Read Online Yardwork by Bruce Blake - Free Book Online

Yardwork
    Bruce Blake
    Smashwords
Edition
    Copyright 2010
Bruce Blake
    Discover other
Titles by Bruce Blake at Smashwords.com:
    Another Man's
Shoes
    Walk on
Water
    Wave
Songs
    Boulder

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    Tim made a
special trip to buy the shovel he used to bury the nameless man. It
was easy: an older lady in a blue vest directed him to the proper
aisle without a second thought. A fifteen-year-old buying a spade
doesn’t raise concern in anyone; it’s not like purchasing a gun or
a hunting knife, though a shovel could be as deadly. But the shovel
didn’t kill the man, Tim merely used it to dig holes to put bits
and pieces of him in, a task for which it was made.
    In the end, his
father’s garden shears finally killed the nameless man.
    The man
probably had a name, everyone did, but Tim didn’t care to know it,
didn’t ask or wonder about it. The moment he found the man sleeping
in the shed, recovering from the abuse of whatever substance he’d
imbibed to put him in that state, Tim decided the less he knew
about the man, the better. If the need to call him anything arose,
maybe it would be ‘opportunity’.
    When Tim opened
the shed door, it creaked on its rusted hinges like it always did.
Autumn sun streamed in, splashing across the rough surface of the
poorly-laid cement floor. Dust motes stirred and spider webs
shimmered. In the rafters, the remnants of a nest poked out over
the edge of an unpainted beam, but no birds lived in it anymore,
he’d taken care of them in the spring, their tiny, brittle bones
long since carried away by neighbourhood cats. The rake hung
between two spikes Tim’s father drove into the wall a couple of
years ago in an attempt to keep things tidy. The man lay curled on
the floor below it.
    “Hello?” Tim
stood in the doorway, his shadow falling across the floor, touching
the prone man. “Mister?”
    No answer. He
took a step closer and the smell hit. Besides the shed’s usual
smell of must and fertilizer, he caught a whiff of the acidic
stench of fresh puke, and beneath it, shit. Tim put his hand over
his nose and mouth, blocking the smell.
    “Are you all
right, mister?”
    The man didn’t
so much as twitch. Tim held his breath, listening. Yes, there it
was: the slow rhythm of his breathing. Alive -- not in good shape,
probably, but alive. Two more steps brought the boy halfway across
the shed, his eyes adjusting to the poor light. The man lay on his
side, facing the wall, a tattered overcoat on his shoulders. The
feet protruding from beneath the long coat wore boots wrapped with
duct tape to hold them together.
    A shiver of
excitement stirred in Tim’s chest.
    “Tim, are you
going to rake those friggin’ leaves or what?”
    A lawn chair on
the deck provided Tim’s father an ideal spot to situate himself --
beer in hand -- to watch his favorite sport: his oldest son doing
yard work. Tim poked his head out of the doorway to make sure his
old man hadn’t gotten up to see about the hold up. He hadn’t, of
course. It would take a lot more than impatience for him to put
down his beer and remove his ass from the plastic cushion of the
recliner-chair.
    “Sorry, Dad. I
knocked over the recycling. Just got to clean it up and I’ll be
right out.”
    His father
grunted, took another swig of MGD, and grabbed the newspaper from
where it lay on the deck beside him, using the delay to browse its
pages for fodder for tonight’s dinner table diatribe. Tim went back
into the shed and crossed to the rusted steel shelves his father
installed as part of the clean up job. On the first three shelves,
a variety of gardening tools and