“Why not?”
“It’s—I don’t know—politically incorrect.” He sighed. “Have you tried the jail?”
“No,” I said. The idea was frightening, but of course it made sense. If Whitey Connors was cracking down, and if Leo and them wouldn’t move, then he might have called the cops. He probably had the cops in his pocket, that scoundrel. There were always patrol cars in the Bi-Cities parking lot.
J Star sniffed, like he smelled something unpleasant. He lowered his head so it was closer to mine. He said, “You’ve been in the dump, huh?”
I was embarrassed. “Do I smell like trash?”
“Nothing in there smells like trash. Look, I know it’s tempting: there’s great stuff in there—the things people throw away, it’s a shame—but that spray they use is poison.” He fingered the sleeve of my t-shirt. “Can’t you smell it?”
I sniffed the sleeve. I couldn’t smell anything except mild body odor. But it occurred to me that I hadn’t smelled the dump in years. “I used to smell it,” I told J Star. “It used to smell like bowling shoe spray.”
“It still does,” J Star said. “You should shower off. You can use our water if you want.”
I didn’t like the idea of stripping down in front of a stranger so I told him I’d shower as soon as I got home.
“Where’s home?” he asked.
I gestured vaguely towards the hills, where Grandpa lived.
J Star nodded. “Why don’t you stay here tonight with my friends and me? They’ll be coming back soon. Some of them are about your age.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I should get back home.”
We shook hands and J Star said, “God bless you, brother.” I had no idea why he called me brother. He was weird, I guess.
Back at the dump I crouched outside the fence to listen for garbage men, but there still weren’t any voices. I climbed back in the way I climbed out, then I wandered around a bit more, not seeing anybody. It was kind of fun to be alone because I could wander wherever I wanted. I wandered into the hangars where the loaders and excavator were parked. I even sat in one of the loaders and pretended to be driving it. Then I walked right up to the back of the headquarters building and tried to look into some windows, but the windows had burglar bars.
Time must have got away from me because the sun started setting. I decided to check the bunker one more time before I left. It was way in the opposite corner of the dump as the building, and by the time I got there the sun had disappeared behind Trash Mountain. I knocked on the door, just in case, then let myself inside.
The bunker was still empty, but they had left their camping lantern. I lit it so I could shut the door and be safer. There were some cell phone parts on the table, which gave me hope since Leo wouldn’t have left that stuff unless he meant to come back for it. I sat in a chair and waited for a while, but then I started to get tired. I can’t remember if I decided ahead of time I would sleep there that night, or if it just sort of happened. Boss had lined the floor with cardboard, which was dry and clean, and pretty soon it started looking good to me. I decided to lay down and rest my eyes.
When I woke up I thought I heard voices, something like whispering, but too rhythmic to be actual human whispering. I was curious but afraid to open the door, in case a security guard was making his rounds in a cart or something. I fell asleep again and woke up to a smell so sharp it stung my sinuses, high up in my nose. This time I was sure I heard something. It sounded like the truck that pumps the sewer, a rumbling sound with a knock, knock, knock on top of it. The smell wasn’t anything like the sewer, though. The sewer would have been a relief. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell it, but the smell came through so strongly that my eyes watered. Forget about sleeping, I thought. Maybe I could burst out the door and make a break for it in the dark, but the noise was so loud I knew for sure there was a big machine out there. I pictured the slumbering excavator, alert and extended, ferocious. It might have scooped me up and crunched me for sport.
After a while the noise got softer and the smell got less bad, or I got used to it, and I was able to fall back asleep.
I woke up at dawn with a headache. I stood up and felt lightheaded, like I was high and hungover at the same time. The awful smell had persisted, but it no longer made my eyes water. Now my eyes were itchy and dry.
