“Oh, don’t do that,” Dinsmore said.
Since I was already holding the bag, I started to put it in my trash bag and Dinsmore said, “Just . . . put it back where you got it. The cleaning lady’ll take care of it.”
I put it back relatively close to where I’d gotten it from and reached into my trash bag to find something else to use.
I stood up to move to the next one.
Dinsmore followed me through the kitchen to a really nice sunroom they had on the back of their house. Because of all the glass and not a single open window, this room was even more stifling. My shirt was already damp. This was where most of the plants were located. I shuffled through the trash on the floor to get to the first container. All the containers brimmed with trash but most of this looked like beer bottles, cans, and cigarette butts. Party trash. It was going to take a while. Hopefully I could get through it without passing out.
“I ate so much I threw up last night,” Dinsmore said. “I had a five pound hamburger. No bun. I do the low carb thing so I can eat as much as I want, as long as it’s mostly meat or eggs. It’s great. Doc says it’s okay as long as I stay active. So I had to work out for like an hour this morning to make up for it. I feel great now. Really good. And I lost two pounds.”
He surveyed all the empty booze bottles in the room as if seeing them for the first time.
“Man, it looks like I drink a lot, doesn’t it?”
I just shrugged.
“Oh well. If it gets to be too much of a problem, I’ll just go back to rehab.”
I pulled my wet shirt away from my skin and wiped my dripping face on my sleeve before moving on to the next container.
“It’s really hot in here. I’m gonna go cool down.”
I felt relieved when Dinsmore left the room, trying to move as quickly as possible before he came back, moving on to the next container, kneeling in trash to remove the trash from the container. I heard water running and splashing from the kitchen. When Dinsmore came back, he was dripping with water, all of his clothes drenched.
“That’s a lot better,” he said.
I had a brief image of him standing at the kitchen sink and spraying himself with the hose attachment.
In one of the containers I found a pair of small blue women’s underwear.
I held them up and said, “Trash?”
He snatched them out of my hand and said, “I’d better hang on to these.”
By the time I was finished in that room, my trash bag was bulging. Standing made me lightheaded.
There was only one more left. A large black olive tree in the master bedroom. I hoped Mrs. Dinsmore didn’t have a man in there with her, which she had on at least two occasions. She was an attractive woman but being in the same room with a couple who are having sex while trying to do my job made me uncomfortable. It didn’t help that Mr. Dinsmore had been in the living room sobbing while this happened. Mr. Billups wouldn’t let us complain about anything because he was afraid of losing an account.
Mr. Dinsmore led the way. He tapped gently on the door and cracked it.
“Sweetie?” he said softly. “The plant guy’s here.”
He opened the door and followed me into the room.
Mrs. Dinsmore was in the bed, nude and uncovered.
I tried not to look at her.
This was the largest container, filled with a lot of used Kleenex and other stuff I couldn’t really make out because it was all covered in a greenish substance that reminded me a little of what I’d seen back at the motel. It smelled like vomit with a more chemical undertone and I had to try really hard to keep from throwing up myself as I used a discarded red cup from the sunroom to scoop out the pulpy waste. I breathed through my mouth and worked as quickly as possible.
When I was finished, I stood up, staggered, and said, “I think that’s it.”
“Beautiful.” Mr. Dinsmore smiled like a lunatic. “Can I get you to look at one more thing?”
“Sure.”
I expected him to take off walking to another room or maybe even outside but he just motioned me to where he stood by the bed and said, “Come here.”
I set the bulging trash bag down and went over to him.
He motioned down to his wife.
“I don’t know what’s happening to her.”
He reached down and scraped his fingers along her arm that looked different than the rest of her body. He held his fingertips up. They were covered in a reddish brown dust.
“It’s like she’s turning to rust,” he said. “Do you think it’s an STD?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not a doctor.”
He looked sad, the lunatic gleam in his eyes turning to an equally barbed gleam of fear.
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right.”
I just wanted to get out. Looking at Mrs. Dinsmore, I wasn’t even sure she was alive but I didn’t want to ask any questions because I didn’t want to implicate myself any further. I took a couple steps back to grab my bag.
“Call us if you need anything else.”
I left the house as quickly as possible, taking a deep breath once outside. It was a warm day and still felt cool compared to the inside of the Dinsmores’.
Thankfully I only had two more stops for the day. The Tewksburys’ and the Farleys’—and those were both outside jobs.
I got back to the shop just after sundown.
Billups was in his office, drinking coffee and watching a Highway to Heaven rerun on a small television.
“How was it?” He didn’t look away from the TV.
“I think the Dinsmores’ gave me PTSD.”
“It’s unsavory the way he just rents his wife out like that. I mean, I don’t think any money changes hands but still . . . Anyway, Donnie says Mr. Dinsmore’s had another girl around the place himself so I guess everything’s even. Was she there?”
“Didn’t see anyone.”
“Donnie says she couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen. Real pretty though.”
