsist. Such a shallow concept. In a state of ennui, he sinks into a deep depression in the middle of a field.
Zitzleberger fights tooth and nail, hip and thigh, with all his might to stay out of Mallard Pond. He succeeds, at least for now. He buys a bankrupt golf club--sells the triplex mowers used to close-cut the greens, sells the golf carts (saves one for himself), the left-over merchandise, gets rid of the pop machines, the greens-keeping equipment; sells his bungalow and moves into the second-story of the club house. He worked forty years running a home repo agency; liked the work too much; was only loved by bankers. Now he finds his true calling, his real work, what the social worker might call “his journey.” Who would have thought his life-long pleasure riding back and forth in neat rows would be the source of his salvation? If he could sing, he would sing; if he could write poetry, he would write poetry--but his mind is seldom baffled by higher thinking.
In the meantime, Gloria Fitting has not given up. She persists with her efforts to have Zitzleberger housed in Mallard Pond. In the gloaming light of evening, she hides in the birches and watches Zitzleberger with her Zhumell Low Light Binoculars, looking through his upper story windows from an abandoned tree stand, hoping to catch him acting helpless, devoid of comfort, convenience, companionship, hopelessly out of touch with the warmth of a close-knit retirement community. Committing Zitzleberger to Assisted Living has become her magnificent obsession. At some level, she knows she needs therapy, but she generally doesn’t like any form of help, lives alone, and blames her parents for everything. She is a victim, and has so little self-respect, she doesn’t even wear a tree harness in the stand.
The cougar reaches the upper level of his noise tolerance, even though he knows the decibel levels are within legal limits. Perhaps an Anger Management Course at the local community college might have helped. Animal instincts are insufficient for solving this problem. He knows something, however, from the behavioral conditioning of his Wisconsin experience--through negative re-enforcement, the cougar knows killing humans can result in punishment--getting chased by cops with dogs, and potentially shot with anesthetizing darts, or even worse, hollow-point bullets. Eating the hygienist resulted in his fugitive status; caused him to lose his native home. He has a better plan, but he’s thankful it’s Sunday. He wants to have a day to rest on his plan, in case he changes his mind. Precipitous actions can lead to trouble.
Monday mornings, Finnegan wakes early, arrives ahead of time to take the first shift on his Gravely ZT, his gravelly voice whispering to the machine as he sets the choke and presses the automatic starter button. As he exits the pole barn, something doesn’t feel right. He opens his metal tool chest and removes his deck leveling gauge, measures the deck side-to-side and front-to-back, checks the oil, engages and disengages the mower blades, checks the anti-scalp rollers, feels the belt tension, even checks the tire pressure. He wipes his hands with a shop towel. Gets back on, restarts the engine, and rolls out of the pole barn. He feels more confident about the machine, but something still doesn’t feel right. Perhaps a cigar will help. He stops the Gravely, nips off the end of a large torpedo-shaped robusto, lights up and proceeds to his assigned mowing area. Warmed by the rising sun, he removes his red shirt.
At about the same time, Zitzleberger is on his deck having breakfast, starring at Tony the Tiger on his box of Frosted Flakes. He sprinkles fresh blueberries over the top of the flakes in his cereal bowl and adds milk. Another day in paradise. Another day of freedom. He pours coffee, and casually looks on the computer screen. All the red rectangles are moving, except one. Mildly puzzled, he checks the space. It’s Finnegan’s patch of grass, the wind waving through it like a snot green sea. “Gee Whiz!” he says out loud. He had talked to Finnegan before about his tendency to pee out in the open. He grabs his binoculars to catch Finnegan in the act of relieving himself. He has few rules, but the acid from urine left big brown spots in the grass. Zitzleberger catches Finnegan in his field of vision zigzagging all around the fairway in big circles. He’s going fast, like he’s being attacked...then he tips over. Pembrook runs towards the club house, shouting in a shill soprano voice, “Finnegan’s been attacked by a wild animal! It’s because he’s so hairy. I told you he should wear a shirt!”
The cougar rises before first light on Monday morning, resolved to solve the lawnmower noise problem, which has steadily climbed to the top of his “to do” list. Although he is well-equipped to use lethal force, he has elected not do so, following Shakespeare’s admonishment to be one of “them who has the power to hurt but does none.” He creeps through the swamp to the edge of the fairway and sees a hairy human waving a red shirt like a matador, and stinking of cigar smoke. The cougar breathes in deeply, and lets go with a baritone growl with a bit too much vibrato (he’s out of practice). He charges, getting up to forty-five miles per hour (how fast would I be in kilometers? he thinks), then with the thrust of his hind legs, he leaps towards Finnegan, skins the back of his neck and flies over the mower with one bound. Finnegan opens his mouth to scream, and swallows his cigar whole. Finnegan starts taking evasive action, then tips over but remains in his seat facing the sky with the blades whirring above him, his hands firmly grasping the steering wheel. He howls for help in an authoritative bass, but all the mowers are frightened, their flimsy loyalties up for grabs; no one seems to know what is going on.
All in all, the cougar thought he gave a well-paced performance, especially with the intricacies of the set, and the eccentricities of the mowers. Despite a lethargic reaction from Custer who must have been on medication, he had fully engaged the rest of the field in a mad fearful romp made up of musical body movement (like Spanish peasants dancing the Bolero in 6/8 time) connected by fascinating dialogue. He could have solved some of the coordination issues with one or two more cougars, but he had worked well within his limitations.
