The Caretaker of Lorne Field

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.