Note: If you’d like to read it in the fancy magazine layout version, it’s on pages 70-71 in the March 2021 issue of Waste Advantage Magazine.
“Back in the truck, Casanova.”
Matt flashed a smile at the girl. “Don’t mind him. He’s just hating because he’s ‘happily’ married.”
My partner Matt Murphy was a smooth-talker who made us late almost as often as we were on time. But for all his shenanigans, he made a long day at work feel a little shorter. It’s important your coworker is someone you can stand, especially if you spend more time with him than your own wife.
We’d always laugh at the euphemisms people came up with for our job. “Solid waste worker”, “waste management professional”, or the best one: “sanitation engineer”. Engineer? There’s no engineering going on here. We pick up the garbage. Call us garbage men, it’s okay. Unless my wife is around. Then you can call me a sanitation engineer, haha. We’re not the type of guys that care about all that politically correct stuff.
The job’s not for everyone. They’re always trying to get more women CEOs and astronauts, but you don’t hear about them trying to get more women in garbage or logging. My brother’s a logger. You get a beer in him and he won’t shut up about how logging’s actually the most dangerous profession in America, but cops and firefighters get all the credit. I looked it up once and us garbage men are at number five. Way above cops at eighteen and firefighters at twenty-four, but I don’t care about the credit. I’d rather pick up the trash than deal with drunks and junkies or run into burning buildings.
Everyone always imagines the smell is the worst thing. That you get used to. It’s the toll it takes on your body. Running up driveways. Dragging trash up and down everywhere. But it pays well, and I get benefits.
Things change. We used to have to worry about hitting kids that were out riding their bike or kicking a soccer ball. Now we have to worry about hitting one strapped into a VR headset or crashing their drone into the truck. The old timers thought they were safe from the job cuts. After all, garbage has been a constant since the beginning of civilization. Matt even told me about some ancient Egyptian trash heap they had found and studied. He joked about an “Egyptian Matt and Jake”. I wonder how much they got paid. Probably a better gig than hauling rock for the pyramids. Anyway, we knew better than to think we couldn’t get replaced. Matt and I were lucky our town couldn’t afford the fancy trucks they only needed one guy to drive, with no one for the back. California’s had driverless trucks for months now.
I loved the job because I wasn’t cooped up inside somewhere. I ran a paper route with my mom when I was a kid and nothin’ beat that feeling of running around in the early morning before the rest of the world woke up. We used to get donuts after our work for the day was done. Now I do the same with my boy when I get home.
A lot of guys liked looking for stuff worth keeping. I think it’s that former junkie mentality. Always looking out for a score or some angle. Some guys I work with go metal detecting every weekend. Done it for years and never found more than some quarters, broken jewelry, and rusty nails. A waste of time if you ask me. It is crazy some of the things people throw away. Matt found one of those cool neon beer signs. The thing still works; it’s lighting up his garage right now. My wife said no to mongo (that’s the stuff you “rescue” from the garbage) a long time ago. Debra “doesn’t do clutter”. At least my house is clean.
You learn a lot about people when you pick up their trash every week. Little clues to their existence. A box for a crib falls out, someone had a baby. A pinata, a birthday. Rich people recycle and compost more. Poor people have more frozen food boxes. There’s something spiritual about it really, watching the contents of someone’s life spill out.
We’d get to know a few people over the years. Sweet kids who liked seeing the big truck. Young college girls that Matt would flirt with. Bikers with more junk on the lawn than in their can. One of the people we got to know the best was this sweet old lady named Helen. We’d catch each other every few weeks.
“Where you off to, Shirley MacLaine?”
As usual, I was doing the heavy lifting while Matt was running his smooth mouth.
“Visiting my brother in Florida. If your girlfriend isn’t careful, I may just ask you to come along with me…” she said, smiling coyly. “You boys stay safe now!”
She’d bring out a glass of lemonade for us, and not that mix stuff either, hand-squeezed every time.
“Jake, I need a man to help me hang this up.” Hanging the planter put us behind schedule again, but I tell you, I looked forward to seeing the flowers in it every week.
You couldn’t shut her up about music. She’d send us home with CDs to listen to. “Helen, you don’t need CDs. You can just stream all these…”
“I’ll never get rid of my collection. They sound better. Trust me.”
“They said the same thing about records…”
Neither one of us owned a CD player but we’d look up the album on Spotify and play it in the truck.
That was all before the virus of course. Two weeks after it started, we pulled up to a box on top of her bin. The note stuck to it read:
You boys stay safe.
Love,
Helen
The woman was sweeter than pecan pie. I opened the box expecting more CDs but inside were hand sewn masks. After that, you couldn’t catch us out without one on.
It had been a few weeks since she’d had a can out. We were a little worried, but she’d gone to Florida to see her brother before. To tell you the truth, so much was going on I didn’t think much about Helen or anyone else. Debra was furloughed. Luckily, we were essential of course. The garbage must flow.
The company updated our app to show big red Xs on houses that were confirmed positive. Oh, believe me, we still picked up their trash. Officially, we were supposed to take more precautions but what could we do? There’s only so much protective gear and trust me, they weren’t saving it for garbage men. Although if I had to guess, I don’t think their trash was any more dangerous than any of the other nasty stuff we run into.
A few weeks went by.
“Shit, Jake.”
“What? What is it?”
He held up the iPad and showed me the big X over Helen’s house.
“Shit.”
We knew her chances weren’t good, but she was a tough lady, after all.
Another couple weeks went by and still no sign of life from the house. Then I saw it.
“Her can’s out, Matt.”
“It’s overflowing too. Looks like she’s been making up for lost time.”
“We should get her some flowers or something, man. Whatever old ladies like.”
“Haha, yeah right. Are you going to show up in a face mask and one of those ruffled tuxes?”
Like I said, taking out the trash is a spiritual job. It all spills out eventually. A box for a crib. A pinata. I lifted Helen’s can in the air, feeling the weight of it. I tipped it over the edge of the hopper and watched her life spill out in front of me. Some clothes, a nightstand, unopened cans of beans.
A lovely lady’s collection of old CDs. They’re sitting on my desk now, the only mongo Debra let me keep.
If you liked this, you should check out my flash fiction piece “Sunday”:
Dumped – My Short Sci-Fi Story Published in Waste Advantage Magazine
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