There’s No One Back There Like That No More
Len Strawbrik sits at his workstation conjuring a password that will allow him to sign off on his employee timesheets. He is a tall, angular man with thinning silver hair and placid blue eyes speckled with traces of lead. He has prominent upper teeth and receding gum line that presents alternately as a smile and a grimace. Owasa9245Mona! His boyhood street address, the name of the German shepherd who got loose and tormented the neighborhood kids when he was six, and an exclamation point for added security. Then the predictable response: The User ID or Password you entered is invalid. Please try again or contact the System Administrator. Fuck the system administrator. He had been to the system administrator at least one thousand times. Sylvia Stumpf wearing that ridiculous headset, you’d think she worked for Mission Control, can’t take the thing off for a simple conversation about how it was better when we collected paper timesheets and a supervisor could make the rounds and check in with his staff in the process. He puts his thumbs to his temples. Another poor night of sleep and coffee no longer sparks the synapses or lightens the irritability. A dinging sound from his computer. A reminder for a nine o’clock meeting about the new operations platform. If it weren’t for these meetings he might get some work done and be at home at a reasonable hour. He doesn’t understand half of what they say at these gatherings. The place infested with Trek speak. Clouds and portals, wikis and Moodles, search engine optimizations, snapchatter. He has a mind to chuck it all and go back to where he started on the manufacturing floor, to a time when his ears, eyes, hands and back were calibrated to the pump and hum of machinery. Only nothing’s the same down there either. Even the machines speak a new language. He hammers out another attempt at the password. Again, it denies him. He pounds the table.
He takes a deep breath, leans back and thinks of being home, resting on the porch. Then he envisions his unkempt lawn, its spikes of grass ragging up out of the sweep of his headlights at the end of a long day and it makes him want to cry. The computer dings. Strawbrik unfurls from his chair, lifts his planner and a manila file from his desk and lopes into the corridor. Ahead is Drubbings, pear shaped in his sport jacket and wide-waist pants, waddling along with computer case and cup of coffee. Strawbrik feels the full weight of his fatigue gathering in his legs. He slows. He’s not sure he can do this today. Drubbings spewing about the platform and heads nodding and meanwhile the hours go and not a thing is produced. He ducks into the coffee station, maybe try the new espresso function and see if it gives him a jolt. He still doesn’t like this new coffee machine, but the chance for a blast of caffeine wins him over for the moment. He grabs a paper cup from the pile and places it under the spigot. He presses the button that says espresso. Nothing happens. He stands back. There’s a button for coffee. He considers it, but he wants espresso. The thing says espresso. It is right in front of him. This is a new machine. He should be able to have espresso. He pushes again, this time with the knuckle of his middle finger. There was nothing wrong with the old coffee maker. You wanted coffee, you walked in here and you poured your coffee. If you took the last cup you made a new batch for everyone else. And Bryant had a heavy hand and made it strong and Zepko made it weak as milk and it was all ok because everyone had a hand in it. Zepko and Bryant were both gone now, of course, as was pretty much everyone else from those days. Could it be he himself was on the downward slant of things? If that was true, then where was the peak? When had he passed it?
There is a little window in the coffee station. It is too high to look out of, but it lets in the sun and provides a peek at the tops of the outdoor light standards. Strawbrik looks now, his eyes reflecting the soft blue of a cloudless Carolina sky. He is in this attitude, gazing at the heavens when Bernie Moss from accounting wanders in.
“What cha got, a spider up there?” Moss says. Strawbrik flinches, shows his teeth briefly and releases a syllabic burst of a laugh. There was a time when meeting colleagues in the coffee room meant laughter and high-spirited ribbing, but now all was aggravation. Moss approaches the coffee machine and sets down a mug he brings with him. He looks over his shoulder at Strawbrik, his eyes peering up out of the top of fleshy cheeks, reminiscent in Strawbrik’s mind of a toad. “So, Len, you been checked out on this gizmo?”
“Nah, I’ve had enough coffee,” Strawbrik says. “Got a meeting,” he nods toward the door.
Moss presses a button and there’s a dash of liquid. Moss lifts his mug.
