"Bruce Holland Rogers - Green Lawns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

10.
 Waxman came to my house one evening, agitated, impatient. "You want to see what comes of not
keeping your lawn up? You want to see it?" he said.
I had brushes to clean before they dried, but he was so close to panic that I agreed to follow him to his
house. He took me into his living room and turned the television on. It was an old set, and it took a long
time to warm up. While we waited, I looked at the green candy dish that sat on top of the TV's wooden
cabinet. The candies inside were barrel-shaped and dark brown, almost black. Horehound, I guessed.
"There!" Waxman said. The screen crackled as it came to life. "I went to turn on Ozzie and Harriet
and I got this!"
Men and women in tight-fitting clothes gyrated across the screen. The camera zoomed in on body
parts, froze, zoomed back again.
"What is that?" Waxman demanded.
I shrugged. "Looks like MTV to me."
"It's in color," Waxman said. "On my screen! Color! Do you see what you're doing? Do you see?" He
pointed to his hands. "And look at this, just look!"
Waxman seemed to be about my age. Or he had until now, anyway. The skin on his hands looked
papery, and his had liver spots. "Don't you see? You're throwing everything out of kilter! You water that
lawn, or there's no telling what might happen!"
***


11.
When I got home, I walked around on the fine straw that was my front lawn. All right, why the hell not
water it a little? It bothered me to waste the water, it seemed irresponsible, but there was something a lot
bigger than water conservation at stake here. That's how it was beginning to seem.
Yeah, all right. I'd water the lawn in the morning.
But that night, I dreamed that I was watching Father Knows Best on a wood-cabinet television. It was
hot in my living room. I was sweating. I had an undershirt on beneath my dress shirt, and the dress shirt
collar was starched and scratched my neck. A woman with her hair done up in a beehive came into the
room-- my wife, I realized, and a boy with a crew cut followed her. "Father," said the boy, "may I have
fifteen cents to buy an ice cream?"
I dug into my pocket and said, "Here you go, sport."
The sheets were damp when I woke up.
"No," I told myself. "I'm sticking to my guns. The lawn is on its own."
***


12.
They tried to do it themselves, the neighbor men with young faces and liver spots on their hands.
They'd turn on my garden hose while I was working in my studio. I'd hear the water running and go
outside to find them soaking down the ground.
"Get the hell off my property!" I said.
"But we'll do it," said Bob Evans. "We'll water the lawn! We'll fertilize it and keep it mowed!"
"No," I said. "No lawn! Damn it, I don't want to live that way!"
***


13. They came in the night. Things like that always get done in the night. But there was no meanness in
them. Only desperation. Their faces were getting old, now. Waxman's face in particular had shriveled and
gone as papery as his hands. That's what I saw when he turned on the light in my bedroom and they