I opened the door of the shelter for a breath of fresh air, but there wasn’t any fresh air to be breathed. I saw two men in white hazmat suits, like something from an A-bomb movie, and I ran the other direction, towards what I thought was the main entrance, but I got turned around. The dump had changed again. I peered through the fence to get my bearings in relation to Komer, and I saw the main street that went by my old house. I didn’t see my old street, though, which should have been right there. There should have been an alley too. That’s what had gone along the fence, when we lived there. In my confusion (or maybe it was the smell, messing with my brain) it took me a while to notice I was standing on firmer ground than usual. Beneath the thin layer of new-looking trash was a concrete slab. Twenty yards away was another slab, then another. A feeling of dread welled up inside me as I looked for signs of my old house, of any house, but all I found were an old bathtub and some bricks from a chimney. The rest of the house parts had been bulldozed somewhere else, I guess. Into one of those cubes, maybe, or up against the base of Trash Mountain itself.
I should have been angry, but instead I felt sad. I had avoided the house for years, not wanting to see another family in there, or to see it empty and filled with ghosts, and now it was gone. Vanished. The fact that it was indistinguishable from our neighbors’ houses really bothered me. What if we had kept a family graveyard back there, like country people sometimes do? How would we visit our dead loved ones? But who was I kidding. We never even had a dog to bury, or a cat or a goddamn fish.
It was only later, on my way back to Grandpa’s, that the anger came. I had a vision of other houses getting bulldozed. Schools and businesses too. I wondered how many busted up buildings could fit inside Trash Mountain, and what about gassed out bodies? What if Boss and them had fallen asleep and never woke up, and were tucked up in there dead? It made me think of Komer and Haislip and all their buildings and people as one big trash pile, the dumpster of the world!
I would buy the Red Dragon 400,000 BTU Backpack Torch Kit with Squeeze Valve, I decided. Hell, I had $2,013 in two shoeboxes wrapped in duct tape; I could probably buy a Stinger missile launcher from an out-of-work mujahideen. I could douse the place in napalm then shoot it from a distance like a sniper. I could fill Grandpa’s truck with nitroglycerine, bum rush the gate, then crash the truck into the base of Trash Mountain and blow it sky high.
Turns out I didn’t have to do that stuff, though. I got a call from Bi-Cities a few weeks later, and they pretty much invited me inside.
Chapter 12
TO THIS DAY I have no idea what makes a résumé stick somewhere, but I guess mine stuck. The call I got was from the guy who interviewed me for the Bi-Cities internship the year before, the one who loved self-starters. He said they had a new position for a self-starter such as myself. “The only caveat,” he said, “is it isn’t an internship. We can’t offer college credit. But I’m guessing that isn’t a problem?”
“No sir,” I said, not even asking what kind of job it was. I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“And your employer won’t be Bi-Cities, technically,” he said, “but Mister Connors himself.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Expect an email from a woman named Marie Angiulo, to set up an interview.”
At school the next day I checked my email between every class. The email from Marie Angiulo came during lunch. I was in the library with Demarcus, where the computers were.
Marie Angiulo said she wanted to meet me at an address that I knew at a glance wasn’t Bi-Cities HQ. Demarcus looked it up and told me it was in a strip mall outside of town, which
seemed weird to me. He did the satellite view and told me the strip mall was empty.
“Huh,” I said, suspicious. This was Whitey Connors we were talking about. A gangster. “Do you think I should go?”
“You got to. Maybe it’s a side business, and they need an off-the-books type character, like you.”
I liked thinking of myself as an off-the-books type character, who could be relied upon for shady tasks such as arms trafficking, but I couldn’t shake a dim feeling of dread. I pictured myself wandering into an empty storefront where the this Angiulo person was lurking in the back, waiting to spring out and bonk me on the head to kidnap me or steal my blood. What if the self-starter guy had passed my résumé to her with a note that I wasn’t much of an employment prospect but might make a good eternal blood-slave?
