Talk of the Town (3 page)

"If you were in a room full of people, could you pick out the men who pick up your trash?"

"I don't think so," she said after a moment's consideration.

"What about your mailman?"

"Sure, he—" She stopped when she got his point.

"You see? We're like invisible people who haul away the used and unwanted. No one sees us. No one talks to us. No one says thank you. No one decorates their trash can at Christmastime the way they do their mailboxes. We do more for the health and preservation of the world than some doctors and lawyers I've heard of, but we're never invited to Career Day at school. Parents say, 'Study hard, son, or you'll end up being a garbageman for the rest of your life.' We're at the bottom of the barrel. Nobody loves us. Doesn't wanting to be one sound a little crazy to you?"

"Well, you went to college," she said. "You have degrees and can speak on a variety of subjects. Why'd you become a garbageman?"

"It's in my blood," he said, grinning as she teased him with his own words. He got to his feet, dusting the dirt from his dirty clothes. "My dad was a garbageman and both my brothers are in the refuse business."

"You're kidding," she said, amazed, amused, and appalled all at once. He looked at her as if to say
"You
see?"

"My younger brother has an operation similar to this one on the East Coast, and my older brother is up in the Northwest excavating old dumps and landfills."

"Ugh. What for?" she asked, taking his lead as he walked around the truck to get in.

He gave her an odd look, then went on to explain as he stepped up into the cab. "The old dumps and landfills are leaking leachate, that's, ah, well, it's rainwater usually, that falls on these places and it filters down through the waste. It carries germs and polluting chemicals with it, into the ground below and into the water table. Also," he said, opting not to mention that the truck's engine was flooded again as the expression on her face was already showing signs of annoyance, "recycling is relatively new, so he'll remove the glass and metals, line the bottom of the pit with plastic, clay, and gravel, and refill it with the decomposing waste."

"So, it's like a government cleanup program."

"Not really," he said, watching her rub the palms of her hands back and forth along the canvas of her overalls as if she were nervous or anxious for something to happen. "There's a little government funding, but it's a private enterprise. My brother will keep what he makes from the recycling and he'll pipe out the methane gas, which is a by-product of decomposition, and sell that to heat homes and the like. And in return for the government financing, he'll also pull out the leachate, purify it, and return it to the water system."

"So everyone wins."

"Pretty much."

"Who thinks up all this stuff? And why didn't they think of it sooner?" she said, wondering aloud as she tried the engine again. Heavens above, it would have saved a lot of time and panic if they had, she thought, neither expecting nor really wanting an answer to her questions. She'd forgotten for a moment who was sitting beside her.

"Who wants to think about trash when there are empires to be built and wars to be fought and trips to the moon to be made?" he asked, disappointed when the engine turned over. He could have sat there, all day talking to her, looking at her. "It's like a disease. No one wants to think about it if it only affects a few people But when it becomes an epidemic and you get it, or someone you love gets it, well, that's a whole new story. Every brilliant mind in the world goes to work on it. And once in a while the solutions are so simple, it's embarrassing."

"It is, isn't it? Embarrassing. Not just that some of the solutions are simple, but that we've let it get so far out of hand."

He nodded, silently accepting his share of the blame. The front gate was in sight. There were a few cars parked along the fence already, but not so many that he'd be afraid to send her through. Unfortunately.

Being a college-educated garbageman was making a little more sense to her. Trash wasn't what it used to be. It wasn't simply picked up and dumped anymore.

"I know they don't offer garbage degrees in college. What did you study?" she asked, curious.

"Science. I had a double major in biology and chemistry. I mastered in environmental science. Took a little law, too, for a while."

"But you're not a lawyer."

"No. I'm a garbageman." And proud of it, she could see. "You can let me out here."

She stopped near the MRF.

"Well, you've been a real education, Gary," she said, preparing to say good-bye to him, more than a little befuddled. Nothing he'd said made an impact on her life, really. It had been marginally interesting, and he was a likable man. But that was all. So why was she finding it hard to leave him? "Between you and Cletus, I'm starting to feel like an informed citizen. Those must be the protesters there, huh?"

