The Duttons

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.

I went to In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger. The cashier, a calm young woman named Destiny, asked me a question I did not expect. "You want that Animal Style?" I paused. I did not know what this meant. But a samurai does not admit he does not know. So I answered with weight. "...Animal Style." "Cool. So that's mustard-grilled, extra spread, grilled onions, pickles. Yeah?" I understood now. This was a sacred permission. For one meal, I was being told to put down my manners at the door. To eat the way a beast eats, without shame. I had waited my whole life for someone to give me this order. "Yes," I said. "I will become the animal." Destiny did not blink. "...Okay. You want your fries Animal Style too?" I stopped. Even the potatoes? "The potatoes also become animals?" "I mean, they get cheese and sauce and grilled onions, so..." "Then yes. Let the potatoes abandon their restraint as well." "...Got it." She was the calmest woman I have ever met. "3x3, 4x4, or just the one?" I did not know these numbers, but I knew a challenge when I heard one. "How many must I face?" "It's, like, how many patties you want." "How many is the most honorable?" "...Four is a lot." "Then four. A warrior does not ask for fewer." She wrote it down without argument. A 4x4, Animal Style, with animal fries. She warned me once, kindly. "That's gonna be huge." I told her I was counting on it. It arrived. It was a tower. Cheese and sauce ran down my hands the moment I lifted it. There was no clean way to eat it. There was no dignified way. That was the entire point. I ate it like a beast. Both hands, no honor, grilled onion on my chin, and I have to be honest with you, it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth. For thirty years I have kept my manners at every table in the world. They handed me a burger and told me to be an animal, and I have never felt so free. So tell me, America. The whole country knows the secret menu. What else are you hiding in plain sight? And "Animal Style." Was I eating the animal, or finally becoming one?