Old Blue

by Bryn Chamberlain

Contrary to what you might think, Old Blue was not my dog. Blue was the lawn mower that led to the salvation of my dog, who was also named Blue. Together, these two formed the strongest, inextricably entwined cords of my youth. The one, a black lab puppy; four and a half pounds of love, joy and energy. The other, a two-stroke, four-horsepower gas lawn mower; rusty red, stained grass-green and spotted with black soot.

We weren’t a wealthy family by any stretch. A younger sister and baby brother, a surly father and mother who tried her best to feed us on his itinerant pay. We never went without a meal, but we’d have to fend for ourselves when Mom took on work as a baby sitter or part-time secretary. As Blue got bigger, his food bill grew, and loud arguments would revolve around “the damn dog,” escalating to threats of leaving him at my uncle’s farm.

My father left for good when I was eight. I tried to comfort Mom as best I could. The first few months seemed alright. Better even, without the shouting and random quick clips across the ear. Blue and I would sit on the front porch, in my father’s old spot and watch the tumble and grind of our dusty street.

Sitting there, I would recall his gruff “Papers here!” when my bundle of fifty plus newspapers were dropped off at the foot of the drive. With my father gone, I felt it was up to me to wave at the truck driver before setting off on the two-mile paper route with close to thirty pounds of newspapers over my shoulders, Blue bouncing along beside me.

One Saturday morning I got home to find Mom in the kitchen looking over some loose change. She had been crying. I knew it was about money. “You want me to pour you some coffee, Mom?” I asked.

“There’s none left. We haven’t got enough,” she replied. Blue could sense distress in people and tried unsuccessfully to tuck his nose up under her arm. I knew the value of a dollar. I knew that those who worked hard for it did not give it up lightly. Mr. Barrington once tore a strip off me for accidentally charging him twice in a month for the newspaper subscription. It was $1.65, but he screamed bloody murder and threatened to call the police. I was so disheartened by the experience, I wanted to quit that day, but I knew I couldn’t. Every bit helped. But I knew it was coming. I knew Blue was a burden. I did not want to give up my dog. I’d have to find another job.

Mr. Barrington lived by himself in a large house with a huge front lawn and an even bigger back yard that swept down a hill. He walked with a limp from an injury of some kind, and the grass on the lawn was always a little too long. I thought of him as some kind of ogre, until I mustered up the courage to knock on the door. “You want me to mow yer lawn?” I asked. He assessed me, my dog and the manual push mower I had pulled from our house a quarter mile away.

“How much?” he replied. I didn’t know. I thought about it for a moment then asked, “You know how much a bag of dog food costs?”

Barrington watched me for an hour, struggling in the deep grass with the woefully inadequate mower until he couldn’t bear it. “Lookit. There’s a gas mower over in the shed. If you can start it, you can use it. Make yer job easier, and I don’t have to watch this crap.”

My father’s saving grace was that he was a good mechanic. “If you got gas, compression and spark, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t run.” I looked at the dust-covered mower and cleared away the junk around it. There was another mower buried deeper in the rubble. Both red, rusted and covered in bat shit. But there was gas in the first one, and the motor spun freely when I yanked on the cord. After the fourth pull, it sputtered briefly, sending out a cloud of blue smoke before stopping. “That means there’s spark.”

But something’s not right, my young mind rationalized. I examined the spark plug and spun the engine again. Within the shadowy darkness of the shed, I could see the little jolt of electricity meant to fire the piston and that didn’t make any sense. The spark should be inside the engine, not out, and I shouldn’t be able to see it at all! I found the necessary tools and, with the plug in hand, I discovered a thin crack in the ceramic insulation surrounded by black burn marks. A cracked plug.

“Look at that, Blue!” I had to negotiate with Barrington for a new plug which cost $1.35 and posed a serious dilemma for a 10-year old. On one hand, there was my anticipated pay of $3.00, which would cover the cost of Blue’s dog food. On the other, there was the price of the new plug which would bite into my profits but allow me to finish the job and get paid.

He could tell I was torn. “Tell you what. Finish the lawn with the gas mower and if you can get that other mower working, you can have it. How about that?” I nodded. The dog food would have to wait.

I purchased the plug with “an advance” as Mr. B. called it. I installed it and moved Blue up to the porch to watch from a safe distance. I primed the carb, set my foot on the mower and yanked at the pull cord with all my might. The mower roared into life, barking and belching a thick, stinking cloud of blue smoke. It was running, and settled into a satisfying idle once I backed off the throttle. Blue peeked out from behind Mr. Barrington, probably happy to see I was still alive.

Barrington ended up paying me the full three dollars and gave me a two-dollar tip for getting the mower started. But even more thrilling was the prospect of owning the second mower. Blue and I ran the quarter mile home to tell Mom.

“I got us a mower!” I shouted when I could finally breathe.

I wheeled the second mower home on the weekend and found the problem immediately; the throttle cable had come loose from the carburetor. I fixed it with a kitchen knife. I also cleaned it and oiled it. Mr. Phillips, a neighbour, showed me how to sharpen the blades. I cut his lawn free of charge while testing out my new mower. The rightness I felt for this tattered mower that I now pushed ahead seemed to parallel the pride and joy I had for the young pup following along behind. As such, I named it Old Blue.

There were plenty of lawns that needed to get cut in my neighborhood, and the Blues and I were known by all. With the paper round in the morning and lawns to cut on the weekends, we made enough cash to buy my sister some new school clothes and Mom a new pair of shoes.

My friend Finny was always on at me to play baseball on Saturdays but I would say, with significant pride and confidence, “I gotta work.” They’d tease, and it grated on me to see my pals having such fun. But when I showed up on my new Raleigh ten-speed racing bike, they soon changed their tune. Finny even asked if he could help. It was a contract of sorts, with the neighbours bidding ever higher to get their lawns or driveways done first. I could do three lawns in a day on account of my strength and experience whereas the others could only manage one before they lost interest or got too tired. After the fifth summer of mowing lawns and paper rounds, I had a crew of four helping and, in the winter months, we expanded into clearing driveways.

During my high school years, I was still mowing lawns but I passed the paper route on to my younger brother. By the 12th grade, I’d opened a small engine repair business out of the garage while the other kids my age were still taking auto shop classes at school. “Me and you and a dog named Blue,” I’d sing to my girl when the three of us took drives in the truck on the back country roads. Sometimes Blue would try to harmonize. He was a funny old boy: slightly blind by that point. But he loved those rides on sweet summer nights.

On the last weekend of my twenty-first summer, I was mowing Mr. Barrington’s lawn when he came out to the porch to shout at me: “Where’s yer dog at?” I stopped the mower and thought hard for a moment, about where I was, how I got there and how I should answer his question. “Blue died this morning, Mr. Barrington. I told him not to worry. He took a deep breath and died right there in my arms.”

You couldn’t call either of us affectionate men, but he hugged me then and there. And I cried. I cried for the first time in my adult life. I cried and I thanked him and I finished the lawn.