by Gary Paulsen
“Dunc—”
“ ‘A pocket a pence, over the fence. Oh what a bash, sample the trash. A tin can, a rag, into the bag. We’ve got it taped, make good our escape.…’ ”
Amos closed his eyes while Dunc droned on and thought: Where’s my bat, look at the rat. Oh what a treat, it’s eating my seat.
He shuddered. It was going to be a long night.
•4
Amos picked his foot up gingerly and tried not to throw up. He couldn’t help it. Every time he stepped on something soft, he wanted to throw up, and there seemed to be about a million soft things to step on. Soft and runny things. Soft and runny things that smelled really bad.
The problem was, it was so dark.
Dunc had been right. The moon was half full, and it should have given them some light, but the clouds had come in just at sunset and blocked the moon completely.
By the time they had arrived, dressed in dark clothes, at the fence surrounding the town dump, it was so dark, Amos couldn’t tell if he was seeing or not seeing.
It was as dark as the inside of a dead cow, Amos thought—sure there must be several of them around. His brain ran on automatic. As dark as the inside of a really dead cow. A cow that’s been dead at least a week under a hot sun with flies and maggots.
He stopped thinking, swallowed, and tried not to breathe.
Getting over the fence had not been as simple as “a pocket a pence, over the fence.” It was an eight-foot-tall chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire on the top, tipping out, and by the time they’d gotten over the wire, Amos felt as if he’d lost at least a pound of flesh.
Dunc had the flashlight but didn’t want to use it for fear they would be seen—although Amos couldn’t believe there was anybody to see them. It wasn’t as if there were a guard on the dump.
Something grabbed at his left leg, held it back. Amos stopped, reached down to push whatever it was away, and felt a familiar shape.
For a moment he couldn’t place it. He touched it with his hand, felt the sides of it, and realized suddenly that he was touching fingers, touching a hand.
“Dunc …”
“Shh. Remember the poem—‘to avoid a fright, stay still and quiet.’ ”
“Dunc …”
Dunc turned. “Stay quiet!”
“Dunc, there’s a hand holding my leg.”
“What?”
“A body, there’s a body, somebody’s body right down here, holding my left leg, and you just tell me to shut up, and I can’t stop talking, you ninny, because there’s a body, a really really real body, down here holding me, and I think I’m going to blow chow now—”
Dunc flicked the light on momentarily and jumped when he found himself looking at a nude body. Then he looked at it a bit more closely. “Take it easy, Amos—it’s just a department store dummy.”
Amos was bent over losing everything he’d eaten since he was four years old. “What?”
“It’s a dummy—just an old department store dummy. The hand got caught up in your pants leg. You’ve got to cool it.”
“That’s easy to say. It wasn’t you the dummy grabbed. I just about had a heart attack.”
Dunc switched the light on once more, untangled the hand, and turned the light off. “Now come on—we have to get to the new section, where they’re dumping now. It’s over there.”
He set off in the darkness, vanishing instantly in the blackness. Amos held back for an instant, thought about returning to the fence where they’d left their bicycles, but realized he didn’t have the slightest idea where it was and set off after Dunc.
Or tried to. He hadn’t made a step before his foot caught inside a can and he went down. Face first. In a pile of something not only soft and runny and stinky but that seemed to have life because it stuck to him and wouldn’t let go and he promptly lost whatever stomach contents he had somehow retained from the body incident.
He managed to get going again, stumbling along in the pitch darkness, but inside of three steps he was hopelessly lost.
“Dunc!” he called in a loud whisper.
There was no answer.
“Dunc!”
“What?” Dunc suddenly appeared next to him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m lost.”
“No you’re not. You’re right here, next to me. And we’re in the new garbage.”
“We are?”
“Yes. Now help me get samples. Here—take your sack and gather.”
Dunc had carried two sacks and he handed one to Amos.
“Tell me again what I’m supposed to gather.”
“Garbage. We’re in a dump, what do you think we should gather? Roses?”
“How am I going to do it in the dark?”
“By feel.”
“You mean touch it?”
“Here’s a pair of rubber gloves. Now be quiet and get to work.”
Amos pulled the gloves on and reached down for some garbage to put in his sack.
The first thing he grabbed wiggled and squeaked.
Amos was not quiet.
•5
“If my folks come home and find us like this, I’m going to receive capital punishment.” Amos glanced over his shoulder at the garage door. “Why didn’t we use your garage?”
They were in Amos’s garage. It was the next morning, and they had spread the garbage out on the garage floor while Dunc, wearing a white chemist’s apron (wouldn’t he just, Amos thought), rubber gloves, and using a pair of tongs and a spatula, sampled different bits, which he put in small, sealable sandwich bags.
“I told you.” Dunc paused, holding a banana peel that had seen better days with the tongs. “Both your parents work and my mom stays home. We needed privacy for our initial research.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“We’re playing around in garbage. I’m about to blow chow for the seventh time. Don’t call it ‘initial research.’ ”
“But it is, Amos.”
“Next you’ll be saying, ‘It’s elementary, my dear Watson.’ ”
“Well, really, it is elementary, Amos.”
