The Grass Incident

The Grass Incident

By Ben Renner

We parked on a hill looking down into Buster’s backyard. Matt and I came slapping down the sidewalk, our footsteps echoing off the white picket fence Buster’s father installed. Matt expressed his concerns about Buster’s absence from school just before we saw Buster standing in his back yard below us, perfectly still.

I wouldn’t have noticed him if it weren’t for the odd position he was in. He was shirtless, his back to us, and his arms outstretched as if he were on the cross. One hand he held open, palm upwards, the other hand held a clump of grass. I stopped in my tracks. Something told me to shut up and watch. Buster stood like a statue for a few minutes, then he slowly bent his elbow and brought the clump of grass to his mouth.

            “No,” Matt whispered beside me. We couldn’t watch and we couldn’t turn away. Buster held the grass to his mouth and took a bite of it from his hand.

            Matt started down the hill. I grabbed him by his backpack to stop him. I wanted to see what else Buster would do. I was fascinated by my friend’s ritual, whatever it was for.

            “What are you doing?” Matt said.

            “Just wait a second,” I said.

            “He’s fucking eating grass. He’s gonna get sick. We have to stop him—come on!”

            Matt wrenched his backpack free and ran down the hill. I lingered behind. Buster must have heard Matt’s feet beating the concrete sidewalk on the way to his front door, but he didn’t move. He bent over, his feet still in the same place, precisely and deliberately shoulder-length apart, and he pulled up another handful. Again, he held his arms straight out, left hand palm up, and brought the handful of grass slowly to his mouth with his right hand.

            “Buster! What are you doing?” yelled Matt, his eyes wide and determined—a savior’s eyes. He had returned from the front yard, where he found the door locked. He tried to jump on the tall wooden fence from the incline of the sidewalk and haul himself over. He couldn’t get his leg on the top of the fence and awkwardly slid back down. “Buster!” he called.

            I walked down the hill to Buster’s back fence. Matt wasn’t going to let this go. “Buster, stop!” I said.

            It wasn’t until I spoke that he looked up at us. His face was smeared green, juice dripping from his lips. He smiled, showing a dark wad in his mouth, staining his teeth. He started chewing. Again I was made into a cowardly voyeur as Matt tried to scramble up the fence.

            “Let me in, I’m coming around to the front,” Matt said. He looked up at me, still standing on the hill watching. “Come on, Brandon! What are you doing?”

            I stared at Buster as I marched down to join Matt, who was at the front door again trying the locks in vain.

            “Come on,” I said, walking into his hard yet bewildered look. I led him to a gate on the side of the house. I reached over the top and pulled the latch up with my fingertips, the top of the fence scraping and digging into my chest. I hopped off the gate and swung it open. We faced Buster in his backyard.

            He ignored us again, holding his arms out and staring at something straight ahead we couldn’t see. Matt screamed at him to drop the grass.       

Buster didn’t flinch. Matt grabbed him and started shaking him. He tried peel the damp clod from his fingers, cursing at him. Buster brought his fist into his chest to keep it away from Matt. Matt, much weaker than Buster, who worked out regularly in training for some bright but unknown cause, tried to bring Buster to the ground. Buster kept his feet and lifted Matt off the grass as he tried to lock Buster’s arm. In a flash, I came down from Buster’s catechistic spell and joined the struggle, adding the advantage of my skinny but long arms to the straining pre-sweat of adolescent muscle.

            “Stop! Stop! Everybody stop!” I yelled. I got between the two combatants and pried them apart. Matt glared at Buster, panting, his face red.

            “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Matt said through his labored breaths.

            Buster didn’t say anything. He stared at Matt with listless eyes. It was a look I didn’t recognize at the time, but I know now that emptiness lurked there. He stared at Matt until Matt had to look away. He still clutched the green gob tightly in his hand. A plane of nothingness stretching forever in front of him. He raised the grass to his face again and tried to take a bite. This time, I wrestled the grass from his fist while he chewed the few blades that got to his mouth. “Get out of here before my dad comes home,” he said, still chomping like a bull. He walked into the house and slid the glass door shut.

            “Hey! Wait! What the fuck, man?” Matt yelled after him, following him onto the back deck.

            I stood and watched as Buster walked away. My heart ached in that moment. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t have the tools to fix it, and even if I did, Buster wouldn’t dare let me or anyone else near his wounds, whatever they may be.

            “Buster! Brandon, come on!” Matt said, pleading with me.

            “Just leave him,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

            “That’s your answer? That’s always your answer. We can’t do anything so let’s just let our friends hurt themselves.”

            “Matt, he’s never gonna tell us what’s really going on with him. We aren’t his counselors, his therapists, or his parents. If he won’t tell us what’s going on, we’ll never find out. What do you want me to do, beat it out of him?”

            Matt stepped down into the wet grass from the low deck. He looked at the spot where Buster tore the grass from the ground. “He’s fucked up, man. He does weird shit like this all the time.”

            “I know, man. We can help him by being his friends. He doesn’t have any friends but us.”

            Matt looked at me.

            “Look,” I said. I led Matt toward the gate we had come through and past the fence. “We’ll talk to the school counselors about him. Maybe they’ll know what to do. Maybe they can get him help. We’ll talk to his mom, too.”

            “Okay,” Matt said. We stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. He looked up at the fading white house and the slick grass. “If he hurts himself…”

            “We’ve known Buster a long time. He does weird shit sometimes and makes himself sick, but I never thought for a moment he’d try to kill or hurt himself on purpose, have you?” I said.

            Matt shook his head.

            “He’s just a little screwed up. We can’t try to get in his head, we just have to be there for him to help him when he needs us.”

            “And what about today? I tried to help him while you stood there watching. If he ate that grass he would have hurt himself, don’t you think?”

            “I dunno what the fuck’s going on in that guy’s head, and yeah, he scared me today. I’m glad you stepped up. I couldn’t move.”

            We returned to the car. The truth was that I didn’t know what to do about Buster then, and I don’t know now. I missed my chance to help him, and then he moved far away.

I thought I could find him and find his forgiveness for what I’d done.