Garbage Read online

  “Tomorrow I’ll bring a bottle of my best stuff if you want.”

  “I won’t complain.” Looks in the register. “Not worth two?”

  “For a name? All right, two.”

  “Second one you could make it cheap or even both. Anyway, you now know you can call on me for other things—Of course, the elderly gentleman, Mr. Addissay, no help to you I’m afraid, who lived here as a permanent for six years. I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, bad luck and even worse hotel business, since nobody likes to know he’s sleeping in the same bed and bedroom someone recently died in, though I suspect you’ve seen and heard it all. He actually only had a rough time the last few days there and passed away on the stretcher going downstairs.”

  “That doesn’t bother me. The honeymooning couple does more.”

  “Way to go. Though I for one have nothing against them no matter how they mutilate their bodies, unless they’re truly taking advantage of the very young.”

  Telegram could still be a mistake. That’s what I’ll think: not from Stovin’s to me but meant for 419 or 421 or even 520 or something, and just get a good night’s sleep.

  Little later I call the telegraph office and a man says “Room number and address is correct but telegram was sent from another city and sender gave an anonymous.”

  I have a couple of drinks in my room, try to sleep, still staying away from most of the pills I’m to take, particularly since I’m drinking, and can’t sleep and then oversleep and awake, eat, walk to work with an even worse headache than yesterday’s and knowing I should take a cab, but on that score I’ve always been a cheapskate. All my bar garbage is on the sidewalk where we left it the night before.

  I call George Ecomolos and tell him about the garbage and say “What’s the trouble—you got a strike or something?”

  “Worse than that, but think on the phone I be telling you, you’re nuts.”

  “Come on then. It’s cold and I’ll heat up a bad brandy for you,” and he says “Come around again your place I got to be doubly nuts than I just said before. Talking to you now even I’m nuts and so shouldn’t. I will though, talk. They go so far to bother you and me with taps, they nuts.”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Ha. That’s who. You nuts or stupid or both those two? The name. Our private garbage pals, your friends and mine. They phonecall me, understand? And say deal off to buy my trash trucks if. If what if what I say and they say to me back not to pick your garbage up anytime now. If I do they don’t buy my trucks and make sure nobody does and on that threat I think they win and if they do I be all the way out to space and broke. Okay, I told and hope they not be tapping. You say one word though—oh hell, should have said nothing to you, nothing, for now I worry.”

  “It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “It’s not. People shoot off mouths. Best of them shoot off—my wife, God bless her, everybody, not purposely, a disease. But they really into you, Shaney. Maybe next only to squeeze you slow-wise where you got garbage piled miles high. I hope not. City stinks like it is. But boy they got ways nobody does and when they tell very firmly me lay off, Eco, I must. Hey, I see you, baby, and swear has to be last time for a year everything me to you sight and sound, so so long.”

  I call most of the private carting companies in the city and each tells me he can’t pick up my garbage because that’s Eco’s territory. I tell them Eco’s going out of business and they say something like “That so? Didn’t know. What happened?” and I say “I think Eco himself got sick of the city or something or just sick. But Stovin’s who’s taking over Eco’s customers won’t handle me,” and I get answers like “Maybe they’ve good reasons…. Eco might have told Stovin you don’t pay your bills, so why should we chance it?…That’s their concern and much as I’d like to and can always use the extra cash coming in and thank you for thinking of me, I can’t, sorry,” and a few of them just say “Sorry” right after I tell them Stovin’s won’t handle me, and hang up.

  I bring the filled garbage bags to the basement and carry the loose garbage in boxes to a corner trashcan a block away. What I carry is about a tenth of my garbage and fills up a whole city can. While I’m jamming it into the can a man says “You shouldn’t be doing that. That’s for public trash alone.”

  “I know and I’m sorry but must.”

  “Then if you know, stop, please, have some civic pride and decency. Take what you put in out and put it in the cans in front of buildings or stores where it belongs. Continue stuffing it in, mister, and you’re in trouble.”

