Driver gets out of the cab. Big guy also. Both bigger and much younger than me and I’m big. Truck’s rear is still in midair but only some dark liquid’s dribbling down the chute. Nobody else is around. Electric cart’s parked the length away of three city blocks and man’s probably in the shack.
“I wish you fellows would understand me but it seems—”
“That’s right,” Foy says.
“That’s what I said. And you can see,” bending over, “by my head that I’m not here for trouble and have really had plenty of it, so excuse me,” and I go back to the van holding the slashed bag together so nothing will spill out and drive off the pier, honk my horn thanks to the shack, leave the bag in front of a store where there’s garbage and drive back to the bar.
I fill the van with the remaining bags and get very tired doing this and my headache comes back bad. I think I feel blood running down my neck and in the dark outside taste it and it’s sweat. I haven’t really cried for I don’t know how many years when all of a sudden there it is. What’s making me so sad? and I answer to myself it’s probably my head that hurts worse than it has in days that’s causing some chain reaction to the tear ducts or whatever they are that start the crying process off and that squeezing feeling inside my neck and chest. But that’s not it. I know what it is. It’s my weariness and frustration with just about everything concerned with this trash thing from the beginning and my near future prospects in the bar combined. Is that it? That’s it or close as I can get. Then go inside, not out here, someone might pass, and let it out for once and maybe you’ll feel better and I go in the bar, lock the door, pull down the shades, try and cry but can’t now and pour a double, shoot it down, another and yell “Cocksuckers, motherfuckers, I hate all you guys, every last bastard one,” and throw the empty glass against the wall and almost collapse from the effort and maybe from my yelling as well and rest a bit more and drink just a single and put an icepack to the hurt part of my head and get back in the van and drive across the bridge singing from all the liquor I drank and actually feeling happy till I thought of it and drop off a bag here and there in that borough and drive to the borough next to it and drop off a few more. When I’m walking back to the van with almost all the bags gone a police car pulls up alongside of me and its top lights blink on and start spinning.
“Mind holding there a second?” the driver says when I open the van door.
“Oh sure, anything, what else could be new?” and I stick a few mints in my mouth.
“You know what you’ve done is against the law,” other officer says, both getting out of the car.
“Wait a second, what is, what’ve I done? — crying? trying?” and think stop, shut up, you’re high, wise up, that’s what your mints were for.
“Why you acting stupid? Leaving your garbage around here like you’ve been doing.”
“Was not. I was collecting it. Only opening these bags and cans to see if anything of value’s inside. This is a fancy area. People around here got money up their ass to throw out fantastic trash that I sell as junk and antiques to antique and junkstores, whichever which.”
“We’ve been following you. And you smell from alcohol. Turn around. Put your hands on the van and spead your legs wide.”
I do. “All right,” when I’m being patted up and down. “I had some. I won’t lie. But I’m not drunk. You want to frisk my trash bags also, go ahead. Black one’s mine. Also the one on the extreme left, so be my guests. But none of the others. Never dropped off more than two to each stop and usually one.” They’re through. I turn around. “Because I’m not greedy. Not a collector too. Name’s Shaney Fleet. I’m a barowner, cheap joint. Here’s my address and name,” and show them my driver’s license and election registration card, only two identifications. “So it’s all just bar and grill trash I was dumping because I can’t get rid of it any other way. If you knew how far I’ve come to dump it, you’d laugh.”
“Let’s see this ‘just bar trash,’ “and he opens a pocketknife.
“Don’t. I’ll only have to carry it back slashed and spilling to the van, which I rented and have to keep clean. I’ll do it.” I unknot the two bags I left out here and three in the van and they look inside all of them.
“What’s wrong?” the driver says. “Business so bad you can’t afford a regular pickup?”
“No company will take mine. It’s a long story.”
“By law one of them has to. You’re either not asking the right firm in the right way or they’re in their rights to refuse you because you don’t want to pay today’s inflated prices.”
“See this head?” I take off my cap. “That’s further on. Listen from the beginning and maybe you can advise me. Two men came in my bar a long time ago. Month? Could it be three? I forget. But Turner and Pete. Oh, very sweet guys these two, your mothers would’ve loved them and I bet in several names they have records a leg long, and they said they represented—” but he cuts me off and says “We’d be interested if it was in our precinct. Tell whoever the cops are in yours.”
“Everytime I yell for the police these days they won’t believe me.”
“Cry fire, not police. That’s what I tell my wife. Okay, different situation, but maybe there’s something you can learn from it, because she’s in alone, couple punks raping her God forbid, neighbors will stay behind their doors if she shouts ‘Someone get the police.’ So cry fire I tell her and they’ll all run out and bat down her door with their heads if they have to to stop the fire from spreading to theirs.” He writes up a ticket for illegally dumping refuse on the street while the other calls in the van’s license number and description and my name and bar address in case I’m tagged around here again.
“Now get your garbage and drop it in some other precinct, not ours.”
I tie up the bags and carry them to the van. I could probably get rid of them in another borough or by the river but I don’t want to chance getting caught by the police who might call in and link me with the last ticket and pull me and the van in, making the van owner angry and maybe my staying overnight in jail again and whatever that might bring on. I drive back to the bar, think what would be worse: bags downstairs or on the street? and I carry them downstairs. Only five of them and if the health inspector asks why they weren’t dumped with the rest I’ll say “Those are today’s.”
I drive to the motel parking space I’m supposed to leave the van at, honk two dots and a dash to signal the loaner his car’s back and cab to my hotel.
“You worked much later than usual,” the nightclerk says. “All recovered?”
“Almost. Goodnight.”
“You have messages. Not that I’m a snoop, but I don’t understand them. Gruff but educated man phoned them in practically an hour apart to the second you’ll see dutifully marked on the time slot.”
I read them. “Boiling hot out today isn’t it?” the first says. “Boiling hot out tonight isn’t it?” the second says.
“Firstly,” he says, “they were phoned in at nine and ten at night so what’s with the ‘today’ and ‘tonight’ distinction? Okay. Your privilege not to answer and minor point. Secondly, your caller can’t be talking about the weather of course, because I froze my rear off getting here.”
“It is cold. When I was outside I wasn’t even thinking of it but it must be near zero.”
“Three above? Your room will be freezing now and by five there’ll be icicles inside. Want to borrow an electric blanket? Small charge.”