“That was a short pour,” Strawbrik says.
“Espresso. Here, let me show you. You just put your cup under here and mash the coffee button one time and you’re good to go.”
“The coffee button for espresso,” Strawbrik says.
“A quick punch for espresso and hold it in for coffee.”
Strawbrik grunts.
Moss turns to face him, lets his shoulders drop and plants his heels.
“You know Taggart in sales says production is off,” Moss says. “But I told him, Strawbrik, he knows his business. That’s what I said. I wouldn’t lie. And that’s Taggart anyway, always has something to say.”
“Why are you telling me this, Bernie?”
“Letting you know I got your back, that I think you’re still doing a fine job.”
These little games being played after all these years. And for what? Still, the comment hits its mark and it will yank him out of his sleep in the middle of the night. Strawbrik thinks again of his lawn. The old mower was shot. Wasn’t that the way? To get a thing done you always had to do another thing that would entail doing yet another thing that you could never get to.
“Huh,” Strawbrik says and turns to go. At the door he turns back to Moss. “You know why production is down, Bern?”
“I didn’t say it was down. Taggart…”
“That goddamn coffee machine.”
When he gets to the end of the hall, Strawbrik heads down the steps and out to the parking lot. He tosses the folder and his planner onto the passenger seat of his Camry and rolls down the window. There is a faint taste of ocean on the breeze. How long had it been since he had been to the beach, and he living so close? Isn’t that why he moved here? He considers going there now, but he is on a mission. He puts the car in drive and heads straight towards the lawn care showroom at the front of the mall.
The salesman, a kid of twenty-four in his tie and white shirt, clearly speaking with a sales script in his head, tells Strawbrik the LawnBeast model P10646 Mowing System with gradient shield self-propel technology is perfect for a lawn like his with its slope and he being a man of an age to appreciate not expending precious time and energy on cutting grass. The salesman goes so far as to say that the Mrs. will appreciate the extra vim he’ll have to devote to other things, “if you know what I mean.” Strawbrik sees through the bullshit but he is in a hurry, and he deserves something new and fancy. He lets himself be talked into buying the LawnBeast model P10646.
By the time he gets home he is giddy. This is the spark he needs, an honest hour’s labor in the sun surrounded by the hum of insects and chirping birds. When he’s done here, he’ll go back to work. Apologize for the missed meeting. Make up for the lost time with the renewed zing in his step. Get the straight scoop from Sylvia on those timesheets and make it up to old Bernie Moss for being so curt.
Only when he fires up the LawnBeast and squeezes the easy lever engagement caliper, nothing happens. He goes back to the garage and gathers up the trouble-shooting list, but there’s nothing about the thing not moving. Inside, his wife, Marinda, clearly put out of routine, asks how it’s going. He just grunts. He riffles through the trash, looking for that warranty. He has only a vague recollection of it in his rush to get his mower on the lawn. This makes him want to kick something. He takes a deep breath and heads back to the garage and the operating instructions. He is given a website to visit. Marinda is at the computer. He massages her shoulders, asks if he can get on really quick. When he gets to the website, he is asked to come up with a password to log in. The idea of another password makes his molars ache, so he punches in the 1-800 number on his cell, only he hits the wrong number the first time, so he mashes the red button with his thumb and re-punches. The voice on the line sounds like an actual person, so he starts to speak. The voice talks over him, listing numbers to push for various concerns, none of which addresses the issue of his mower not mowing. He presses 0 in hopes of reaching an operator, but instead he gets a Muzak version of “Tequila Sunrise.” He thumbs the red button again and as the phone disconnects he swears he hears a “Hello, May I help you?”
Len Strawbrik is back on the lawn glaring down at his LawnBeast model P10646. Across the street the sun has cleared the top of the long leaf pine, and the morning has forever left this day. This time when he depresses the Quickstart ignition tab while simultaneously clasping the auto safety bail bar, the thing doesn’t even start. There’s a tickle at his calf, and he imagines the grass growing as he stands. He goes after his tools, but Marinda yells as she’s pulling out of the driveway, “Just take the thing back.”
