Look, officer, I have absolutely no idea why I’m here.  I don’t know why you dragged me out of my home in the middle of the night, I don’t know why you brought me down to the station, and I don’t know why I’m handcuffed to this chair.  I’m not guilty of anything.

The man that you have sitting here before you is a husband.  He’s a father.  He’s a local businessman.  I’m certainly too modest to call myself one, but I would suggest that other people would see me as a pillar of the community.

If I’m guilty of anything, it’s being guilty of caring too much about my community.  That’s why I provide high quality lawn care and landscaping at an affordable price.  I love my neighbors and I love this town.

I have done nothing wrong.  So go on, officer, tell me what horrible thing you think that I did, because I can guaran-damn-tee you that I am innocent of whatever idiotic charge you’re even thinking of bringing my way.

…

Oh.  You… have pictures.  And security camera feeds.  What, um, what’s that one there?  A personal cellphone video that has been posted to YouTube.  I see.

Well, whatever.  None of this proves anything.  How do I know these haven’t been faked?  It wouldn’t be the first time that the police attempted to frame an innocent man.  Yeah, that has got to be it.  There’s someone here in the building that knows all about things like Photoshop, and you’ve got that guy frantically making up all of these bullshit images.  I’m going to get this to a lawyer, and not only am I going to have your badge, I’m going to own this whole damn station.

…I see.  You have witnesses.  Many of them.  And that is a lot of physical evidence on that list.  Well no.  Um, please give me a moment to gather my thoughts.

Okay, so, I think that what’s happening here is just a little misunderstanding.  I can completely understand how these events would look bad in a certain light, but you have to view them in the proper context.  Context is everything when it comes to something like that.

You got me.  I admit that I killed those people.  Wow, it actually feels good to say that out loud.  Whew.  You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to talk to someone about this.  It’s lonely having to keep this kind of secret.  Can you imagine how hard this whole thing has been on me?  It’s been brutal, let me tell you.

Huh?  Yeah, of course, I feel bad for the dead people, too.  I’m not saying that them dying isn’t sad, or whatever.  Sure it is.  I’m just saying that I’m kind of a victim in all of this, too.  Like, there can be more than one victim, right?  In this case there’s, I don’t know, multiple levels, I guess.  Up here there’s the highest victim level, and down here is the lowest.  Who’s to say who’s at what level?  Not me, that’s for sure.  I’m just saying I’ve had a really rough time.  The dead people stopped having problems when I killed them, but my problems are ongoing.

I think you’ll get what I mean, and dare I say even agree with me, when you hear what the context is.  Everything has to be put in the proper context to really understand it, yeah?  Yeah.  Yeah.  What we need here is context.

Let me set the stage for you.  I’m a local businessman running his own lawn mowing and landscaping company.  I used to make money hand-over-fist back in the day.  It wasn’t even hard.  Pass out some flyers in the early spring, get services set up with anyone that called me, and do the job and get paid.  Simple as that.

Then all these other guys started opening up their own companies and competing with me.  Some of them were even people that had worked with me.  They took my money, they learned what I had to teach them, and then they stabbed me in the back and went up against me.  None of them could touch my great prices and even better service, of course, but each of them was able to take a little piece of business away from me until I was just existing on scraps.

Even worse, the pandemic hit.  Nobody had any free money anymore, and they couldn’t afford a luxury like mowing or landscaping.  Not that those things are really luxuries.  No sir.  The first step to living a healthy life is to have a healthy-looking home, and your lawn is your outdoor home.  Some people just don’t get that no matter how much you try to drive it home, though.  Bunch of simple-minded nitwits.

During the pandemic, I had to make some major cutbacks.  I went from five crews down to myself and my assistant manager.  I know what you’re going to say.  What about those government payouts you could get to help your business keep going?  Well, I got those, and I spent them on the business.  There were just a lot of expenses that needed taken care of.  Equipment needed updated and maintained.  The trucks had repairs that couldn’t wait.  That sort of thing.

Now, you’re probably wondering about the new pool that I got with some of that money.  It’s a legitimate business expense.  I’ve got this back pain that comes and goes, and being in the pool helps to loosen it up and keep me going.  It’s a therapy pool.

Anyway, back to what I was saying.  My business was hurting.  If I can be honest with you, and I feel like I can, I was afraid that I was going to go completely under.

When the pandemic finally ended, I got a lucky break.  A local realtor asked me to do a big landscaping job for an expensive house in an expensive neighborhood.  It was just the break that I was looking for.  The house was in extremely rough shape, and if I could make the outside look pristine, I’d have a line of very impressed and very wealthy customers banging on my door to keep theirs looking great, too.

When I say that the grass was in bad shape, I really mean that it was a shitshow, pardon my French.  Most of it was torn up and dead, and the grass that was somehow miraculously managing to grow was ragged and yellow.  The previous owners hadn’t given a crap about what their property looked like.  It was such a shame, because you could tell that at some point long ago it had been someone’s pride and joy.