The next morning I put on my western jacket and necktie and drove to town, or rather to the strip mall on the outskirts where the address was. The parking lot was empty except for a sagging burgundy Oldsmobile. The strip mall was empty too, except for one narrow storefront that had some posters in the window. The posters said CONNORS FOR STATE TREASURER.
My God, I thought. This was the side business?
I put my feelings aside and went in.
The swinging glass door set off a loud chime, but nobody came to greet me. The store, for lack of a better word, was gray and unlit. There was a table with some folding chairs, and a big wide counter where something had once been sold, or a service rendered. All over the table and countertop were posters and papers and greasy looking empty fast-food bags.
“Hello?” I said.
Nobody replied so I sat down in a folding chair and waited. A few minutes later there was a flush and a woman in a droopy sweater came out from the back. She had long grayish hair and big glasses like grandmas wear in movies, but she wasn’t too old.
“Benjamin Shippers?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, stopping myself from saying ma’am, recalling my conversation at the grocery store with the Darla Waddell, years before. I rose to shake her hand. “Miz Angiulo?”
“Call me Marie. Sit down. Alright, let’s take a look at this thing.” It was more like arright let’s take a look at dis ting. This lady wasn’t from Komer. She sat down and snatched a couple papers off the table: my résumé and cover letter, the ones Demarcus had done up for the internship. But a whole year had gone by. I couldn’t even remember what was on them!
“So,” she said, “why do you think Christian Connors should be State Treasurer?”
“Who’s Christian Connors?”
“Whitey Connors.”
“Oh, right.” I didn’t really know what a State Treasurer did, but I had to think quickly. I said, “The way I see it, a man who can run a big complicated dump like he does can probably run a state, or do its treasuring at least.”
“Never heard it put like that. Alright, what’s this I hear about you and William Mlezcko?”
“Pardon?”
“Bill Mlezcko, Junk Mlezcko. I hear you ran with him in high school.”
“I don’t even know him. I swear. I knew his brother Ronnie.”
She shuffled her papers and read something. “Ronnie, Ronald—well, he’s in jail too.”
I couldn’t believe it. Ronnie was in jail?
“You still run with him?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Marie.”
“Shit. I mean sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She eyed me over her glasses. “You got bigger things to worry about.”
“Pardon?”
“The number for the leadership conference for gifted young people got me the voicemail of someone named Ruthanne Shippers. Any relation?”
Shit, I thought. I had forgotten that Ruthanne screened her calls, like anybody ever called her, that shrew. “She’s my sister,” I muttered. The interview was going horribly.
“We couldn’t get hold of Toni Mikiska, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. The only reference that came through was”—she squinted, reading—“Mark Bauerman. He said you were a creative thinker, when motivated.”
When motivated? Come on, Mr. B!
Marie Angiulo put down my résumé and slid it across the table far away from her, like it stank. “Ben,” she said, “do you mind if I call you Ben? I gotta level with you. The sheer quantity of lying on this résumé is reprehensible. If it were up to me, I’d call the police. But lucky for you, Whitey is the type of man who can’t see a thing without reading it, and he saw your so-called résumé right here on this table. Something about it must have struck him. He said to me, ‘Hire this boy.’ I tried to tell him you were a liar, but he wouldn’t have it. He said to hire you as a shoeshine boy for all he cared.”
I felt grateful to Whitey, then immediately tried to quash that feeling. The man was my nemesis.
“Welcome to Connors for State Treasurer,” Marie said.
“For real?”
“Sort of. Nothing about campaigns is too real, really. We’re bringing you on as junior administrative custodial.”
“As what?”
“An office boy. We need somebody in here during working hours in case people drop in to give money or volunteer. Your first job is to sort all these papers.” She waved her arm at the papers all over the room. “Scratch that. Your first job is to memorize this script.” She slid a sheet of paper across the table. “It’s stuff to say to people.” She took out some keys and handed them to me. “At six o’clock, lock up, then come back tomorrow at seven. Think you can handle that?”
“Yes, ma’am—Marie.”