  “You’re right, sorry again,” and I walk away with some of my trash and stick it in a public can on the next corner a block away. Same man’s there when I turn around and he says “Now I warned you. Two times in two minutes is too much in one day. What’s your name? I’m calling a cop.”

  “James Blackmore. I’ve nothing to hide. I live in that building there, second floor, window with the flowerbox is mine. All our cans were filled so this is what I was forced to do to both get the smells out of my apartment and keep the sidewalk clean,” and I cross the street, go in the building I said was mine, through the vestibule door watch the man look around for someone or maybe he was just faking me. Anyway, no cop comes and he looks up to what I said was my window, gives one of those disgusted looks and walks away. I go back to the bar, serve customers, an hour later lock up and return to the first trashcan with two boxes of empty condiment bottles, a big roastbeef bone and broken barware and such. When I get back to the bar I’m beat and have to take a few aspirins and rest for an hour on two chairs. Then I open up again. At least I got rid of the loose heavier trash and broken glass that would’ve ripped the bags. Later I’ll think of ways more.

  Most regulars stop asking after my head and start bitching I’m too slow. “My manager’s coming back to the shoestore in a minute, Shaney. Bad head and all and much as I sympathize for you, try and hustle it up?” I try to as I want to keep them but it’s tough.

  Al comes around eleven, does some odd jobs for me and then I close up and we carry several plastic garbage bags to the first trashcan I was at this morning. It’s gone, though my boxes with trash are still there, and we at my suggestion start walking to the trashcan a block further away when he says “Why not just put them in front of any building with garbage?”

  “Good idea. My head hasn’t been thinking the same since it got hit,” and we leave the bags in front of some buildings.

  Back at the bar I give him a couple of bucks and drinks and have one with him with more aspirins and while he walks me to my hotel he says “Ever think of selling the bar, with all the problems you got with it?” and I say “What would I do if I did?”

  “Bake in the sun down south someplace or on one of those tropical foreign isles or keys.”

  “And after the first day with a burnt-up back, to do what?”

  “Apply lotion to it, rest off the burn and get a new one a week later.”

  “And after that and after that? That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Golf, fish, swim, sail, tennis or learn any or all of them. Or meet a young lady or one closer your own age, but get laid, gamble, play the ponies, eat well and drink.”

  “Oh fun fun fun and after the first month of dying of boredom or liver disease, what?”

  “Open a bar down there and call it Shaney’s.”

  “I don’t know anyone there at any of those places. All my customers and what you might call friends are here. I’m a city boy, born, raised and worked here almost all my life, even if that is a city under the southern sun you’re talking of where you want me to be. Worse, I don’t like that much sand, sun and palm trees or really any trees. I like them in the park, even if I only get to see them if I go out of my way when I walk to work. Also pavement, sidewalk, whatever the hell materials the streets are made of I mean. But real life, seasons, snow and getting snowed on and trudging through drifts and shoveling it if I’m not sick like this. And biting rains, freezing colds, noise, l
ots of noise, a madhouse, old and new tall buildings going up and torn down, car and people congestions and rushes—even grimy streets in a way if they don’t get too unclean. Besides, my memories are all here—my parents’ and sister’s graves.” “I didn’t know you had sisters.”

  “One. Long ago. Maybe nobody does. We were very close. She died when I was a kid, but I remember her.”

  “Then come visit them once a year to pay your respects and lay flowers. With a jet and cab you can probably be at the gravesite in three hours.”

  “Who’ll take care of my southern or foreign bar?”

  “An assistant. Someone you know who can make drinks and sandwiches and trust.”

  “You must be the only regular left I didn’t tell this yet. I never had an assistant who didn’t steal me blue in the face and blind. They’ve always been one step ahead of me and I also want everything to be run exactly my way, so I’m a lousy boss.”