I thought about the blue underwear I’d found in the plant container.
“I don’t know what’s happenin to this country,” Billups mused.
I absently checked my phone but hadn’t missed anything. Maybe Billups had forgotten I needed a ride. I didn’t want to stick around and listen to him talk about the moral failings of America.
“So . . .” I said.
“Right!” he said. “You don’t have your car. Tell ya what . . . we’re so short staffed right now that I don’t really have the time to be runnin you all over the place. You can borrow one of the company trucks, just make sure all the equipment’s locked down.”
“Okay. Thanks. Um, see you in the morning, I guess.”
“No excuses now.”
I left the shop and got back into the truck, feeling a small sliver of freedom. I drove out to Travis’s place, not knowing what I expected to find. I thought about Dawn the entire way there. I didn’t know what it was about her. I wasn’t the type of guy who gets smitten with people. I wondered if she was waiting for me to contact her. Hadn’t I told myself I never wanted to see her again? And now I was freaking out that she hadn’t contacted me and it hadn’t even been two days? Was I just thinking about her because I’d had to go back to work today? I felt like Dawn was doing her best to humiliate me and make me feel uncomfortable but, really, how much more humiliating could it get than working for Billups?
I sighed. I should have gone to college. The things I’d been able to laugh off with the optimism of youth were the very things making middle age nightmarish.
I flipped my brights on and turned onto the access road leading to the field. I stopped the truck and let the headlights illuminate as much of the field as possible. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I got out of the truck and walked over to the fire pit. No evidence of recent fires. The insects made rhythmic humming noises around me. I walked a little farther back in the field and came to a wooden cross stuck into a mound
of dirt. It looked like the kind of grave people created for pets.
I turned the flashlight of my phone on and shone it on the cross.
Printed on it was this:
HEAR LAYS TARVIS STANELY
I took a photo of it and shook my head.
Did Dawn actually expect me to believe Travis was buried here?
I sent the photo to her with the message “Ha ha.”
I pulled back onto the road and around to Travis’s parents’ old farmhouse. Even though Travis and I had been friends since high school, and I had been over there a lot during that time, I probably hadn’t seen his parents in over a decade. I was a completely forgettable person and hoped knocking on their door wasn’t going to get me shot by his dad.
The porch light flipped on and his mother opened the door.
She hadn’t aged well.
Her thin hair was puffed around her deeply lined face, watery light blue eyes peering out from what looked like a melted mask of the woman I remembered.
“Can I hep ya?” There was no recognition.
“Hey Ruthie, it’s Brad.”
I thought this would help, maybe even elicit a smile of recognition. But it did nothing.
“Travis’s friend,” I elaborated.
“Travis ain’t here,” she said.
“Do you know where he is? I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”
“Travis does what he wants. He ain’t here.”
I decided not to press it any further. It was like whatever life force Ruthie had had been drained completely.
I went back to the apartment, masturbated to the thought of licking Dawn’s pussy, and went to bed after reading for a few minutes.
* * *
The next morning I made coffee, watched a beheading video on MeTube, and went to the first stop on the route. I didn’t know if I should be worried about Travis or not. Dawn had never responded to my text and, frankly, I was more worried about that. Maybe it was just because the couple of nights I’d spent around her were juxtaposed with returning to work. If given the choice to be with Dawn—or just part of whatever it was she was doing—or getting up and going to work everyday, I would choose being with Dawn. What would that make me? An employee? A servant? A sycophant? You could say it would mean giving up my freedom—having to do whatever she asked me to—but I’d never really seen having a job as a major hallmark of freedom. All it meant was making barely enough to keep myself alive. That’s the big, cruel joke of a capitalist country. They tell you you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do but you have to have the money to do it.
I mowed three lawns on Main Street. I remained unmolested on the first two stops. The third stop I made it all the way to getting everything loaded back up on the truck before Mrs. Evans came stalking out of the house. Like many Midwestern women her age, she was built like a man, had a man’s haircut, and a dour humorless demeanor.
She didn’t say hi or thanks or anything, just, “Will you come and look at something?”
“Sure.”
I followed her to a flowerbed at the front of the house.
“There,” she said, pointing down between two boxwood bushes.
I looked, not really knowing what I was supposed to be seeing.
I smiled and confusedly shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t see?”
“What am I . . . supposed to be seeing?”
“Grass,” she said. “There is grass in the flowerbeds.”
Her severe expression turned to something closer to fear or maybe just utter, soul crushing disappointment.
I got down on my knees and scrambled between the two bushes. Ultimately, I thought, they really just wanted to see you down on your knees so they could lord over you. It must have righted some balance of class they felt entitled to. I had a quick thought of being on my knees between Dawn’s legs. Why hadn’t she contacted me?
I managed to find one blade of grass about an inch long.
“This it?” I held it pinched between my fingers.
Her look of disappointment turned to one of relieved joy.
She placed a hand over her chest and said, “You got it.”