“Don’t spend all day on the internet jerking off. When you’re done organizing, there’s cleaning supplies in the bathroom. Make the place inviting.”
Marie stood up to leave. I wondered when I’d see her again. And when, and if, I’d meet Whitey Connors.
“Any questions?” Marie asked.
“Yeah, um, why is this office way out here? Wouldn’t it be more convenient for Mr. Connors if it was at the dump—Bi-Cities Sanitation, I mean?”
“Separate pies, know what I’m saying?”
I had no idea what she was saying, but I knew I couldn’t infiltrate the dump from a strip mall two miles away. I would have to bide my time.
After Marie left, I studied the paper she gave me. If somebody called I was supposed to say “Connors for State Treasurer, may I help you?” then “Would you care to make a donation?” then “The core issue of Mister Connors’s platform is improving education,” which seemed weird to me, since he was a businessman and a sanitation expert, but the rest of the spiel explained it: “How, you ask? By redirecting the money wasted on government-run sanitation into schools and the arts. Bi-Cities children deserve an education, don’t you agree? How will Bi-Cities children compete in the world economy without such skills as solar panel repair?”
Since when did we become Bi-Cities children, I wondered. Was Whitey Connors going to change it from Pansy Gilchrist to Bi-Cities Sanitation High School?
After I went over the paper a few times I spent the rest of the day straightening up. There was a file cabinet with hanging files, but the hanging files were empty. Instead, papers were piled up in the fronts of drawers, along with receipts, business cards, matchbooks, fliers, and knickknacks like a spoon commemorating the state bicentennial. I took my time sorting things into piles by category (e.g. “miscellaneous correspondence”) and making labels for the hanging files. By six I wasn’t anywhere near done so I stayed and kept going. When I got hungry there was half a can of peanuts in a drawer, and I drank water from the tap in the bathroom.
In the back was a storeroom with big metal shelves from floor to ceiling, but the shelves were empty. There were boxes of stickers that said CONNORS FOR TREASURER in red, white and blue. There were a couple thousand copies of a letter from Whitey Connors. It started, “Dear Constituent,” then said the same stuff that was on my paper. It was pretty boring. Anyway, there was a littl
e couch back there too, one of those wood-frame couches with cushions you can take off, so I arranged the cushions in a line on the floor and went to sleep.
Marie showed up the next day around ten and was impressed by my progress. If she knew I had slept there, she didn’t say anything. She said, “Anybody call?” and I said no. Then she gave me a big box of envelopes and a printout of a couple thousand addresses and told me to process the letters in the back room. By “process” she meant print the addresses on the envelopes, fold the letters, stick the letters in the envelopes, then put stamps on the envelopes since the meter was broken. Processing letters sounded horrible, but I could tell she was testing my mettle so I said, “You got it,” in a real chipper voice and got started before she even left.
Processing the letters took me four days. Each day at lunchtime I drove to the post office to mail the ones I had finished. I did this without asking, hoping it would make me look like a self-starter who took the initiative.
I didn’t see Whitey Connors that whole first week except once. It was early Friday morning. The front door chime went off, and Marie was in the back room before I could even stand up. I was worried about her seeing me like that, sleeping back there, but she was too preoccupied with the boxes to say anything. After she went through the boxes she turned to me and said, “Where’s the goddamn stickers?”
I told her I had moved them to a drawer in the front, and when I led her out there, that’s when I saw Whitey Connors, or at least I thought it might be Whitey Connors. He was in the parking lot leaning against the side of the burgundy Oldsmobile with his cell phone in one hand and a thirty-two ounce styrofoam soda in the other. He looked small, and that smallness, combined with his curly brown hair, made me think he was young. I had expected an older man. He had a confidence about him, even just leaning there like that, a sort of compact energy that told you he was ready for action. I almost admired him, I’m ashamed to admit, and more shameful still: he reminded me a little of myself.
Chapter 13
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