Chapter 1
Jack Durkin let out a groan as his wife, Lydia, dropped a bowl of corn flakes in front of him.
“Aw, woman,” he moaned. “You trying to kill me? Corn flakes? This makes twenty-three days straight now.”
“You don’t like it? Get a job that pays money.”
“Get a job that pays money,” he said, mimicking her. “I got a job, you old hag-”
“Don’t you dare call me that!”
“Well,” he said, sniffing, “don’t you make fun of my job then. I spend every day saving this world, and don’t you forget it!”
She laughed at that. “Saving the world? You old fool, you spend all your time pulling out weeds from a field nobody cares about.”
“Pulling out weeds?” he exclaimed with indignation. “Hell you say! I spend every goddamn day from winter thaw to first frost saving this worthless planet. Those ain’t no weeds I’m pulling. They’re Aukowies, as you damn well know! Weeds, huh? Do weeds scream every time you kill one of them?”
Lydia Durkin stopped scrubbing the previous night’s dishes to roll her eyes. Half under her breath she muttered that he was nothing but an old fool.
“Old fool, am I? We’ll see. Maybe I forget to pull one of them evil little suckers out, let it grow nice and big and hungry.” Being as quiet as he could, he pushed himself away from the table and tiptoed over to her on his bare feet. Then, once within striking distance, he jabbed his fingers hard into her ribs, tickling her. “Nothing but one of them Aukowies eating you up,” he laughed.
“Stop it! Stop it!” she screamed, jerking away and striking out with an elbow, catching him flush in his stomach. He stopped, and he stopped laughing, too.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “It’s not funny us living like this. Because you have to spend every day walking up and down a field pulling weeds-”
“They’re not weeds, you crazy old bat-”
“Shut up! I told you not to call me that! And I’m not old, only forty-six. I only look old ’cause I’ve been living with you like a pauper. Because you’re too lazy to get a real job.”
Jack Durkin held his stomach gingerly, still recovering having had his wind knocked out of him by that elbow. Damn thing was as hard as a crowbar. His knees felt creaky as he hobbled back to his chair. Without much enthusiasm he took a bite of corn flakes, then dropped his spoon back into the bowl.
“I got a job,” he said defiantly. “The most frickin’ important job in this whole goddamn world. And I’m under contract, goddamit!”
“You and your lousy contract.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said, pointing a thick finger at her. “That contract is the most sacred piece of paper on the planet. Don’t you dare desecrate it!”
Something about his tone stopped her. She went back to scrubbing the dishes and muttering under her breath what a useless fool she married. Jack Durkin sat scowling, first at her then at the bowl of corn flakes sitting in front of him. He pushed the bowl away, his round face turning red.
“Where are Lester and Bert? Why ain’t my sons eating breakfast with me?”
“It’s summer. I’m letting them sleep past six o’clock!”
“Well, that’s not going to happen again. Tomorrow morning they’re damn well joining me for breakfast. If I’m off saving the world every day, least they can do is join their pa for breakfast. You get them woken up or I’ll drag them out of bed myself. Don’t you think I won’t! And quit your goddamn muttering!”
Fed up, he pushed himself away from the table, grabbed his baseball cap and thermos, and headed towards the door.
Lydia Durkin stared stone-faced at him, but once he opened the door she softened a bit. “Ain’t you gonna eat nothin’?”
“Not in the mood now.”
“Well, I’ll bring you a lunch.”
“No, you don’t. It’s in the contract, goddamit! You don’t come out to Lorne Field. Never!”
He bent over and slipped his wool socks on and saw one of his toes sticking through the fabric. He glared at the toe angrily as if it had no right to be there, then put on his work boots. It took time tying up his laces, especially with how bad his back felt. When he was done he slowly straightened up, trying hard not to let Lydia see how much pain he was in, and with a loud harrumph stepped outside and slammed the door behind him.
Damn, that woman put him in a foul mood. Should be a law against her serving him corn flakes twenty-three straight days, especially her knowing that was all he’d have to eat until eight that night. And that little witch could’ve ruptured his spleen elbowing him the way she did. Chrissakes, all he was doing was being playful. As infuriating as all that was, what stuck in his craw was the way she belittled his job. Made it sound like he was some kind of loon.
