Ministers' Row  by Paul Bergstraesser                                                      

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           As a boy, fiction disgusted me.  I caught on early to the deceit of children’s literature which seemed to suggest go ahead, indulge your imagination, but someday you’ll have to square with reality.  And it wasn’t that I had trouble reading:  I was adept at it.  I just had no desire to be manipulated by an activity that offered limited promises and a bleak future.     

           Because books were a dead end for me, I was able to commit myself to the literature of living.  You wouldn’t find me indoors in the summertime, stuck in the mire of some patronizing kid’s book.  I was out there popping wheelies, scouring the mucky ditches along the highway for additions to my beer can collection, ribbing my friends when they veered into the rational, laughing at the absurdity of myself.  I remember awakening late one Saturday morning soon after the school year had ended.  I had slept hard through the night, corpse-like, and was still groggy when I pulled on my T-shirt, cutoffs, tube socks, and Pumas.  I passed through the kitchen and stepped out onto the driveway, the day’s heat beginning to cook the blacktop.  Across the street, in my friend Keith’s yard, a group of my buddies had already begun the tug and pull of some sport, probably devised on the spot.  I stood there, peaceful, content, shining brighter than the sun, spinning on the axis of my boyhood.  And then I sprinted across the street and into the fray.

            
            Had my pursuits been more scholarly, more supposedly internal, my parents may have let me slide a little longer on finding a summer job.  But I had grown into an able-bodied thirteen year old who mowed a fine lawn so my father enlisted me to cut the grass at Ministers’ Row.  The Row, near O’Hare Airport, was a block of six houses occupied by retired ministers, my grandmother anchoring one end.  Her husband had left Russia before the Revolution, come to America, preached on the Plains, finally settling in the Midwest with his bride, twenty years his junior.  He had died several years earlier, and now my grandmother was overjoyed at my weekly visits to the Row.

            
            I was always very precise in mowing our own yard, making sure to edge around the trees and sweep down the sidewalk and driveway.  A block of houses, although small, presented a formidable task.  After a few weeks of mowing these lawns my precision went lax:  I angled the mower against the trees to cut the awkward patches and with my foot dragged clumps of grass from the cement into the freshly leveled green.  Meticulous or not, I still collected the eight dollar checks at the end of the day.

           One August afternoon I arrived at the Row, hesitating before leaving the chilly a/c of my father’s car.  I cut through the rising heat of the day and entered the coolness of my grandmother’s house.  I sat with a can of root beer and pulled at the fray of my shorts, watching my grandma’s brittle movements about the kitchen until she lowered herself into a chair to rest her inflamed joints.  A cuckoo clock above the table announced the half–hour mark before one.

            
            “What time should I return?” my father asked.  “Three?  Three thirty?”

            
            “Maybe a little later.”

            
            “It takes you that long?”

            
            “Kind of.”

            
            It had been taking me longer and longer to complete the job, sometimes reaching into the late afternoon.  After all, I deserved a lunch break.  And a brief siesta.

            
            “I’ll be back at four then.”  He leaned to hug Grandma.  “Bye Mom.”

            
            We were left alone, and I shook the empty can, knocking the pull-tab around the bottom.

            
            “Well, I should get started.”

            
            “Okay, Karl.”

            
            I went out to the garage and filled the mower’s gas tank.  It brimmed over, and I screwed on the cap to hold in the liquid.  I started on my grandma’s lawn, and as I cut a swath by the picture window that enabled her to monitor the comings and goings of her small chunk of the world, she waved and sucked at her cheeks several times in rapid succession, an elderly tic.  I nodded and noticed her settle into the recliner and again focus her attention on the television console that doubled as a table, framed photos of her progeny displayed on top.  She was gearing up for the Cubs game that was due to start in half an hour.

            
            The yards behind the houses rolled out to a two-track dirt alley, and by the time I had finished the Schott’s lawn, next to my grandma’s, my shoes had already begun to green, and a thin coat of sweat ran from my scalp to balls.  I turned off the mower, meaning to head back for a quick drink, when Evelyn Schott motioned from her front step.

            
            “We’ve got lemonade,” she said.  “Come in.”

            
            I smiled and tried to pass by her to enter the house.  Evelyn and her mother were circus obese and took care of Reverend Schott who years before had been paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident.  I entered a living room darkened by blankets sagging over the windows.  One corner of the room was illuminated by the television, the Cubs game, and the rest of the room was taken up by a medieval apparatus:  some sort of scaffolding supported a pulley system from which thin ropes, slack at the moment, ran down to a fresh-scrubbed, seal-like creature who smiled up at me.

            
            “Hello, Karl.”

            
            “Hi Reverend Schott.”