  “So I’ll come down and work for you and won’t steal and I know the business and got nothing to gain standing here and my wife can wait your tables.”

  “I told you about Stovin’s?”

  “All I need to know I suppose or so you thought.”

  “What I say? I forget—my head.”

  “All that you didn’t want to do what they wanted you to and for it you got brained.”

  “Then you can see why should I be so sure you’re not working for them too? Trying to get me to sell out cheap and save them the inconvenience of beating my butt in again and maybe this time one of them getting caught with no excuse.”

  “Hey. You know me how long before you ever heard their name, so I can almost take what you say as an insult.”

  “I’ve got to be extra careful.”

  “It could still be one.”

  “I’m sorry but so far it’s not in me to rely on any one person I know.”

  “I’m what I say I am, honestly. Total your register, work out whatever shadowing system you have, then put me behind the bar for as long as you like and you’ll see. Not a penny will slip into my pocket that’s not a tip for me and even that if you don’t want it to and my wife is even worse.”

  “Anyway, nobody will buy my bar except for the oldtime fixtures and liquor stock, so how can I invest in any place new? I just have to stick at what I still got.”

  “Here’s your hotel. You were going to walk past. Hey, these talks have been swell,” and we shake hands.

  “Al, I’m kind of sorry I never spoke to you as much before. But maybe, as you know, if you did work behind a bar—”

  “I did, what are you going on for?”

  “Then you know that after a while almost everyone on the other side of the bar gets to look and act alike to you, but you’re all right.”

  “I don’t know. Working the bar even twelve hours straight never turned me off to people or them to me.”

  “You’re lucky. Goodnight,” and I go inside. “How you doing?” I say to the nightclerk and he says “What’s this? You haven’t my bottles? That a way to treat your helpmate?”

  “Damn it, I forgot,” and give him five dollars.

  “What’s this? Bribery now?” Puts it back in my hand. “Bottles, not money. Two quarts like you promised and it’ll be worth twice as much to me as that five.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Next day under my bar’s front door is a summons from the Sanitation Department for leaving trash on the street. I phone the Department’s summons section and say “What trash where did I leave? My sidewalk was clean when I left it last night and clean today.”

  “Inspector’s report says you left it in front of private dwellings and storefronts not your own.”

  “What? Streets as dirty as they are and sidewalks with ice and still unshoveled snow on them for people to fall and this inspector has the time to untie every trash bag in town to see what’s inside really belongs to the people in the building it’s in front of?”

  “Our office got a phonecall.”

  “Who from?”

  “Someone. Maybe a landlord or storeowner, maybe a passing citizen. In such complaints when you’re so completely infringing on the law, the courts say you don’t have to know who are your accusers. Want a hearing, I’ll put you down for one. You’ll have to pay your fine first, which you’ll get back with interest if you win, though next June do you? For that’s how far we’re backed up. But from now on if you can’t afford private carters, don’t go leaving envelopes and things with your name and address on them in the bags you leave at places where you shouldn’t.”

  “Many thanks.”

  “For what?” and hangs up.

  That night Al and I rip up all the address labels and bill envelopes and stuff before sticking them in with the rest of the garbage and distribute the trash bags and garbage cartons in front of buildings and stores three and four blocks from the bar. When we get back I give him a few bucks, tell him to help himself behind the bar and pour me a tall scotch with rocks, lock up and he walks me to the hotel and says looking at the sky “Nicer night tonight isn’t it?” and I say “They’re all the same.”

  “All the same? Stars, planes, moon with rings around it when you couldn’t see anything but clouds last night?” and I say “All right, tonight’s different.”

  “How’s your head getting?—that’s what I should’ve asked before, forget the stars and night,” and I say “Better.”

  “You’re not talkative tonight, I won’t,” and I say “No, I like to, takes my mind away, great night, oh yes, great night.”

  “You’ve new troubles?” and I say “Who said I had troubles in the first place?”

