I needed my lawn mowed. I asked an American for the name of a company. He said, "Get a kid." A kid. Not a service. A child. I asked which kid. "Any of 'em." I asked where one obtains a kid. There is no directory. There is no listing. He said, "Ask around." I asked around. Two days later a fourteen year old named Cody was standing on my porch. He did not bring a mower. Nobody told me this part. The kid uses your mower and your gas. He brings arms. I asked his rate. He said, "Whatever." Whatever. A negotiation had opened and the other party declined to attend. A blade drawn against no opponent must be returned to the sheath in silence. I put my wallet away. So I conducted research. I asked four adults what the correct amount was. Four numbers. Twenty. Forty. Twenty five. One man said he gave a kid fifty once and could not remember why. There is no rate. There has never been a rate. An entire national labor market runs with no published price and every participant is somehow satisfied. I looked up the state minimum wage. I timed the work. I arrived at a defensible figure and I paid it. My neighbor watched this from his driveway. Later he came over and told me, kindly, that I had underpaid. I said the amount exceeded the legal minimum. He said, "Yeah, but he's a kid." THE PRICE IS NOT THE PRICE. THE PRICE IS THE PRICE PLUS SOMETHING NO MAN ON THIS STREET WILL SAY OUT LOUD. So I corrected. I overcorrected. Sixty dollars for forty minutes. The same neighbor came back over. "Alright. Don't ruin him." There is a floor and there is a ceiling. Neither is written anywhere. Both are enforced by men standing in driveways with their arms folded. The samurai who cannot read the room dies in the room. I have been dying in this room since June. Cody was thirsty. I did not offer him water, because he had not asked, and a warrior does not name another warrior's weakness. My wife told me he is fourteen and it is ninety one degrees. I now leave a bottle on the step where he can take it without being seen taking it. I asked my neighbor why the whole street does this. Why grown men pay a boy more than the work is worth and then pretend not to have noticed. He said, "You're not buying a lawn." Then he went inside, because apparently that was a complete explanation. Cody has cut my grass eleven times. He is saving for a truck. I know the exact figure because he told me, unprompted, in August, sweating, holding my own mower. Last week a family moved in three houses down. The man came over and asked if I knew anybody who cuts grass. I said, "I got a kid." I heard what that sounded like. I did not correct it. He is nine hundred dollars from the truck. A mountain is not asked to be smaller. A mountain is walked around, at night, quietly, by a man with a truck payment he intends to make on someone else's behalf. I have started mentioning him to people.