Thinking about all that only made his foul mood blacker.
There was a time when the Caretaker of Lorne Field was held in reverence. When people respected the position and understood the sacrifices the Caretaker made so the rest of them could be safe. With his pa things started to change-slowly, maybe, but they changed as the ones who believed started to die off, and it had only grown worse under his tenure. Damn it, he had the most important job in the world, and now it was just one slight after the next. If not from his wife, then from the rest of the townsfolk. Even from his own boys…
Thinking of that made his back ache more than it had been.
Years of tending to Lorne Field left him with a rounded spine, bowed legs and creaky knees. All that bending and stooping he had to do all day long. Fifty-two years old and he felt like an old man. More than that, he looked like one. The sun had dried him out during all those years of walking back and forth across Lorne Field. Left his skin like a piece of rawhide. Probably responsible too for a good part of his hair falling out.
He stopped to work out the kink in his back. Bad enough he had creaky knees, now he had a kinky back. And if that weren’t enough, he was reduced to walking on foot down the dirt path to Lorne Field because some delinquent punks stole his bike. He had asked Lydia to buy him a new one, but she refused, claiming they didn’t have the money. When Chester Conley owned the town’s sporting goods store he would’ve gladly given Durkin a free bike, but Chester had long since retired to Arizona, and his son who took over the shop didn’t see things the way Chester had. Now Durkin was going to have to wait until the first frost to figure out how he would raise enough money for a new bike, which left him stuck having to walk for the rest of the season. One more indignity piled upon all the rest. One more stinking burden to shoulder.
A black, black thought entered his head. He could teach them all a lesson. If he bought a bus ticket, he could be in California in three days. Probably take eight, maybe nine days for the Aukowies to mature, another week or so for them to ravage the land and make their way to the west coast. That’d give him more than two weeks of peace and quiet. Two weeks without some raisin-faced shrew picking the flesh off his tired old carcass. Two weeks without his ungrateful boys rolling their eyes and smirking at him. Best of all, two weeks without any condescending looks from those townsfolk when he walked past them. Oh boy, would that teach them! Let them see how funny their jokes were when Aukowies shred them into mincemeat! Of course the Aukowies would get his wife and boys first, not only because they were closest but ’cause of the grudge they held against him. They’d make ’em suffer. Probably take their time too, at least as much as an Aukowie could.
He imagined Lydia and his boys in the grasp of the Aukowies, imagined the pure horror that would blind their eyes as they realized how all his stories weren’t just stories. As he visualized it, his thoughts turned into a lead weight that sunk into his gut. As much as he would never admit it, he did care for his battle-axe of a wife and his two gangly teenage boys.
That’s right, you old fool, he thought to himself. Teach the world a lesson by destroying it.
Whether or not the rest of the town still understood it, his position was one of the greatest responsibility. He had never yet forsaken it, and he wasn’t about to. No matter how miserable the weather was, no matter how poorly he felt, he had been out there every day since his twenty-first birthday doing his job as stipulated by the contract. Even when he was nearly dead with pneumonia he was out tending Lorne Field. Lydia had been near hysterical trying to get him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t be deterred. Stayed there seven in the morning to seven at night as he always did. Even though he was almost blind from fever and had chipped a tooth ’cause he was shaking so bad, he weeded out the Aukowies and kept the world safe. Took him two years to lose the cough that pneumonia had given him. But he did his job.
Straightening his back as best he could, he pushed out his chin and quickened his pace as he headed to Lorne Field. If he didn’t let that sickness stop him, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let feeling sorry for himself do it now.
Lydia sat deep in thought, a cigarette held loosely between her index and middle fingers, her small bloodshot eyes watering from the smoke. She couldn’t help feeling guilty sending her fool husband out of the house once again with nothing but cold cereal. You’d think he’d catch on that it was no accident it’d been weeks since he had anything decent to eat. That maybe, just maybe, he’d realize she was trying to discourage him from this joke of a life they were living and push him into a real job making real money. But the man was as dense as a brick. He actually sounded as if he believed the nonsense he spouted off about saving the world each day. Well, if he was going to deprive them of a real life then she was going to deprive him of real food!
