Read Online Who I'm Not by Ted Staunton - Free Book Online Page B

house.” I didn’t like that. How long did it take to sell a house? It helped keep me at Open Book all day, as if I had to soak up as much luck as I could while it was still there. I even did some work to pass the time. I told the teacher I wanted to start with English, so I spent the time reading To Kill a Mockingbird , which I’d already read, and then answering lame questions in a workbook and listening to the babies cry. There are worse ways to spend a day.
    I got the Garden Fairy joke when Dave pulled up on Saturday morning. He was a bulldog of a guy with a laugh like a chainsaw revving. Two fingers on his left hand were just stubs. “I had an argument with a lawn mower once,” he said as he showed me how to start one up. “I lost.”
    Dave drove around in a bright yellow pickup with Garden Fairy painted on the sides. We went to three different places that first day, cutting lawns and trimming hedges and bushes. Shan had packed me a lunch. Dave loaned me gloves, but I still got blisters. It was hard work, but I didn’t mind much. It felt good to be outside, doing stuff, and I didn’t have to do much Danny. The only time I thought about him was when Griffin drove by once.
    The best part of the day was at the very end. By then it was cool and looking like rain. Dave the Garden Fairy and I drove a load of cuttings to a place just outside of town where he knew he could dump them. You could see the lake in the distance. We bumped down a dirt path that followed a creek along the side of a field and suddenly came out on an embankment above the lake shore. I helped Dave pitch the grass and leaves into a gully. Dave stopped for a smoke. His gray Notre Dame T-shirt had big patches of sweat. I felt pretty grubby myself.
    â€œOkay if I go down on the beach?” I asked.
    â€œBe my guest.” Dave waved his hand. Even with fingers missing, it was the size of a pot roast. I scrambled down. Barely a mile from town, it looked as if you were in the wilderness. The lake was like an ocean. Waves were rolling, and they were loud, too, like white noise from a TV not hooked up to cable. I threw stones into the water, but my arms were already sore from working, so I sat down on a log until Dave finished his cigarette, imagining what it would be like on the other side.
    When Dave dropped me at Shan’s, he paid me fifty dollars cash, Canadian. I liked that. It sounds weird, but it was the most cash I’d ever had that was truly mine. Harley might give me cash for the movies or for snacks, but he’d handled everything else. One time I’d asked him how come I didn’t get more, and he said, “Room and board. And your college fund.” A few days later he gave me an iPod and let me stock it up on iTunes. He said a kid like me would carry one. Mostly, though, it was for show. Harley had never let me use it when we were working or when he wanted me to play his memory games as we drove. I wondered where it was now, and whether you could use Canadian money in the States.
    Sunday, I was stiff as a board and my hands were sore. It didn’t matter. I had money in my dresser drawer. Shan was happy I’d done okay with Dave. Even Roy wasn’t bitching at me, maybe because his back felt better. That afternoon I asked to borrow Matt’s bike (he was playing a video game) and rode back out to where we’d dumped the leaves. The lake was calmer and the sun was out. You could feel heat coming up off the sand and stones. I sat on the stones with my back against a log for a while and listened to the waves lapping, and I felt myself relax. It felt good. It felt like the first time in forever.
    After a while I explored a little. A few yards up the beach were the ashes of an old campfire, with some blackened beer tins mixed in. In the weeds was a rusted cogwheel that looked as if it could have been from some ancient tractor or mad scientist’s machine, and on the pebbles was an old