RON

I climbed the fence and jumped down into the wet grass and began to climb the steep bank. I was late for my early shift by ten minutes. The morning mist just above the sparkling grass looked incredible. I was already out of breath. I almost slipped over. The staff were told not to come this way along the grounds but it shaved off a few seconds and the emerging always stunning scenery made things worthwhile. Through the metal fence I could see cars with people inside coming up the long arcing driveway.

     I could see something odd up ahead underneath the huge Oak. Like a shadow. The type of shadow the tree would throw in the evening. I headed for it and realised the shadow was piles and piles of leaves. I stood looking at all the leaves amazed and realised it must have been the new contractor I’d seen about. This was no accident. The branches really worked and I went back and round a bit to get a good angle. Maybe inspired toward the end of his shift by the real shadow he manoeuvred them into the template. Then really went to town. My footsteps remained in the grass all the way up the steep bank. And freshly harvested strips of grass luminous against the shiny wet black covered my shoes.

     The bottom of my 90% nylon trousers were soaked.

I envied his job out here, working alone in the vast grounds of a listed building disguised in all his over-the-top protection stuff. I desperately wanted to be disguised at work. In a back office somewhere, perhaps, and left alone instead of traipsing about the building with my name and job title sewn into my shirt like some kind of half-wit. It wouldn’t work for me out here. Not if it meant chasing leaves. The next door neighbour at my parent’s home chased leaves. And somehow he seemed just as dead.

He practically begged to be kept on in some capacity but was told for Health and Safety reasons it was a job he could no longer do. He was already past retirement age. There was nothing they could do. When he spoke to me about it his eyes changed. He said he was as fit as a fucking fiddle, as fit as anyone in the shitting street and would study my face as if trying to detect any trace of doubt. He said I was a man now I earned real money. He didn’t know that I had just quit my first ever job after a couple of months realising that I had no real interest in cars. I didn’t really know how to speak to adults so I mostly listened or at least pretended too.  I found that by more or less focusing upon the face and making expressions of agreement, perhaps throwing in a laugh every now and again they had exactly what they wanted.

“Its soul destroying, not being at work, without your own money in your pocket,” he said more than once. He walked about his drive picking up the leaves tossed down from our two trees in our small wild garden and the huge beautiful Sycamore at the end of our cul-de-sac next to us. He collected the brittle bones and shoved them forcefully into a bin-bag. He did seem different these days. He smiled less and greeted people with an unnerving desperation at the back of his throat he couldn’t seem to clear.

     A week later he got hold of one of those leaf eating machines and spent day after day patrolling his property with a new deeply satisfied look. He had the only detached property in the road so his land was slightly larger than everyone else’s standard patch front and back. The sound of that thing sent me crazy. Judging by the look of it he’d spent big money. I avoided him for fear of any questions about being home all the time. I wanted peace and quiet, everybody else was out during the day and I just wanted to sit round and relax. I felt too embarrassed to tell him this. I felt fairly certain one of my family had already told him about me jacking the trainee mechanics job in anyway, wondering aloud about my future plans. I had no desire to discuss such details with anyone. He retreated to the garage to light his pipe and returned triumphantly to survey his spotless lawn and spotless drive.

     Sometime before, his car leaked oil all over the impeccably self-laid geometrically arranged powder-red bricks of the driveway. Pru walked round the stain while her husband puffed on his pipe. It was power-washed into oblivion the very next day. Making good use of it he went over the entire drive slowly and deliberately and more than once until it shone. The shocked flowers bordering our garden were bent heavy with dirt. “A man needs to work” I would hear him say to anyone who would listen. “A man needs to work or his soul is in ruins.”

