On The Lawn

Ryan Brown

One evening, at the end of a summer, Charles began slowly, and awkwardly moving his furniture outside, and onto his front lawn. There the living room set stayed for one warm night, and part of the next day before the first of a long stream of neighbors walked past to investigate. It was then that words, such as odd, and strange began being uttered from one curious party to another. From neighbor to friend, and neighbor to cousin moved whispers of what was happening.
2392 which had, just recently, been one concrete block among the many, was now the source, and object of every crisp, and spicy thought for those who peered into the arrangement on the lawn. Charles’ neighbors, who always seemed to be looking out of picture windows at passing cars, and through window shades, through the dark, looking for what might be lurking in, or around the driveway light of the house across the street, they began to talk about how the unfashionable and fully upholstered lawn ornaments had been left out.
They mentioned too, amongst friends, that the furniture had been neatly arranged in a standard room configuration, with a sofa and a love seat gathered around a pine coffee table. One neighbor, who had in his collections a stack of design magazines going back a number of years, had begun saying, to anyone who would listen, that the whole lot was framed almost perfectly, within the lines of the driveway, and the sidewalk. These casual observations acquired quickly the help of conjecture, and rumor.
“I heard that three of his family are in the mental hospital” said the retired teacher who had started a flowerbed in that part of her front yard which had a line of sight to Charles’ house.
“He must have stolen it all. Why else would you leave stuff out like that, unless you felt guilty and needed to get rid of it?” came a comment from the man with three beagles, which were pulling their leashes in three separate directions.
Soon the furniture on the lawn became the centerpiece of discussion at social events. The entire neighborhood was suddenly getting fit by taking walks around the neighborhood. The groups of walkers all seemed to stop to stretch, or talk within a few feet of the tan sofa and green love seat, which had been placed under a tree.
It was then that the phone calls began coming in. These conversations all started with something innocuous, like the request for Charles’s sugarless barbecue sauce recipe, which contained alcohol, and had made a brief, but scandalous appearance at a neighborhood gathering three years previously. But for lack of spite, or fearlessness, the callers seemed to back away from the calls as soon as each of them was holding a receiver to an ear.
There were a few questions about Charles’s health, which were conversational cul-de-sacs. Charles, over the last decade, had been replying “fine as a fiddle” whenever he had been asked this type of question, regardless of the presence of a cough, or a rash, or the mysterious lump on his back, which had grown to the size of a overripe grape over a period of three weeks, and had then failed to change over a subsequent two years. But the conversations held nothing else of note, and the callers eventually excused themselves and hung up.
Charles considered briefly that his name had been entered into a dead pool. He imagined his own name printed neatly in a box along side a few other names and dollar amounts. He wondered who among his neighbors would be the next to slip away, as he shuffled off to his family room to sit with his parakeet, on the blank canvas of his carpet.
Sixteen minutes after noon, on the third day of the furniture in yard, the head of neighborhood watch, Imelda Rodin, strode around the lawn and up the concrete walkway to Charles’ door, where she knocked with the force of a woman whose power has not yet waned. Charles then appeared behind his screen door with a paper napkin tucked into the collar of a polo shirt.
“Hello Charlie” Imelda said smoothly.
“Good morning.” Charles wiped his hands on the napkin.
“It’s afternoon. Well, it has come to our attention that some of your belongings have been left out on your lawn.” Imelda said with the hum of a multi-decade smoker.
Charles paused, and thought of the sandwich, which was still sitting on his cutting board.
“We can help get the city to come and pick up refuse if there is enough of it.” Imelda was talking more slowly now. “Some of the neighborhood, we, were talking about getting a pickup anyway.”
“Thanks for stopping by, Imelda…” Charles began.
“Do you need help with your furniture?”
“No, I think it will be OK.”
“Well, we want you to get it off your lawn.” Imelda was now leaning towards the screen door.
“Why? What does it matter?” Charles said, with his head tilted slightly.
This caught Imelda by surprise, and she stood there, blinking, for just a moment. “It matters” she blurted.
Charles stood silently on the other side of a screen door, unsure of what to say, as Imelda turned on her heel and strode away.

“I decided to make more room for Pete and myself” Charles ventured to the woman in the blue house dress. The dress was printed with little white swirls. She had had come to pose a single question on behalf of her sewing circle, and to obtain the answer. Her face was not showing any satisfaction. There, in the middle of the walkway, she stood, as if afraid to stand on the same lawn as Charles’ former living room contents, but also afraid of coming too near the man who had placed those things on his lawn.
“But,” she began, “why not donate it? Why leave it here?”
Through the screen door, Charles saw the minute white swirls on the woman’s blue dress. “I thought that it was all too much. Too much, in too small a space. I, and my bird, we were under the shadow of the stupid things. I needed room for my thoughts. I figure those kids from the school will run off with the stuff.”
The woman nodded, hoping to conceal the fact that she didn’t understand. Charles was looking at the white swirls, which through the screen, looked like a formation of satellite image hurricanes.

Imelda had worked herself into a state of furry.
“The neighborhood is coming apart at the seams!” she screamed while hacking lettuce into little green strips with a cleaver. “We do what is done, precisely, because that is what is needed. Without that, what are we? Who are we? We have nothing, that’s what we have. That’s what we are. We are nothing if we do not hold to our selves, and what is good. That’s why there are laws and that’s why we don’t just do whatever the hell we want.”
Dan was standing at the kitchen table, his hand still on the handle of his brown leather briefcase. “I suppose” he said dryly.
“What does that even mean? You do think this whole thing is ridiculous, don’t you? I mean there is a way that things are done, there is a certain civility that needs to be maintained, a specific manner in which life needs to be enacted.”
“Yes, I think it is ridiculous. Why don’t you simply talk to the man again…”
“Routine makes our society. That is what society is, routine and more routine. It stands opposed to barbarism.” Imelda continued chopping at the fine miniature lettuce pieces.
Dan’s phone rang inside his briefcase. Dan looked down and frowned. “So what are you going to do?”
Imelda stopped chopping. She put the cleaver down on the counter, and turned to look at Dan, whose briefcase beeped softly.

In the peacefulness of late summer, a match was struck. The fire began slowly burning the gasoline splashed lawn, and furniture set. It all burned into the night for a few quiet moments before every dog in the neighborhood began barking. Soon the neighbors arrived, some in bathrobes, and standing along the opposite side of the street. Some neighbors, who were in full daytime dress, clustered along the sidewalk or the curb. Just a few awkward individuals seemed to have, in a hurry, put on a random collection of clothing, none of which was right for the season. It was these people, who were now wandering into the street calling out questions into the night air, questions which were not heard, and not answered. There, loosely circled around the bonfire, the neighborhood took in the spectacle of flames.
Then there came the sirens, which ran ahead of the the fire department’s ladder truck, which had to wind it’s way into, and through subdivision, and around a school, then over from the frontage road. Soon the police department’s new squad car, and two rival ambulances also arrived, adding to the fire a field of blinking red, blue, and yellow lights.
As firemen doused the front yard in water, the flames disappeared into the black smoking couch and love seat. There, seeping into the street around the the firetruck, police cruiser, and ambulances was the crowd. The two police officers motioned for the neighbors move back across the street, and away from the water and smoldering items. As they shuffled backwards, the neighbors talked, and muttered, but the idling fire engine drowned them all out.
There accompanied by blinking lights, and the sound of the fire engine idling, was Charles’ smile, which appeared in his kitchen window.