Garbage

by Stephen Dixon

  “At my bar.”

  “Please—I said negative or yes. Is yours a pay phone?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Don’t give the bar’s name or if you own it or don’t. Simply stay there, keep the receiver off without disconnecting us for a minimum of ten minutes and we’ll trace it and come to you. Are you able to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you hear recorded music it’ll mean we know where you are and are on our way and you can hang up. Anything goes wrong before then, call us back.”

  I leave the receiver off, twenty minutes later say into it “I didn’t hear any music. Have you traced me, sir?” Nobody answers, I repeat the question, get a dial tone and hang up. Probably better I don’t meet them, seeing how they botched up just the simple task of tracing me. And our two interests really aren’t related, private and public garbage and all that, so I don’t call back.

  A woman comes in that evening, takes a bar stool and says “Bloody Marsky, hold the pepper, lots of vodka, Slavic style if you got and rocks.” She looks and is dressed kind of seamy and scouts the place as if all she’s interested in is who’ll screw her for money or buy her drinks and preferably both. I never liked the professional pickup or freeloader in my bar. It reflects badly on me and sometimes on my father to the few oldtimers who remember him, and also makes a lot of men mad when the woman doesn’t come across gratis after all those bought drinks or suddenly out of nowhere makes a phonecall, grabs her bag and goes. But you can get sued for kicking someone out for something they didn’t do or they’re not, so I’ll just watch her.

  I make her drink and say “Dollar even, please,” and she says “Boy, that’s cheap,” opens her handbag, keeps it open without taking anything out and says “I wonder if you can help me. About an hour ago I was speaking to a man on the phone here. But we were cut off and when I tried calling him back your line was busy. Anyone here keep the phone off the hook for a while around that time?”

  “An hour ago? How about four?” and she says low enough only for me to hear “Tone it down, honey. I’m Assistant D.A. Ischgewitz, you spoke to my associate Assistant D.A. Digsby before, though don’t refer to either of us as such. Jerelle. Just Jerelle, as though you know me somewhat.”

  “Okay Jerelle, how you doing tonight?” and I put my hand out to shake.

  “Excuse me,” still low, stirring her drink, “but do you normally shake your customers’ hands after you serve them their drinks?”

  “Usually when they come in.”

  “That’s what I thought. Then why do you want to shake mine now and so ostentatiously as though you knew me well? I don’t want to shake it. It’s too obvious and doesn’t suit my role or yours. You want to give my cover away and maybe get us both knocked off?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. That’s it—hand down, relax, wipe the counter if you have nothing to do and your hand’s itchy and it actually is a little filthy around my glass. Now, is there a possibility we can get knocked off? I have gotten my share of death threats during this investigation, though far below par.”

  “I’ve been threatened too.”

  “But can we immediately, in answer to my question, by anyone here?”

  I look around, couple of familiar customers, wipe the bar, “No.”

  “All right. Now by whom before, and what Digsby said was with a club?”

  “A pipe. I only said I’d been clubbed because it seemed like not the right use of language anymore to say I’d been piped. Stovin’s Private Carting Company.”

  She sips, thinks over. “You know, this Mary merits a B plus in my humble estimation and I’m an expert on them. Pepper always poisons it.”

  “I don’t usually put in much.”

  “You didn’t this time, did you? Even a pinch of it is especially bad for my health.”

  “You said leave it out, I did.”

  “Who’s Stovin’s?”

  “This bandage on my head? They also set fire to my apartment and have threatened to do much worse. Now they’re dumping trash as a kind of harassment on my sidewalk and Sanitation is giving me summonses for Stovin’s dirty work.”

  “Members of the Sanitation Department are involved in a possible collusion with this carter?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then why’d you call us? Your problem if there is one should be dealt with by investigators of private carters.”

  “I know. Truth is I had misgivings before and after phoning you about you coming here. I only went along with it thinking maybe you’d tip me off who to go to with my complaint, because nobody else knows.”