" 'Fraid so." He drummed his fingers on his knee, looking at the small crowd of people beyond the gate, some three hundred feet away. "Not much of a turnout this time."

"Do they make you nervous?" she asked, detecting a subtle change in his demeanor.

"They make me mad."

She might have asked why. She might have even questioned him about the incinerator project he was planning, to be polite. But he started to get out.

"When will you come back?" he asked, holding the door open.

She shrugged. "When I need more stuff to work with."

"You're not going to make this easy, are you, Rosemary?"

She could have pretended not to know what he was talking about, but it wasn't her way.

"I think making your acquaintance was very easy. And very nice. I hope to see you again sometime."

"Count on it."

She smiled and waved and thanked him for his help again as she drove away. She probably wouldn't brag to her friends that a garbageman had tried to pick her up at the dump, but his attentions had pleased her in a deeply feminine fashion. No woman ever got enough of that sort of consideration, did she?

TWO

She turned off the flame of the blowpipe and pushed back the mask on the welding hood to take a fresh look at her work. The metallic sculpture stood tall and graceful, but there was something wrong with it. Something as basic as breathings but she couldn't put her finger on it.

She sighed, discontented, and shook her head. She could always ask Justin to come up and take a look at it, get his opinion. . . . No, she wasn't quite ready for that. In another week or two maybe, she decided, her shoulders drooping with fatigue. She turned off the acetylene gas by way of the valve at the top of the tank She'd done all she could for one day.

She removed her thick gloves and the hood, picking up a soft towel she kept nearby to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck. She always worked with the fans blowing and the doors open, but even tying her hair back in a ponytail did little to ease the heat inside the hood.

But it wasn't the unseasonably hot spring weather or the heat from the torch or the physical exertion or the size of the hood that was steam-cooking her brain. She'd had her creative juices cranked up to high on a front burner for so long, they were boiling over, spilling down the sides of her inventive pot of thought, flowing uselessly, going to waste, turning to black carbon and more steam in a flame of futility.

Her last three works had fallen miles short of her expectations. She looked at them, grouped a few yards away, outside the ring of bright light she'd been working in. They were finished, but they weren't complete. Justin wouldn't let her work on them anymore. He said they were perfect. Beautiful. Magnificent. But they weren't.

They were big, clumsy, and awkward. They were like stepchildren she wanted to love, but she just couldn't seem to bond with them. Whatever they needed wasn't in her to give, and the hopes she might have had for them simply weren't there anymore.

She drank lukewarm water from a plastic bottle and turned her back on them as she screwed the top back on. The longer she looked, the harder she studied them, the further away the answer seemed. She was hungry. She wanted a bath. She needed to sleep.

The past few nights had been fitful and bothersome. She dreamt over and over of an elegant ball at the All Bright dump. The King of Trash—who looked a lot like Gary the garbage guy—was about to announce his choice of a bride, but he hadn't yet seen Rose. Her overalls were dirty and her son Harley's smelly high-tops were the only shoes she could find. She jumped up and down and waved frantically as he passed by on his bulldozer, but she couldn't catch his attention. If only he would look at her. See her. She pushed her way past hundreds of people with picket signs, her heart racing with desperation. If he didn't know she existed, he'd never know how much she loved him or what a wonderful life they could share. Then, just as she was about to pull the lever on the magic trash compactor that would turn all the King's trash into golden eggs and prove to the King and the kingdom, once and for all time, that she was worthy of being his Queen . . . she'd wake up in a cold sweat.

And so it was, with rose-scented bubbles clinging to her skin, her hair pinned high up on her head, her muscles just beginning to unravel, her mind pondering the insanity of the subconscious, that she heard a knock on the door downstairs.

The second time she heard it, she stopped stirring the bubbles with her finger and frowned, listening intently. She heard nothing.

