Garbage Man

by Joseph D'lacey

  All the photos could do was remind her of the ‘life’ she’d known before finding her Saviour. There had been a void in her existence then - no, that wasn’t accurate - her entire existence had been a void, even in childhood. She had never participated, she had only ever observed. The world revolved and its people willingly danced. The old Mavis - the young Mavis, as she’d been - did not like the music. Nothing in the dance held any meaning for her. Until she found Him, even the natural spin of the planet seemed powered by random, purposeless clockwork. The world was a toy, its people were puppets; the whole of creation pirouetting ceaselessly in an absurd oblivion.

  Reaching nineteen without any change in her outlook and concluding her arrival in the world was equally without meaning, Mavis hung herself inside her mother’s huge antique wardrobe. She didn’t understand the principles of a hangman’s noose and so she asphyxiated slowly rather than snapping her neck. Her body’s will to survive had been stronger than her mind’s inability to find a reason to keep on living and she kicked and hammered the old cupboard to pieces around her. It collapsed, setting her free.

  And it was in that moment, cheek by jowl with the reaper’s blade, God had entered her life. It was like standing in the stream of a flamethrower. All her ignorance was burned away. At last, she began to understand. She did not feel welcome in the world because she was His special scion. Of course she felt alienated and excluded - she was of the very divine fire that now flayed away the last of her human stupidity. Through the flames came God’s voice so clear and direct that the sound hurt more than the blaze around her.

  You are my child, my instrument. Love me as I love you and I will always guide you, always protect you. Do as I ask, and you will dwell forever in my house.

  She’d never felt alive before that moment. Now she was alight with sensation; explosions of brightness and colour lit up death’s night sky.

  -I’ll do anything you ask of me.-

  I ask only this: Be vigilant.

  There was a terrible moment of doubt. The conflagration dimmed.

  -How will I know what to watch for?-

  Trust me. You will know.

  In a moment her faith was total. She had a relationship, a personal relationship, with the creator. It was like a direct line to his wisdom and love. He never spoke to her again - not in words - but he communicated with her in signs every day. Whenever she asked for His judgement or help on a matter, the answer came. All she had to do was be vigilant and she would see His reply. The sign might come in a newspaper article or from a television advert. It could arrive as a phone call from someone or an odd coincidence that had very specific significance. Since sharing in God’s love everything had become significant. She was constantly in conversation with Him.

  Though she wore a silk square to hide the scar the rope had left on her neck, when she was safe and alone at home, she uncovered it. For, though it was a shameful thing she would never let another human being see, it was also the mark that made her His child forever; her mark of salvation and redemption.

  And she was constantly watchful.

  It had become her duty, not merely to spread the good news, but to watch for sinfulness and wrongdoing in her small area of the world and to make things right in His name. Where she’d previously seen meaninglessness in every deed, now she saw the playing out of the battle between good and evil. Increasingly, the world looked like Satan’s domain. Greed, selfishness and an unquenchable desire for instant satisfaction were tearing the Christian world apart. Morality - the simple, common sense goodness outlined by the Ten Commandments - was a fraying thread. It no longer held anything secure. God’s creation was falling apart around her. Though she was frightened by what the world could do, by what ordinary people could stoop to, she stood squarely beneath the responsibility to show no tolerance for evil. She shouldered it gladly.

  Everything had its purpose. Even the unpleasant altercation with the Smithfield girl outside her house had yielded something. It gave her the idea of using her old camera. Now, studying the pictures she’d collected from the camera shop that morning, she realised she was in a position not only of responsibility but also of power. This, again, was part of His message to her. Not only must she watch, now she must act. Her camera was dated. It contained film which needed to be developed, but it did the job well enough. Not all the photos were clear and few of them ‘proved’ anything.

  One or two, however, had the power to set things straight.

  The question was how best to use them and whom to show them to. She had two options:

  She could go with her anger, her desire to do damage to the guilty party, and show them to the person she had, until very recently, favoured. Or she could show them to the one who, in her eyes, had done the greater wrong. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that much of her thinking was based on her prejudice against young, good-looking, self-assured men. She had to let the Lord be the judge.

  When it came right down to it, the woman had done much worse and had been doing it for longer. It shocked Mavis that such things were occurring on the very estate where she had lived for the last twenty years. It was a sure sign of where the world was heading - into the welcoming jaws of Armageddon. Mavis didn’t want the judgement day to come, though she had no fear of it on her own account, and maybe by getting just these two young people to see the wrongfulness of their behaviour, getting them to reconcile their differences and start again, maybe that would keep God’s wrath at bay just a little bit longer. There had to be love in this world and there had to be respect. Most of all there had to be faithfulness to God’s plain but holy laws. Righteousness and Goodness and Sacrifice above all other things.

  And forgiveness. It was difficult to bear that in mind. If Mavis could not forgive their actions then how could these two, who had strayed so far from the Christian path of marriage, forgive each other? Her decision could not be made lightly or without the help of the Lord.

