Garbage (9 page)

“Then I'd say you must be a jerk.”

“Let's see the bent bars.”

“They're repaired. Think I wanted them coming back the next night?”

“Who repaired them?”

“A craftsman. Someone I know. I'm not letting you bother him because that part's none of your business or his.”

“You reported it?”

“Sure I did. How else can I get my legal theft insurance and also put the loss plus all the other unstolen things I declared stolen on my income tax form?”

“Well, I do believe you and I don't.”

“Then to me you're still a jerk. I'm your friend. Though we don't see each other twice a year, we know how hard we work and our fathers go back in this trade ages ago for years, so think I'd choose those thieves over you?”

“You did to pick up your trash.”

“That was them over Ecomolos, not you.”

“If you're my friend, forget the money. Just go along with me and tell whatever officials need to hear it to stop Stovin's about how they pushed the garbage pickup in our faces like dung.”

“I go only so far for friendship as I do for being Mr. Easy Touch behind the bar and then, like I know you must, I stop. My life, that's first. My business, second. You want to switch them around, that's your business, your life. But now you better believe I was robbed also because if you don't then I can't talk to you again like this like friends. And why you so worried? You'll come out ahead on the robbery too. Like me tell the income tax people I was holding a couple-thousand for you and I'll back your every word.”

“How much of mine you report missing?”

“I was smart for you. I only told them a big roll and why.”

“No, I'll tell them the hundred-thirty or so Hector said he left. I'm strictly by the books.”

“Even when you can't be insured for it?”

“Even.”

“Then maybe you really are a jerk or your head got hit worse than it looks. But I got a lot of bookwork and setup to do, so what do you say we shake friendly and part solid old pals?”

We shake. I go. It's cold with another inch of snow on the ground. I flip up my collar, take out my flop hat. I bought it today three sizes too large for me regularly. It's the only size that can both protect and be set lightly on my head. Every now and then for the past day the wound bleeds through the bandage and I change it myself. The stitches are still in though the doctor promises they'll evaporate. My head still aches, probably because I don't take all the pills I'm supposed to. I don't want to get so groggy with them where I can't work or will slip on the little spilt water that's always on the bar slats, try as I might to keep that area dry, and get hurt even worse. Maybe I shouldn't go to work. No, I know I shouldn't but I have to make money because if I don't I won't have any. And I also don't want to just stay in my hotel room alone with nothing else to do but drink, which I never liked that much and along with it just to pass out or think, though with all the booze I own it's probably the one thing I can afford to.

So I open up. Place looks in okay shape. Nothing much missing: some soda, several fingers of scotch. Two minutes after I'm there someone barges in, runs to the john and I get so scared at this man throwing open the door and running past me that I drop my broom and back up against the liquor shelf and knock a bottle over, catching it as it falls. He comes back, sits on a stool, says “Beer, Shaney me boy, and I'm in a rush.” I draw a beer, he puts a dollar down, looks at me and says “How's it going?”

“Fine.”

“Haven't seen you open for days.”

“Been away.”

“Vacation?”

“No,” and I give him change and go about my business. He orders another beer and when I give it to him he stares at me and says “You know, I only now noticed. What's wrong with your head? Trip on your stairs, get mugged?”

“Sort of. I don't want to go into it.”

“Don't. You're not married, right?”

“No.”

“I am. So I thought, well, it happens, I'm not saying it does to me, but what happened with you?”

“I really don't want to go into it, Curtis, mind?”