Absentmindedly, she noticed her cigarette had burnt close to her fingers. She stubbed it out, stared for a moment at the darkened yellow nicotine stain that ran along the inside of her index and middle fingers, and then lit up a fresh one. She wouldn’t be smoking three packs a day if she didn’t have to suffer such a fool of a husband! Nineteen years old when she got involved with him. How could she have known any better? Only nineteen years old… just barely out of high school…
Back then the Durkins were mostly a mystery to her. This odd little family that mostly kept to themselves. She remembered as a little girl the way her pa would seize up when he’d run into old man Durkin, almost as if he were in the presence of royalty. If they were in the diner, her pa would offer to buy him a beer or a sandwich. If they were in the street or the Country Store, her pa would ask if he could do anything for him. It never occurred to her as a child that her pa and old man Durkin were the same age. Old man Durkin seemed ancient in comparison, with his white hair and weather-beaten face and hunched-over appearance.
After high school she went to work as a waitress at the Main Street Diner. It was well into the following winter that Jack Durkin started to come in. He was the Caretaker of Lorne Field then and living alone at the Caretaker’s cabin, his old man having retired to Florida and his younger brother, Joe, disappearing to God knows where. Growing up, she never had much to do with either of the Durkin boys. Joe was closer to her in age, but he mostly kept to himself in school. Jack was six years older but, like his brother, didn’t talk much to other folk, and the few times she’d see him around town he walked about as if he carried a heavy weight strapped to his back.
During those winter months Jack became a regular at the diner and Lydia soon caught him sneaking peeks at her. Not that she minded. At this point only a little bit of the fatigue of being Caretaker showed on his face. He was fairly decent looking, still had his hair, his back mostly straight and his chest only showing slight signs that someday it would cave in from all the stooping he had to do. Anyway, he didn’t let his hands roam along her backside like a lot of the men in the diner, and after three weeks of her trying to look shy and him pretending that he wasn’t openly staring at her, he asked her out and she accepted.
He took her to a nice restaurant two towns over in Hamilton. They both had lamb chops and he ordered a bottle of red wine and the waiter didn’t bother to check her driver’s license to see that she was two years under the legal drinking age. He didn’t talk much during dinner, mostly looked down at his hands or through the window at the snow falling outside. Around the time when they were eating parfait desserts and drinking coffee with Amaretto, he cleared his throat and asked whether she knew he was Caretaker of Lorne Field.
“Well, yes. I suppose everyone back home knows that.”
“Any idea what I do as Caretaker?”
She thought about it, shrugged. “I guess you take care of Lorne Field.”
He smiled at that. It was a mean-spirited smile confined mostly to his mouth; his eyes reflected something other than humor. She didn’t like it at all. “That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “You know much else about it?”
She shook her head.
“You know anything about the contract?”
Again she shook her head.
“My family’s been under contract for almost three hundred years now. That’s nine generations of Durkins. Contract calls for the Caretaker to live freely in the home at Lorne Meadow and to be paid eight thousand dollars as an honorarium each year.”
“Honorarium-that’s like a salary?”
“Yep.”
“You get paid eight thousand dollars a year and get to live rent-free just for taking care of a field?”
His face darkened for a moment, but it passed. “That’s right,” he said, his voice strained. “Look, I don’t have time to do this right. In a few months I got to be back working every day seven in the morning to seven at night and I’ll be doing that until first frost, so I don’t have time to court a woman right. The contract requires me to get married and have a son, preferably two in case something happens to the older boy. I don’t have time to be messing around. You’re no beauty but you’re pleasant enough to look at. So you want to marry me?”
At first all she could do was stare at him open-jawed, then she found her voice and sputtered, “On our first date you’re going to propose to me? And that’s how you’re going to do it? By telling me I’m no beauty?”
