'Certainly,' Harold said, retreating towards the back door and striving to keep his melting smile in place. 'You go right ahead and finish. I think I'll take a little nap -'Sure, buddy,' the lawnmower man said, getting ponderously to his feet. Harold noticed the unusually deep split between the first and second toes, almost as if the feet were well, cloven.
'It hits everybody kinda hard at first,' the lawnmower man said. 'You'll get used to it.' He eyed Harold's portly figure shrewdly. 'In fact, you might even want to give it a whirl yourself. The boss has always got an eye out for new talent.'
'The boss,' Harold repeated faintly.
The lawnmower man paused at the bottom of the steps and gazed tolerantly up at Harold Parkette. 'Well, say, buddy. I figured you must have guessed. . . God bless the grass and all.'
Harold shook his head carefully and the lawnmower man laughed.
'Pan. Pan's the boss.' And he did a half hop, half shuffle in the newly cut grass and the lawnmower screamed into life and began to trundle around the house.
'The neighbours -' Harold began, but the lawnmower man only waved cheerily and disappeared.
Out front the lawnmower blatted and howled. Harold Parkette refused to look, as if by refusing he could deny the grotesque spectacle that the Castonmeyers and Smiths -wretched Democrats both - were probably drinking in with horrified but no doubt righteously I-told-you-so eyes.
Instead of looking, Harold went to the telephone, snatched it up, and dialled police headquarters from the emergency decal pasted on the phone's handset.
'Sergeant Hall,' the voice at the other end said.
Harold stuck a finger in his free ear and said, 'My name is Harold Parkette. My address is 1421 East Endicott Street.
I'd like to report . . .' What? What would he like to report?
A man is in the process of raping and murdering my lawn and he works for a fellow named Pan and has cloven feet?
'Yes, Mr Parkette?'
Inspiration struck. 'I'd like to report a case of indecent exposure.'
'Indecent exposure,' Sergeant Hall repeated.
'Yes. There's a man mowing my lawn. He's in the, uh, altogether.'
'You mean he's naked?' Sergeant Hall asked, politely incredulous.
'Naked!' Harold agreed, holding tightly to the frayed ends of his sanity. 'Nude. Unclothed. Bare-assed. On my front lawn. Now will you get somebody the hell over here?'
'That address was 1421 West Endicott?' Sergeant Hall asked bemusedly.
'East!' Harold yelled. 'For God's sake -,
'And you say he's definitely naked? You are able to observe his, uh, genitals and so on?'
Harold tried to speak and could only gargle. The sound of the insane lawnmower seemed to be growing louder and louder, drowning out everything in the universe. He felt his gorge rise.
'Can you speak up?' Sergeant Hall buzzed. 'There's an awfully noisy connection there at your end -'
The front door crashed open.
Harold looked around and saw the lawnmower man's mechanized familiar advancing through the door. Behind it came the lawnmower man himself, still quite naked. With something approaching true insanity, Harold saw the man's pubic hair was a roch fertile green. He was twirling his baseball cap on one finger.
'That was a mistake, buddy,' the lawnmower man said reproachfully. 'You shoulda stuck with God bless the grass.'
'Hello? Hello, Mr Parkette -'
The telephone dropped from Harold's nerveless fingers as the lawnmower began to advance on him, cutting through the nap of Carla's new Mohawk rug and spitting out brown hunks of fibre as it came.
Harold stared at it with a kind of bird-and-snake fascination until it reached the coffee table. When the mower shunted it aside, shearing one leg into sawdust and splinters as it did so, he climbed over the back of his chair and began to retreat towards the kitchen, dragging the chair in front of him.
'That won't do any good, buddy,' the lawnmower man said kindly. 'Apt to be messy, too. Now if you was just to show me where you keep your sharpest butcher knife, we could get this sacrifice business out of the way real painless. I think the birdbath would do. . . and then -,
Harold shoved the chair at the lawnmower, which had been craftily flanking him while the naked man drew his attention, and bolted through the doorway. The lawn-mower roared around the chair, jetting out exhaust, and as Harold smashed open the porch screen door and leaped down the steps, he heard it - smelled it, felt it - right at his heels.
The lawnmower roared off the top step like a skier going off a jump. Harold sprinted across his newly cut back lawn, but there had been too many beers, too many afternoon naps. He could sense it nearing him, then on his heels, and then he looked over his shoulder and tripped over his own feet.
The last thing Harold Parkette saw was the grinning grill of the charging lawnmower, rocking back to reveal its flashing, green-stained blades, and above it the fat face of the lawnmower man, shaking his head in good-natured reproof.
'Hell of a thing,' Lieutenant Goodwin said as the last of the photographs were taken. He nodded to the two men in white, and they trundled their basket across the lawn. 'He reported some naked guy on his lawn not two hours ago.'
'Is that so?' Patrolman Cooley asked.