It was a travesty.
The aged red power mower the fat man had brought in his van was running on its own. No one was pushing it; in fact, no one was within five feet of it. It was running at a fever pitch, tearing through the unfortunate grass of Harold Parkette's back lawn like an avenging red devil straight from hell. It screamed and bellowed and farted oily blue smoke in a crazed kind of mechanical madness that made Harold feel ill with terror. The overripe smell of cut grass hung in the air like sour wine.
But the lawnmower man was the true obscenity.
The lawnmower man had removed his clothes - every stitch. They were folded neatly in the empty birdbath that was at the centre of the back lawn. Naked and grass-stained, he was crawling along about five feet behind the mower, eating the cut grass. Green juice ran down his chin and dripped on to his pendulous belly. And every time the lawnmower whirled around a corner, he rose and did an odd, skipping jump before prostrating himself again.
'Stop!'
Harold Parkette screamed. 'Stop that!' But the lawnmower man took no notice, and his screaming scarlet face never slowed. If anything, it seemed to speed up. Its nicked steel grill seemed to grin sweatily at Harold as it raved by.
Then Harold saw the mole. It must have been hiding in stunned terror just ahead of the mower, in the swath of grass about to be slaughtered. It bolted across the cut band of lawn towards safety under the porch, a panicky brown streak.
The lawnmower swerved.
Blatting and howling, it roared over the mole and spat it out in a string of fur and entrails that reminded Harold of the Smiths' cat. The mole destroyed, the lawnmower rushed back to the main job.
The lawnmower man crawled rapidly by, eating grass. Harold stood paralysed with horror, stocks, bonds, and bisonburgers completely forgotten. He could actually see that huge, pendulous belly expanding. The lawnmower man swerved and ate the mole.
That was when Harold Parkette leaned out of the screen door and vomited into the zinnias. The world went grey, and suddenly he realized he was fainting, had fainted. He collapsed backwards on to the porch and closed his eyes .
Someone was shaking him. Carla was shaking him. He hadn't done the dishes or emptied the garbage and Carla was going to be very angry but that was all right. As long as -she was waking him up, taking him out of the horrible dream he had been having, back into the normal world, nice normal Carla with her Playtex Living Girdle and her buck teeth -Buck teeth, yes. But not Carla's buck teeth. Carla had weak-looking chipmunk buck teeth. But these teeth were -Hairy.
Green hair was growing on these buck teeth. It almost looked like -Grass?
'Oh my God,' Harold said.
'You fainted, buddy, right, huh?' The lawnmower man was bending over him, grinning with his hairy teeth. His lips and chin were hairy, too. Everything was hairy. And green. The yard stank of grass and gas and too sudden silence.
Harold bolted up to a sitting position and stared at the dead mower. All the grass had been neatly cut. And there would be no need to rake this job, Harold observed sickly. If the lawnmower man missed a single cut blade, he couldn't see it. He squinted obliquely at the lawnmower man and winced. He was still naked, still fat, still terrifying. Green trickles ran from the corners of his mouth.
'What is this?' Harold begged.
The man waved an arm benignly at the lawn. 'This? Well, it's a new thing the boss has been trying. It works out real good. Real good, buddy. We're killing two birds with one stone. We keep getting along towards the final stage, and we're making money to support our other operations to boot. See what I mean? Of course every now and then we run into a customer who doesn't understand - some people got no respect for efficiency, right? - but the boss is always agreeable to a sacrifice. Sort of keeps the wheels greased, if you catch me.'
Harold said nothing. One word knelled over and over in his mind, and that word was 'sacrifice'. In his mind's eye he saw the mole spewing out from under the battered red mower.
He got up slowly, like a palsied old man. 'Of course,' he said, and could only come up with a line from one of Alicia's folk-rock records. 'God bless the grass.'
The lawnmower man slapped one summer-apple-coloured thigh. 'That's pretty good, buddy. In fact, that's damned good. I can see you got the right spirit. Okay if I write that down when I get back to the office? Might mean a promotion.'