A Job Well Done

From the age of nine until I was twelve, my dad was stationed (for a second time) at Yokota AFB in Japan. One blistering summer morning when I was eleven, I was mowing the neighbor’s lawn—one of my first steady-paying jobs. And because my client was a single airman with no family to take care of, he had money to spend. His yard was the largest in the neighborhood, and he paid well. Plus I quite enjoyed the little perks he threw me after I finished—an ice cold Welch’s grape soda, an extra slice of pizza from the pie he wasn’t going to finish, a handful of change he dug out of his car. “Good job, man.” It sure beat tracking down paper route clients. It felt good to be appreciated. And I soon took pride in my work.

Anyway, on this particular morning, the base sanitation crew, comprised of both American and Japanese workers, was doing a bit of work. I wasn’t sure what they were actually doing, but from my observations, they seemed to be working their way down the street, opening each manhole cover and sewer spot, sending a small Japanese worker down into the abyss with some high-tech gizmo, and then fishing him out after a while. I had watched them for a while earlier in the day and promptly forgot about them. That is, until they made their way into our little cul-de-sac. As I started the motor, and the mower chugged to life, the workers congregated around one spot on the far end of the four-plex. For a wile they stuck to their business and I stuck to mine. It wasn’t too hard to stick to anything, though, with the humidity the so high.

Mostly, I tried to stay out of their way as I was on my way to making money, which would result in either more baseball cards, more candy, or more video games; most likely, though, a combination of all three.

My neighbor liked his yard cut in a neat spiral shape, so I would trace around the edge of the house and fence, always circling until I swirled into a jumble in the middle of the yard. Needless to say, I had come back around the corner from the side yard into the front, just in time to witness three of four workers levering crowbars, attempting to pry open the metal plate from the top of the concrete cover. The second they cracked the seal, thousands, I and mean thousands of roaches rushed to the surface and began to scatter. This is not a hyperbole. And these were not your ordinary garden variety of roach either. These suckers were of the four-inch flying variety. Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom bugs. Those who are squeamish may choose to turn away now.

Instantaneously, the workmen began yelling—at each other, at the roaches, and then at me. Surprised at the sudden verbal assault by six or seven short guys in coveralls, I let go of the mower and it ground to a halt. A couple workers had dived into the back of a nearby truck and emerged yielding large cans of some kind of bug bomb. They drenched the insect host in a noxious fog but without result. The brown and black devils scuttled on without casualty.

The yelling intensified. I couldn’t understand the rapid-fire Japanese banter, but soon the shortest and oldest and baldest man—by far the most weathered—approached me and stared into my soul, commanding my attention. He didn’t say a word; he simply pointed at me with a bony, dislocated finger and then at the lawn mower before me and then at the roaches. With unmistakable sign language, he gestured for me to cut down the advancing infestation with my machine. And then with a smirk and a twinkle in his eye he nodded.

I understood. And I nodded back.

The Briggs and Stratton revved back to life, and I plunged in with my insect-death machine, cutting a path through the swarming pestilence. Mowing up one way and down the other literally left stripes in the ranks of the advancing cockroaches, almost like a cartoon. Some stripes still kept marching while other bands were littered with thorax and abdomen pieces, a few antennae still twitching among the dismembered.

After multiple passes, the horde was disbanded. Only a few intact bodies remained, the wounded stumbling through the still untrimmed sections of the lawn to the far reaches of the yard or careening over the edge of the curb and into the gutter, escaping back into the underworld of the drain system.

I killed the engine and looked up. The workers raised an unprompted cheer—all but the wrinkled bald guy. He just nodded and grunted contentedly, my own knowing Mr. Miyagi. I knew then that I had done a good job on this lawn.

Then as quickly as the roaches had appeared, the workmen disappeared, leaving me alone with half a yard left to mow. I don’t think they ever went down that hole, nor did I ever see that cover lifted again.