I decided that I was going to do something special for this job.  It was too important to trust to those crap chemicals you can get at any big box hardware store.  No, I was going to mix my own fertilizer so that I could make that lawn look its absolute best.  Completely organic and guaranteed to do the trick.

That’s how me and Martin, that assistant manager that I mentioned, found ourselves mixing together manure and compost the night before we were scheduled to start the job.  Because of the smell, we always this small piece of land I had bought years earlier in the woods.  I had always wanted to build a little cabin on that land, a nice home away from home, but I had never had the chance.

We’d been working for three or four hours, and the fertilizer was starting to come along, but it just didn’t have the kind of consistency that I was looking for.  When you’re putting down fresh fertilizer, you need it to be soft enough to spread around, but also firm enough that it doesn’t just slop all over the place.  It’s a delicate balance that takes a real professional to achieve.

I decided to use some mulch to thicken the mixture.  While I took a break to get a beer, Martin started to scoop the mulch into the fertilizer.  I can’t tell you exactly what happened to him while I was at the truck getting my drink from the cooler, what I can tell you is that when I got back, he was dead on the ground with a pool of blood under his head.

Here’s what I think happened.  I think that Martin accidentally stepped into the fertilizer.  It was slippery as hell, and he must have lost his footing.  He went stumbling backwards, hit his head on the wood chipper we were using to make the mulch, and out went the lights forever.

It’s just like I said.  I had nothing to do with his death.  Unless a goddamn bear ran out of the woods and took him out while I was at the truck, it was his own damn fault that he died.

In fact, Martin put me in a really difficult position by dying like that.  Now, I’m going to admit to something here, but I really need you not to blow it out of proportion.  Can you promise me that?  Martin wasn’t what you would call a legal resident of the United States.  I didn’t ask any questions since it really wasn’t my business, but I do know that he came up here from one of those countries down south.  Couldn’t tell you which one.  All I knew was that he came to this great country of ours to work hard and be a contributing member of society, and I was happy to assist him with that admirable goal.  The fact that I was able to pay him less than half of what I paid my other workers was just an added bonus.

There were going to be some really awkward questions when Martin’s body was collected.  Not awkward for him.  He was dead.  Awkward for me.  The police were going to find out that he wasn’t a legal citizen, and when they did, they’d be all over me even though all I did was help a guy out.

He didn’t have any family.  He never mentioned one, anyway, so he must not have had one.  That’s not the kind of thing that someone doesn’t mention.  I’m sure that he would have told me if he had one even though I never asked about it.

I remember standing there for a long time, just staring at Martin’s corpse while trying to decide what to do.  Getting the authorities involved would only hurt me while not helping anyone.  That wasn’t fair.  I hadn’t done anything.

Then, as if they were operating on their own, my eyes turned towards the wood chipper.

There wasn’t much of a choice at all.  Martin was dead, and that was a tragedy and all that, but that couldn’t be helped.  All that mattered now was getting rid of the problem so that life could move on.  For me, I mean.  It wasn’t going to be moving on for Martin.

I’m sorry, I apologize, that last part came out wrong.  It’s the middle of the night, and I’m tired.  Hold on, I’m going to get a quick drink of water.  Thanks for having a glass for me.  Could definitely be colder.  Just something to keep in mind for next time.  The more hospitable you are, the more people are going to want to cooperate.

Where was I?  Oh, right, I was just about to shove Martin into the wood chipper.  So I did that.  Got him undressed and shoved him into the wood chipper.  It seemed like the best solution at the time.

Just between you and me, you wouldn’t believe how easy it was.  Lifting him wasn’t.  Martin was all dead weight.  Hey, I just realized where that saying came from.  Dead weight.  You learn something every day.

Anyway, the part that was easy was when I finally got him up and into the chipper.  The machine caught his body and sort of sucked it in.  I keep all of my equipment in tip top shape, and that includes making sure that all blades are sharpened.

As the blades sliced and diced Martin, the chute sprayed the slush the machine was making into the fertilizer mixture.  I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even thought of doing that.  I was in mourning for Martin, remember, God rest his soul.

It was one of those, what do you call it, happy little accidents.  The remains started mixing with the fertilizer, and as it did it became less watery.  More out of curiosity than anything else, I used a rake to stir the concoction.  I was shocked.  The final product was the exact consistency that I was looking for.

I think Martin would have liked that.  He was always a really detail-oriented guy.  Kind of a perfectionist without that way of looking down the nose at people like most of those folks have.  He would have been proud that the last thing he did was make the project he had been working on successful.

By that point it was really late, and I had the most important job of my career the next day.  I pulled my truck up closer so that I could pack the fertilizer into the plastic barrels that were in the bed.  It wasn’t easy work, especially now that I didn’t have someone to assist me.  Eventually I finished, gathered up Martin’s clothes, and headed out.

On the way back home, I stopped at one of those donation containers in the parking lot of that strip mall off of Dalton Road.  I tossed Martin’s clothes in there.  They were dirty, but there wasn’t any blood on them.  Not exactly sure how that happened given how much of the stuff was leaking out of his noggin, but somehow it did.  It seemed a shame to waste them, and they weren’t my size, so I decided to give them to the less fortunate.