  Mavis Ahern laid aside the wedge of amateurish but incriminating photos. She slipped off the sofa and onto the carpet. There she prayed and meditated and cried for His guidance. She petitioned for a sign that would make her course of action clear.

  An hour later, her knees sore from kneeling on the thin carpet, she opened her eyes and struggled to get to her feet. Numbness and tingling in her calves threatened to take her balance so she let herself fall into the armchair that looked onto the garden. There she saw her rose beds and how sweetly the roses bloomed from their foundation of manure. She saw how unforgiving the spikes of the roses were and how they all existed together in a natural harmony. From muck came beautiful things, dangerous things. Marriage was like those roses, wasn’t it? God surely meant for her to do something rather than nothing and the roses were His sign to her.

  A magpie flew down from her pear tree. One for sorrow, she thought. What did that mean? A moment later she saw a separate pair, still flicking their tails and rattling their calls to each other up in the branches. Three for a girl. She looked around carefully but there were no more. And no other obvious signs.

  So, then: she would tell Tamsin. Show her the pictures. Her part would be done then - unless they asked for further guidance from her - and the two young people would have to mend their marriage in their own way.

  From the muck good things would come. That was the Lord’s message.

  ***

  The drinking part was easy, as was the not turning up to college. In the space of a day, Ray Wade had developed an uneasiness that made him want to avoid everything. Including his higher education. It wasn’t an important term to complete - he’d already taken the exams and thought he’d done well enough. Lectures had seemed far more important before Jenny’s accident. He’d let Shreve Tertiary College know he was sick and then stayed sick until the term had finished. Now it was the summer holiday, a time for long lunchtime pub sessions. For late nig
hts smoking weed, watching DVDs and playing Revenant Apocalypse on his game console. There was Glastonbury and Notting Hill Carnival to look forward to and, since Jenny was no longer running his life, he could do whatever he wanted.

  He had the feeling though, that some things remained unresolved. For a start, he knew he was staying bombed all the time because he missed her. He hated himself for being so weak when all he’d wanted to do was to get away from her and live his life the way he wanted to. And then there was the incident that had happened at the roadside.

  He thought about that more than anything.

  He thought about it even when he thought he wasn’t thinking about it.

  It was this constant obsessing that led him, not back to Jenny’s door, but to the grass verge where it had happened. He had to know what it was he’d seen. Put it behind him once and for all.

  It was a different day when he drove out to the ring road, the quickest way from his place to College - the way they’d been going when it happened. Day by sweltering day, the sun had burned away all the moisture from the earth and now the verges were hard, dry and yellowed. Ray had both the front windows down in the Rover to counteract the heat - there was nothing hotter than the interior of a black car in a heat wave. He might as well be driving around in a pizza oven. The smell of synthetic leather and moulded plastic oozed from the seats and steering wheel as Fleetwood Mac thrummed out ‘The Chain’ from the only thing of value in the car, Ray’s Pioneer stereo.

  Neither the sunshine vibe music, nor the glaring presence of summer were enough to make him feel good about revisiting the spot where Jenny had ‘lost’ her toe. He pulled off the road in the gateway to a field waist-high with brightly-flowering rape and walked the final few yards to the spot.

  A month of weather had changed the place from the damp, blood-streaked verge he remembered to an arid, dusty scrub. As he reached the spot, he slowed down and took in a long, careful view of the strip of stubbly grass lying between the ring road and the fields. There wasn’t a single car passing in either direction. Across the rapeseed field a silent gang of crows loitered in the dead outer branches of an oak tree. The ground in front of him was dry and empty. No blood, no litter, no sign of anything except drought.

  He stopped on the place where he thought the ‘attack’ had happened and giggled at the memory of Jenny being knocked over in the rain by a bag of damp rubbish. He shook his head at himself. How could he be laughing? Some other part of him answered, how can you not be laughing? The bag of rubbish hadn’t been moving. It hadn’t been alive. They’d both had very little sleep the previous night. They’d both been so stoned on a new batch of weed that they’d taken most of that sleep in a tangled pile on the sofa. Nothing had bitten Jenny’s toe off. Inside the bag of rubbish there must have been a shard of broken glass, an old carving knife or razor. Shit, there could have been an animal trap hidden inside it deliberately by some evil-minded sicko.

  And why was there nothing here to prove that anything had ever happened? Because the environmental services would have been along in the meantime and cleared up the mess. A crow or magpie had probably hopped away with Jenny’s big toe and fed strips of it to its brood of hungry chicks. Ray released a sigh.

  ‘What the fuck am I wasting time out here for? I’ve still got all ten tarsals.’

  Astounded by his own stupidity, worried and amused in equal measure by the kinds of paranoid fantasy he was prepared to accept as true, he turned away from the spot and trotted back to the car.

  His mind eased by his review of events, he made a deal with himself:

  He wasn’t going to think about stupid Jenny and her stupid toe anymore. He wasn’t going to believe in slithering hungry garbage. He was going to enjoy the rest of the summer.

  ***

  His aching heart and his aching cock led the way. Her front door was a terrifying magnet he could not avoid, though the rest of his body protested. Even his brain told him he was crazy.

