NACH.COM

Picture a young man with a pony tail. He wears light blue shorts and sandals and plastic sun glasses and a silver watch on his left wrist, and it is mid-afternoon and the early August sun is high overhead. The young man sprays a young Japanese maple tree with a hose. The tree is planted near the curb in a hole dug in the middle of fresh sod that is still not firmly rooted to the earth. The young man keeps his right thumb over the mouth of the hose so that the water is forced out in a jet to the base of the tree. His name is David. His hairless chest and legs are browned from work outdoors in the hot summer sun.

David is home from college for summer vacation. He comes from a wealthy family and traveled for a month in England before coming home to start work as a groundskeeper for a public elementary school. After the school’s students went home for summer vacation in early June the city council invested in a new lawn for the school’s playground. David was hired to maintain and nurture this new lawn so that it would be healthy and vibrant when the children returned to school in September.

David is paid five dollars and fifty-three cents an hour for his work. There was no negotiation. Rufus Bikkel, the principal of the school, said the city council had budgeted for exactly that amount . He said the salary was fixed by law and he could offer no more or no less. The salary had to be five dollars and fifty-three cents an hour, for forty hours of work a week. There was no chance of overtime. The job ended August 29.

David accepted the job over the telephone, in early May, just before final exams. He called from a pay phone in the third floor hallway of his dormitory. David told Rufus that he would have to leave August 22nd, not August 29th, because fall classes were to begin on the 24th. That was acceptable to Rufus, who was the principal of the school when David attended it ten years earlier.

It is summer time. It is hot. David could be earning twice or three times as much in New York or Boston. His college roommate, Fred Dahmer, earns four hundred dollars a week as a summer clerk at a law firm in San Francisco. He shares an apartment in Berkeley with two friends from college and by the beginning of August Fred has saved nearly one thousand dollars. He works 72 hours a week and sleeps when he is not at work.

David spends much of his salary on beer that he drinks several nights a week with friends from high school. They all go to different colleges. At night, when they get together after work, they tell stories about college. They drink beer at the ninth hole sand trap of the public golf course.

David spends some money on gasoline for his car. It is a blue convertible. His father, a prominent local lawyer, bought the car for David as a high school graduation present.

David spends the rest of his money on Cynthia, who works for a day care center. She earns four dollars and ninety-five cents an hour. Like David she is home for the summer after her first year of college.

Picture Cynthia. She has a sweet, honest face, blue eyes, and long dirty blond hair. She wears a blue and white sun dress and she is squatting beside Bobby Korjek, a shy five-year-old who is afraid of the other children in the day care group. Bobby says he wants his mommy. Cynthia tells Bobby that his mommy wants him to play with the other children. Bobby says he will play if that’s what his mommy really wants.

Cynthia and David have been dating for three years, beginning in their junior year in high school. They are both deeply in love and relieved that after a year of college they have not split up. They traveled together in England for a month before coming home. It was a difficult year, with many letters and many telephone calls, but now it is summer and they are together and they feel three more years of college will not be so difficult. They hope to find jobs in the same city after college and to live together. Then, though they rarely discuss it, they will likely get married.

Picture David again, an hour after he watered the Japanese maple. He sits on the shaded steps of the school that has the freshly sodded playground. The sky remains cloudless and there is no breeze. David gulps from a jug of water that he keeps in the shade on the steps. The water is cool because David refilled the jug with water from the hose before sitting down for the drink.

After the drink of water it is time to rake the tree bark beneath the swings. The children of the neighborhood are sad that the playground is closed for the summer and they look forward to when it will be reopened. They want to play on the swings and they want to run on the new grass. Before the end of the month David must paint the metal poles of the swings. He can choose between red or blue paint. The city council did not specify what color paint it wanted, but Rufus will not let David buy red and blue paint. He must choose one or the other.

Now picture David a half hour before it is time to leave work for the day. The sun is farther west in the sky, but still high and still hot. David is lazy, slow, and he checks his watch every five minutes. He rakes, then leans on his rake and looks down into the bark that has been spread over the soil beneath the swings. The brown bark is dry and flaking and it gets between David’s toes. He moves his toes and the feel of the bark working its way beneath his sandals is unpleasant.

Now it is five-thirty and all of David’s tools are stored away and he leaves work. He jumps into his convertible and drives to Cynthia’s house. Cynthia is waiting outside on her front porch, reading the newspaper. They embrace and kiss and then they sit beside each other on the porch swing and they drink lemonade.

“You think we’ll attack?” Cynthia asks, worried.

“I think everybody’s trying hard to make us attack,” David says. “I don’t think we should.”

“Neither do I,” Cynthia says. “It’s disgusting. You know what it’s for, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Money, stupid.”

“Well of course. That’s obvious.”

Now picture Cynthia and David later that night, walking arm in arm after watching a movie at the theater downtown.

“I liked it,” Cynthia says.

“Me too,” David says.

They reach David’s car and they embrace and kiss. In the car Cynthia says, “I though it was really well done. The acting was great.”

“I know, he was great,” David says.

“So was she. They both were.”

Now picture David several hours later. He is in Cynthia’s house, in her bedroom. Her parents are asleep down the hall. David is naked, and he is on top of Cynthia. She is also naked, and they are pumping their groins together, trying to be quiet but forgetting themselves. David kisses Cynthia’s neck and holds her wrists down on the mattress. She breaths hard and closes her eyes and sweat streams from her forehead to her pillow.

Forty-five minutes later David is dressed in his light blue shorts, sandals and a white t-shirt. He tip-toes through Cynthia’s quiet darkened house. He opens and then shuts the front door with almost no sound. He walks three blocks to his car. He parks the car far from Cynthia’s house so that her parents will not guess that he is in their daughter’s bedroom. He starts the car and drives home. His parents are asleep.

Now picture David the next morning as he arrives at work. He is very tired and he leans heavily on his rake.

Now picture David a year later, after his second year of college. He has decided to major in history. He has short hair and he wears a dark gray pinstripe suit. He walks up two flights of stairs to the small apartment that he and Cynthia share in San Francisco. They are both summer clerks in law firms and they have three more weeks of living together in San Francisco before they must return to college. But college is half over. The next two years will not be so bad.

Now picture David and Cynthia, together, several hours later when Cynthia gets home from work. After she closes the door to the apartment they embrace. Cynthia was told to stay late at work because an important brief is due in court the next day. When she gets home it is already dark outside.

David has dinner on the table: a large green salad and bulgur wheat and cold white wine. Beebop streams out of the radio in the kitchen until Cynthia turns it off.

An hour later they are in bed. They hold hands. They are both tired.

“Do you think we’ll attack?” Cynthia asks softly.

“I think so,” David says. “Everybody wants us to attack.”

“I don’t,” Cynthia says. “It’s terrible. It’s just for money.”

“Of course it is,” David says. “And I think it’s going to happen.”

Now picture an old man. He has only one hand. He wakes up one morning and shuffles to the bathroom in his underwear and he urinates. Then he looks into the mirror as he brushes his teeth. The water in the sink is running and he watches the yellow toothbrush swing back and forth across his face. His beard has many gray hairs. His face has wrinkles. He thinks back, back to when he had two hands. He remembers cold lemonade. He would like a glass of lemonade for breakfast. That is what they will do. They will drink lemonade. He shuffles back to bed. It is still early.