            
            He had been placed on his stomach and covered haphazardly by twisted sheets.  His head was facing the TV, and his arm hung down, touching the floor but for curled fingers.

            
            “I’ll go help Mom with the drinks.”  Evelyn pounded off to the kitchen.

            
            “Come closer, Karl.”  Reverend Schott beckoned with a faint motion of his head.  “Could you put my arm back up here?  Under my neck?  It’ll stay if you shove it in there.”

            
            I looked at the hanging cut of beef and imagined it to be cold, frigid, but when I lifted his arm, it was hot with life.

            
            “Thank you . . . listen, Karl, I need more of your help.”

            
            “Sure.” I leaned in.  I’d straighten the sheets, no problem.

            
            “I need you to get me out of here.”

            
            “What?”  I backed off.

            
            “Please help me to leave this place.  Anything you can do.  It’s not right around here.  They . . .  just get me out of here.  But don’t say anything to them.  Don’t say any—”

            
            Evelyn and her mother charged back into the room with a pitcher of lemonade and a trayful of glasses.  I drank down the fluid quickly, had a second glass, and said my goodbyes, Reverend Schott winking at me several times.

            
            Outside, the sun and heat righted me somewhat, and I started up the mower.  I had heard stories from my father and grandma about Reverend Schott’s paralysis—that he had been unbelted in the backseat and plowed straight through the front seat, killing his mother, and also that he had been housebound for years.

            
            I finished off the next lawn, Mr. Huebner’s, after what seemed to be hours.  Because the task was mindless, my thoughts churned incessantly, patterning out like the rows of grass I cut.  I finally went back for lunch.  The cuckoo chirped twice as I downed a bologna sandwich on extra soft white bread, some potato chips, and another root beer.  My grandma creaked about the kitchen, fixing the meal, and after I was done we retired to the living room and Cubs game.  They were tied with St. Louis, and as we watched, the Cardinals got a barrage of hits, continually loading and clearing the bases.  My grandma’s tics went into overdrive.  Her mouth popped and cracked, as though she were working over a ball of chew; her tongue forced itself out of her face and then retreated, a hesitant groundhog.  She finally stopped her unconscious rocking when St. Louis ended the inning by grounding into a double play.

           The food had made me groggy, and the heat contributed to my daze when I returned to mowing.  I completed the Wilfried’s lawn and decided a quick nap was necessary so I turned off the mower and reclined in the Hirsch’s uncut grass, finding a spot in the angular shade of the house.  After a delicious fifteen minutes I awakened and slaked my thirst at their metal spigot.  I ran it until it was cold and cupped the water to my mouth.  Afterwards, I was unable to turn off the spigot for some reason and made a valiant effort to fix it because the last thing I wanted to do was confront Martin Hirsch.

            
            According to my grandmother, the previous summer Martin had approached her as she sat on a bench in her front yard.  He was unable to drive and angrily demanded a ride into Chicago, a good twenty miles away.  His aggression spooked my grandma, so much so that she was reluctant to sit outside anymore in the summertime.  I also learned that Martin’s father, a minister, had died years before and that Martin had lost his job as a scientist and was living with his mother on Ministers’ Row because of a bipolar condition.  Belligerence and hostility were symptoms of his disease.

            
            All attempts to turn off the spigot failed, so I hesitantly knocked on the front door.  Martin answered.

            
            “I saw you resting out back,” he said.  “Are you okay?”

            
            “Yes.”  I was surprised at his concern.  “But I . . . I took a drink of water from the side of your house, and I can’t turn off the spigot.  I’m really sorry.”

            
            “You mean outside?”

            
            “Yeah.”

            
            “Come in.  I’ll go take a look at it.”

            
            He nodded and left.  Any anxiety I had about talking to him disappeared.  I stood in the front hall facing a steep flight of stairs heading up.  Next to this the basement door was open, a bare bulb illuminating the darkness.  I heard a deep grunt from the bowels of the house followed by a footstep.  And then another strained exhalation, the seeming death rattle of a worn being.  Finally a bedraggled woman emerged from the basement:  stringy gray hair matted against her lined face, a grimy floral dress affixed to her damp body, the hem trailing behind her.  She was bent over, a heavy box in her arms, and through her dress I could see the rungs of her spine.  She didn’t notice me on the landing and readjusted the box before ascending the next flight.  I remained still.  When Mrs. Hirsch came back down she was in a daze, holding herself, breathing heavily, and she again disappeared into the basement.  Another inhuman grunt shook the house, followed by the footsteps, and when she arrived at the top of the stairs, I decided to make myself known.

            
            “Mrs. Hirsch.”  I said it quietly so as not to startle her.

            
            Shock registered in her eyes, and she nearly dropped the box, catching it on her knee at the last moment, crying out.

