For the next thirty years the McCurdy sisters lived alone in the big, decaying house, surrendering first one and then another room to leaking roofs, falling plaster, heaving floors, and the cost of heating oil, until all that was left for them was the kitchen, their parents’ old bedroom and bath above, and the connecting back staircase.
The McCurdy sisters weeded on. One of their Johnson neighbors started up the lawn mower. Maudie and Sal stared at the ground, pretending not to hear it. A year ago Maudie decided it would be a lark for them to do children’s books together, she the writing, Sal the illustrations. Sal agreed but insisted on something like The Magic Meat Grinder or The Brave Little Set of Socket Wrenches, for she was shy about venturing too far from the hardware things she knew how to draw.
Their most promising venture had been Lonny the Thoughtful Lawn Mower. Every week after his owner used him Lonny would sit in the musty toolshed and wonder why lawns had to be cut. Clearly his owner didn’t enjoy the job or take any real pleasure in the result. Wondering if there was some law of man or God requiring lawns to be cut, Lonny trundled down the alley to visit the prosperous machine in the lawyer’s toolshed, who told him there was no such law of man on the books. Next Lonny visited the grounds of the nearby church where a saintly old lawn mower everyone called “The Rev” assured him none of God’s commandments touched on lawns except perhaps about cutting them on Sunday.
But Lonny’s question inspired a midnight meeting of all the town lawn mowers. At the noisy gathering a big country-club rider-mower declared that when a faithfully mowed lawn died, it came back as part of the golf course, while good lawn mowers came back as big rider-mowers. Others maintained that men cut the grass because they’d do anything to get out of the house. (“Here, get this,” offered Sal when she read Maudie’s first draft, “Have a lawn mower call out, ‘I say people cut their lawns because they don’t want to be... uh... uh... automatic.’ And later on Lonny figures out the word the machine was really looking for was ‘shiftless.’ Get it?” “No, I most certainly do not,” said Maudie.)
The lawn mowers finally concluded that grass was cut because that was the way things were. “But that’s absurd,” Lonny insisted. “And if cutting grass is absurd, then we’re absurd.” A machine in the crowd called Lonny an existentialist. But the thoughtful little lawn mower persisted. “Okay, then try this on for size: Why does each house have to have its own lawn mower when four or five of us could do the whole town?” Suddenly he was being denounced on all sides as an atheistic communist and an advocate of socialized lawn care. A moment later Lonny was running away with a mob of angry lawn mowers in hot pursuit. He managed to escape down an alley and reached his toolshed, where he panted in the darkness while lawn mowers searched the night for him. Here the story stalled. Maudie claimed she couldn’t find the right ending.
Finally Sal came up with one of her own. Lonny wakes up one night to this noise like helicopters, with a strange light streaming through the cracks in the toolshed door. Outside he sees this giant lawn mower descending from heaven attended by choirs of weed-whackers and chipper-shredders. And a resonant voice from within the machine tells Lonny that because he was a lawn mower who dared to ask the question why, he would now be raised to another level of lawn mower consciousness. “Or some kind of glop like that,” added Sal.
Maudie shook her head. “But that wouldn’t be sincere. I mean, you really don’t believe there’s this Great Lawn Mower out there somewhere.”
“Hell no,” said Sal. “But you do.”
Maudie stood her ground. “I need an ending that gives meaning to Lonny’s life, one that’s an inspiration to young readers,” said Maudie.
Mulling it over in her heart Sal came to suspect Maudie just didn’t like the preliminary artwork. So, late one morning after they’d come in from tying up dahlias, Sal put the question to her sister directly. It was Maudie’s turn to make lunch. As she poured the can of soup into the saucepan she said, “I admit I hoped for something more cartoony, dear.” Looking under the pot to adjust the flame on the gas stove she added, “You know, machines with the corners knocked off. And eyes. And a mouth.”
Sal had been sitting at the kitchen table untangling a mare’s nest of green garden twine, the remains of a ball that had gotten away from them and rolled away down the yard almost to the garage. “You want whimsy,” she said scornfully. “Well, I hate whimsy. I say give the kids the real goods, a lawn mower that looks like a lawn mower, nuts and bolts and all.”
“Here’s a for-instance, dear,” offered Maudie. “Where Lonny’s panting there in the toolshed after his escape, how about drawing lines around his gas tank like, you know, heavy breathing?”
“Huh, I’m way ahead of you, sister,” said Sal, winding the untangled twine into a hank around her right hand. “I’ve rethought that whole bit. First off, it’s dark. So that page is black except for this balloon on a string of bubbles with the word ‘Whew!’ in it with drops of sweat like quotation marks around it.” She looked down at her winding. “So there’s your panting lawn mower, Miss Know-It-All McCurdy!”
“And how are you going to make Lonny thoughtful? A balloon with a light bulb in it?”
Sal scowled, hating Maudie’s superior tone. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, afraid she was walking into another of her sister’s treacherous little ambushes.
Maudie sprang her trap. “That’s only a thought, dear. Not thoughtfulness.”
Sal ground her teeth. “Don’t worry,” she said darkly. “I’ll think of something.”
As she turned to get the bowls from the cupboard Maudie gave her rendition of Mother’s delicately dancing, scornful laugh.
It was a sound that always made Sal boil. Red-faced, she got to her feet and stood behind her sister, snapping the twine between her fists.
“Now if you ask me,” continued Maudie, “I think you should try something more like The Little Engine That Could.
The Little Engine That Could, eh?” growled Sal. Suddenly she had looped the twine over Maudie’s head and crossed her forearms, pulling the twine tightly around her sister’s neck. “I think I can,” Sal muttered through clenched teeth as the bowls crashed to the floor. “I think I can. I damn well think I can.”
Sal ignored Maudie’s clawing hands and focused down at the top of her sister’s head, watching the skin beneath the thin white hair turn from pink to purple. Maudie’s hands were harmless fluttering creatures before Sal’s black rage passed and she let go the twine. Maudie fell to the linoleum, retching and making noises as if she had a fish bone caught in her throat.
Sal stood there blinking in astonishment for several minutes before she gathered her sister up and set her down in a kitchen chair. Then she dashed to the refrigerator and wrapped ice cubes in a tea towel. She had Maudie hold the compress to her throat to keep the swelling down while she pounded upstairs for the salve to put on the broken skin. She was crying when she came back down with it. Maudie was crying, too. Sal told her many times how sorry she was. And Maudie nodded to show she understood.
It was several days before Maudie could speak above a croak, and several weeks before Sal could look at that mark around her sister’s neck without having to turn away with tears in her eyes. They sat together for many hours holding hands and telling each other that everything was going to be all right. They never spoke of Lonny the Thoughtful Lawn Mower or the subject of children’s books again.