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I dreaded it when Russ, our yardman, pulled up in front of our house on Thursday mornings. His crew piled out of his truck and began taking lawn equipment from the back of his trailer. They were in the yard with all their machines roaring within a couple of minutes. But it wasn’t the noise from the machines that bothered me. It was the noise from Russ.

Russ seemed to resent it that I was at home whenever he came around. I’d walk out the door with his check and he’d look at me with questions running through his mind, an attitude that I owed him an explanation for my presence. At first it was only a look on his face, but by the second week he had to know. “Going in to work later?” he asked as I gave him the check. I sensed other questions waiting in line behind the first one. Still, I didn’t want to tell him it was none of his business, and if I didn’t answer, it would only make him more curious. “I work at home,” I said. I told him the yard looked good and went back inside, but I knew that walking away wasn’t going to stop the questions.

The yardman we’d had before Russ had been unreliable. He didn’t show up and never offered an explanation for not coming. We’d call him to see if he was sick or if his truck had broken down and he’d answer with promises he seldom kept. Russ had several other yards in our neighborhood, and when my wife was taking her walks she’d noticed that his yards were green and well maintained. She spoke with him, he came over and gave us an estimate, and we hired him.

“He does stare a lot,” I said to my wife afterward.

“He’s focused,” she said. “Wife and three kids. He needs the work.”

Whenever I came out with the check he stopped what he was doing and watched me approach him, a smile in the corner of his mouth. I went out before he was finished, thinking he’d be less likely to start a conversation if he was in the middle of something. “Working hard in there?” Sweat and bits of grass all over him, hands thick, like boxing gloves. “Getting a lot of work done today?” And, “Must be nice.” Underneath the small talk, he wanted answers.

I talked to my wife about it, but she didn’t think I should let it bother me. She said he was asking questions that anyone might ask, and the yard looked better than it had in years.

“Does he ever ask you what you do?”

“He’s never asked me.”

“I think I’ll tell him I don’t like the personal questions.”

“Just ignore him. It’s his nature.”

“What about my nature? Should I ignore that?”

“You can’t control his nature,” she said.

Russ could tell I didn’t like his attitude. I began handing him his check and thanking him without making eye contact. His smile spread from the corner of his mouth to his whole face. If I wasn’t going to look right at him, he wanted to make sure I could see it.

One day he asked: “Putting in your hours today? Who do you consult with?”

I didn’t answer. My wife had told him about the consulting one day when she went out to talk about planting some flowers.

“Sure must be a good business,” he said.

He held the check up in front of his face and squinted at the amount. I turned and walked back into the house.

Later when I was out running, I stopped to talk with another yardman, George, who worked in our neighborhood. George had one helper and they worked from morning till night. So many people used him I figured he had to be reliable. George said he knew where I lived and he’d be at the house about five o’clock to look at the yard and give me his price. I told my wife about it.

“Is he the one who wears all the shirts?”

“That’s him.”

“Have you noticed how slow he walks? That’s why he’s around here all day long.”

George showed up an hour late. We were eating, but I got up and went out when he knocked. He walked around the house, nodded at everything he saw, and scratched his stubble with his fingernails. He did walk slowly. He was slightly over five feet tall and carried a big stomach. He wore four shirts, the top one unbuttoned. At the end of the tour he came to a stop in our front yard. I hadn’t noticed it before but he was a compulsive blinker, and he blinked more than once a second.

“That guy who lives on the corner there,” he said, pointing across the street. “Have you seen him? He walks like this.”

George slumped, stuck his head forward, and swung his arms behind him as he took a few steps. He then showed me another neighbor’s walk, waving in the direction of her house, but I didn’t know the person he was talking about. After the imitations, he named his price and it was ten dollars higher than Russ charged.

“I do a good job for you,” he said, blinking. “Keep it all shaped up. And I won’t fool around with your wife.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. I told him I’d think about it and let him know.

I went back inside and sat at the table. My wife had finished eating but she hadn’t gotten up.

“He’s higher than Russ, and he said he wouldn’t fool around with you.”

“He said that?”