I’m constantly doing that kind of thing.  You might want to make a note of that in your notebook.  I’m a generous guy that gives a lot to his community.  That’s part of that context I was talking about earlier.  It will help you see the whole story for what it is, and when you do, you’re definitely going to see that you’ve made a mistake here.

You also might want to make a big note about how cooperative I’m being.  I haven’t exactly been treated well here.  I mean, this water is room temperature at best, and my wrist is itching from the handcuff, but I’m still helping you by proving I didn’t do anything wrong.  Most people wouldn’t be that accommodating.

The next day I went to the job and started the lawn repair.  The yard was so bumpy that I had to rent a roller to flatten it out before I could seed.  A lot of guys in my industry would have put down sod insteading of seeding, but here’s the thing: seed just works better over the long run.  I could have used sod.  It would have looked better instantly.  That would have just been a bandaid, though, and if I do a job, I’m going to do it right.

I got the yard completely prepped, and once that was done, I spread the fertilizer.  It was a little lighter shade of brown than it normally was.  Not by much, but I’ve worked with fertilizer long enough to notice a small difference like that.  It spread really smooth and had the perfect consistency.

I was maybe halfway done when I found a piece of a toe in the fertilizer.  It wasn’t much, maybe an eighth of an inch long at most, but it was definitely a toe.  Luckily it just took a few pokes with the rake for it to break apart and mix into the ground.  I guess that makes sense.  It had been sitting in a hot barrel filled manure, mulch, and Martin.

When I was finished, I went back home and took a cold shower.  It had been a long day, and I was beat.  After that, I got a beer out of the fridge and started to make dinner.

Oh, right, you probably don’t need to know that part.  I can respect that.  Time is money.

Over the next couple of weeks, I monitored the lawn as I worked on the rest of the property’s landscaping and some other handyman jobs that the realtor asked me to do.  I wasn’t sure how well the grass was going to come in.  It wasn’t like I had ever used a blend with a human in it before.

I shouldn’t have worried.  That lawn grew in faster and greener and healthier than any other one that I had ever installed.  It wasn’t even close.  All the lawns I’ve ever put in have come out great, but this one was on a whole other level.  It was beautiful.

I wasn’t the only one that noticed, either.  The neighbors started coming over to the house while I was there, asking me what my secret to such a green lawn was and wondering if they could hire me to work on theirs.  I picked up half a dozen new clients within the first month, and every single one of them was loaded.  For the first time in years my business was starting to grow instead of going down the toilet.

And it was all thanks to my wonderful new miracle fertilizer.

Now, I’m sure that you’re seeing the obvious problem here.  I had used my special Martin blend on the first house, and I didn’t have any left to use on these new client properties.  Using the regular stuff wasn’t going to work.  They had already seen the results of the Martin mixture.  If I didn’t produce those same results with their yards, they wouldn’t be happy and I wouldn’t get any future work from them.

That clearly wasn’t acceptable.  I needed that money.  The only thing to do was make more of my special fertilizer.

So that’s what I did.  Each night I’d go find a person, kill them, and take them back to my spot in the woods to make more fertilizer.

Hold on, hold on, I know how that sounds.  It’s okay, though.  I didn’t kill good people.  I just killed the people that it was okay to kill.

Here, let me give you an example.  Do you remember that guy that used to stand around in the grocery store parking lot over on Vanderbilt?  The one that would come up to you with a flier about that country that he wanted ours to stop supporting?  Or maybe support?  I can’t remember which it was.  One of the two.

The reason you don’t see him anymore is because I turned him into fertilizer.  Even though I could have chosen anyone to do that, I decided to do my community a favor and get rid of a public nuisance instead.  I wasn’t just going to line my own pockets.  I was also going to help my town.

Everyone I tossed in my woodchipper was someone that getting rid of made things better.  That guy near the highway that was always begging for money even though we all know he wasn’t actually homeless.  A couple of those women down at the bar that sit in the corner and mocks anyone that gets near them that isn’t built like a linebacker.  Let’s see, who else…  There were so many that they all kind of blur together.

I’d have to think about it for a while.  I’m sure that I can come up with a list.  The important thing to remember is that all of them were a drain on society.  No one that you can reasonably say didn’t have it coming.

Ah, right, I also chipped up my ex-wife.  I guess that she doesn’t technically fall into the same category, but trust me when I say that she was a major bitch that needed taken care of.  Even if you want to say that I shouldn’t have done that one, you have to admit that one maybe unearned kill is more than balanced out by all the good that I did.

And those lawns?  Every single one of them looks better than they ever have thanks to my proprietary enhancement.

There you have it, officer.  I’m sitting here an innocent man.  All that I’ve done is make our town better.  If I took care of my bills by doing so, well, isn’t that only fair?  Everyone should be paid for their services, right?  That’s how capitalism is supposed to work.

What do you say?  Are you going to uncuff me so that I can go home now?  I’ve got a job to get to early in the morning, and I’ve had a long night of mixing fertilizer.