I was afraid she’d cry if I dropped it onto the lawn so I slid it into my pocket, patted it, and said, “I’ll make sure it goes where it needs to.”
But she was already gone, back into her closed up house. I watched the door shut and noticed a security camera above the front door. A quick perusal of the front of the house revealed two more cameras on either corner. I’d lived in Gethsemane my entire life and never really got the feeling crime was rampant. Something else for rich people to spend money on. I was going to drop the blade of grass on her lawn before getting back into the truck but I imagined her watching me from some darkened room of her house and was afraid it would bring her running back out.
I mowed the grass and trimmed some shrubs for the Baptist church in town, the Presbyterian church on the opposite side of the street, and went to one of the two bars in town to trim and water the ferns surrounding their party patio.
After that I went to my last stop, the Gundersons’, an indoor one.
I parked on the street since Roberta was in the driveway. I’d met her coming and going on a number of occasions. Roberta was a type of light nurse who bathed them and turned them.
She emerged from the house as I was on my way up to it.
She smiled a little and said, “Well, it should smell a little better anyway. I got em all washed up.”
“Yikes.”
“And I passed the maid on my way in.”
“Makes my job sound too easy.”
“Yeah, put in a good word for me, would you? I’d love to stop doing this shit.”
“You know . . . come by and fill out an application. I’m not exactly a model employee but I’ll do what I can. We’re really short handed right now.”
Roberta let out a little laugh and said, “Okay. See ya around, Brad.”
“See ya.”
We both knew she wouldn’t bother asking for an application from Billups. Roberta had a vagina and was probably too brown to work for Billups, even though those things would never come from his mouth. They didn’t have to. Like a lot of guys his age and socioeconomic status, he said it by what kind of radio shows he listened to and television shows he watched, how he dressed, the bumper stickers he chose to put on his car, the slogans he decided to wear on his t-shirts or hats.
I waved to Roberta as she pulled away, wondering why I’d never found myself with someone like her. Someone who seemed nice and genuine. Of course, I knew Roberta already had two kids and had to take a second job because her husband was too busy battling alcoholism and drug addiction to really be present. The nice ones got chewed up young and just kept getting gnawed on until there wasn’t anything left.
I knocked on the Gundersons’ door and waited for the faint click of the automatic lock, my cue to enter.
Unlike the crushing heat of the Dinsmores’, the Gundersons’ was like walking into a meat locker.
There were four of them—two parents and two kids—all so morbidly obese they were virtually bedridden. The good thing was—since they were virtually immobile—they couldn’t follow me around the house. The bad thing was that they always had a laundry list of things for me to do. Like they spent a good amount of their lying around time, which was all the time, thinking about the plants in their house, most of which they were too fat to get up and actually look at.
Mrs. Gunderson lay in a trundle bed in the living room, wearing the bare minimum of clothes stretched over her pale, doughy flesh. She and Mr. Gunderson were nearly indistinguishable from one another. I waved to her but it didn’t elicit any kind of response. I typically dealt with Mr. Gunderson, who was one of those fat men who’d developed a lady’s voice, possibly because of all the weight on his trachea or vocal cords or whatever. The first time I’d heard him speak, I’d had to stifle my laughter for the rest of the conversation,
feeling like a jerk the entire time.
I walked through the house and to the large master bedroom in the back.
The door was open and I leaned in.
“Hey, Mr. Gunderson. I’m here to take care of the plants.”
“Oh, hey, Brad.” Man, that voice. It got me every time. I ducked back out of the doorway for just a moment so I could compose myself.
“Could you come here a minute?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. At least Mr. Gunderson never talked long. It seemed like, as I’m sure with most things that weren’t eating or watching TV, it took too much effort. I wasn’t sure how he and Mrs. Gunderson had ever managed to work up the energy to fuck and have children. But they hadn’t always been morbidly obese. Somewhere along the way they’d simply chosen to pick their poison. What was it Charles Bukowski said? “Find what you love and do it until it kills you.” Something like that.
I went into the room and got to within three feet of the bed. Roberta was right. It didn’t smell like it did on a lot of other days—sort of dank and musty, maybe a little cheesy or yeasty. I’d have to remember to try and time it like this. After the humiliations suffered at the hands of a lot of my other clients, the Gundersons’ would be just about the easiest on my route.
I leaned in so I could hear Mr. Gunderson.
He held out his phone. “Will you do me a big favor and take a photo of the plants when you’re finished with them? I haven’t seen them in a while and I’d love to look at them, but I don’t think I’m going to be getting up any time soon.”
He moved his eyes toward the foot of the bed.
I hadn’t even noticed his left foot had been removed, the leg above its absence covered in purple knots and suppurating wounds. The other leg didn’t look that much better and I imagined that foot probably wasn’t far behind.
“Sure.” I took the phone. “You just want pictures or you want me to shoot some video?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Video would be really nice.”
“Sure thing.”
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