I guess Mr. Graber started obsessing over his front lawn when his wife passed.
All right, I should clarify: Mrs. Graber’s body, to this day, has never been found, but by year one we all assumed she was dead.
It’s mostly unclear what happened to her, or what happened to Mr. Graber. But ever since Mrs. Graber disappeared, Mr. Graber went a little mad. Okay, a lot mad. I’m not one to sugarcoat things.
I lived across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Graber for seventeen years. I’d consider myself somewhat of an expert on the situation, though this is the first time police have been interested in what I know. I guess when you’re under eighteen at the time, no one really gives a damn about your opinion when someone older is around.
I grew up in the same house for seventeen years before I hit the road for college. The Grabers have been on that street a lot longer than my family. In fact, there was a rumor among all the kids that the Grabers had been in that house for over a hundred years.
Call me crazy, but I believed the rumors growing up. Hell, a small part of me still believes that rumor. The whole time I’ve known the Grabers they’ve been older than dirt. Mrs. Graber was the sweetest woman you could have ever met (sweeter than my mom, if you can believe it) and Mr. Graber was the crankiest old fart you’d forever be unlucky to meet.
Mrs. Graber did have one flaw. She was sweeter than my mom’s sugar cookies, but she was still human. The easiest thing to remember when you were a kid was: stay away from Mrs. Graber’s roses. If you so much as pick off a silk petal, she’d be on you with a broom in hand faster than my brother on second helpings. Really, though, that was Mrs. Graber’s only fatal flaw.
I can understand why Mr. Graber became obsessed with the front lawn after his wife’s disappearance. Those roses were her children. As far as I know, they had no children. I’ve never even seen a child step over the threshold of their front door, save for me and my older brother Nicky, but I’ll get to that.
Anyway, Mrs. Graber treated her roses with better care than any other mother I’ve ever known. Yes, even better than my mother, and she was damn good at being the caretaker of the family.
Her rose bushes lined before the front porch and were never higher than the average man’s shoulders. She pruned them beautifully, watered them always with a pail, never a hose, and poured fresh soil under them twice every three months. They were beautiful colors of blood red and pure ivory, always reminding me of the ones in Alice in Wonderland, except they weren’t painted by a lost little girl but by the hand of God.
The only flowers in the front yard were the roses. The lawn was Mr. Graber’s job. It was more of a frame or an accent for the roses, though it was always manicured as perfectly. In essence, it was pristine, but it was obvious that it wasn’t taken car of with the same passion as the roses. I don’t know really how to explain it. Seeing it really does the best justice.
When Mrs. Graber disappeared, my first thoughts went to the roses. What’s going to happen to them? I thought. Soon I had an answer. Soon, Mr. Graber was out there every morning pruning and watering the shoulder high bushes while the police searched from his wife. As days passed, then weeks, and Mrs. Graber was still gone, those rose bushes became Mr. Graber’s wife. However, he didn’t just covet the roses, but the entire front yard. If he found so much as an imprint of a foot in the luscious green grass, he wouldn’t stop banging on people’s doors until he matched up the print size to people’s feet.
I guess that’s how I’m getting to the part where Nicky and I were unfortunate enough to be invited into Mr. Graber’s house.
Nicky and I were playing basketball. I was twelve and he was fifteen. Our father set up a hoop above our garage and Nicky never went easy on me. That’s why I’m so good today; I owe it all to my brother’s ruthless nature.
Moving on, our driveway wasn’t that long. More than once the ball rebounded hard off the basket and skyrocketed toward the Graber’s front yard. Every time we were quick enough to grab the ball before it landed on the soft grass or in the rose bushes. We pumped our legs as hard as we could. Not to beat the other out, but to save the ball and save ourselves.
But it just takes one time. One time, like all those anti-drug campaigns say. It took one hard rebound off the backboard and neither of us were quick enough to retrieve the ball before it was too late. It landed smack dab in the middle of the ten by fifteen lawn. Nicky and I screeched to a halt, our sneakers almost leaving tread marks on the asphalt. We stared at the ball as if it had grown legs and tap danced to the location it was in now.
I remember Nicky nudging me, saying, “Go get it.”
Instead of taking a step forward, I took a step back. “You get it,” I retorted.
“I’m not stepping on that grass,” he said. “I don’t wanna get my ass kicked by him.”
“Me neither.”
“Chicken.”
I turned to him. “Says the kid who just said, ‘I don’t wanna get my ass kicked by him.’”
He nudged me again, this time shoving a hand in my back, making me step forward. “Just go get it.”
“No, Nicky. I said I’m not gonna do it.”