            
            “Are you okay?” I moved to her.  “I’m Edwin Baumann’s grandson.  I mow the lawns.”

            
            She put the box down and attempted to straighten her hair and dress.

            
            “I’m fine.  Yes, I’ve seen you.  It’s nice to finally meet you.”  She acted calm, as though nothing were out of the ordinary, and held out her hand.

            
            I shook it and looked down at the box.  It was packed tight with thick chemistry books.

            
            Martin reentered the house then, and I saw his face darken as he looked at his mother. 

            
            “What’s the hold up?” he boiled.

            
            She gave a slight motion in my direction and then bent over the box, hoisting it to her chest.

            
            Martin led me to the door.  “I’m moving my study upstairs,” he said by way of explanation.  “I fixed the spigot.  Don’t worry about it.”  He smiled and quietly shut the door behind me.

            
            I expected to hear a string of curses from inside, but all was silent.  I continued on the Hirsch’s lawn and then moved to Mrs. Pieterbock’s, the final yard of the day.  She was another widow and a stern, serious woman.  Whenever I went to her door to collect the money, she rarely opened it more than a crack.  The face that peeked out was severe:  full, dark eyebrows that seemed much younger than the rest of her; a nose and jaw that had been pulled forward from her head, as though she were part animal.  And, like an animal, she never smiled.

              
           I had just begun on her lawn when my father turned onto the street. He honked and waved.  I waved back and figured it was either four o’clock or a few minutes before—my family was cursed with German punctuality.  I was generally relieved when cutting Mrs. Pieterbock’s lawn because it meant my workday was nearing its end, although I had one final task to accomplish:  collecting the eight dollars from each house. 

            
            With my ears still buzzing from the mower’s engine, I knocked on Mrs. Pieterbock’s door.  After several minutes, she opened up and invited me in, which was odd, because she usually had the check ready and would quickly hand it out to me.

            
            “I’ll get your money,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

            
            Shades were drawn throughout the house, but a series of floor and table lamps cast a low glow in each room.  Next to the kitchen two doors opened into what seemed to be bedrooms; the one on the left had a twin bed and an upright piano, and the one on the right had a larger bed covered in some type of plastic.  Suddenly a wolf-like animal jumped up onto the plastic.  In its bloody maw I saw a chunk of red meat.  The beast dropped the meat onto the plastic and stared out at me, slavering.  In the next room another wolf rose from underneath the piano bench, yawned, stretched its back and breathed in, also staring at me.  In the main room a third wolf sat up on the couch.  Some instinctual trigger caused them to jump up and approach me at the same time; they silently wove through my legs and each other, crisp and primal. 

            
            “Don’t worry about them.”  Mrs. Pieterbock handed me the check.  I saw her smile at the animals as they trotted back to their previous positions.

            
            “Thank you.”  Outside I folded the check in half and stuck it in my back pocket.  I finally returned to my grandma’s house forty-eight dollars richer.

            
            On the car ride home I leaned against the cool vinyl interior and sipped at a root beer.  I was enervated by the day’s toil, not only physically but mentally.  When we arrived I saw my friend Keith shooting baskets in his driveway and, with a fresh surge of energy, headed across the street.

            
            “Dinner should be soon,” my father shouted.

           I acknowledged him with a brief wave and stepped on Keith’s long shadow which ran down the driveway.  He passed me the ball, and I heaved up a thirty-footer.  The ball rimmed away, and I flicked my head to clear the thick hair from my face.  Keith rebounded the ball.

            
            “How’d it go?”

            
            “Boring.”

            
            I had neatly folded the checks into each other and retrieved the stack from my pocket, splaying them out like cards.

            
            “Nice,” Keith said.  “How much?”

            
            “Forty-eight . . . should we do our shoes?” The afternoon was quickly drawing to a close, and I wanted to fit in as much play as possible.

            
            Keith looked down at his feet.  “Might as well.  I’ll get some scissors.”

            
            We had decided several weeks earlier to cut up our gym shoes a bit, a nick here, a gash there, so our parents would buy us brand new ones.  Keith returned with the tool to enact our plot, and we walked halfway up the block and sat on the curb.

           He handed me the scissors.  “You first.”

            
            I unloosened the laces and pulled the tongue forward, cutting a corner off of it.  I ripped at the seams to make the damage seem more natural.  Keith took the scissors and ran the blade along the stitching between the sole and the canvas.  He then banged the shoe against the curb several times to separate it and held it up for my perusal.

            
            “That’s good.”  I nodded and began to scour the side of my shoe against the cement.  Our side street became our workshop, and as the sun descended below the trees we crafted our shoes into footwear that had seemingly undergone months and months of rough play.  When we were sufficiently convinced that we could fool our parents, we donned our handiwork and split up for the evening:  dinner was fixed and waiting.