"Someone's at the door," she hollered to be heard through the bathroom door. Still nothing. "Earl? Har-ley? Will you get the door?"

A third knock.

"Is anyone out there?" Silence. "Harley? Oh, for crying out loud," she muttered, reaching for a towel.

"I'm going to wring his neck," she said, speaking of her grandfather, who had a tendency not to hear much beyond the call to dinner unless he wanted to.

She pulled the door open with the towel wrapped around her, bubbles popping on her legs and ankles, water pooling at her feet, and was dumbfounded to find the room empty. She padded over to the stairwell and called, "Who's down there?"

"Gary Albright," came a muffled voice.

"Who?"

"All Bright Garbage. Gary. We met on Tuesday."

She waddled a wet route across the room to the window facing Beach Street and peered down. There in the twilight stood the King of Trash.

"Hi."

He stepped away from the door to look up at her. The lamplight at her back glowed warm and golden in her hair and along the naked slope of her shoulders. She looked like something out of a fairy tale. He felt something swelling inside, filling empty places he didn't know he had.

"Hi," he said, a slow and remarkably bright grin spreading across his face. "I was wishing you wouldn't be in overalls, but that’s much better than I'd hoped for."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, sidestepping the window so all he could see was her head and neck. She hadn't fallen asleep in the tub, had she? She wasn't back in that crazy dream, was she? "How did you know where I lived?"

"From the deposit slip you gave me, remember? Your address was on the front." A stupid and dangerous mistake she would never make again, she decided immediately. "I brought you some stuff," he said, indicating the box at his feet. "I know you said you like picking out your own, but I needed an excuse to come see you."

"What for?"

"For whatever you do with it. I was curious about that too. I'd like to see it."

"No. I mean, what did you need an excuse to come see me for?"

"Well, I didn't know how you'd take to me showing up on your doorstep, so I figured I'd bring along some reason for being here, in case I got bashful at the last minute." He grinned. Bashful wasn't really a problem for him. "This wasn't an easy place to find, you know. It's right where it's supposed to be, but I kept looking for a house or an apartment. I've never met anyone who lived in a gas station before."

"And now you have," she said, glancing across the not-so-busy main street at Lulu's, the diner where she spent the better part of her life cleaning and scrubbing and waiting on tables. The door had opened and her grandfather and teenage son were coming out. "Look. I don't mean to be rude or unfriendly, but”

"But you're going to be anyway, because you hardly know me and you're not in the habit of inviting strange men into your home. I understand that. So, why don't you come out here, look at the stuff  I brought, talk to me a little while, and get to know me better? Then the next time I come, I won't be so much of a stranger." He held his hands out in a pleading manner to tease her.

“You don't even have to change what you're wearing. Just come down as you are."

He was tickling that deeply feminine thing inside her again, and she smiled.

"Hey, Mom," Harley called, his changing voice deep and manly this time. His carrot orange hair was probably longer than it should be . . . and hardly ever combed. His arms and legs were long and skinny, gangly looking from growing so much over the winter. Going through what only a loving mother could refer to as a homely phase, he wore braces on his teeth and had a small rash of pimples on his chin. Still, looking at him was the only thing in the world that could bring a spontaneous smile to her lips. "Lu wants to know if you had time to clean the gunk out from under the fryer today."

"Run back in and tell her yes," she called to him, watching Grampa Earl walk in a distinctly lumberjack style as he crossed the road. She'd often wondered if the gait was hereditary—Harley having a similar posture— and if so, was ever grateful that it was recessive in her. It was a bold, manly stride, and she felt she was much too short and too female to do it justice.

"Earl, this is Gary Albright," she said when she noticed the old man eyeing her guest. "Gary, this is my grandfather, Earl Wickum. The boy is my son, Harley Wickum," she added, getting the family secret out and over with.

It didn't take long for most people to figure out that the three of them had the same last name, and what that meant about her and Harley. She rarely offered details, but she never tried to hide it. And most people were polite enough to let it go at that, no matter what they were thinking.