“No. We all have our troubles. I don't tell you mine, you don't to me yours. If I did, but you don't want to go into it. But if I did it'd be traditional—customer: bartender, not bartender to customer. Not that I'm not interested in what might have happened to you, but we'll forget it. I will. I'm sure with that face pain on your face and bandage, you can't. I'm sorry. I can't keep my mouth quiet. Tell me to shut up, tell me to go, even, if I continue to talk about it. But I think my problem is I'm too overconcerned with people's problems. This ridiculous social consciousness in me. Chasing kids down the street who rob old ladies, which some people might not find a problem of mine. The old ladies, I mean, but forget it. I'm sure it's a sick need in me, a compulsion, I'm sure. Like I wasn't a good little boy and am overcompensating for it now, but that's not what I wasn't. So I have to look after everybody and have all these ethical even religious ideals when I probably deep down don't and hate people. But give me a last one quick. I'm in a rush and talked too much.” I do, he drinks, stands, says “Do me a favor. And I'm sorry, you're going to dislike me for sounding so well-meaning when I just admitted I'm probably really not, but take care of that head,” and goes.

Sanitation inspector comes in and says “Chief's driving around today, Shaney, so shovel the snow from your front or I'll have to write out a summons.”

“I'll do it now. Have a beer.”

“The chief inspector.”

“Just shoot it down. What can he see from a car and my window isn't even clean.”

He sits. “I'm afraid to ask, but what happened to your head?” I give him a beer and a bag of peanuts. He never pays for them though sometimes he tries. It's not for favors from him, which are so small as to be almost just neighborly, but because he's on his feet all day and deserves a break like any public servant patrolling the streets and keeping the law and order of things.

“Shaney, can you hear me in there? What happened to your head or don't you want to say?”

“Garbage happened to my head. You know garbage so you know how it can come from nowhere sometimes and hit your head. A brick filled with it—a private one—but maybe the less said of it the better for me and quicker the garbage brick hitters will go away.”

“I don't understand you but do that you don't want to talk about it, so okay.”

I give him another beer, get my shovel, go outside and clean the sidewalk of snow, throw rock salt, come back, dishwash, pour, mix, cook, make sandwiches, drinks, tap a keg, fill a three-pound coffee can with grill grease, pack two huge plastic barrels with whole liquor bottles I'm by law supposed to first break and cover them with kitchen scraps, clean out the toilets and urinals, mop the washrooms and bar floors, scour the refrigerators inside and out, dust every bottle on the bar, place phone orders for food, beer, liquor, soft drinks and different kitchen and bar accessories for the coming weeks, stock the deliveries that come in, do some accounting, pay my bills, send out laundry, work like this for only ten hours today.

I'm tired through most of the day and at midnight I shoo everybody out early but one regular who says when he's about to step out the door “Need some help, Shaney?” and I say “Nah, I can do it myself,” and he says “What are you talking—you can't handle those big cans,” and I say “I don't know—sure, if you can manage it, as I'm really feeling too weak to and the garbage has already been here three days.”

After Al carries the barrels out he says “Worth a shot of gin, isn't it?” and I say “Think I'd've let you if it wasn't?” and he says “Not that I wouldn't have done it for you for nothing the way you're banged up,” and I say “Don't worry, nobody does anything for me for nothing, just enjoy,” and pour a double gin for him and he says “Can you also spare a split of ginger ale with a lime twist in it?” and I say “For sure.”

I leave the bar with him, look around when I step outside and lock up to see nobody's going to suddenly run up and throw something at or jump on me. I ask Al to walk me home “so if I do drop dead along the way someone will be there to take me to my grave,” though what I really want him for is sort of as protection. We walk, he talks. About his lost job, kids, sports, exsonofabitch boss, too-slim wife, funny and sexy TV shows, films and dinners he wishes he'd the money to go to and how I really shouldn't come in tomorrow with my head wrapped like so, though he guesses I probably know best what I'm doing for myself or at least better than he.

“Yes.”

“If you want, give me your keys and I'll open up. I've tended bar quarter of my life and you can come in when you like.”

“No thanks.”

“Bar's a bar. Beer goes, I know how to tap. And I never drank a drink till six any day but my folks' funeral, God's word.”

“It's not that.”

“Six in the evening and by drinking I mean alcohol.”

“So I thought.”