He sizes up the LawnBeast logo, a wide cartoon mouth with long teeth and spots of saliva spewing out and considers the sledgehammer in the garage. Instead he wrestles the LawnBeast into the trunk of his Camry. As he steps through the driver’s side door there’s a searing needle burn at the back of his upper calf. A fire ant. Strawbrik grinds the bony bastard between his thumb and forefinger. As he prepares to pull out of his driveway, the neighbor’s lawn care company arrives with its blitzkrieg of grass cutting equipment. He waves and smiles at them as if doing otherwise would be an admission that he has made all the wrong choices in this life.
At the mall showroom Strawbrik tells the salesman he wants his money back. He is told he needs to go to the Warranty Repair Center, which is in its own small structure at the back of the mall, just beyond the loading docks.
“But I just bought the thing not two hours ago.”
The salesman shrugs and retrieves the manager who walks Strawbrik outside. He points to a three-story office building. “Just head toward that building. You can’t miss it.”
Strawbrik follows the general contour of the mall parking lot toward that three-story office building when the parking lot dead ends into a curb outlining a thin strip of craggy grass. He revs the engine in preparation to drive up over the curb and the strip to where the parking lot continues but thinks better of it. He finds his way to an intersection with a light.
At the light he thinks, Warranty Repair Center? Surely, they won’t try to fix this thing. It never worked. How can you fix something that never worked? He wants his money back and that’s what he will argue for. Clearly this company needs to be taught a lesson, though in a remote part of his mind he knows that if a new mower is offered he will take it. What he hopes is that he will look out over his freshly cut lawn at dusk, over the joyful contrast between green grass, white sidewalk and rounded shrub. His wife will come with drinks, and his shoulders will rest easy on the back of the chair as the day’s last robin bends its ear to the ground.
But now there is sweat on his back and neck and it is not the joyful kind that comes from productive physical exertion. The light turns and his wheels squeal. He rounds a bend and turns right onto a road that leads to another road that appears to pass just in front of the three-story office building. But to get to that road he needs to be in the left lane and he is in the right lane and a truck hauling frozen pizzas is blocking the way, so he is forced to stay in the right lane and next thing he knows he is on the onramp to the interstate heading south.
From the interstate, it occurs to him that his plans for the day had nothing to do with being on the interstate stuck behind this container truck going twenty miles an hour and his body is now wound up to lay waste to an entire pride of saber tooth tigers, but the only action available to it is to make an aggressive swerve around this sonofabitch as he decides to wander bovine-like into the left lane as well. So Strawbrik swerves back right and nearly rear-ends an even slower moving fuchsia Plymouth Neon sporting a bumper sticker that says “No Fear.” He waits while this race between the tortoise and the slug plays out, until one of them pulls ahead to give enough room to get around. Strawbrik zips out into the left lane and pulls up next to the Neon. The driver is a woman, probably about his own age with silver hair. She is texting. Strawbrik’s foot goes numb on the accelerator.
Ten minutes later he’s back at the original exit. He takes a right and another right, revs his way around the mall, turns right at the light and again he’s heading onto the interstate. This time he makes a wheel-squealing U-turn before the on-ramp and blasts his way back toward the three-story building. When he arrives, there’s no sign of the Warranty Repair Center. A worker on one of the loading docks waves his hand vaguely over a swath of unmarked pavement to the left.
Strawbrik hammers the gas and rockets around the lot five or six times before he notices that the flat-roofed brick structure he originally thought was attached to the three-story office building is in fact not attached but is separated by a five-foot gap. There is no assigned parking area for this building, just a continuation of the nondescript zone he finds himself in. He jams the grill of his Camry against the side of the small building. He walks most of the way around the building and comes to a flat windowless steel door and a rectangular plastic sign drilled into the wall that says Warranty Repair Center.
Strawbrik hoists the LawnBeast model P10646 mowing system with gradient shield self-propel technology out of the trunk and sends it clattering to the ground. He rolls the thing around the building, opens the steel door by turning the tiny metal knob, braces the door open with his shoulder and pulls the LawnBeast through by the handle so that it rolls through on two wheels. Inside there is a ten-foot-long windowless hall that ends with another door. He pushes it open using the crash bar and yanks the mower through.