“He did. And he can’t stop blinking. He blinks about a hundred times a minute.”

“Maybe he’s got a photographic memory.”

“If he does, he’s been using it to take pictures of you.”

I agreed to put up with Russ, but my wife started taking the checks out to him, which seemed to further arouse his curiosity. She said he kept asking her about me. Was I out working? Was I feeling okay? Was I happy with his work? She’d come back into the house chuckling, but I didn’t think it was funny.

The day before we went on vacation Russ arrived when my wife was in the shower, so I had to be the one to take him his check. I was dressed for a meeting and running a little late. Russ looked up at me with surprise.

“Well, well,” he said. “Duty calls.”

I handed the check over. I told him we were going out of town for a vacation and we were leaving the back gate locked. We wanted him to come next week but to skip the backyard. If it was okay with him, we’d pay him when we got back.

“How long will you be gone?”

I didn’t like the question, but if I walked away without answering him he could get mad and take revenge on the house while we were away. I imagined him putting the hose through the mail slot and turning the water on.

“Almost two weeks,” I said.

“Must be nice. Where are you guys off to?”

“The west coast,” I said and left it at that. I turned away from him before he could come out with another question.

Back inside, I told my wife through the bathroom door that I was leaving for the meeting.

“Go okay with Russ?”

“He asked about the trip.”

“Anyone you mention a trip to is going to ask about it. Relax and think about the meeting.”

I went out the back door to the garage and got in my car. I repeated my wife’s words, but I was still angry. Russ didn’t need to know how long we’d be gone. Why did he ask? I backed out and told myself I wouldn’t be able to concentrate at the meeting if I was fuming about Russ. But before I’d gone too far I could tell that I wasn’t going to stop thinking about him unless I went back and said something. I made a U-turn in the middle of a four-lane blacktop and sped home.

Russ and his helpers were still working when I pulled up. I hurried out of the car and made my way straight for Russ. He was holding an edger, and he switched it off when he saw the look on my face.

“Why did you ask me those questions about our trip?” I was thinking that Russ could stick two fingers up my nose and lift me off the ground. “Why do you need to know where we’re going and when we’re coming back? Does it have something to do with you?”

“You afraid I’ll come back and rob your house?”

“Just tell me why you asked.”

“If you didn’t want to tell me, why did you tell me? You afraid I’ll do something to you?”

“I don’t like all the questions,” I said. “You know that, and you go right on asking them.”

I’d said what I had to say so I went back to my car, which was still running, and drove off to the meeting.

When we got home after our trip, it was obvious that Russ hadn’t been back to cut the grass. Before we took the bags from the car we checked the house, but there was no sign of damage.

“I’m not surprised he quit,” my wife said. “I may call and talk with him.”

“I don’t want him back unless he’s got the message.”

She called Russ the next day, but he didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t trust him, he said, and he didn’t want to work for somebody who would talk to him that way. He thought I needed to have my ass whipped, he told my wife, but he wasn’t that kind of person. He didn’t think I knew what real work was, and he doubted if I did much work at all. I sat on my ass all day, he said, and after all he’d done for us he thought I could show him enough respect to answer a few simple questions.

Everything my wife told me about what Russ said confirmed what I’d thought of him. But when she finished she said: “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

After listening to her I kept talking to myself, answering her, answering Russ, and I decided to go out for a run, hoping to clear my head. I was still running down our street when a blue jay came straight at my face, shrieking. I cursed, swinging and flailing at it. The blue jay swooped behind me and butted the back of my head. I yelled at the bird and swatted at it as I ran. It hovered over me, and then flew into a tree.

George and his helper were working in a yard nearby, and they stopped to watch me take my swings at the blue jay. The helper was doubled over laughing, his hands on his knees. George jumped and swatted at the air around his head, egging on his helper’s laughter.

“I thought you had him there for a minute,” he said.

I was running past him. He stopped swinging and took several steps toward me.

“Hey, hey,” he shouted at my back. “Where’s your wife?”

“She’s at home,” I answered over my shoulder.

“I never see her anymore.”

Read the next installment of Encounters

© 2010 Glen Pourciau