“Then what? It's references, I can get. Because I'm only thinking of you and your head and of course a few bucks off the books for me.”

“I'm okay.”

“You're okay? You're not okay.”

“What can I say? I'll survive.”

“Then if you want I can take your garbage out every night and walk you home this way till you don't need me, my only pay maybe a couple double-gins on the side and coin or two just to get me home, all right?”

“Fine.”

“Great—This walking. It's so strange for me. All the years I know you—maybe a dozen—and never seen you once out of your bar, even by accident on the street.”

“I know.”

“I'm being truthful, not diddling with you. You're all right. You're well liked. You've been generous and more kind than all the other bars around and that's why drinkers will always go to you even if your prices are a bit high.”

“Mine?”

“The Manor House for instance on G.”

“All the Manor Houses are dives with the worst pimps, hookers and sprawled-out crazies and drunks in them and oversmoky, dirty and unhealthy beyond belief and wouldn't give you credit for a beer on your birthday if you showed them the birth certificate where the exact same time you asked for credit was the exact same time fifty years ago you were born. And far as their food and one on the house is concerned—well I don't know. Maybe their food's good, mine's not so hot.”

“And they give free drinks.”

“One after every three like me?”

“Their ratio might be lower, but believe me—”

“Pour as tall a glass and not in your big hollowed-out bottom that I think a sin to have?”

“If you slip the barman something. As to the hollow bottom, I'd have to inspect, as I didn't even know yours wasn't. But believe me, nobody I know lays a bad word on you except maybe if they're gassed.”

“Why you telling me all this?”

“Like I said, to show you're liked.”

“No, people always have other reasons.”

“Not me. It's the truth with proof. I thought with your head hurt you needed encouragement and to know good feelings come your way from people too.”

“Thanks.”

“Welcome. Look, I don't mean to get personal now that I feel we know each other better. But head injury aside, I've never seen you with no smiles like this. What actually happened? Someone said something about garbage and I said ‘ He got slugged over that?'”

“I didn't, thanks again and I'll see you,” as we're at my hotel.

“Tomorrow. You closing same time as tonight till the bandages come off?”

“Earlier.”

“I'll be in before then. Ten. Help you around, sweep up, do that—pots even. I draw the line at toilets, at least inside them unless you pay me real well, and take out your garbage and see you to home. Still on?”

“Sure.”

We shake, I go in, not expecting to see him tomorrow because what drinkers promise the night before are like light-years away in memory the next day, check for messages, are none, wonder if Stovin's is through with me figuring as I do that we're all squared up now: one of each of us landing in the hospital and me with several forever lost workdays. If they let me alone from now on I won't broadcast to the world what went on between us anymore. They wouldn't want me to, thinking other storeowners they want to do or do garbage business with' might get similar ideas and defy them or try to which Stovin's might hold me responsible for starting it all. I just want to get better and find an apartment and work and do business the way I've always done it: alone with the tradesmen I want to do it with.

A telegram's under my door. No name on it, just my hotel address and room number and the message says “Nice and quiet now huh?”

I go downstairs and ask the nightclerk “How'd I get this?” “Telegraph people. Wanted to phone it in and when you didn't answer, delivered it by hand.”

“How come it wasn't in my box?”

“Telegrams we think are important messages, and since people are inclined to rob from boxes when we're not looking, we stick them under your door.”

“If it's so important why wasn't it pushed all the way into my room instead of hanging half outside into the hall?”

“Boy who pushed it didn't do his job. In any case we got it away from downstairs.”

“And there's no name on it, just the room. Why you so sure it was for me?”

“That's your room number, four-twenty, so that's you.”

“But I've only been in my new room for two days. It could've been meant for the guest right before me.”

“Let's see, last before you,” and he looks in the register. “Oh yeah, a couple not even for the night. Two men, they gave fake names, passing themselves off in the afternoon as a father and son team in for a funeral and needing a few hours repose.”