The room he enters is shockingly white—white wallboard, white tiled floor and bright fluorescent lights. It reminds Strawbrik of a time he spent Christmas up north and the snow outside cast a white sheen on the walls and ceilings. There is a vigorous hum of air conditioning. For a moment he forgets where he is. Then there is a booming voice. “Can I help you?”
In the middle of the room is a makeshift counter created from the remnants of three castoff department store display cases. Behind the left case stands a squat man with his hands on his hips, a pencil behind his ear and a tool apron around his waist. His face is wide and pink below a receding hairline, the whole of it reminding Strawbrik of the flat end of a ham before it goes into the oven. He wears thin, square-framed glasses and an oval patch on his short-sleeved shirt that says Louis.
“Yeah you can help me. Give me my money back.” Strawbrik shoves the mower at the counter, but the shove is weak and the LawnBeast stops an inch short. Strawbrik’s muscles and tendons are not fooled. They know that he does not want his money back. He hopes this Louis will leap over the counter and with the twist of a screwdriver send him on his way. Strawbrik wants nothing more than to cut his lawn now, to be able, at the end of the day, to say it is done. And at night he can flick on the porch light and gaze out the picture window over his neatly trimmed lawn and carry the vision back to his bed and into a deep abiding rest.
A guttural chuckle comes from the other side of the counter to the right. There’s a man there, a beefy guy with unkempt curly black hair accented by a few silver strands. He wears red sweat pants and a black hoodie and sits on a little stool with wheels. He has a smart phone or some gadget in his hand and Strawbrik isn’t sure if he is laughing at the phone or at him.
“O-kay,” Louis says, extending the ‘kay.’ “Can you tell me what problems you are having with your LawnBeast?” Strawbrik is at the counter now, but Louis’ voice is still loud, like a holiday automaton that has only one volume setting. His tone also rings false. The heat rises back into Strawbrik’s voice.
“It’s a piece of shit.”
“O-kay. Is there an issue with ignition?”
“There are issues with everything. I have a yard with a hill. I was told this thing would go up hills, but it does nothing. It’s now one-thirty. I bought this mower and set aside this day to do a simple task.…”
“Maybe there’s too much dew,” the curly haired guy says. He has a sandpapery voice and a nasally Midwestern accent. His stool gives off a little squeak.
“Dew? Shouldn’t something called a LawnBeast handle a little dew? Dew. Jesus.” He thought it would feel good to open the full throttle of his voice against an obstructive middle manager, but now that he has done it, he feels bad. He feels tired. He sees now that the curly-haired guy has a thin rumpled vest over his hoodie with a little oval patch that says Mickey.
“O-kay,” Louis says. He types something on his keyboard. “Gold Sentinel Protection?”
Strawbrik is not sure if he is addressing him or not, so he remains quiet.
“Do you have your Gold Sentinel Protection document?” Louis says. He remains poised over his keyboard, waiting for the correct sequence.
“Your warranty,” Mickey says still looking at his phone.
Strawbrik fumbles around in his pockets. Another squeak comes from Mickey’s stool.
“It’s okay, sir,” Louis says cheerfully. He comes from around the counter with a scanner gun and leans over the LawnBeast.
Strawbrik looks past the station Louis just vacated. He slips into one of those trances where he can’t look away. He is aware of Louis on one knee with the scanner held over the mower, but his eyes are fixed on a door behind his station that says Team Members Only. He imagines this door leads to some back area where things get done. A repair man, perhaps, behind a desk covered with wrenches and clamps and thumb-worn yellowed manuals, a set of glasses attached to a thin strap around his neck for when he has to look at tiny springs and screws. Strawbrik has seen this guy before, wearing a blue uniform with his name on a patch, unscrewing the back of the family television set and tapping on the tubes and saying he’ll need to bring it back to the shop, but in the meantime, here is a loaner, a portable, and that is about the best thing going because it is something different and he will not need to go without.
“Is that a fire ant bit you?” Mickey asks. He’s peeking through the break where two display cases come together. “Around the back of your knee right there. I tell you, I cannot stand them things. That is one thing about living down here I do not like.”