  Pushes her drink aside, looks mad. “Do you realize you’ve taken up two very important hours of my incredibly limited time, counting getting dressed like an idiot like this and traffic here and no doubt back? I don’t know. Christ I’m pissed. Oh, start with Sergeant Lars of this precinct if he still handles extortions and rackets, but other than him—”

  “He was the one in on this from the beginning. He said I had nothing going for me.”

  Grabs her bag, gets off the stool and starts to leave.

  “You didn’t pay for your Bloody Mary.”

  Turns to me. “Listen, barowner, don’t make me angrier. I might look weak and stupid but I can pull strings.”

  “You want to close my place, go on and close it.”

  “I don’t have to go that far. Just keep your cool.”

  “Then what? Those drinks cost money. You had a hot head before you even came in here. Taking up your time, well hell, so am I—I’ve got time—your stupid recorded phone music that doesn’t work. And also losing my shirt because of this garbage thing and almost my head and no help from Sanitation, you or the police. And you yourself said a dollar’s cheap for that drink.”

  “For what? You hardly put a shot in it and I hardly took a sip.”

  “You wear lipstick.”

  “Wash it off the glass with soap—soap!”

  “I always do. I meant that it gets in the drink. Even if it didn’t I’d still have to throw it out. That’s the health law. You telling me to violate it? Actually why my getting so upset? Usually I give a police officer or anyone similar on the force or for the law a complimentary round or bite to eat if they want, just for the hard and dangerous job they have on the streets.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t hear that,” and leaves.

  “Who she think she is?” a customer says.

  “You helped me with a trash bag last night, want to again for another drink or grilled cheese?”

  “Cheese. Little lettuce-tomato on it this time. I’ve drank enough and am all out of dough, even for a tip.”

  I make him a sandwich, give him a trash bag to get rid of someplace. Give another man a couple of beers for taking out two trash bags. First man comes back and says “If I haul away one more you’ll give me a shot of cheap scotch?” I pour him one, he drinks up and starts taking the bag away. “Make it two bags for the large shot I gave,” and he says “That’s too much. I’ve a bum shoulder since I was a kid.” I say “Knock off with the excuses—just take the damn two,” and he does. I put the rest of the bags in the basement, phone for a cab to take me to my hotel, lock up when I see the cab coming and next day I find twice as many bags in front of the bar than the previous morning, some when I inspect inside them the same bags I gave the two customers last night, and another summons. I bring the bags downstairs, where I’ve a pile of about thirty now.

  All morning, when I’ve the time to, I take some of the smaller softer garbage and break it up a little more or just flush it down the toilet as is if I think it’s small enough. Around noon one of the customers comes back from the bathroom and says my toilet’s backed up. I go to it. Floor’s full of water and toilet paper and some of the garbage I flushed down has come back and is floating at the top of the toilet bowl with somebody’s stools. I scoop the stuff out and try the plunger, but it doesn’t unclog it. I mop the floor and phone a plumber. Whil
e he’s in the toilet with his plumber’s snake pushing the garbage to the sewer, a Department of Health inspector comes in and asks to see my basement.

  “Routine?”

  “More. Someone complained you have it all filled with trash and vermin.”

  “Who?”

  “Anonymous, but the complaint slip says the caller’s voice sounded sane and brainy enough to make us have to check it through.”

  “Sure, I got trash down there. But in plastic bags, sealed tight—they don’t even smell or not much, at least not way up here. And I spray roachkiller all over them every day. You smell anything?”

  “Stale beer and roachkiller, but my nose hasn’t been the same for a month.”

  “What’s the matter, a cold?”

  “The season. You have schoolage kids packed in crammed classrooms, they always bring something home.”

  “Have a brandy and beer while you’re here—that ought to fix you up.”

  “Just the second half of that—the draft,” and I pour and give him it, he says “How much?” I say “First’s on me if you don’t mind, especially when you didn’t take the brandy,” and he says “No way, leastwise today,” and gives me a dollar, I give him change and he puts a quarter tip on the bar.

