Seamus Schneider, dancing on the skin of the earth, pedaling furiously in the rain, the drenching
north London rain, a pair of garden shears balanced on the handlebars,
wondered how he managed not to lose his balance. He
presented a spectacle to the passing cars. The people in these vehicles, if they noticed him at all, must have thought
Schneider represented the current shabby state of the nation's affairs. As soon as one hit the M-25
things improved, less likelihood of terrorists or lunatic fringe members
disrupting one's journey. Then one was home and all of this was just more
spectacle on the telly, bread and
circus for the working classes.
Schneider knew
that he presented this sort of spectacle.
It would have been all
right for a younger man, but he was
getting pricklier as he got older and further afield. And the rain never stopped. But he didn't mind
the rain as much as the blank,
passive stare as at a goldfish,
the beefy sneer, the wide-eyed momentary sojourn. The worst
of it was that they, the
ubiquitous they, were inside in cars and he was outside on an old bicycle. If anyone had
enquired, Schneider would have
insisted on the preference of being on the outside looking in, but
if honest he was compelled also to
ask himself where in the hell he thought he was going, and on a bicycle no
less, purchased from some hoodlum
at the Brick Lane market.
He once had believed, and the vestiges of
this faith still trailed about him like flotsam, that the fetish for the
acceptable curriculum had long ago ruined society.
But he possessed not even
the token of his passage, if one did not count the wife and the bicycle that both tied him to a seemingly ceaseless rota in this former
sink of empire.
The shears were not his. They were only an
encumbrance and getting harder to handle with the rain bearing
down. The shears belonged to Lawrence. He knew him only as
Lawrence. Schneider wondered whether Lawrence was a man of the cloth.
He wore civilian clothes
and affected a neutral, standoffish benevolence, but Schneider would have put money on his being a
vicar. Not that he'd ever known any
vicars. But Lawrence worked from
the Flower Lane Church of England.
The secretaries in the Good
Neighborhood Scheme offices, in the Flower Lane church hall - the elderly women perpetually undergoing aerobic
classes as if in a circle of hell next door
on the basketball courts, treated Lawrence with the sort
of respect due to a representative of God on Earth, but Schneider was never
quite sure where he stood vis a vis Lawrence, let alone God.
The rain continued
to fizzle in the air for a short time and at last stopped. Good timing.
Schneider pulled up on the sidewalk to check the directory. He was not far off
from his destination.
Thin-lipped women with overgrown,
sour-faced children in prams
congregated suddenly outside shop fronts, in some kind of
mid-afternoon ritual of which he was ignorant. There was dissolution in the air. He could see it in the faces of people. Schneider welcomed
the prognostications of
global disaster made in the popular press. He longed to have been right all along about things.
Bring on entropy, ye men of learning, said Schneider to himself.
He pushed the bicycle along the sidewalk. Rows of houses were
empty, just this side of complete abandon, for sale signs
teetering eerily on the overgrown
patches of weed and brambles.
Stray cats made dashes for cover across the street. Schneider
checked the directions Lawrence had
scribbled on a piece of Good
Neighborhood Scheme stationery. The house was at the end of the street. Thick, woody brambles overgrew the picket fence. Paint was falling in jagged patches from the front door.
Schneider rang the buzzer. It still worked; he could hear it sounding inside.
He heard footsteps, and then the door opened.
"Mr. Isaacs?" enquired Schneider.
The man, an older
gentleman with a yellowed moustache, lanky thin hair
combed across the scalp and black
framed glasses, studied
Schneider with a blank expression.
"Yes?"
he said.
"I'm from the
Good Neighbor Scheme. Here to cut your grass."
"Oh, yes. Seamus. Yes, yes. Come
around the back."
"I've got the
bicycle."
"That's all right. You see, I've been done by the bloody
doctors for cancer. Haven't been
keeping up with things around here like I used to."
"Right."
"You are here
to do the back lawn, aren't you?
