On Tall Grass and Bad Luck

It all seemed so perfectly timed. Finally, a weekend had come with no work or chance of rain, and five minutes into cutting grass, which was nearly to his knees now after two weeks of neglect, his mower began to sputter.

          It was hard not to wonder as he limped the mower back to his shop, if some being beyond his being was tampering with his tools, with the weather, in an attempt to teach him that none of it—the lawn he strived so hard to cultivate—really mattered. It was hard, too, not to wonder if there was no being beyond his being, that his bad luck had not been conspired at all, but merely parts on a mower finally giving in to wear, rain that had overstayed its welcome. Either way, none of it truly mattered. Unless, he thought, it was properly told.