  “I wasn’t trying to manipulate you or anything,” I say going downstairs with him. “Not for a few cents—that isn’t what I was trying to do. Anybody, my feeling goes, even the mayor, is also a potential customer if he lives or works around here or nearby, so the first or second one free is my standard policy.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t get alarmed if you are. But I live upstate and go by the rule to get for nothing you got to give for nothing, and so on on my job, so now we’re all straight.”

  I show him the trash bags and tell him why they’re there.

  “Hiring a carter’s your problem, ours is your clientele’s health.” He writes a violation. “I’m sorry, you think I like doing this? But get all these bags out by this time tomorrow or we’ll have to temporarily revoke your health permit which will mean you’ll have to close down till the violation’s corrected and permit’s returned.”

  “At least let me keep open the bar part.”

  “Beer’s food and you’ve got olives on the bar and stuff. No, Department regulations are the entire place I’m afraid, so nothing more for me to say.”

  I don’t offer him anything else—not money, which I’m almost tempted to just to relieve from me some of the strain. Or whatever he might like: though I never did it before or my father if he was telling the truth. I know from other bartenders where some inspectors have taken women as payment or TV’s or sports tickets or washers for their wives or in the old days suits for themselves and radios. But I can see by his face and personality where it would only get me in much worse.

  That evening while drinking with a customer at the bar I tell him my dilemma from almost the beginning and say “I’m at a loss now to know what to do. You used to have a store, Red. What way in the same spot would you get rid of your trash without having the same bags pile up on you with twice as many others the next day?”

  “Take them to the garbage pier.”

  “What garbage pier where?”

  “Uptown along the river on the West Side where they unload all the city’s garbage into barges and tug them out to the ocean to dump. You want a van, say the word. A friend for a small fee for him and me. You have to do the driving, I’ll only help you pile them in, as I don’t want to get too involved in this if those shits who are screwing you are as serious as you say.”

  I call Sanitation and learn it’s okay to unload my trash at the pier after two a.m. when there’ll be no city garbage trucks to interfere with. I give Red the money. He comes by around one with the van and we fill it up with bags. He says “I wish I could help you with the second load but have to get some sleep.”

  “Next round I can probably do myself though it’ll probably kill me.”

  “Make sure you get the van back to my friend before you croak or he’ll kill me. While it’s still out you, me and the bar are on loan.”

  I drive to the Sanitation dock, enter the pier through a gate onto this old covered wooden structure like an old-fashioned covered bridge upstate but much longer and which has at the end of it floating in the river a huge barge. I back up and drop my bags in it one by one. All kinds of things are already in the barge and as trash some I’ve never seen before. A hammock that looks brand new. If I had any use for one or knew anybody who did and felt it’d be safe to climb in to get it, I would. A set of golf clubs, half a big tree, what seems like a good restaurant freezer, shrubs that have green flowers on them so they must’ve been growing indoors, a bunch of small men’s hats the same size it seems and in what look like perfect blocked condition and shape and some still fitted bottomside up in lidless hat boxes. Rats are in the barge also and mice or maybe they’re baby rats, these mice, a special river barge kind, not like what I’ve seen in my bar cellar from time to time. And various animal carcasses. I almost think a dead human hand sticking up, its fingers outstretched, with the rest of the body underneath covered by garbage. Next time I drop a bag in I think it’s definitely a human hand with blood on it even and on the forearm puncture marks and around the wrist a patient’s identification bracelet. I drive to the man at the gate who seems to be in charge here. He says “It’s probably your imagination or part of a store manikin or something,” and I say “No, it really looks real, come and see.”

  “It’s happened before, I won’t say it hasn’t. One time I found five whole baby bodies in it and not fetuses, all tied together and gagged and smothered, worse thing anyone’s ever seen here. It made the papers.”

  “I think I remember hearing of it.”

  “You’d have had to. None were traceable, case went unsolved, all sorts of speculation, no crime could have been viler unless there were more bodies of them. Let’s take a look if you insist.”

  We get in a two-seater electric cart and when we’re halfway there he stops and says “Oh yeah, now I recall, sorry for wasting your time, because I was to expect them. A small truckload of cadavers from a medical school, or parts of what’s left of them, arms and legs and things, no heads, that’s not allowed to be scrapped the law says. I think next time they should consign them to a common pauper’s grave, but I suppose they think what use would a nameless tomb be to anyone and also the expense and who’d keep it up over the years?”

