Part one of this tale is basically character building and setting the destination. It heats up toward the end, but the juicy stuff is in part two.
Frankie
part one
It was 4:45 and no Ezra. He was normally back to the shop by 4 or shortly thereafter, I was hoping he ran into a small difficulty somewhere along the way instead of kids picking on him. Individually the kids generally left him alone, but as a group they could be ruthless little shits. For you see, Ezra, commonly known around town as crazy Z isn't like you and me. He lives in a 37-year-old body with the mind of a ten-year-old. He's always polite and cordial, I have never seen him be mean or lash out, Ezra only goes deeper into his own little world when others denigrate and make fun of him.
Physically he could be taken for any other dark-skinned man walking around this sleepy southern town. He's at least six feet tall and slender, bordering on skinny with strong arms and legs proportionate to his body. His most prominent feature is that even as a man in his mid-thirties his facial features are that of a boy. He has a bright smile when he chooses to let you see it, which isn't often. He's been picked on and ridiculed his entire life and it shows in how he interacts with others. Sadly Ezra doesn't speak well, his sentences are choppy and his vocabulary is horrific.
The reason most folks refer to him as crazy Z is that he wears a beanie with a propeller on top and a pair of yellow tinted swim goggles all the time. Around his neck are generally two strands of what you and I may classify as Marti-Gras beads, to him they're treasures he'd found along the way. He wears bib overalls and a long-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned to his chin every day regardless of temperature or where he may be going.
Ezra keeps a folded piece of tin foil in the left upper pocket of his bibs, he told me in confidence that he has secret friends, and he can hear them better with his antenna. Thus, the folded tin foil. I often wished I had a magic wand to wave over him and loose him from whatever it was that never allowed him to grow and age as all the rest. Ezra showed up every morning ready to do what he did every day, mow lawns, rake leaves, help widow ladies move stuff, or whatever someone needed done. Within reason. He was always in clean clothes, bathed, shaven and ready to work. His younger sister took over his care when their dad died, she is a teacher at our local high school. The only female industrial arts teacher I had ever heard of, and like me, she had thrown herself into a career. That and taking care of Ezra.
Though I'm a few years younger than Ezra he treats me as he would an older person. It's always yes sir or no sir. As many times as I told him to call me Trom (pronounced Troom, my parents were first generation Norwegians) he insists on addressing me as mister Knudson, mister K, or boss. When I got out of the military I was fortunate enough to buy into Mr. Neals farm implement business. He didn't sell implements any longer, but he kept the name his father had given the business fifty plus years before. What he did sell was lawnmowers, snowblowers, leaf blowers, chain saws and all the other toys men with new homes thought they needed. Those and gardening supplies including a portable greenhouse in the spring.
With the closest box store, (think orange, green, or blue) over sixty miles away local folks tended to rely on Neals Implement for their lawn needs. He'd been a Toro dealer for over thirty years when I bought in. Everywhere you looked around town you saw red yard equipment and orange Husqvarna chain saws. Lawn equipment was on the cusp of a paradigm shift when I entered the business, people were enthralled by and going to the new zero turn mowers, something we didn't sell at the time. Just before Mr. Neals sold out to me and retired, we began carrying the zero turn units, they were an instant success.
If Harry down the road had one, all his neighbors felt they needed to do the same. However, there were still the people with smaller yards, many of them elderly, many of them incapable of mowing it themselves. Enter Ezra, he had been hanging around the business since his early twenties. Mr. Neals had little things for him to do helping people in town but never enough to last all day, every day, which left Ezra sitting around more than working. Mr. Neals would give him twenty dollars every week regardless, Ezra viewed himself as a man with a job, something most men need in their lives.
Being asked nearly every week by customers with elderly parents or friends if I knew anyone who mowed smaller lawns, I decided to offer Ezra as a solution. He was already familiar with town, adding lawns to his daily agenda would give him steady work year round. Most folks in town knew him, everyone trusted him, it was a win, win for all. I kept a schedule of who needed what and would give Ezra a list of where to go each day. He would be paid five to ten dollars per yard depending on the size. I kept ten dollars a week for gas and made sure the equipment he used was fueled and ready every morning.
He pulled a small flatbed cart with short sides behind an old riding mower, you've seen the carts at garden centers, the ones with the inflatable wheels. The old cub cadet was without a mowing attachment, used only for crazy Z to haul his gear. On the cart was a trimmer, extra gas, his push mower, a rake, shovel, water jug and lunch.
People in town were used to seeing Ezra coming down the street atop the faded yellow cub cadet, bibs, a long sleeve shirt, multi-colored beanie, swim goggles, beads, and a two-inch-wide piece of silver tin foil in his bib pocket. He had seen some kids with a flag on a fiberglass pole attached to their bikes, he wanted one for his tractor. It seemed like silliness at first, but when I would drive around town and see that bright orange flag on the other side of tall shrubbery, I would smile.
**********
Back to where the story began.
It was the slower dormant time of year so there wasn't a lot of mowing and Mrs. Carlson's garden wouldn't have taken him too long to till. I had expected Z to be back much earlier. It was now five minutes from closing time at five and no Ezra, I would need to go find him as soon as the doors were locked. Then in the distance I could hear the faint rumbling of the old cub cadet making its way around the corner. Pulling into the space reserved for him in the shed he jumped off and came to me right away.
"Sorry boss. I runned outa gas and had ta stop at da gas station. Miss Carlson neighbor wanted me mow his lawn. I used five dollars. Dat be okay?"
As I mentioned earlier, Ezra's vocabulary is horrible and he never speaks in long sentences, they're always short and factual. Listening to him talk reminded me of the old police sitcom where Sgt Joe Friday would inevitably say, "just the facts ma'am".
I smiled as I put my hand on his shoulder, "That's good Ezra, it's supposed to be sunny again tomorrow and now Mrs. Tompkins wants you to till her garden, it will be planting season soon. It will be a busy day so I'll see you here at seven. Is your sister coming to pick you up?"
"Nah, she be busy, gonna walk boss. Here be da money."
With that he grabbed his lunch pail and was gone. I would put his money away each day, at the end of the week I would pay him for the work he'd done and the yards he'd mowed. He would give the envelope with his pay to his sister, she would give him an allowance and bank the rest for him. She never came into the business on Saturday mornings, she would sit in the car and wait for Z. His sister Francine, known around town as Frankie, was three years younger than me and though I vaguely remembered her in school, I have to say with all honesty I never paid attention to her. She was just another of many cute girls in the lower classes.
I learned from my mom that she and Ezra's blood line was interesting, it was anything but cookie cutter typical. Their great grandfather was a black man who married an Inuit woman, something completely unheard of in those days. No, not him marrying an Inuit woman, a black man moving to Alaska. One of their three children (Francine and Ezra's grandfather) then married a white woman who was half French, half Dutch. Their son married a lady from Columbia and had two children, Francine and Ezra.
When my late mother told me that story my mouth hung open in amazement. The result of all that breeding left Frankie and Ezra with light brown skin color, features of several different cultures, and soft wavy dark hair. I remember Frankie's hair had always been long and wavy, she kept Ezra's short. When I left for the military she was a junior in high school, when I returned six years later she was the new industrial arts teacher.
