Garbage Man

by Joseph D'lacey

  Following the girl was impossible; Aggie would notice her immediately, especially after their last encounter. The best view she would get if the girl came past again would be from around the side wall dividing her property from the next door house. She glanced at the times of the sightings; all three were Sundays, one mid-morning when Mavis had not long been back from church, the other two shortly after lunch. It was simple then; the following Sunday, she would be ready. She would devote the day to this one matter. There had to be a way to bring the girl back into the flock but first she had to know the nature of the girl’s sin. It would be the power this knowledge gave her that would provide the impetus for the girl to comply with her wishes. Yes, it was blackmail but the ends utterly justified the means.

  Mavis would teach the girl about the love of God first. Then she would teach her about prayer. Right here in the living room. On their knees. Mavis would show her the way. It was time to bring the sheep back into God’s pasture. One at a time at first and then, as the flock grew, she would lead them home in droves.

  ***

  It seemed as though winter had no plan to end. Until the weather began to change, any kind of change, Mason knew there was little he could do in his garden.

  Other things kept him occupied.

  Upstairs there were two spare ‘bedrooms’ neither of which he used for sleeping. The larger one contained a wardrobe left by the previous owners. When he had spare items or clothes, he put them in this room in boxes. The air in there smelled of damp cardboard and perspiration. There was a set of free weights in the corner. He used them occasionally to ‘hurt’ himself back into his body when the calling he’d first heard in the woods wanted to speak to him again. Lifting weights helped to dampen the effect. If he worked hard enough he could stumble to his bed and fall asleep, still dripping sweat, and wake up clear and silent-minded. Recently, he’d been spending more and more time up there. The way he lifted weights didn’t enlarge his muscles, it had the effect of bringing grooves and curves into relief as his fat burned. A vain man would have spent time admiring the effect in the mirror. Mason Brand never bothered.

  In the smaller of the two spare rooms he fitted a blackout roller-blind. Testing it in the middle of the day with the door shut threw the room into complete darkness. He changed the bulb in the light fitting for a 25 watt red bulb. From the boxes in the next room he brought four tray-baths, an indoor clothes line, some tongs and developer, stop and acid fixer. He hadn’t worn a watch for many years but now he would need one. All he could find was a wind-up alarm clock in one of the boxes. He gave its key a couple of twists and it ticked immediately. There was no work surface so he brought the kitchen table upstairs. It wouldn’t be for long, after all. For the moment he could eat standing at the kitchen counter.

  As he worked he found he was excited. His hands trembled ever so slightly and it made him laugh to himself. Like a kid again. He mastered the emotion quickly. This was not something he was going to allow himself to get used to. Nor would he do it again once this task was finished. When the room was ready, he pulled down the blackout blind and tested the light levels. It was perfect. He left the room in darkness.

  As he shut the door his telephone rang downstairs. He did not recognise the sound. Its tone was strange in the silence of the house. A message coming in from somewhere. A message for him. There was no answering machine. The phone rang and rang.

  As if breaking out of a trance he hurried down the stairs and picked up the receiver. He didn’t know what to say. Finally the voice at the other end took the initiative.

  ‘Hello? Mr. Brand?’

  ‘I . . . yes.’

  ‘Shall I come round?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We need to find somewhere.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If I pick you up, we could walk there together.’

  ‘No.’

  There was a short, tense sigh. Words snatched back before they were out.

  ‘You can’t come here again,’ he said. ‘People will notice.’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘I do. I’d like to live here a little longer.’

  ‘Have you got a mobile?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll meet then? Somewhere . . .’

  ‘Outdoors. Trees and sky for depth and background. Texture and skin. It has to be . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Natural.’

  ‘I wanted some modern stuff too, you know.’

  ‘Nature is modern. Nature is ancient. It’s all the same. You’ll get what I give you or you’ll get nothing.’

  ‘Fine. Where then?’

  ‘Shreve Country Park. Off the beaten track.’

  ‘I know a place. It’s where people go to -’

  ‘That’s no good. On the other side. By the landfill. There’s a quieter spot.’

  ‘It stinks like shit over there.’

  ‘It’s a quieter spot. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Fine. What time?’

  ‘Before dusk.’

  ‘What should I wear?’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘There’s a concrete pumping station by the rock dam.’

  ‘I know where you mean.’

  ‘Behind that, there’s a track leading off the footpath. The gate is broken and overgrown. You’ll find it to the left of a hollow tree.’

  There was silence on the line for a while. He listened to quiet white noise. He thought he could hear her breathing. Suddenly, he didn’t want her to change her mind.

  ‘I’ll have a can of mace with me, you know.’

  ‘Bring whatever makes you feel safe. I don’t care. Before dusk tonight. That’s not long from now. Don’t be late.’

  He placed the receiver down and stood unmoving in his hallway for a long time.

  ***

  The old camper van hadn’t moved from its parking place on the block-paved frontage of his house since he’d arrived six years previously. The tyres were long since flat, there was green and yellow mildew growing on the rubber sealant around the windows and windscreen. Rust expanded from several sites like a skin disease. People had made their complaints from time to time but it was his property and his car. There was nothing they could make him do about it unless someone proved the vehicle was a danger. Most people had learned to simply leave Mason alone and that was how he liked it.