"Anything you
need done," said Schneider serviceably.
"Yes. Well, my name is Ron. Ron
Isaacs. You can come around the
back, Seamus."
Schenider pushed the bicycle around by the
back gate. Ron was holding the gate open for him.
"What line of
work are you in, son?"
"Oh, I do a
little bit of everything," said Schneider.
"It's
absolutely dreadful the way this government is running the country into the ground, isn't it?"
"Oh,
yeah."
"I know it's hard for the lads to find any
sort of steady work. I'm a roofer
myself. Worked in the trade for 25 years. I've always been active. When you're
a roofer you're always active."
Schneider set the
bicycle against a rusted oil barrel.
"But I've
been done by the cancer," added Ron.
The backyard was a
scrap heap, piled high with rotted planks and assorted timbers, rusted pieces of machinery set among the grass. A small brown dog barked at the kitchen door.
"All right, Lady. It's been hard for her
with the grass so high, you
see," said Ron.
He opened the back
door and the dog ran out on stiff
legs into its former fields
of glory, yapping and jerking into the thicket.
"There's a
hedgehog in there, you see," said Ron.
Schneider took the shears and snapped them open
and closed once or twice,
loosening the hinge.
"You need
some oil for that," said Ron.
"What I need
is a decent lawnmower," said Schneider.
"You can use
mine," said Ron, stepping over and removing the canvas from a push mower
that looked like it hadn't been used for decades.
Ron was fairly alert for an old man, thought
Schneider, as the two of them
adjusted the blades on the mower and tried to get it to work. But then suddenly his eyes would lose their focus, and he would seem faded and gray, the spark
gone. He went
back inside the house with the dog, letting Schneider carry on alone.
Schneider was glad
for the mower for one big reason,
and that was the dog turds he kept coming across, slicing wet and sliding between the blades. He would have hated to go through them with Lawrence's shears. Somehow the dog got back outside again
and was running around sniffing the gory remains of the past. The dog was on its last legs. It relished being
alive and then seemed to founder, like Ron, staring into the tall grass in memory
of the ancient prey, the hedgehog. The sun was out now, and steam was rising
from the grass as Schneider worked. He kept coming
across rusted tools in the grass, pliers and wrenches. He wondered if Ron would
miss them. Probably not. Ron appeared with a cup of tea for
him. Schneider took the cup. Ron smelled strongly of tobacco
and some sort of medicinal
odor Schneider could not identify.
"You're doing
well," said Ron. "I would have done it myself, but you see I've been
done by the cancer. This is the scar
here, see?"
Ron lifted his
shirt to show Schneider the scar, yellow
and grisly like an old rope burned
into the pale folds of his stomach.
Schneider sat on the concrete porch by the back door and drank the cup of tea.
Ron folded his shirt back in his pants.
"How long
they give you?" asked Schneider.
"Two weeks or
two years. Nobody knows for sure. I've already ordered my coffin." Schneider looked away,
unable to take Ron's stare.
The radio was on
in the kitchen, broadcasting
Parliamentary Questions.
The Leader of the Opposition was blasting the Prime
Minister. In the same way death rebuked life for not fulfilling its campaign
pledges. It showed in Ron's stare. He was
talking about his career as a roofer. He had been responsible
for the introduction of neolite, an asbestos tile,
into the Wembley area. Schneider listened with interest. The man was making a summation of himself. Schneider was witnessing
something important.
"Say," said Ron. "Maybe you can help me
cover the roof of the shed. It's been leaking all winter, and I'd like to have it covered."
"Sure," said Schneider, looking over at the shed. It was leaning dangerously against the side of the
house. He thought there was no way
Ron could be serious. But he was.
"This was my motorbike here. Used to get around everywhere on her."
Ron was peeling plastic off the motorcycle
in the shed, revealing a fairly new Yamaha 250.
"...ride her
down to Bournemouth regularly. I'll sell it to you if you like."