“I’ll let you win. Yeah, if you go get the ball, you win the game.”
I crossed my arms, frowning. He knew by the look on my face that his bribe wasn’t worth it.
He sighed. “All right. I’ll give you my allowance.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“I’ll give you my allowance for the next two months.”
“The next three months.”
He reacted as if I punched him in the gut. In a way I had. He’d been saving his allowance up for a car since he was fourteen. He glanced up at the basketball, then at Mr. Graber’s front door.
Understand when I say that Nicky was no coward. He knew how to gain everyone’s respect and to prove himself. As a freshman, he swung up to varsity on the basketball team and got a lot of crap for it from the upperclassmen. He gritted his teeth and schooled them instead of letting up and submitting to the social systems of high school.
So, when he was willing to give me three month’s worth of his allowance, I knew that his fears of Mr. Graber were real and intense. If I was a little bit older at the time, a little bit wiser, I’d probably see myself as a fool for walking onto Mr. Graber’s lawn and retrieving the basketball. If only we could have left it there and forgotten it. However, it was evidence––physical evidence––and Mr. Graber would know who the ball belonged to immediately when he saw it.
I accepted my brother’s bribe and stepped onto the sidewalk before Mr. Graber’s lawn. It was like a vast emerald ocean spread before me, the basketball a stranded ship in the middle. I looked over at the empty driveway (Mr. Graber usually parked his old station wagon in the garage), and looked back at my brother, who was in the same spot on the road. He nodded, consenting to what I was about to do. The tips of my sneakers were less than an inch away from the front lawn. I gulped. I didn’t want to do this. I felt every organ in my body shrinking to the size of a quarter.
Inhaling deeply, I took two of the biggest steps I had ever taken in my life, picked up the ball, threw it to my brother, and took two giant steps back to the sidewalk. What I thought would be walking on fire actually felt like walking on clouds. In fact, the center of the lawn was slightly elevated above the rest, though to the naked eye it was hard to notice. The grass was springy with health and hydration.
Nicky caught the ball and was already running back to the house before I made it back to the sidewalk. When my feet hit concrete, I began to run myself, able to breathe freely again, as though the world as I knew it was once again mine.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Behind me, I heard the all-too-familiar creek of Mr. Graber’s screen door open. My heart skipped but I willed myself not to look back. Nicky was at the beginning of the driveway, then I saw his body turn around.
“Stop right there, you sons of bitches!”
No, I remember thinking. NOOOOO.
We had been caught. We were as good as dead now.
“I said HALT!”
Nicky and I both obeyed. In fact, Mr. Graber’s words practically turned us to stone.
Where were our parents? They were at work. This happened sometime in July, the middle of Summer break. Nicky and I spent most of our summer days at home or riding our bikes around the neighborhood with friends while our parents worked.
Anyway, Mr. Graber caught us and caught us red-handed. He saw the imprints the basketball and my feet made in the grass. His face turned beat read, a vein pulsing dangerously at the top of his hairless head. With a shaky, arthritis-ridden finger, he pointed at the grass.
“What in the hell happened here?” he asked, his tone demanding an answer Nicky and I didn’t want to give. Spittle flew from his mouth. “What were you two sons of bitches doing on my lawn?”
Nicky, being the big kid, answered, “We were getting our ball.”
“What was it doing over here on my lawn, huh?”
I flinched, taken aback by the sudden flare in his silver eyes. I stole a glance at Nicky, who was trying hard not to tremble.
“It bounced over on accident,” he said. “We’re sorry. It will never happen again.”
“Like hell it won’t! Where are your parents?”
“Work,” I heard myself say automatically.
“Come over here,” Mr. Graber hissed.
We obeyed without a second thought. He could have told us to go jump in a lake and we would’ve done it. When we were within arms length of him, he grabbed us both by the nape of our necks and pushed us inside his house.
I bit down on a shriek, tears stinging my eyes at the sudden pinch of pain. I remember thinking, This is it. We’re going to die. He’s going to kill us and we’re going to die.
Mrs. Graber had been missing for three years by this time. Each year Mr. Graber grew a little more obsessive, a little more mad.
I never imagined what the inside of his house looked like. Not before or after Mrs. Graber. The first thing I noticed when I was forced inside was a thick layer of gray dust. In less than ten seconds I sneezed three times. That made Mr. Graber pinch my neck a little harder. Tomorrow I’d have two pale purple finger marks. From the corner of my eye I saw Nicky shooting a warning look my way.
But the dust was everywhere. It was evident who did the cleaning around the house and who did not. I have this bad dust allergy, due to small sinuses. Whenever there’s dust around, my nose fizzes like soda and I sneeze like no other. The running joke with my brother is that I sneezed all my brains out a long time ago.