  The only part of the camper that still worked was the rear door through which the tiny living space was accessed. Some nights when he couldn’t sleep he would take an A4 pad and sit on the dampening foam cushions by candlelight and imagine he was back in the woods. It was a dangerous pastime because it was the kind of activity that opened him to the calling. Some nights he missed the woods so much he was happy to take the risk. And, if he heard the calling, he wrote what it said.

  If he needed to shop for anything or go anywhere, Mason rode a bicycle. The bike came from the recycling centre at the Shreve tip and that was the place he was most likely to go when he needed something. Winter was giving way, releasing its grip, weakening as the Earth progressed around the sun. Although it had held Shreve tight in its clamped fist this year, time was prising its fingers free. Perhaps no one else would know the change was coming for another few days - when the weather began to soften - but Mason felt the changes in his blood the way he felt the phases of the moon affect his mood. He needed new tools and new pieces for his old tools. The tip was the place to find them.

  He cycled off early to miss the traffic, cold morning light gleaming on the speckled chrome of his handlebars.

  The tip was a great place. It opened at 7am and closed at 6pm in winter, 8pm in the summer. People took their bags of garden waste and old furniture and broken TVs and
all manner of leavings. Most of it went into the crusher ready to be taken to the landfill. There were bays for separating items out of the rubbish; places for wood, glass, cardboard, electronics, broken domestic appliances, hardcore, soil, green waste and metals. But many people still dropped items for separation into the main waste bay.

  As Mason cycled past the entrance to Shreve Country Park he was unable to stop himself from glancing in and smiling at the memory of what had taken place there. He had done a good job, a professional job. In spite of the guilt he felt over letting himself be manipulated into working again, he had the girl’s word that she would receive his knowledge. He pushed the smile away quickly when he saw someone leaving the car park on foot. It was a man walking two panting, salivating bulldogs. It looked more like the dogs were walking him. Mason didn’t make eye contact, he never did, but he recognised the man from Bluebell Way. There was a faintest waft of cigarettes as he cycled by; that and the odour of the overheated mutts.

  His journey took him around the town’s small ring road and off on a dead-end road leading to the tip. As he cycled along this road, three trucks full of collected waste turned out of the tip’s entrance and grumbled past him. He was buffeted by dust, diesel and the smell of waste - something he almost relished. So sensitive was his nose that he could put a fair guess on what each truck contained.

  The staff knew him and knew also that he wasn’t one for conversation. Instead they nodded to him and smiled. Mason liked to think he had the respect of the people that worked at the tip. He doubted they were very well paid, but they, like him, could see the value of all the things the rest of the town threw away. He was quite sure they capitalised on it whenever they could.

  Mason parked his bike outside the office where it would be safe and walked around to the portakabin where they displayed dumped items ready for resale. He spotted a box of books and went immediately to it. Here was something more for his shelf in the shed. He looked for classics mainly but sometimes a modern thriller would catch his eye. As he rummaged, a car pulled up at the main bay. Mason glanced up and saw Richard Smithfield’s Volvo pull in. He edged quickly to one side. This was a man he had no desire to talk to or meet. Ever.

  The man got out of his car, wearing driving gloves. He went to the boot of the car and opened it. Mason shrank back as Richard Smithfield looked around before removing a single black bin bag and walking quickly towards the dumping hatch. The bag looked heavy but barely filled. He threw it in. The sound it made was a kind of crash and clink. A metallic percussion. Mason expected Mr. Smithfield to take more bags out of the Volvo but he didn’t. He slammed the boot shut, jumped back into the car and drove away. There was a five mile an hour speed limit around the tip. Mr. Smithfield must have been doing fifteen or twenty. Dust rose in the vehicle’s wake as it sped away along the access road and back to the main ring road which looped the town.

  ***

  Aggie Smithfield walked along Bluebell Way trying not to hurry. It was hard not to break into a run. Her mouth was dry with anticipation and, for the moment, she wasn’t thinking about Mason Brand at all, only what his name on her photographs could do for her. He’d given them to her in a simple, plastic-coated cardboard folder with elastic drawn over a steel bobble to keep it shut. He wouldn’t let her look at the photos while she was there.

  ‘Open it when you get home. Not before,’ he’d said only moments before.

  ‘Fine.’

  She’d tried to keep the hurt out of her voice. Had he noticed? It was hard to see his face through his beard. Hard to see his mind through his eyes. She had no idea what he was thinking. One thing she’d realised: he wasn’t as old as the beard made him look. And he was all muscle. His downcast demeanour and his rumpled clothes hid a lean, strong man rippling with quiet energy. It was hard to admit to herself that something about him aroused her interest - her sexual interest. He was hairy. He seemed dirty. He wore no sprays or aftershave, made no effort at all to look . . . nice. But the orbs of his eyes were the purest white she’d ever seen. The whites of a fundamentalist. Somehow she knew this meant his body, his insides, were clean and unpolluted. No cigarettes. No booze. No skunk. And all he seemed to eat were the vegetables from his own garden. His irises were a gleaming brown-amber, somehow lit from the inside. Whenever he looked at her she had to look away.