She could almost see him swallow back the crack, ‘Well, you ain’t!’ His face reddened slowly as he looked back at her. “Look, I don’t got time to do this right. I apologize if I offended you. I ain’t socialized much in my life. I guess in your own way you’re pretty. But I told you I don’t got time to do this the way it should be done. Contract requires me to get married and have a son and it’s got to be done soon. You don’t want to, that’s fine, just tell me. I got my eye on other girls, you just the nicest.”
That last comment appeased her pride enough for her to answer back, “Well, you ain’t so good-looking yourself.”
“Never said I was, did I!”
“Well, least you could do is propose right!”
“I don’t got time for that!” But he got up off his chair, moved next to her and slowly lowered one knee to the floor, grimacing as he did so. After taking a ring from his pocket, he cleared his throat and looked like he needed to spit something out. “Lydia May Jones, will you marry me?” he asked, sliding the ring on her finger.
She examined the ring and told him it looked old-fashioned.
“It should,” he said. “It’s an antique. Been in my family over two hundred years.”
“How big do you suppose it is?” she asked, one eye closed as she squinted hard at the ring. “At least half a carat? I heard rings are supposed to be at least half a carat.”
“I don’t know. So what’s your answer? You gonna marry me?”
“I’ll think about it.”
He shot her a look like he wanted to smack her, but he got off his knee, sat back down and silently finished his parfait and coffee.
When he took her home later, he walked her to the front door and then grumbled that he needed an answer soon. “Contract requires me to get married. I don’t got time to wait. You don’t want to then that’s that. I’ll just have to find someone else. Other girls I got my eye on.”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
He nodded, not happy with her answer but willing to accept it for the time being. As he started back to his car, she stopped him. “Least you could do is kiss me goodnight!”
Awkwardly, he moved back to her and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She was surprised at how strong his fingers were as he held her by her shoulders. Like they could crush stone. Bricklayer’s hands, that’s what she thought. She took hold of him by the side of his face and had him give her a proper kiss.
“So what do you do as Caretaker?” she asked in a breathless whisper.
He smiled then. Not the mean-spirited smile she had seen earlier, but something sad, maybe a bit whimsical. “I save the world everyday. Break my back doing it, too.”
When she got inside she showed her pa the engagement ring and told him about the proposal.
“It’s a nice-looking ring,” her pa said.
“It’s old looking,” she said, pouting. Then forcing her voice to quaver with indignation, she added, “The nerve of that man. Proposing to me on the very first date. And the way he did it!”
Her pa thought about it and showed a conciliatory smile. “Well, first off, that ring’s an antique. Probably worth a lot of money. And I wouldn’t be too hard on the boy about how he proposed. He probably don’t have time to do things otherwise.”
“What’s that mean?”
He ignored the question, a weariness aging his large broad face. “You should think about marrying him, Lydia. He’s got a hard road ahead of him and could use the help of a good wife.”
“Why should I even consider it with the low class way he treated me? And what’s so hard about his road? All he does is take care of a field!”
He sighed, kissed her on the forehead and started to walk away. She yelled out to him, “Pa, you didn’t answer me. What’s so hard about taking care of a field?” All he did in response was wave a tired hand in the air before disappearing into his bedroom.
Contrary to what she told her pa, she had pretty much already made up her mind to marry Jack Durkin. She was sick of waitressing; it was tough on her ankles and every night she came home with her feet all blistered and swollen. Besides, in 1979 eight thousand dollars a year was a good salary, better than what a lot of people made when you include having your home for free. It seemed like a good deal, one that she decided she couldn’t pass up. The next morning when Jack Durkin came to ask for her answer she told him she’d marry him, and Durkin, still frowning, nodded and told her he’d arrange the wedding. Three weeks later they were married.
After they were husband and wife he showed her the Caretaker’s contract. The document was several hundred years old, and he was so earnest as he went over it that she almost burst out laughing. But she decided if he could play his part with this foolishness so could she, especially if it meant free housing and eight thousand dollars a year. Even though the contract forbade anyone but the Caretaker or his eldest son from coming within a crow’s flight (whatever that was?) of Lorne Field, she followed him one day and hid and watched as he walked up and down the field picking out weeds. When the canvas sack he carried was filled he dumped out its contents into a stone pit and continued with his weeding. After an hour of watching that, she got bored and headed back to their house with no interest in ever watching him at work again.