“How long will it take you to fix this?” Strawbrik asks Louis.
“Coming right up, sir.”
Again, the guttural chuckle from Mickey. “That grass must be awful high for it to bite you way up there,” he says. Louis continues to type something into the computer. Despite Mickey’s comment, or maybe because of it, Strawbrik senses progress being made. Wheels are turning. There’s a sudden lightness in his chest. He can still get this thing done. There’s a lot of day left. Just a little change in perspective is all. Tonight, a cold one and tuna steaks on the grill.
“Tell me something,” Mickey says. “Does this look like a shop to you?” Strawbrik ignores him as if maybe he’s talking to another customer. But there are no other customers. “You ever see a shop where the workers have such clean hands?” Strawbrik looks up despite himself. Mickey passes the phone to his left hand and holds up his right. “I don’t know about you, but when I think of guys who work in shops, they got greasy, cut up, swollen hands.” He passes the phone back to his right hand and waves his left. “Not like these.” Mickey goes back to his phone and texts something. Strawbrik looks back towards Louis.
“And this don’t smell like no shop either,” Mickey says while still texting. “When I think of shops I think of kerosene and blots of oil covered with sand on the floor.” He stops texting but still looks at his phone.
“You don’t hear no hammers here,” he says. “No air compressors. No guys conversing about parts. Parts. Nobody delivers parts to this place.” He’s back pushing buttons on his phone. Strawbrik returns to looking at the Team Members Only door.
“Tell ya the God’s honest truth,” Mickey says. “We don’t fix anything here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We don’t fix anything.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Mickey shrugs. “You seem like a nice guy.”
“Here it comes,” Louis says as the printer kicks on.
“You know,” Mickey says. “You look tired, like you could use a rest. Maybe you should hire one of those lawn-maintenance companies.”
The printer stops, and Louis rips off the sheet. He pulls a tag out of his tool apron and writes something on it.
“You kinda remind me of a lady who was here a few days ago,” Mickey says. “Or a couple weeks. I don’t know.” He leans back a little and his stool squeaks again. “Anyway, she had one of them hats ladies used to wear to church, you know with the netting around.” He flutters one hand in front of his face. “She come in pushing a grocery cart with something in it covered with a blanket. It was like she had a bird in a cage under there. Like this was the veterinarian. So, Louis here goes around to help. He has trouble getting it out of the cart it’s so heavy, but finally he dumps it up here on the counter and it makes the whole place rattle. I pull off that blanket and under there, honest to god, is an old Singer sewing machine, you know with the black and gold lettering. I think it was like at least fifty years old. She said her husband always brought it here, that there was a man back there who took care of it. And I says, not here, lady. But she insists. She keeps peeking back there like there’s something I don’t know about.”
“What is back there?” Strawbrik asks.
“Ain’t nothin’ back there. That’s what I kept telling her, only she wouldn’t believe me. Kept talking about some nice man and I’m saying maybe you got the wrong place or maybe once upon a time, but not now. There’s no one back there like that no more.”
“It looks like a place where a repairman might be,” Strawbrik says.
“Like I just told you, we don’t fix anything here.”
Louis leans over the counter and wraps the tag around the handle of the LawnBeast. He hands Strawbrik the computer printout.
“This diagnostic serves as your claim check for pick up,” he says. “Your LawnBeast will be ready in twelve to fourteen days.” He rests his hands on his hips.
“Twelve to fourteen days! Jesus Christ! I need my lawn cut today. Just give me my money back.” Another squeak comes from Mickey’s stool.
“Your warranty is for repair,” Louis says.
“He just said you don’t fix anything here.”
“Your P10646 mowing system will be serviced by our expert technicians and will be returned good as new,” Louis says.
“It is new! What are you a comedian? And where are these experts?” Strawbrik’s eye passes over the Team Members Only door and stops there. He hears the grind and clank of gears. “Who’s back there?” Strawbrik nods toward the Team Members door. Again, there’s an alluring clatter of machinery.
“Tennessee,” Mickey says.
“What?”
“Where the experts are is Tennessee.”
“You’re going to send this piece of crap all the way to Tennessee?”
