“You used to mow too,” Grandma said. “You remember? You did the Pruitts’ yard. And the Bankses’. Herbert paid you a dollar fifty, and you’d buy baseball cards at the Rexall.”
“Mama…”
“Your daddy taught you both. Right out there. In straight lines.” She pointed at my stripes. “He used to say, a man who cuts a crooked line will tell a crooked story. You remember him saying that?”
Ray’s face had gone red. Not angry red. The other kind.
“I remember,” he said quietly.
“I’ve paid you four hundred dollars every month for eleven months,” Grandma said.
“You offered.”
“I did,” she said. “I did offer. You came to me last August and said Sheila was after you. Said you were behind on the truck. Said you’d see to my yard if I could help you out. And I said yes.”
She paused.
“I said yes because you’re my son,” she said. “And I’ve buried one son. And I’d rather go without than watch you struggle. That’s the truth.”
Behind me, I heard one of the ladies under the oak tree make a small sound.
“But you never once cut my grass, Raymond,” Grandma said.
Ray flinched.
“Tyler Simms cut it,” Grandma said. “Loretta’s grandson. Fifteen years old. On a Saturday morning, with your daddy’s mower, that you never once changed the oil in. I watched him through the window. Every time. You think I didn’t see that?”
She looked past Ray. At the skinny kid in the backward Cardinals hat, standing by the curb with Grandpa’s rake.
“And you stopped paying that boy in May,” she said. “Loretta told me.”
Ray turned around and looked at Tyler. Tyler looked at the ground.
“And then,” Grandma said, and her voice went very quiet, “you went to Edna.”
Ray turned back around.
“You went to Edna Pruitt,” Grandma said. “Who taught you to read. Who stayed after school with you every day in third grade because you couldn’t sound out your words, and never charged your daddy one cent for it.”
