Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“Aw, hell, you think I don’t? But only when I think I can help. You’re as hard-headed as I am, Denbow. No one can tell you anything. Nothing I can do for you. Even if I could, you’d tell me to go to hell.”

He held out a hand. “Not annoying each other is part of the deal. Okay?”

Denbow put the mower in gear. Nothing he could do for him. Except rent him the house at a ridiculous figure because he knew Denbow would appreciate living there.

The following spring, the first Mrs. Ziegler had been admitted to the hospital for extended treatment, but she’d died suddenly and unexpectedly.

Zeigler had suffered the first defeat he could never turn into eventual victory.

The employees attended the funeral en masse and returned to the plant to fill orders well into the night so that no time was lost. They wouldn’t have done that for the much younger second wife, their collective judgment better than Zeigler’s since it wasn’t distorted by love, lust, desire, or whatever else had motivated him to marry a woman thirty years his junior during a vacation in Mexico six months later.

“He couldn’t seem to handle Mother’s death,” said Randy. “I thought a change of scene would help. The last thing I expected him to do was take up with some bimbo from San Francisco, much less marry her.”

If Randy didn’t realize Zeigler’s marriage was a gesture, proof that he hadn’t really lost the battle, Denbow didn’t intend to educate him.

“Tequila, a Mexican moon, and a low-cut gown have addled the brains of many a good man,” he said. “He’ll get over it.”

“I know that,” said Randy icily. “The question is — how much will it cost him? That’s what worries me.”

No one expected the price to be Zeigler himself.

Denbow swerved around a granite outcrop too big to remove. Everyone is entitled to one mistake. She’d been Zeigler’s. Hair that really wasn’t blonde, clothes that were a little too tight and showed a little too much thigh and a little too much cleavage — as adept at playing a man as a concert pianist at playing a Steinway.

Zeigler had seen only an exciting woman who listened to his wisdom with wide eyes.

She was gone ten months later. What she took with her, other than Zeigler’s heart and soul, Randy didn’t say.

What Denbow didn’t understand was Zeigler’s continued depression. The man was too much of a fighter. Even floored twice, Zeigler should have picked himself up and staggered around the ring, looking for his opponent, not stretched out on the canvas looking up with unseeing eyes.

He stopped the mower alongside the lane where it curved away near the top of the slope. One more pass and he was through.

On the other side of the rutted gravel, Zeigler’s two-thirds of the hillside lawn was a rippling green blanket almost six inches tall.

Zeigler had been a lawn freak. He could have hired someone, but he himself mowed, sprayed, fertilized, and wandered over it in the evening with a spray bottle of weed killer zapping anything bold enough to take root.

“I like to grow things, Den-bow, but I don’t have time for flowers or vegetables, and riding the mower gives me time to think. When I look over it, I’m a proud man. A fine lawn isn’t in Mother Nature’s scheme. If you have one, you’ve fought her to a standstill. And I did it all alone. Not like the business. The people who work for me, and people like you, all have a part. But this lawn—” He gestured. “Don’t you think you ought to do something with your section?”

“Leave my wildflowers and weeds alone, Zeigler. Mother Nature’s been losing too often lately. She deserves a break.”

Zeigler’s once-velvet green carpet was showing the signs of neglect. He hadn’t set foot on it since his Mexico-acquired blonde had left him twisting in the wind, and Randy had turned down Denbow’s offer to mow it whenever he did his.

“I’ll take care of it. My father would want me to.”

But Randy had a wife and home of his own and the well-fertilized grasses shot upward during the warm fall days while the weed seeds rooted themselves into the rich soil in joyful anticipation of spring. Now that it was her turn, Mother Nature was taking no pity on Zeigler.

Denbow said what the hell and steered the mower across the lane. No telling when Randy would get to it now.

He’d worked his way halfway down the slope when Randy’s blue Caddy came up the lane and stopped so suddenly, it skidded on the gravel. Randy left the car and stood with hands on hips. Waiting.

Denbow waved and smiled as he approached. Randy, almost a twin of his father except for a softer face inherited from his mother, lifted a hand and drew it across his throat, face set and eyes narrowed.

Denbow cut the engine.

“We agreed that I’d take care of the lawn,” snapped Randy.

“Just being neighborly,” said Denbow. “Thought I’d help you out.”

“No one asked you to.”

“What’s the problem? The mower does the work. All it’s costing me is a little time, so forget it. How’s your father? Any prognosis?”

The words came slowly. “It isn’t as though he has appendicitis.”