Empty Gardener

The riding mower echoed loudly as he backed in into the shed, bouncing off the slim wooden walls and slamming into his eardrums.  Cooper throttled down the engine, and the racket quieted considerably.  He sat on the idling, unmoving mower, simply staring at through the open doors of the shed.  Sunlight cut  a shadow across the shed’s mouth, leaving half the mower exposed, the other half in shade.  Cooper turned the key, and silence stood as loudly as the echoes of the engine had earlier.  Slouching in the seat, he stared at his hands, resting on the steering wheel.  They were covered with small scratches, and his fingernails were lined with dirt.  He had dug out some multiflorae rose from the edge of his yards, and the thorns had punished his hands.    The sweet smell of newly mown grass drifted in with the weak breeze.  His fingers tapped out an erratic rhythm on the wheel, slowly stopping, and beginning again just as erratically as the hours wore by.  The musty, decayed smell of the old and dead grass caked to the lawnmower deck overwhelmed that of the fresh cut lawn.  By turning his head to the left, he could see the bag of grass seed spilled all over the floor.  That seed was meant to fill in some patchy spots last fall, and it had sat until mice had discovered and feasted upon it.  Shadows marched inside the shed as the day wore on.  Cooper breathed deeply of the old ghosts of gasoline and oil that had leaked onto the floor.  Sweat dripped down his body and soaked into his clothes.  The shed trapped heat like it had trapped the sounds of the mower, focusing them intensely in this eight by ten world.  Shovels, rakes, and shears leaned against the wall on his right, some inherited and well used, others like they had just come from the hardware store.  His own body odor weaved with the gasoline ghosts and the dead withered grass to grip his nostrils relentlessly.  At least he could no longer smell her perfume.