“No, it’s not. It’s garbage, that’s what it is, and it’s starting to smell like a dump in here.”
Dunc was back at work. “Just tell them that Scruff tipped the garbage.”
Scruff was Amos’s dog. Or was the family dog. Years before, in what had become known as the Hot Burrito Incident, Scruff had decided the best thing to do with Amos was spend as much time as possible biting him or chewing up Amos’s clothing or—his latest trick—sneaking into Amos’s room at night and peeing on Amos’s shoes.
“I’d like that.” Amos nodded. “I owe Scruff for ruining my hiking boots. But Mom leaves him in the back yard when she goes to work, and she’d know that I let him in the garage, so I’d catch it anyway.” Amos looked at his watch. “Can’t you hurry this up?”
“Research is like good soda,” Dunc said. “You can’t hurry it. When it’s right, you drink it.”
“That’s wine. That’s what they say in the wine commercials on television.”
“Same thing.”
“All right, all right. Just hurry.”
“I’m … just … about … done. There. I think I’ve found something.”
“What?”
Dunc held up a Baggie. “This.”
Amos leaned close and peered into the sack. “It looks like sugar mixed with something I don’t want to think about.”
“It’s the smell.” Dunc unzipped the top of the bag. “Here, try it.”
Without thinking, Amos leaned over and took a big noseful from the sack.
“Yaacck!”
Dunc grinned. “Ammonia, right?”
“Yaacck!”
“Perfect. I didn’t figure to get that lucky on the first mission. Great.”
“Yaacck!”
•6
“It’s all very simple, really.” Dunc held up the book. “Once you k
now a part of something, you can learn it all.”
Amos said nothing. They were back in Dunc’s room. It was midmorning, and they had just awakened. Or Amos had. Dunc had apparently been working all night. Amos had told his parents he was sleeping over at Dunc’s so they could have more time for “research,” as Dunc put it.
Amos had just managed finally to get the stink of ammonia out of his nose and mouth. “Simple,” he said, nodding. “Everything is simple to you.”
“No, really. You have the stink of ammonia, but it’s in powder form. What does that tell you?”
“That somebody has come up with a new kind of stink powder?”
Dunc shook his head. “No, now come on. Think.”
“I can’t. Smelling that bag burned my brain out.”
“It’s simple.”
“If you say that again, I’m going to brain you.”
“Ammonia nitrate. Doesn’t that jump into your thoughts?”
Amos stared at him, then shook his head. “Never. Not once in my life has ammonia nitrate jumped into my thoughts.”
“Fertilizer.”
“Ahh.” Amos nodded. “Now that has jumped into my thoughts lately. Only under a different name. Especially when I think of you and that bag.”
“No. Not like that. Ammonia nitrate is a kind of chemical fertilizer. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“The nose that was on my face, you mean.”
“Somebody, person or persons unknown, is dumping chemical fertilizer at the dump.”
Amos closed his eyes, sighed, opened them. “Wait now, just wait one minute. You had me out in a dump half a night, grabbing things that moved and made sounds, crawling through stuff that made me vomit, over dead bodies—”
“Department store dummies.”
“—or what I thought was dead bodies, to tell me that somebody is dumping fertilizer in the dump?”
“Exactly. Perfect, isn’t it?”
“Where, please tell me, just where should somebody put fertilizer? In the mall?”
Dunc held his hand up. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m beginning to understand more and more about fertilizer all the time. I think maybe you’re full of fertil—”
“Not that kind, Amos. Chemicals. Somebody is dumping chemical fertilizer in the dump illegally.”
“Oh.”
“And all we have to do is catch them and turn them over to the authorities, and that will crack the case.”
“You’re starting to sound more and more like Sherlock Holmes.”
Dunc ignored him. “We’ll have it solved in no time. All we have to do is find out who is dumping—trace the garbage back.”
“That’s the part I’m not really happy about.”
“It’s all so simple. We just do a little detective work, and you have a science project in the bag.”
Amos shook his head. “I’d really rather be working on how to make colors. You know, for Melissa. It seems we got way off the track here. And besides, you haven’t said how we’ll trace the garbage yet.”
“We have to go back to the dump.”
“I knew it, I just knew it. At night, right?”
“No. This will be a daylight raid. We’ll have to wear deep camouflage, find a way in so we can see which truck dumps which garbage, then follow or ride the truck back to where it came from.”
Amos looked at Dunc. For a long time. “You’re nuts.”
“We can do it.”
“We, nothing. I’m not going this time.”
“You have to—it’s a two-man operation.”
“Dunc, listen to me, one more time—it’s a dump. It’s garbage. It doesn’t matter. I want to do colors.”
“Environment.”
“What?”
“It isn’t color that Melissa is interested in. It’s the environment.”
Amos eyed Dunc suspiciously. “How do you know that?”
“Same as you found out about colors. I heard Billy Dee tell Janey Carlson that he heard Jackie—you know, that kid that always has boogers in his nose—tell Wayne Carlson who told Davonne Washington …”
“All right, all right.”