Mickey shrugs. Louis crosses his arms.
“What happened to that old lady?” Strawbrik asks.
“She kept wanting to go back there. I think she was delusional.”
“I’m going back there.” Strawbrik searches for an opening past the display cases and spots a low gate-like door with a latch just behind Louis’s station. He dashes around the display case, pushing the Lawn Beast. “Sir, you can’t,” Louis says. But he is already past him. He slips through the low gate and pulls the mower through.
“There’s nothin’ back there,” Mickey says again, though Strawbrik senses he has not left his stool or stopped looking at his phone.
Strawbrik reaches the door and turns the handle expecting it to be locked, but it gives easily. The door pulls shut behind him, clicking out the hum of the air conditioner from the outer room. It is warmer in here and softly quiet. The lighting is dim as in a garage and incredibly still. He parks his LawnBeast on a faded green square painted on the floor with a vague hope that some repair person will register its presence. But it is clear no one is back here. Visually it is a sea of bubble wrap. Hanging from racks are vacuum cleaners and weed whackers, several warehouse rows of them wrapped and hung in ghostly silence. On the floor below are mowers much like his own, their engines spun in plastic and tags dangling from their handles. Something there catches his eye. Greenish blue, sleek in its simplicity, incongruously located beneath the toaster ovens and partially covered by a plastic sheet, the front bench seat of a 1960’s era automobile.
He pulls back the plastic cover and runs his hand over the upholstery’s smooth surface, letting his fingers ride along its knitted grooves as if over an ancient exotic balm. He turns and sinks into the seat, succumbing to the forgotten sound of stretching fiber, and allows his hands to spread over its cool surface while resting back his head.
The sweet smell of vinyl conjures memory of diesel and sweat, sweet grass and clover. Of blue sky and white clouds and time to watch the drawing shadows on wide fields. He is young and there is a scent of earth and his hands are resting firm on the handle of a spade, digging and lifting, digging and lifting and pausing to watch the sun’s ascent. He can tell time by the sun. His muscles taut and tan. He has friends working the other rows, and there are a couple of other guys he knows just from here. Through the long afternoon he notes the rising mist and the building of clouds. There is time to look up from the spade, to watch clouds form, to admire progress and to take in the faint tang of diesel wafting from the Massey Ferguson droning in the misty distance. The boss, the old Swede in his yellow shirt, his right-hand firm to the wheel, his strong chin aimed over top like an arrow.
The hours are filled with promise, of college in the fall and of girls. Time to mark the clouds piling and darkening in the west and creeping in above the tree line. There is the scent of rain and fluttering leaves. A heron prows overhead, a crow caws and the Swede on the tractor in the distance makes another pass. Strawbrik goes back to his row, picking out the weeds and loosening the soil with the spade. Soon there is a shushing breeze and chill on skin. The sun is covered in dark cloud. There’s a drop and a flash. He looks again toward the man on the tractor who sends out a whistle and waves in a wide arc and guns it toward the barn up front. Someone starts the old flatbed, the sound of ringing metal spades tossed onto the back. Strawbrik hustles to the truck in the rain. There are four of them crammed into the front bench seat. Strawbrik sits wedged against the passenger door as thick drops burst against the windshield. He rests his head on the old vinyl and feels the inevitable rushing salve of sleep.
There is a sharp knock followed by the grind of a chain and gears. Strawbrik is partially roused, but soon he slides back into a semi dream of sloshing wipers and vinyl seats once bleeding in the sun now cool under cloud of rain. A shadow rounds the stand of hanging vacuums–mechanical with tentacle arms clasping down from a sliding car on a rail. It hovers over the LawnBeast, drops and wraps with spinneret limbs, lifts without effort and whisks the mower back beyond the wall of silent appliances, pulleying its way into the distance like the voices of children calling from a neighbor’s yard.
• • •
Frank Tascone’s work has appeared in the Chautauqua Literary Journal, AWP Chronicle, Encore Magazine. His story, “Priscilla Gload,” was a Pushcart Prize nominee. He is an assistant professor of English and writing at the University of Mount Union and lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with wife Kirsten and daughter Sophie