From the wood’s edge, the cougar sees Zitzleberger calmly walking into the fairway where Finnegan is down laying in a stream of semi-consciousness. Pembrook stumps around beside him. Custer still mows as if nothing happened. The other mowers disappear into the pole barn; some are leaving the property. Zitzleberger carries a rifle; the cougar guesses its a 30.06 Remington pump.
Zitzleberger’s empire is threatened. The Lawnmower Club is temporarily shutdown. He calls the Department of Natural Resources to report a cougar siting. He uses the tiger on his cereal box for target practice. With every shot, the cougar ruminates about death and mortality. “I need to be honest with myself,” he thinks. “This was a stupid thing to do...if only the limbic impulses in my brain stem wouldn’t be so dominant. If only my hearing wasn’t so sensitive.” The grass on the fairways grows out of control, with only Custer continuing to mow. Finally even he gives up, mowing his last stand on a grassy knoll.
Gloria Fitting knows something’s up. Pembrook tells her. (He secretly wants Zitzleberger out so he can buy the club and impose a dress code.) Her snooping activities around Zitzleberger’s property are unabated. The TV weather reporter says this is the second full moon of August, a blue moon, a perfect night for her undercover investigations. She knows she will prevail. Sooner or later, she will catch him neglecting himself and she will have him committed to Mallard Pond. “I bet he can’t even button his pants,” she smiles. This evening, she plans to collect samples from his trash bin to document his poor eating habits. She crawls towards the back of the clubhouse, humiliated by her snake-like movements, but determined. For some reason unknown to herself, as she approaches the building, she starts quietly hissing.
Zitzleberger is planning to go out and hunt the cougar down. He begins to understand what Gloria Fitting meant about social ties--he misses the mowers, wants them back to restore his self-respect as the founder and general manager of the Lawnmower Club. “My mowers and my dignity have been wounded,” he shouts through the open window, a warning for the cougar. The night is empty and quiet, there is only the full moon in the sky. Zitzleberger hears a faint hissing sound from his backyard. He goes into the back bedroom to look down, and sees Gloria Fitting prone by his trash bin. He runs downstairs with his rifle, exits the back door and points the gun at her. “All my troubles began with you!” he says.
He can’t believe his opportunity. He has Gloria Fitting under his control. He can shoot her for trespassing, but he’d most likely end up in jail. He grabs a length of rope. She looks like hell, curled up and covered with dirt, her loose sweater stained with grass, burrs sticking to her everywhere, her neat bun unraveled leaving snaky-looking strands of hair. She’s frightened; her eyes are bloodshot. She knows this could be her doom. She uncurls and raises up from the ground into a yoga sitting pose; tries to pay attention to her breathing, avoid distracting thoughts like “I’m going to die soon.” Zitzleberger tells her to stand up. He points to the woods with his gun. She walks before him, wobbling forward silently, already grieving the damage this may cause her career..if she lives. Zitzleberger marches her to the top of the landfill, and ties her to a tree. He cuts a sliver of flesh on her forearm with a pocket knife to fill the moist evening air with a scent of blood.
“You can’t do this to me!” Gloria pleads. “You want the cougar to kill me. You’re going to leave me here to be eaten alive, and all I wanted to do was help you! You won’t get away with it. You’re going to lose your club, and as a felon, Mallard Pond will reject you. You’re making a big mistake, mister. You’re old and tired, and your decision-making ability is probably 4 on a scale of 10.” Zitzleberger moves his unkempt head close to hers, stares blankly at her, gives her an evil smile, then turns towards the clubhouse.
The cougar is having difficulty sleeping under the glaring light of the full moon, his long yellow and tan form lays in the grass. He dreams fitfully, having a nonlinear dream narrative about blackout shades. He hears Gloria Fitting crying out for help. He rises to his feet, and picks up the scent of the young woman mixed with an aroma of blood. After cleansing his palate in a creek, he finds her tied to a tree, muttering about unresolved issues with her mother. He moves close and gazes at her with his dilated green eyes; looks for a neutral place on her body to place his nose and tongue, resolved to make tasting notes afterwards.
She doesn’t look like a mower. She’s small and skinny, completely unappetizing. The cougar’s cerebral cortex has not evolved to develop well-defined categories, or other high levels of thought, but the girl does not appear to be prey. (Just an intuitive hunch, the cougar surmises.) A gun-toting 250-pound man, on the other hand, falls in the flight or fight region of the cougar’s well-developed cerebellum. The cougar sees Zitzleberger lumbering in a straight line towards the Lawnmower Clubhouse, his gun pointed to the ground; the cougar vaguely knows what he does next could affect his mental health and overall quality of life. FIGHT RESPONSE! In the same moment, the cougar loses his introspection and peripheral vision; his large green eyes dilate as he focuses on Zitzleberger walking away from him. All the blood in his long body goes to the muscles of his legs. He doesn’t give Zitzleberger a sporting chance, doesn’t circle and face him down, doesn’t give him a warning growl--just leaps high into the night air as if his open jaws could swallow the moon, and breaks Zitzleberger’s neck faster than a speeding lawnmower.
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