Andrew and Steven

by Kenneth Wise

  Chapter 4

  All the kids at The Center, besides going to school and attending the sessions with their social worker and psychologist, were required to work a certain number of hours a week. Usually the jobs required two or three hours a day three days a week but the kids received fifteen hours a week toward their “labor” requirement. The jobs were all easy and most kids had fun because they felt like they had some unplanned free time.

  The jobs varied from washing dishes in the main dining room, to cleaning the gym, to cleaning classrooms. Of course, as with any home or business, someone had to be responsible for trash and garbage collection. The “garbage men” jobs were not assigned but were filled strictly with volunteers. There were few volunteers; most of the kids did not want to stoop so low as to be “garbage men;” besides it was a dirty and smelly job.

  The garbage men worked from one to six in the afternoon every day and there were usually two crews, so each crew worked three or four days a week. The kids went to school five hours a day when they were on trash duty. While most kids hated even the thought of picking up trash and garbage, others volunteered every week. It seemed that some kids, like Andrew and Steven, were smarter than some others and could see more to this job than just picking up everyone else’s trash.

  The trash crew picked up the refuse from the center and from the adjacent institution. Trash was picked up twice a day, one PM and again at five PM. Each pick up took about an hour. Once the trash was collected, the adult trash supervisor, Mr. Jablonski, drove to a landfill and dumped the trash.

  Mr. Jablonski was an older guy, at least to teen and preteen agers at The Center; in truth he was about fifty. He reminded Steven of the steel workers that surrounded him in his hometown. To Steven, he had one of the most distinctive and memorable faces he could remember. He thought Jablonski had the kind of face great artists look for. It was creased and looked like he had spent years at sea on an open boat. His deep set eyes were as black as coal and matched his short cropped hair and he seemed to have a permanent scowl. The most prominent feature was his nose. Maybe he used to be a fighter because it was badly bent from having been broken so many times. It reminded Steven of an eagle’s beak, and he worked hard at projecting that kind of personality. As it turned out he was actually one of the nicest and “coolest” guys at The Center. Steven thought Mr. Jablonski was likely a great father and grandfather. He always seemed to appreciate the fact that Steven never called him anything but “Mr. Jablonski.

  The helpers, the kids who had volunteered to help, were “free” for about three hours a day. The Director of The Center and his staff had completely overlooked that situation and, since there had never been any trouble, they never caught on to the secret of the garbage man job. Those who knew the secret, kept it a secret.