  “When’s the bandage finally coming off?” and I say “Maybe when I see a doctor, which might be never. No coverage, that’s why I don’t like going to them so much.”

  “Want my wife to look at it and patch you up again? She once had some practical nursing training and has done it for me,” and I say “That might be nice.”

  “Or a clinic. Maybe you should just go to one,” and I say “They’ll hear I own a bar and make me pay them regular overpriced fees till I’m bankrupted.”

  “Don’t pay them,” and I say “Hospitals it’s not in me to welsh on so long as I got.”

  “But it could be getting infected from whatever aftereffects and your neglecting it,” and I say “If it was I’d feel it with a fever and more pain than a pounding headache, so if your wife would, I’d like you to ask.”

  “First thing when I get home if she’s not asleep. But three nights in a row, Shaney. You could almost call mine permanent work for you after what I’ve had the last few months,” and I say “Actually if it continues working out like this, I probably could put you on evenings seven to twelve starting around Monday so you could really make some dough and I could both open up and go home sooner. For the time being I think I need to.”

  “Great,” and I say “Favor for a favor—okay, settled and maybe, if you’re as honest as you say, all day Sunday if you can and without my even coming and leaving there,” and we reach the hotel and shake hands and he seems happy and slaps my back and says “Sorry, slapped it too hard it looks like,” and I say “Little, it hurt my head but I’ll survive,” and we say goodnight.

  “Oh Jesus, the bottles,” to the nightclerk and he says “You know, one more round of your amnesia and I’m going to start letting those early morning calls to you through.”

  “I still get them?”

  “Occasionally, in various male and female voices, that they just have to absolutely speak to you—it’s that important.”

  “Tomorrow definitely, the best stuff I have—even three.”

  “Don’t overdo to the degree where you could then think it’s worth it to forget again. Two regular-sized rums will suit me fine.”

  Next morning on my way to work I make a point of walking past the park to see the snow inside. It’s still clean and relatively untrampled in and from the border wall I see a dog leaping in it. I also see a
rabbit, second time here in my life, and two boys, probably cutting school, sledding down a hill. When they see me looking at them I wave and yell “Hiya doing, fellas?” and they yell “Hi, come on in, water’s fine,” while they wave back.

  There’s no Sanitation summons waiting for me at the bar so so far so good today. Business is the same as usual, but since the weather’s much colder and it’s snowed a little more and walking for everyone’s slippery going, that could be a positive sign. Al comes at ten with his wife and she looks at my head and from her kit treats and repatches it better than the doctor did, while Al cleans up, restocks the bar, taps a keg and gets rid of the garbage by himself somewhere outside. His wife’s funny and sweet, over drinks I provide they tell me about their kids and married life, when they walk me to my hotel I ask Al to come to work as a bartender tomorrow at seven and he shouts “Hurray” and they embrace and Tina hugs me.

  I go inside and give the nightclerk a shopping bag. He pulls one of the bottles out, looks at the label and says “This is the best rum there is. You shouldn’t have gone this far, even if I’m not saying do it again and I won’t be your friend,” and gives me a fresh copy of tomorrow morning’s newspaper and for the first time says “Have a pleasant sleep.”

  Al comes every day on time, does a good job, makes even more at the bar and with the food than I did in the same period a week ago. All the customers think he’s a find and from what I can see he doesn’t steal a dime from me nor drink on the job or keep the place anything but clean and he gets rid of all the garbage every night without my getting one summons. With him working the night shift alone and me the days, I not only get to rest my head a lot more but net more in a week than I usually do including his pay. On Friday and Saturday nights and all day Sunday, when I take my first real day-off since I took over the place and just stay in the hotel and read the papers and sleep, Tina works with him, cooking and waiting tables just for the tips in it and for what sandwiches she can bring home to her kids and says she earns enough and in food to make it more than worthwhile for herself. I later tell Al “Next Sunday and any night you and Tina are here, save a little on the babysitter if you want and have your kids come in for supper on me.”