For the first ten years or so of their marriage she had no real complaints, although she didn’t much care for her husband’s hardened attitude towards her three miscarriages, acting as if it didn’t matter because the babies would’ve been girls. And she didn’t like the fact that months before she found out she was pregnant with Lester he had acted all nutty, mumbling stuff about how if she didn’t have a boy soon he’d have to divorce her-that it was stated so in the contract. But other than that cold behavior on his part things were okay. More than just the house being free, people did things for them during those first ten years. Doc Wilson never charged for medical care, old man Langston who owned the local butcher shop gave them their meat for free, and others helped them out, too. Lewis Black came by and did free carpentry. Tom Harrold the same with plumbing. Ed Goodan for the electrical. There was little she had to pay for during those first ten years. And there were times when Jack, in his own gruff way, acted kind of sweet with her.
About the time she was pregnant with Lester things started to change. Doc Wilson died and the new doc who took over started to charge them full price. Several years later when old man Langston passed the butcher shop on to his son, he made him promise to continue giving the Durkins their meat free. The son did for a while but after the old man moved down south he went back on his word. Over time most of those who’d been helping out were either dead or retired elsewhere, and the ones who took their places didn’t have the old generosity. Worse, she started noticing townsfolk looking at her funny, like they knew all about the scam she and Jack were running on them. Before too long the eight thousand dollar annual honorarium didn’t seem like much, even with the free housing-especially after Bert was born and they had two hungry boys to feed. The last few years they were barely able to scrape by. Pipes, water heater, furnace-something always seemed to need fixing in that old house, and she couldn’t afford to take the boys to the doctor anymore, let alone have their crooked teeth fixed. She had gotten to the point where she was just worn out from it. Hell, welfare would pay more than what they were getting.
The last cigarette she lit had mostly burnt out. She took several last puffs from it and crushed it out in the saucer she used as an astray. She heard some scuffling noises behind her and turned and saw her two boys. Both were thin as string beans with alfalfa-like hair that seemed to shoot in all directions. Lester was seventeen and already over six feet tall. With the way Jack stooped, the boy appeared to tower over his father. Bert was thirteen and short for his age-barely topping five feet. Both boys physically took after her, Bert maybe more so than Lester.
Bert scratched the back of his head as he yawned. Lester stared at her sullenly and sniffed. “Dad already left to pull weeds?”
Lydia nodded. “You two boys want breakfast?”
Lester rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah, that’s what we’re here for.” Bert joined her at the small kitchen table and flashed a good-natured smile. It tore her up to see either of them smile with the way their teeth looked, almost as if cherry bombs had gone off in their mouths leaving them twisted and crisscrossing over each other. It killed her that she couldn’t afford braces for her boys.
“How’d you two like blueberry pancakes and bacon?” she asked. Lester, making a snuffling noise, said it was okay with him. Bert just smiled hungrily and rubbed his stomach. She got up and found the bacon, blueberries and eggs that she had hidden in the refrigerator behind a bottle of prune juice and a head of wilted cabbage. All she had to do was put things where they didn’t belong and her husband would never find them, lacking even that much imagination. She brought the items back to the counter, and along with some milk and flour, started mixing the pancake batter.
Lester said sourly, “You know what nickname they started calling me yesterday? Weedpuller. It really sucks being in this family.”
“Les, honey, I’m sorry. Just ignore them.”
“Weedpuller!” Bert yelled out. “Ha!”
Lydia shot him a look that silenced him, then went back to stirring the batter. After a long moment Lester asked if he was really going to have to become the Caretaker when he turned twenty-one.
“No, honey, you won’t.”
“’Cause I don’t want to do that. Spend all day pulling weeds like some retard.”
“You ain’t going to have to.”
“Dad keeps saying I will. That it’s in his stupid contract.”
Lydia turned, her eyes hot enough to have ignited a can of gasoline. “That contract can go to blazes,” she said.