  “In the special field they have, the city.”

  “Then it’s you and me, Jack, you and me and every taxpayer, which comes from our billfolds. Better here.”

  “I don’t mind paying for it when it’s just a few cents per taxpayer, especially when I now know they’re ending up here and then the ocean.”

  “They don’t float, they sink, nothing to bother your beach house about unless they have an unusual bloated condition. And it’s good for the water and earth and so eventually us. Helps replenish the minerals in them exactly like everything we excrete.”

  “I still think it’s worth a check to see if that hand’s not connected to somebody murdered.”

  “No, I know what it is, was forewarned,” and he drives to his wooden shack by the gate, I get out and drive to the barge and drop some more bags in it, trying to cover the hand which I can’t stand seeing anymore. One of my bags finally knocks it over and the next one sinks it.

  A truck pulls up. Private carter, not from one of the companies I know of. Man jumps out of the cab, dump part of the truck rises to about forty-five degrees up and the back flap flips open, something like a coal chute drops out and the garbage starts sliding down it into the barge.

  “What are you doing here? “the man says. With a long iron hook he’s dislodging some garbage stuck at the sides of the raised rear.

  “My bags. I’m all done but this one.”

  “You private or public?”

  “I own a bar if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s where y
our bags come from?”

  “No, from home.”

  “What ‘ s in it then?” and he slashes the bag I ‘ m holding with his hook.

  “All right,” when the bottles drop out, “they’re from my bar, what of it?”

  “What of it is what are you trying to do, put us out of work? Get off the dock with your garbage and don’t come back.”

  “Hey look, don’t talk to me like that. I’ve had more than enough crap from you private garbage guys.”

  He puts the hook up to my face. “Smell this. Smell good? Smell like dogwood? Your face and van’s going to smell like this when I push both you and it into the barge after splitting your nose and tires. Because store people start depositing their garbage here to save on the private costs and not one of us truckers will have a job. Foy?”

  Driver gets out of the cab. Big guy also. Both bigger and much younger than me and I’m big. Truck’s rear is still in midair but only some dark liquid’s dribbling down the chute. Nobody else is around. Electric cart’s parked the length away of three city blocks and man’s probably in the shack.

  “I wish you fellows would understand me but it seems—”

  “That’s right,” Foy says.

  “That’s what I said. And you can see,” bending over, “by my head that I’m not here for trouble and have really had plenty of it, so excuse me,” and I go back to the van holding the slashed bag together so nothing will spill out and drive off the pier, honk my horn thanks to the shack, leave the bag in front of a store where there’s garbage and drive back to the bar.

  I fill the van with the remaining bags and get very tired doing this and my headache comes back bad. I think I feel blood running down my neck and in the dark outside taste it and it’s sweat. I haven’t really cried for I don’t know how many years when all of a sudden there it is. What’s making me so sad? and I answer to myself it’s probably my head that hurts worse than it has in days that’s causing some chain reaction to the tear ducts or whatever they are that start the crying process off and that squeezing feeling inside my neck and chest. But that’s not it. I know what it is. It’s my weariness and frustration with just about everything concerned with this trash thing from the beginning and my near future prospects in the bar combined. Is that it? That’s it or close as I can get. Then go inside, not out here, someone might pass, and let it out for once and maybe you’ll feel better and I go in the bar, lock the door, pull down the shades, try and cry but can’t now and pour a double, shoot it down, another and yell “Cocksuckers, motherfuckers, I hate all you guys, every last bastard one,” and throw the empty glass against the wall and almost collapse from the effort and maybe from my yelling as well and rest a bit more and drink just a single and put an icepack to the hurt part of my head and get back in the van and drive across the bridge singing from all the liquor I drank and actually feeling happy till I thought of it and drop off a bag here and there in that borough and drive to the borough next to it and drop off a few more. When I’m walking back to the van with almost all the bags gone a police car pulls up alongside of me and its top lights blink on and start spinning.