Mr. Graber pushed us into the kitchen, which was the cleanest room in the house. There was still dust––it was everywhere, mind you––but I could breathe a little easier. Nicky and I sat at the small card table in the middle of the room. I was on the verge of tears, another sneezed locked and loaded in both nostrils.
We’re going to die. He’s going to kill us and we’re going to die.
“Mr. Graber,” Nicky started.
Mr. Graber pounded a fist on the table. “Not a word,” he growled. He left the kitchen.
Nicky and I didn’t dare get up. We looked at each other: tears standing on the brims of my eyes like crystals and his eyes three times their natural size. With my wet eyes, I asked him, What are we going to do?
Are we going to die?
Is he going to kill us?
A bang came from somewhere in the house. We snapped our heads to the back entrance of the kitchen that lead to the backyard. Through the screen door we saw Mr. Graber set down a bag of soil, a shovel, a rake, and the lawn mower. A tear rolled down my cheek, hooked under my chin, and splashed on my shorts.
I was convinced that he was going to run the lawn mower over us, throw us under the rose bushes, and sprinkle new soil on the scattered remains of our bodies.
The screen door slammed shut as Mr. Graber came back inside. I jumped in my seat. Nicky remained still.
The vein continued to pulsate on the top of Mr. Graber’s bald head. My mother raised us not to stare, but I could not take my eyes away from that. Nicky, on the other hand, looked Mr. Graber in the eyes. I think, because Nicky didn’t keep his eyes down in fear, that was why he was the one who had to weed and pour new soil under the rosebushes. I had to mow the lawn. Really, both of those jobs sounded terrible to me. I hated yard work at twelve and I still hate it now. To Mr. Graber, though, this was perfect punishment for stepping on his lawn.
“If you miss one weed, if you get some soil on the grass…” He paused. “You don’t want to know what will happen, sonny.”
Then Nicky said one of the most audacious, gustiest things I’ve ever heard leave his lips. He said: “I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Graber.”
It was a lie. Oh yes, I saw right through my brother’s words, but I don’t think Mr. Graber did. He leaned forward, placing both of his old hands on the table, saying, “You should be afraid, sonny. Even if you’re not afraid of me, you should be afraid, nonetheless.”
I don’t know how he did it, but Nicky managed to hold eye contact. It was as though, to Mr. Graber, Nicky knew something––knew something Mr. Graber had been keeping a secret for a very long time. Later, I asked Nicky why he said that.
He answered, “All Mr. Graber is is an old fart who doesn’t like anyone under the age of forty.” He added: “ I think he killed Mrs. Graber.”
So, I found myself mowing the ten by fifteen patch of grass to perfection, because despite what Nicky admitted, I was terrified of Mr. Graber. I didn’t want to know what would happen if I missed a blade of grass or didn’t mow in a straight line.
As I guided the lawnmower along the grass, I noticed that in the middle of the patch was a slight slope. Just as when I retrieved the basketball, I felt my feet ascending at least half a foot then descending the same height one second later. While I moved, I thought nothing of it. Our yard was uneven and bumpy from the roots of our oak tree. Days later, when I thought about that day when I thought I was going to die, thinking about that conspicuous bump in the grass, I realized there was no tree in Mr. Graber’s front yard. Only the rose bushes. Suddenly I thought about what Nicky had said:
“I think he killed Mrs. Graber.”
I never asked Nicky why he thought that. I guess I didn’t really want to know, not at the time. As time stretched on like a rubber band, I found myself thinking about what Nicky said more and more, and about that undetectable yet obvious lump in the grass.
Then I remembered Mrs. Graber’s roses the years she went missing. Mr. Graber tended them well, but my mother also wondered if he switched to another type of soil.
The roses were vibrant that year. No, beyond vibrant. They were brilliant.
I didn’t think anything of it then, but I think about it often now. I haven’t been back to that house in ten years. My parents downsized to a condo my senior year in college. I have driven by the Graber house a handful of times since then. I know you’re aware that Mr. Graber kicked the bucket five years ago and a new family’s moved in since then.
I’m sure you’re also aware that the new family doesn’t take very good care of the yard. The roses shriveled up and died quickly, too quickly. The grass is all crunchy and dried up, too. Last time I passed by it, I noticed something. Something you guys are probably already aware of, but in the middle of the patch of grass, it’s a lot yellower than the rest of it. Like that section was the first to go. Like that small part, that mound, had been dug up years ago, for whatever reason, and something is buried there.
When I saw that, the first thing that came to my mind was what my brother said.
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