“… that Sarah Kemper said that she heard that Melissa …”
“All right!”
“… worries about all the hunting and trapping that goes on and really, really respects someone who cares about the environment and tries to fix it.”
Amos sighed. “I’ll go.”
“I thought you’d see it my way.”
“When do we go?”
“This afternoon. As soon as we get our deep camouflage ready.”
•7
“How do I look?” Dunc stood next to the dump fence and held his arms out.
“Like a large banana peel covered with coffee grounds and boogers and maybe a little baby fertilizer mixed in with—”
“That’s enough, Amos.”
“I was going to say green runny snot.”
“Amos.”
“Well, what do you expect when you make me get into an outfit like this?”
Amos was covered with an old half-rotted burlap sack in which Dunc had cut arm and head holes and then wired trash he’d pulled from the trash heaped all around them. Over the top of Amos’s head Dunc had jammed an old lampshade and on this he’d hooked other bits of garbage so that Amos was completely covered in refuse from head to toe.
“I can’t,” Amos muttered, “stand myself.”
“Think of Melissa—how proud she’ll be.”
“It’s getting harder and harder to think. The smell is rotting my brain.”
Dunc turned away. “Follow me. Stay low, and only move when the trucks and machinery can’t see us.”
Dunc moved away from the fence between two heaping mountains of what looked to Amos like paper diapers. Amos held back for a moment, then followed.
The town dump was like a large plain covered with trash. It didn’t appear to end and there was a haze of smoke and dust over it that made it all seem like a movie set for an alien movie. On the other side, away from where Amos and Dunc had crossed the fence, two huge bulldozers worked like giant monsters pushing the trash that came from the trucks as they brought their garbage-filled Dumpsters, tipped them out, and moved away.
Dunc kept low, and the surprising thing was that he had been right. If they stayed low, moved only when the Caterpillars were headed away from them and the trucks were leaving or turning, they were almost impossible to see.
The boys moved in fits and jerks. When they stopped they looked exactly like garbage and within twenty minutes they were at the bottom of the slope the trucks were dumping over.
Dunc stopped and squatted, motioning with a half-rotted-banana-peel hand for Amos to do the same.
“What now?” Amos asked.
“We wait. When we see a truck that dumps the wrong garbage, we go for it.”
Amos tipped the lampshade back a bit so he could peer out at Dunc. “What does that mean, exactly—‘go for it’?”
“Just follow my lead. Now be quiet and sit still, and watch up there.”
Amos hunkered and peeked up the hill from beneath his lampshade. “It would help if I knew what I was looking for.”
“Bad garbage.”
“Oh. Well, that helps a lot. I was going to look for good garbage.”
“Amos.”
“It’s so easy to tell the difference, you know, here in the dump. There’s good garbage and there’s bad garbage.…”
And he was still talking when a truck backed to the top of the heap and tipped a Dumpster to drop a load down the side of the pile, and Dunc grabbed him by the shoulder, or more correctly the sack, and said in his ear, “There it is! See the powder? Come on, follow me!”
“What?”
But Dunc was halfway up the hill of garbage, scrambling on plastic bags, before Amos could catch up with him.
And then there was no time for talk.
Dunc worked around the fresh
ly dumped load to the still-tipped Dumpster. The driver hadn’t even gotten out of the truck and couldn’t see around the back, and the men on the tractors were working another pile.
Dunc grabbed the edge of the open Dumpster and swung up and over and in and turned to help Amos.
Amos stopped. “Inside the Dumpster?”
“Hurry up!”
Dunc grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved and flipped Amos up and into the Dumpster just as the hydraulic arm started to bring it back up.
The lid closed with a grinding bang.
It was completely dark.
•8
“Are you out of your mind?” Amos had to fairly scream to be heard over the sound of the garbage truck’s engine. “We can’t ride inside a Dumpster!”
“What do you mean, we can’t? We’re doing it, aren’t we?”
And they were, if it could be called riding. The truck bounced with every rut or chuckhole in the road, and there were no springs to absorb the shock inside the Dumpster. The boys bounced from top to bottom, pranging off the steel like rubber balls, and each prang gave a new bruise.
“Ouch!” Amos landed seat first on the cold steel floor, then shot to the top where he smashed the lampshade so hard down on his head it hit his shoulders. “Mmmmphhh.” He spat out a banana peel. “I don’t know what we’re doing, but I don’t think it’s riding. People die doing this.”
“From what—being in a Dumpster?”
“Yeah. They catch plague and things. It happens all the time.”
“No it doesn’t. Plague comes from fleas on rats.”
“Just the same, just the same—ouch!” Amos slammed into the side wall. “How long do you think we can last?”
Dunc scrabbled his way to the front of the Dumpster, where a faint beam of light came through a tiny hole. He put his eye to the hole. “I don’t recognize where we’re going—oh, no!”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? What did you see?”
“Well, nothing, really. I just recognized where we’re going.”
“Where?”
“I could be wrong, of course. Looking through that little hole. I just saw a corner with a street sign flashing through. It could have been anything.”