  Right now, none of that mattered. What mattered was getting home to her bedroom and locking the door. Then she could -

  ‘Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry, young lady?’

  Fuck. Not now.

  She took a few more steps.

  ‘I asked you a question, girly.’

  She stopped, turned and faced Mavis Ahern across the street. The hag was standing on the pavement outside her house. God knew how long she’d been watching for - Aggie hadn’t been concentrating. She didn’t want a confrontation this time.

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from betraying her excitement, and now this unexpected frustration.

  ‘And where have you been?’ That was enough, right there.

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘It is if you’ve been up to no good. If I think you’re getting yourself into trouble, I’ll have no choice but to tell your parents.’

  Aggie stood with her mouth moving and no words coming out. Was this woman for real? Why did the old bitch think she had anything to do with her life? Why was she even on this planet? Her mind made up to settle things for the last time, Aggie approached the Ahern woman directly, staring her out. There was some fanaticism in this woman’s eyes too but nothing like the power in the gaze of Mason Brand. He saw things as they really were. This old bitch saw them through a fractured, opaque lens. As Aggie neared her, the older woman appeared to back up. Only a fraction but it was enough.

  ‘Someone should have told you this long ago, Mavis. You’re a sad, lonely, old woman with nothing better to do than poke your nose into other people’s lives. I’m sick of it. If you’ve got something to say to my mum and dad, you come with me and say it. Right now.’

  Mrs. Ahern had lost her voice for the moment.

  ‘Come on, you curtain-twitching bitch. Come and tell my parents all about it.’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘You heard.’

  Aggie grabbed a hold of the woman’s wrist and started to pull her along the pavement. The woman was stronger than she looked but she didn’t let that stop her.

  ‘Come on, we’ll go and talk to them right now. I want to get this over with.’

  ‘Let go of me. This is assault.’

  ‘You don’t know the fucking meaning of the word.’ Mavis Ahern snapped her arm out of Aggie’s grip making

  Aggie stumbled away. The folder flew out of her grasp. When it hit the pavement the steel bobble caught the kerbside and bent. The elastic snapped off. Silky sheets of monochromatic images slipped into the gutter. For a slice of a second, Aggie stood in hesitation, her secrets disgorged in the street. Then she dived to retrieve the spilled guts of her brand new portfolio. Mavis Ahern beat her to it. She had grabbed two sheets from the folder before Aggie could collect the rest up and shuffle them back into their protective shell.

  For some reason, Aggie didn’t try to take them back straight away. Here, for the first time ever, someone was seeing her as she had always wanted to be seen. It was her vanity that caused the hesitation, not the fact that she wanted Mrs. Ahern in particular to see her that way. She regretted it immediately. These things were still . . . private somehow. Aggie hadn’t even seen them herself and now this psycho harridan had her sticky fingers all over them.

  Still Aggie didn’t move. She watched the vigilante’s face. What she saw there gave her satisfaction. The woman was awed by the art and struck by Aggie’s beauty. She was envious and disgusted. Aggie saw the flame of self-hatred rise into the woman’s
face before she denounced the images she held in her hand.

  ‘Filth. Degradation. What is wrong with you people?’ That was it, wasn’t it? The vigilante believed herself separate from the rest of the community - at least from those who didn’t attend church or live by her painful, joyless morals. To her, Aggie was some kind of heathen invader in her perfect, religious world. Aggie took her chance and snatched the photos. Mavis Ahern was far quicker again than she’d expected. Aggie’s fingers met empty air.

  ‘Give them back.’

  ‘I shall be keeping these for your parents to see. Possibly for the police.’

  ‘They’re mine,’ said Aggie. ‘My property. If you don’t give them back to me I’ll call the law myself.’ She pulled her mobile from her pocket and stated dialling. ‘All I’ve got to do is hit dial and I’ll be talking to the police. Do you want them to come down here and interview you in the street over an accusation of theft? How’s that going to look in your precious church, eh?’

  ‘These are illegal.’

  ‘Believe it or not, Mavis, I know the law about this because I plan to make it my profession. There’s nothing illegal about these images. The police will agree with me. All I have to do is get them to come here and look for themselves. Now, give me back my property.’

  The vigilante didn’t seem able to hand the photos back without her glance being drawn again and again to what she saw on those two sheets of black and white photography. Aggie’s removal of the photos from her hand brought her back to something like full concentration.

  ‘You’re damned,’ was all she said. Aggie snorted.

  ‘I’m not damned. I’m liberated.’ She placed the photos carefully back inside the folder with the others. She’d have to hold it all closed with her fingers now that the bobble was so bent. ‘I’ll think of you,’ she said to the crazy, lonely woman who stood before her. ‘I’ll think of you often when I’m living far from here and you’re still rotting alone with nothing better to do than pray and spy.’