Night Shift

Harold Parkette waits until the middle of July to admit to himself, and his long-complaining wife, that his lawn needs to be cut. He once took great pride in his lawn, but the previous summer his beloved mower was ruined after a dog chased a neighbor’s cat under it while the blade was spinning. Parkette calls a mowing service called Pastoral Greenery, and the next day a portly, hairy mower arrives in a battered van. The gregariousness of the “lawnmower man” intimidates Parkette, who admits to himself that he’d “always been afraid” of men like that (213). He suggests the lawnmower man get to work and then retires into the cool of his home to ponder the Mower’s strange exclamation of “by Circe” (213). As he reads the financial section of the paper, his thoughts turn to the Wall Street CEOs he views as “minor demigods.”

The loud and abrasive clatter of the lawnmower causes Parkette to rush to his backyard. He is stunned by what he sees. The lawnmower runs on its own and “scream[s] and bellow[s]” while the lawnmower man, “naked and grass-stained” (214), crawls behind the machine and gobbles up the clippings. When a mole emerges from the ground, the lawnmower darts off its path and kills it.