"I don't
know. It's certainly a nice bike."
"Does seventy
on the motorway."
"How much
would you want for it?"
"Three
hundred quid."
Ron went back inside,
vital with the old struggle for
survival gurgling once again in his veins
despite the large proportion of his insides riddled
with decay. Schneider thought he could use a
motorcycle. Man the wanderer,
homo migratorio was Schneider, sailing over the grass, rolling down
the street. He never wanted to end his days with the stink of his own
decrepitude in his nostrils.
Schneider believed in the practice
of mobility. Luckily, the wife was not yet settled back into local
society. Schneider would not give her the chance if he had his say.
There was an old rake of
Ron's he used to pile up the
cuttings. Then he snipped the brambles back from the edges of the lawn. Lady would have the upper hand once
again in the struggle for backyard
supremacy with the hedgehog.
"You've got
to help me with the shed now," said Ron, highly excited. Lady yapped loudly around his heels.
Schneider felt like going home before the rain descended again. But he knew he
had to help Ron. It would give him
an infusion of strength to
work on the shed. He was already rolling out the sheet of plastic he
intended as a covering, trying hard to control the shaking in the hands that
had once introduced neolite, the miracle tile, to the Wembley area.
Ron and Schneider
worked at covering the
shed with the plastic. Ron led the way down the
narrow alley between the house and
the shed. Together they threw the plastic over the shed. Then the old man
insisted on climbing the ladder while Schneider held it steady below. Schneider could see the arc of the
man's life as he climbed the ladder, his vanity and strength
just enough to keep away despair. Ron tried
adjusting the plastic.
"Hammer,
please," said Ron. Schneider handed up the hammer. Ron began to hammer. His trembling hands
made it hard for him to get the nails into the rotting wood.
“Why don't you let
me do it?" asked Schneider.
"That's awright," said Ron. Schneider could see the
condensation forming on the inside of his glasses. The hammer slipped and crashed to the floor. Schneider picked it
up, letting go of the ladder. Somehow
Ron got down off the ladder without falling. Sschneider was grateful for that.
There were some nails on the floor and
Schneider went around the shed with them, reaching up to hammer the plastic down to the rotten
siding of the shed.
Ron watched.
"Good. Well
done," he said, wiping his glasses.
Schneider was sick. The whole idea had been to
give Ron a sense of
pride in himself, and he'd had to go and do it himself. Schneider tried to make
it up by coming inside with Ron and meeting his wife. He had a difficult time looking at Emma. Her lower teeth were missing and her legs were swelled from poor
circulation. She was otherwise a
cheerful, ebullient sort of woman, and
Schneider saw how much the
two loved each other. She told Schneider
about her two sons, both wonderful fellows, one an accountant in Watford. Schneider wondered why they didn't help out with
cutting
the lawn if they were so
wonderful.
"Seamus helped
me cover the shed, dear. It should keep
dry now," said Ron.
"Oh, that's
very kind of you," said Emma. "How much do we owe you?" she asked.
"Nothing. The scheme pays me. It comes out
of the council budget."
"Really?"
The two of them were Labor party supporters,
old style socialists. Ron had campaigned for the local Labor candidate, but
someone in the neighborhood had stolen the billboards from
the front lawn. Schneider thought
a decent interval had passed and made to go.
"About the motorcycle. I'll get back to you,
Ron," said
Schneider as the old man showed
him to the back gate. They were
best of friends now.
"What price
did I quote you, son?"
"Two
hundred," said Schneider. Ron's eyes faded to gray.
The rush hour traffic was growing menacing
and threatening to whip out of control. Soon Schneider
would be home, but still he cursed
and made faces at the cars,
hoping indignation would
keep away misfortune.
Anthony Caplan's latest novel, Savior, will be published April 18, 2014, on Amazon's Kindle by Harvard Square Editions. Read a sample on his website at: http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com/savior
