The Jugheads by J.R. Helton

Author:J.R. Helton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, novel, Texas, family, fame, suburbia, American West, 1970s, seventies, drugs, sex
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2014-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

WALDEN REVISITED

My father immediately applied the same principles of city yard care to the house in the country. That is: give Jake a million inane, time-consuming projects to do. Only now there was one difference. My father wasn’t going to work in the mornings. He was working with me.

“I’m retired,” he said. “I’m retired at thirty-four.”

The first project of that summer was to rearrange rocks down by the river. We had about a hundred and fifty yards along the Frio River, and the banks were full of limestone rocks. I had a truck now. I’d sold my car and bought one. My father liked to drive it down our road to the river. But there were too many big rocks.

“We need to clear all of these out.”

After we hauled the rocks, we had to level the road.

“It’s too bumpy.”

The caliche road was a little over half a mile long. In the evenings, he and I ran down it and back for our daily run. While we ran, he planned projects.

After smoothing out the roads with wrecking bars, picks, and shovels, he had loads of dirt hauled in. The man who brought it, Mr. Ferris, asked what we were going to use it for.

“I’m gonna have my son use a wheelbarrow and haul it up and down the road and fill in the low spots.”

The man looked puzzled. “Hell, you need a grader to do that. I can do it for you in no time. All this dirt’s just gonna wash out.”

My father paid Mr. Ferris and shooed him off. “No, no, no, we wanna do it.”

The road took days to finish. It was hot. Summer in Texas. My father pulled out my old push mower.

“I want you to mow down this area all around the house. Use the weed eater to get the high stuff there. And then I want you to mow the next tier and a path four feet wide that runs down and around each tier all the way down to the river.”

He started me working early in the morning and I went at it all day. The push mower, I realized quickly, wasn’t going to work.

“It’s too slow,” I complained. “I need a real lawnmower.”

“Bullshit. I’ll show you how to do it.”

He pushed the mower a few feet and caught a rock in the blades. He pulled it out with difficulty and went on. Stop. Another rock. After four rocks, he quit.

“All right, I’ll go get you a lawnmower. But what you need to do is go down where you’re going to mow and pick up all of the rocks. Pick them up in the pasture down there, too.”

I spoke up. “You want me to mow the pasture, too?”

“Of course. All that grass is too high down there.”

“Yeah, but the pasture’s huge, Dad. You need a riding mower or a tractor to mow the kind of area you’re talking about.”

“No you don’t. Riding lawnmowers are for lazy bastards who want to sit on their ass. Start picking up the rocks.

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