  Don’t do it like this. Think about it first. Make a plan.

  The voice of his heart was louder. The voice of his heart commanded.

  Donald’s feet walked him down the stairs of his house and to the front door. None of his family was up yet. Knowing exactly how to open the front door and close it again without a sound, Donald’s body let him out into the warm bright morning. His paper round took about twenty minutes. That was all the time he had in the worst scenario. In a better scenario, there might be longer but only if he didn’t dawdle now. Faster than he was prepared for, his legs took him and all his pain on a direct route to her. He cut the corners off the streets, walked across other people’s driveways, stepped through the edges of gardens.

  His mind screamed at him to stop, turn around, go home, think it over.

  His heart battered away making it hard to breathe. His throat dried out and he knew he’d have no voice, only the expression on his face when he saw her. That would be enough, said his heart, more than enough. Then they would touch - a spark to the high-octane fuel - and he would enter a painless ecstasy.

  For a few minutes, his mind said.

  That will be enough, replied his heart.

  He was there somehow. Without remembering a single step that brought him. His chest hurt. He knew when he opened his mouth all she would hear would be the drum and bass of his heartbeat. A hand reached up to knock, he saw it and couldn’t believe it was his. It was. The hand knocked an urgent double-rap on the white-painted wood.

  Footsteps in the hallway. The door opened and he saw her

  fucking hell

  husband standing there in his dressing gown. Unshaven, bleary eyed. Unhappy.

  He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t look the man in the eye. He was sure his face was the colour of the scarlet roses in her front garden. The man looked confused and impatient.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asked Kevin Doherty. But Donald heard the barely veiled ‘piss off, squirt’ in his tone. His throat locked.

  Mr. Doherty opened his eyes wider, craned his neck forward in a we’re-all-waiting-and-we’ve-all-got-better-things-to-do gesture of encouragement. Then Donald saw recognition on the man’s face. There could be nothing worse.

  ‘You’re the paper boy.’

  ‘Uh . . .’ said Donald.

  . . .

  ‘I’m s-sorry,’ he added.

  . . .

  And finally,

  ‘No papers today.’

  Mr. Doherty shrugged.

  ‘Thanks for the warning, but who cares? There’s nothing in the local rag worth reading about. Do me a favour, son, will you? Cancel our subscription.’

  The words stopped Donald’s heart. The paper was his only connection to her.

  ‘It’s all right, son. I’m sure you won’t lose your job over it.’

  The husband closed the door. Donald’s legs turned him around and took him away as fast as possible. A shout from behind stopped his heart again.

  ‘Hey! Come here a second.’

  Donald stopped walking and considered sprinting. His body wouldn’t do it. He rotated towards Mr. Doherty like a robot and took a few reluctant steps back towards the door. The man’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  ‘I want to ask you something.’

  Donald started thinking up the frantic denials, lies and excuses. None of them were believable. Mr. Doherty was going to smash him into unconsciousness. Maybe strangle him to death right there on the doorstep.

  Mr Doherty looked from side to side at the quiet neighbourhood and beckoned Donald closer. Two steps were all he could manage.

  Mr. Doherty’s voice became even quieter.

  ‘You haven’t seen a couple Staffordshire bull terriers, have you? They’re easy enough to recognise - got these stupid grins on their faces most of the time. Thought you might have noticed them on your
paper round.’

  ***

  Ray Wade’s days took on a lethargic monotony that was utterly comfortable and utterly safe. He arose some time in the hour before midday and would see the pile of books that needed to be read before the end of the holidays. Bypassing them he would spend fifteen minutes or more frowning over a month-old crossword as he sat on the pot. Breakfast at Luigi’s café varied a little, but not much - some version of the full English highlighting his favoured fried food of the moment - and then back to the flat for his first spliff of the day. There was no hurry in any of this.

  He made a mug of tea and set it on the coffee table while he constructed a complex pattern of cigarette papers, licking and ripping until he had the shape he wanted. Then he crumbled hash over the innards of a Marlboro, made a roach from the dwindling packet and rolled the whole lot into a pristine cone. The first blast of hot, tearing smoke hit his lungs like spicy fog and jammed his brain with sparks and dizziness a moment later.

  When he’d recovered from the first rush, out came the games console and in went disc 2 of Revenant Apocalypse, the scariest and most satisfying game he’d ever played. There on the rumpled couch he would stay for the next three or four hours, moving only to make tea, relieve himself or roll new joints.

  In the late afternoon, both spaced and creeped-out by his one-man war against the undead, he would rediscover the world of sunshine outside the flat and walk through Shreve to The Barge, a pub overlooking the canal. There, in the gravelled beer garden, he would sit and stare at the ducks - cold pints of cider taking the edge off the build up of game-induced paranoia.

  The walk home would include a stop at Rockets Video Rental for a couple of DVDs - comedies usually - to counteract the terror of half a day spent hacking zombies to pieces with a sword. The final leg would then depend on which takeaway he required and whether or not he needed to visit Monkey Man for a new block of hash.