He rarely went indoors during the day, eating in the garage and drinking from a thermos. I watched from my sister’s window filled with an urge to go down and kick over the bin-bag of trapped claustrophobic leaves. The wind picked up sending leaves around his ankles. He glared at our trees bitterly, blew clouds of smoke and disappeared back into the garage. When he came back out he had his hat on. He vanished again and then there was a knock at the door. I froze, panicked that he’d seen me. The bell went, its overly long tinny song unsettling the house. I stood rigidly behind the curtain, devastated that I had left the TV on in the front room loud enough to drown the sonorous whir going on outside. Too loud now. A melancholy blue glow no doubt playing on the ugly flower-patterned frosted glass of the front door.

No way would I answer. He was absolutely mad.

He gave up but it took another five minutes for me to work up the courage to move, I couldn’t imagine what he’d think if he saw me now. He fired up the vacuum once more and I sunk to the floor drained of energy. I crawled along the brown carpet, torn and thick with dirt and wretched underwear and ancient yoghurt pots with un-removable spoons and came to the stairs where I sat for more than an hour hopeless and trapped like his fucking leaves.

            He tramped over our long grass and cracked concrete drive as though he was doing us a huge favour, had somehow, the following day, managed to convince Mom this should be done each day using our electricity from the socket in the garage. Its lock had broken several years earlier. The wheels in their narrow tracks made such a monster noise when opened that no burglar would brave sticking around after that Dad would say, and besides, there was a knack to opening the thing that made it appear locked to anyone trying to wrench it open. I discovered the arrangement only when I heard the garage door groan. The house shook and I went outside with beating heart to see what was going on. He explained the situation and enquired good naturedly about my job. I said I had some time off.  

     He really had it in for those leaves. I watched as he wandered around methodically sucking up anything that moved. Gradually stepping out to the path that ran along the tall fence at the end of the road underneath the Sycamore. Then all the way to the houses opposite and back into the road where cars would turn or park. I guess the only reason he didn’t continue on and on was that he simply couldn’t find a long enough extension in either garage.

Leaves were removed from the grounds for Health and Safety reasons, I was told, not because they look unsightly to paying guests. Maybe Ron should have applied for a job like this. Maybe it would have given him some peace instead of watching the nights close in with zeal and fury and his health wouldn’t have failed so quickly. Wandering round faced with the innumerable enemy, chuckling to himself that where one job was lost another created. I replied that the sight of seeing fallen leaves unnaturally disturbed had an adverse affect on my health. The manager laughed at this. A big ugly laugh.

A coach pulled into the car park and a phalanx of tourists got off wearily. The driver opened up the belly of the coach and pulled out the luggage for someone with a name stitched in their shirt to take away. One of the tourists broke away and began to take pictures of the building. He noticed something. Came toward me and began to smile. He took his camera from the strap around his neck and motioned for me to take a picture of him next to the tree.

The manager came down the grand steps from reception with a hot face to carry the luggage himself. I grabbed the camera to take the photo. Putting my eye to the viewfinder I found the morning sun just above the distant hills as large and as near to earth and perfectly round as I had ever seen. A thin layer of cloud made it easy to take in. Through the camera everything looked astonishing. I tried to get everything in – the creeping mist and sparkling grass still with footsteps all the way up the bank, the close round sun seemingly drawing a shadow from the tree toward it. Everything seemed to possess an otherworldly magic and power. I crouched down to show him I meant business, took a few steps back, crouched down again wanting to look at that scene a long time. As soon as I pressed the button it would be gone. The sun would go back to a regular and un-viewable position. The mist evaporate and the dry grass iron out any impression. Leaves would disappear into swollen industrial plastic bags just as the contractor should have done yesterday and I would be carrying things.  

He was a land artist I decided, interested in Richard Long and Goldsworthy and the like. Christo, even. The very next time I see him I will engage him in conversation. Tell him how much I admired the shadow he left behind. I heard my name called with sharp exasperation and I reluctantly took a photo of a smiling man off-centre in a dreamlike world and decided as soon as I had this conversation I would quit this job.

Yes.

The very next time I see him I will jack this job for sure.