HAD BEEN PREPARED TO EXPLAIN TO Barry X. that I wouldn’t be able to work on Saturday, what with more pressing demands around the house and all. And I had been prepared to suggest a few hours on Sunday afternoon, if he needed me. But I worried for nothing. Barry is leaving town for the weekend, and since I wouldn’t dare try to enter the office without his assistance, the issue quickly became moot.

For some reason, Miss Birdie does not rattle my door before sunrise, choosing instead to busy herself in front of the garage, below my window, with all manner of tool preparation. She drops rakes and shovels. She chips crud off the inside of the wheelbarrow with an unwieldly pickax. She sharpens two flat hoes, singing and yodeling all the while. I finally come down just after seven, and she acts surprised to see me. “Why good morning, Rudy. And how are you?”

“Fine, Miss Birdie. You?”

“Wonderful, just wonderful. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

The day has hardly begun, and it’s still too early to

measure its loveliness. It is, if anything, rather sticky for such an early hour. The insufferable heat qf the Memphis summer cannot be far away.

She allows me one cup of instant coffee and a piece of toast before she starts rumbling about the mulch. I spring into action, much to her delight. Under her guidance, I manhandle the first hundred-pound bag into the wheelbarrow and follow her around the house and down the drive and across the front lawn to a scrawny little flower bed near the street. She holds her coffee in gloved hands and points to the precise spot where the mulch should go. I am quite winded by the trek, especially the last leg across the damp grass, but I rip the bag open with gusto and begin moving mulch with a pitchfork.

My tee shirt is soaked when I finish the first bag fifteen minutes later. She follows me and the wheelbarrow back to the edge of the patio, where we reload. She actually points to the exact bag she wants next, and we haul it to a spot near the mailbox.

We spread five bags in the first hour. Five hundred pounds of mulch. And I am suffering. The temperature hits eighty at nine o’clock. I talk her into a water break at nine-thirty, and find it difficult to stand after sitting for ten minutes. A legitimate backache seizes me sometime thereafter, but I bite my tongue and allow myself only a fair amount of grimacing. She doesn’t notice.

I’m not a lazy person, and at one point during college, not too long ago, I was in excellent physical condition. I jogged and played intramural sports, but then law school happened and I’ve had little time for such activities during the past three years. I feel like a soft little wirnp after a few hours of hard labor.

For lunch she feeds me two of her tasteless turkey sandwiches and an apple. I eat very slowly on the patio,

under the fan. My back aches, my legs are numb, my hands actually shake as I nibble like a rabbit.

As I wait for her to finish in the kitchen, I stare across the small green patch of lawn, around the monument of mulch, to my apartment sitting innocently above the garage. I’d been so proud of myself when I negotiated the paltry sum of one hundred and fifty dollars per month as rent, but how clever had I really been? Who got the best end of this deal? I remember feeling slightly ashamed of myself for taking advantage of this sweet little woman. Now I’d like to stuff her in an empty mulch bag.

According to an ancient thermometer nailed to the garage, the temperature at 1 P.M. is ninety-three degrees. At two, my back finally locks up, and I explain to Miss Birdie that I have to rest. She looks at me sadly, then slowly turns and studies the undiminished heap of white bags. We’ve barely made a dent. “Well, I guess. If you must.”

“Just an hour,” I plead.

She relents, but by three-thirty I am once again pushing the wheelbarrow with Miss Birdie at my heels.

After eight hours of harsh labor, I have disposed of exactly seventy-nine bags of mulch, less than a third of the shipment she’d ordered.

Shortly after lunch, I dropped the first hint that I was expected at Yogi’s by six. This was a lie, of course. I am scheduled to tend bar from eight to closing. But she’d never know the difference, and I am determined to liberate myself from the mulch before dark. At five, I simply quit. I tell her I’ve had enough, my back is aching, I have to go to work and I pull myself up the stairs as she watches sadly from below. She can evict me, for all I care.

THE MAJESTIC SOUND of rolling thunder wakes me late Sunday morning, and I lie stiffly on the sheets as a heavy rain pounds my roof. My head is in fine shape-I

stopped drinking last night when I went on duty. But the rest of my body is fixed in concrete, unable to move. The slightest shift causes excruciating pain. It hurts to breathe.

At some point during yesterday’s arduous ordeal, Miss Birdie asked me if I’d like to worship with her this morning. Church attendance was not a condition in my lease, but why not, I thought. If this lonely old lady wants me to go to church with her, it’s the least I can do. I certainly couldn’t be harmed by it.

Then I asked her what church she attends. Abundance Tabernacle in Dallas, she answered. Live via satellite, she worships with the Reverend Kenneth Chandler, and in the privacy of her own home.

I begged off. She appeared to be hurt, but rallied quickly.

When I was a small boy, long before my father succumbed to alcohol and sent me away to a military school, I attended church occasionally with my mother. He went with us a time or two, but did nothing but gripe, so Mother and I preferred that he stay home and read the paper. It was a little Methodist church with a friendly pastor, the Reverend Howie, who told funny stories and made everyone feel loved. I remember how content my mother was whenever we listened to his sermons. There were plenty of kids in Sunday School, and I didn’t object to being scrubbed and starched on Sunday morning and led off to church.

My mother once had minor surgery and was in the hospital for three days. Of course, the ladies in the church knew the most intimate details of the operation, and for three days our house was flooded with casseroles, cakes, pies, breads, pots and dishes filled with more food than my father and I could eat in a year. The ladies organized a sitting for us. They took turns supervising the food, cleaning the kitchen, greeting even more guests who brought

even more casseroles. For the three days my mother was in the hospital, and for three days after she returned home, we had at least one of the ladies living with us, guarding the food, it seemed to me.

My father hated the ordeal. For one, he couldn’t sneak around and drink, not with a houseful of church ladies. I think they knew that he liked to nip at the bottle, and since they had managed to barge into the house, they were determined to catch him. And he was expected to be the gracious host, something my father simply couldn’t do. After the first twenty-four hours, he spent most of his time at the hospital, but not exactly doting over his ailing wife. He stayed in the visitors lounge, where he watched TV and sipped spiked colas.

I have fond memories of it. Our house had never felt such warmth, never seen so much delicious food. The ladies fussed over me as if my mother had died, and I relished the attention. They were the aunts and grandmothers I’d never known.

Shortly after my mother recuperated, Reverend Howie got himself run off for an indiscretion I never fully understood, and the church split wide open. Someone insulted my mother, and that was the end of church for us. I think she and Hank, the new husband, attend sporadically.

I missed the church for a while, then grew into the habit of not attending. My friends there would occasionally invite me back, but before long I was too cool to go to church. A girlfriend in college took me to mass a few times, on Saturday evening of all times, but I’m too much of a Protestant to understand all the rituals.

Miss Birdie timidly mentioned the possibility of yard work this afternoon. I explained that it was the Sabbath, God’s holy day, and I just didn’t believe in labor on Sunday.

She couldn’t think of a thing to say.