Coming around the slow curve revealed the view he'd been looking forward to. Between subdivisions ran this treeless street along the crest of the hill, with no houses having been built on one side, where the sidewalk disappeared and the hill dropped away. Jake could run along the edge of the asphalt and feel the dried weeds coming up between the cracks, and then crunching beneath his feet. The view filled his vision and looked out across a valley. The Guajome, named by the indigenous people a few hundred years ago. A lot of it was farmland now, and he could see the highway snaking between and around the neatly cropped green hills, off to the east. He could see the suburbs filling the valley from the sea, creating a swath of sienna stucco and burnt orange spanish roofing tile. It ended abruptly, he could see, against the wild land on one side and farmland on the other. It was a shoreline, of sorts. But we were building into the sea.

And there beyond, in the distance, lay the great Sleeping Indian, as he was known. A string of elongated hills, with a roundish, head-shaped rise of the land on one end. It was an otherwise unnoticeable featured terrain, but if someone pointed it out to you, you would see it immediately, and without mistaking it. The Sleeping Indian. There he was, on his back. He'd be miles tall, if ever he was roused, and decided to stand up. And when you thought of the suburbs drawing up to him like a blanket, you realized you knew people that lived at the foot of the Sleeping Indian. And now that he's been pointed out to you, you will never be able to un-see him.

The sight of the view always cleared Jake's head, and the breeze in his face as he ran downhill made the list in his head come to life. New words formed, and combinations of adjectives swam poetically in his head, and he knew that he was writer for sure. And he would speed up, knowing what to put down on paper when he got back to his desk.

Around the corner, and a steep downhill, trying to pick up speed without falling, and without noticing the house on the corner, the one with the fake grass. He hated that grass, laying out there, fading in the sun. There was nothing real about it, unless plastic was real, he thought. And he knew for certain every inch of it. He knew because he put it there.

Burrows Greenscape was his business. A small, "family" business. Just him and his dear wife, selling fake grass to the sun-drenched southland. Just think of the advantages of artificial turf! Why, the government was even offering rebates if you installed the stuff. Get rid of those water-sucking plants in your yard and put in this stuff. Lose the sprinklers entirely! Think of the money you'll save!

He hated it. Hated everything about it. Its soulessness, its fakeness, its inability to grow and thrive. The mere idea of it was an insult to God, he was sure. But it was a living. He came into the business on a whim, years back, when he was down on his luck. Digging ditches came easy to him, it seemed. He had worked construction while he was in college, and knew that there would always be a job in it, so he felt that he'd always have that to fall back on, if college didn't work out, that is. Years later, when he got married and walked out of that coffee show forever, he applied for his contractor's license, and went into construction full time. Someone showed him the fake lawn product, and he did it on a whim, entertained by the thought of it -it was so absurd.

But he did good work, and was semi-reliable. The mark-up on the stuff was enough to make a decent living off of, and here, years later, he found  himself laying lawn after lawn of fake, plasticene fescue. And his customers were always happy

Most of them were older, and their lawn-mowing years were over. Retirement, for them, came down to sitting under their aluminum patio cover after an afternoon of blowing the leaves off the never-growing lawn. They smiled a lot, and Jake envied them. But he got a good tan out of the work, and all the digging kept him in shape. Still, he felt deep down, somewhere in his soul, that installing fake grass was an affront to God. And here he was rolling the astroturf out over his own neighborhood.

He couldn't help but look at it, as he ran past. He saw the turf coming up on one corner. And a bump in the middle where an old root was that he couldn't (or didn't) remove during the install. He saw the sand collecting on one end, and blowing up on to the driveway. He hoped the customer didn't recognize him running past, and he tried not to notice the grasses' more than ten percent fade rate, which was contrary to the written warranty. It wasn't his fault!

And as he came past, and around and back up the hill to his house, he thought of today's job: another lawn in another part of town. The digging that needed to be done, and how tiring it as going to be in the noonday sun, and how tired he already was, from the run. And why was he out here doing it to himself, anyway?

He was about to step into the boulevard and back across when he saw him there on the other side. The Naked Runner. Little blue shorts today. Running shoes. And, again, no shirt. The man with intent, and at a good clip. Jake kind of admired the pace the guy kept, to be honest, but that clenched jaw and those squinting eyes. That furrowed brow that looked angry, it kept Jake at bay, and he moved up the opposite side of the street until he was past. And then he crossed. Avoiding the naked runner entirely. Don't mess with him, he thought. Best not to get in his way.

And he followed the sidewalk the last few blocks home. Under the pine trees and sidestepping the ankle-busting pinecones that rolled beneath his feet. Past the graffiti laced street sign that he'd been meaning to clean, and around the last corner, over the old manhole cover, up around the gutter and storm drain, and there it caught his eye, as it always does, the old rusty brake drum.

It looked like it had come off a truck a year or so ago, and the weight of it, and it's unobtrusive location away from the walk, left it undisturbed there. No one felt the need to move it, or haul it away. The brake just sat and rusted, there, at the side of the road. Jake tied to make a metaphor out of it, on nearly every run. That here was an abandoned brake, rusting away. That perhaps it was shorn off by someone in the heat of escape, racing to break out out and away from the suburbs. The brakes had come off, and it was no matter. We've got to get out of here, and we've got to go fast. And we're not gonna need that because we ain't planning on stopping.

But that was not the metaphor that stuck in Jake's head. It was quite the contrary. It was a brake, to be sure, but it was frozen in time, and not going anywhere. We'd stopped in the suburbs for repairs, and just plain rusted out. We broke down and stopped forever.

When Jake got home he walked off the sweat a bit before heading inside. And between the curb and his desk was a wash of a thousand little tasks: consider what had to be unloaded and loaded into the truck for the day, get next week's orders in, return a few phone calls and type up those all-important invoices, clean the coffee carafe, pick up the kids' toys -especially the wheeled ones at the top of the stairs- and fill his water bottle for the work day, change into his boots, figure his schedule and get out. It was another busy day, and he'd already blown an hour of it running around the neighborhood. 

As he pulled the truck out of the driveway and headed out of the cul-de-sac, he saw the Naked Runner coming in, full stride. They didn't make eye contact, but Jake remembered that he hadn't gotten around to writing any of it down that morning, and he intended to catch up on it later that night after the kids were put to bed. But he was afraid he'd know just how tired he'd be by then, after a day of digging up old dead grass, and he knew no words would get down on paper tonight either.