The Adventure Game

Houses in the design style of TV architect Mike Brady stand on slopes of manicured grass. If there was a typical, ‘70s era street in all of America, this would be it. I stop the car and an SUV immediately pulls up and stops behind me. I glance into the rearview mirror and see a middle-aged man with curly hair speaking very seriously into his cell phone.

I get out of the car. My first thought is that this place looks like a particularly unlikely location to find something out of the ordinary. Homes are built at a safe disance from the nicely-paved street. Doors are locked. Not a single shrub or lawn ornament is out of place. But I have to look. Walking up and down the sidewalk I find a corroded coin: a penny that’s been scratched out of recognition, almost as if bitten into. Lincoln’s face is lost beneath hatch-mark gouges. The date is indecipherable. Still, this may be important so I take a picture.

Ahead, an enormous maple tree stands in the lawn at the crest of the hill. Its size is deceiving, and it seems so out of place here. Walking a little further I discover a yellow Post-it note at the edge of a lawn. It reads:

5/26

–11:30

w/Karen

I take a picture. I look again to the maple tree and notice a woman walking beneath it through her yard and into the house. I’m reminded of a book I read as a child: The Big Orange Splot. In it, a plain house on a plain street full of plain houses is visted by a bird carrying a bucketful of paint. The bird flies over the house and spills the paint onto the roof. At first the neighbors disapprove of the big orange splot, but the homeowner, Mr. Plumbean, refuses to remove it. He likes that his house is a bit different. Soon, the whole neighborhood buys into the man’s stubborn individuality, and by the end of the story the street is transformed. One house looks like a seafaring vessel. One is a hot air balloon. Another, a kaleidoscope of psychedelic colors. I think of this story when I see the enormous tree, and wonder if it was ever that homeowner’s big orange splot.

Eventually, I turn and see that the man in the SUV is still barking into his phone. He looks angrier now, and I wonder … is he speaking to Karen? Is he upset because she lost the rarest penny in his coin collection?

I find myself in the neighborhood where I grew up, though I haven’t seen this particular street in many years. The middle school sits on the steep hill to my right. The grass is wet. It’s been raining all day but now the sky is clear and the sun sets behind the school, staining the sky bright orange.

I’m counting to ten slowly, and as I say “Nine” I see the only other person on the street: an old man with white hair and baggy plaid pants, leaning on a shovel like it’s a cane. He lifts it slowly and stabs the earth near the foot of his porch, digging, perhaps. But his motions seem sporadic and aimless. Maybe he’s senile.

I say “Ten” as I pass him, and so this is the end of the adventure. I try to pull over, but cars line the street. I park as soon as I can, and the result is an illegal, crooked, hurried stop next to a yellow hydrant. I get out of the car and walk towards the man, and decide to snap a quick photo.

I walk right by his house as if I’m going somewhere up the street, and glance his way. I should say something, I think. He is part of this adventure. There is no one else on the street and I passed him at Ten. But he looks mean and focused. He stabs the earth with the shovel again, and I see that he is carving out the overgrown grass that has taken over his walkway, scooping up the broken dirt and tossing it into the freshly-mowed lawn.

I walk halfway up the street, going nowhere. I double back and see him from afar. He wipes his brow, trades the shovel for an actual cane and shuffles into the house. I wait for him to enter then walk to the first block of his weedy walkway. I can hear music blasting from a television inside. I see that he has only carved out about two percent of the overgrowth, and judging by his exhaustion and the time it took him to do this, I bet he’ll be out here every night for three weeks, carving a little bit each day until the walkway is wide again, and the edges are crisp and sharp.

I decide to ask if he needs help with this. My math is poor and my measurements are probably exaggerated, but I guess that there are twenty feet of edging, forty feet total (counting both sides) and at a foot per minute this might take me forty. I walk up to the porch and wonder why I’m about to ask a stranger if I can edge his lawn. Well … it’s part of the adventure.

So I knock three times. The television music booms off the wooden floors inside. I can’t help but examine the room through the screen as I wait. There are oil paintings hanging in thick frames on the walls, and a vase full of fresh flowers. Then the man comes to the door with a confused smile on his face.

“Yes?” he says.

“Hi, I was walking by and I saw you working on the lawn,” I say.

“What?!” He says it like I’ve just proposed something outrageous.

“Yeah, I saw you digging the grass and I wondered if I could help.”

“Oh, no,” he says kindly. “No, thank you.” He’s looking at me with clear, bright eyes. I can see that he’s neither mean nor senile.

“I just saw you as I walked by and I thought I’d ask if I could help. You’re digging out all the grass from the walkway?”

“Yes. That’s okay. I just have a bad knee.” He says it soberly, but in a way that suggests optimism, as if the failing mobility of old age were like the rain that had come and gone so suddenly this afternoon: at any moment liable to reverse and be restored to a more pleasant state.

I want to ask him his name, take his picture, and tell him about this first adventure. I imagine him inviting me into his home, telling me the stories behind the paintings. I want to know who gave him the vase full of flowers. I imagine we’d tour the whole house each with a glass of lemonade. But instead I say “Ok, see ya,” and leave.

As I near the road I see the clear line between his lawn and the next. The neighbors have toys. A young family, perhaps. But the old man, as slow as he is, and with a bad knee, has them beat on lawn care. A blooming bush stands in his yard, fertilized flowers flank the white porch posts, the grass is trimmed and green. He’ll be out in the yard for the next three weeks, I’m sure, stabbing at the grass and restoring the edges of his walkway until everything is as it once was.