by Gary Paulsen
“If you don’t tell me I’m going to take something off my outfit and shove it down your throat.”
Dunc hesitated another moment and when Amos was about ready to start for him he gave up. “You remember the parrot?”
“The one that would talk to me only when I swore?”
“Yeah. You remember where he sent us?”
“Sure. Down to the water”—Amos bounced as the truck turned and stopped—“front. You mean we’re going to the waterfront?”
The truck engine changed pitch and the Dumpster swung up and out, then dropped to the ground with a thump.
“That’s where we’re going, the waterfront? Where we blew it apart?”
The truck engine changed again, roared briefly, then grew fainter as the truck drove away.
“Not going,” Dunc whispered in the sudden quiet. “I think we’re already here.”
•9
Dunc waited another moment, until Amos was standing next to him, and then raised the lid and the two stuck their heads up.
Directly in the face of a man named Charlie Rags. Charlie had seen the truck drop the Dumpster and had decided since it was newly empty—Charlie thought of it as “clean”—he would set up housekeeping. Charlie had once been either a doctor or a flute player—he couldn’t remember which. But that was before he had discovered beer, wine, whiskey, cheap wine, and shaving lotion in that order. He had been living in Dumpsters for some years now, drinking what he could get, and would probably have done it for many more years.
“Hello,” Dunc said. “Are we close to Fifth Street?”
Dunc and Amos were still in their camouflage. If you looked carefully it was just possible to see an eye or a nose.
But Charlie Rags didn’t—indeed, couldn’t—look closely. He hadn’t been able to look closely at anything for over three decades. His eyes didn’t work close. Or far, for that matter.
But he could hear just fine, and he heard Dunc talk. Charlie had heard some strange things talk to him. Bugs, snakes, a lamp pole, and in New York a horse with a policeman sitting on him—the horse said his back was sore—but he had never had garbage open a Dumpster and ask him for directions.
“That way.” He pointed, closing one bleary eye. “Two blocks.” Then he threw away the wine bottle he was carrying and walked away, swearing never to drink again. Talking garbage was too much.
“Thank you,” Dunc said to his back.
Dunc pushed the lid back all the way and climbed out and started walking away.
Amos clambered out of the Dumpster. “Wait a minute—where are you going?”
“Home. We have to hurry and change outfits and come back here after dark.”
“We do?”
“Sure. You don’t think they’ll come in the daylight and leave illegal garbage, do you?”
“No. Of course. It was stupid of me.”
“Well, then.”
“Of course we have to come back after dark. I should have guessed. It’s the waterfront and there are people down here who would sell us for yard ornaments. Of course we have to come after dark. Otherwise it wouldn’t be dangerous, would it?”
“You’re mumbling,” Dunc said over his shoulder. “And don’t lose your garbage yet until we get to a bus stop. Nobody will bother us looking like this.”
“Seems stupid to me, coming back in the dark, just stupid.…”
“You’re still mumbling.”
“It’s the lampshade over my mouth.”
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
“Lampshade.”
“Hurry up, will you? The buses come on the hour and we’ve only got a couple of minutes to make the corner.”
Amos ran to catch up, which brought him slightly ahead of Dunc as they reached the corner of Fifth Street where the bus would be.
Later they would argue about Amos’s position and how it had caused the disaster. Amos blamed Dunc for yelling at him to hurry up, which caused him to increase speed and put him at the bus stop at the precise moment he needed to be there for the calamity to occur. Dunc said no, things happened with a natural flow, and what happened would have happened anyway, no matter what, but Amos didn’t believe it.
The difficulty lay with cellular phones.
Amos had done research on cellular phones, trying to find out just when they had been invented and just exactly why. He did this about the time he wrote the President of the United States and explained just exactly why they should be uninvented, although he never got an answer.
The problem was his apparently genetic phone-answering code. Anytime a phone rang, anywhere a phone rang, he was convinced that it was Melissa calling. At first it seemed to include almost any bell—causing a memorable catastrophe when his mother’s new oven timer went off and Amos destroyed the kitchen trying to answer the oven. It had taken a doctor to get the oven grate off. He had since worked some of the bells out of his system so that he no longer ran for oven timers or children’s tricycle bells or the belt beepers worn by doctors.
But it was different with cellular phones.
It is true that he did not often hear them ring. The odds were that if he happened to be near one, it wouldn’t ring, and he had only once before actually had a problem with a cellular phone. He had been riding in a car, stopped at traffic, and a phone in the car sitting next to them had rung. Luckily, the man in the car had a twelve-year-old daughter and understood the problem with phones and didn’t press charges, but it had been a narrow escape.
He was not so lucky with the bus.
Whatever the reason—fate, or because Dunc had told him to hurry—Amos arrived at the bus stop just a half a step in front of Dunc, at the exact moment when the bus door whooshed open, and a cellular phone on the bus driver’s belt rang with an incoming call.
As it turned out it was actually his wife calling to tell him to stop at the store for some cheese dip but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but the ring.
All the instincts kicked in and by the end of the first pulse in the first ring Amos had a foot on the bus step and was powering into the bus, left leg nailing the second step, classic form, arms pumping, hand out for the phone, a little spit flying from the side of his mouth.
Except none of this showed because he was still in deep camouflage, peering through a crack in a garbage-encrusted lampshade at the cellular phone hanging on the belt of the bus driver.
What the driver saw was terrifying. The door opened to show him a pile of banana peels and coffee grounds and bits of paper and rags and other disgusting trash suddenly come to life and come bounding up the bus steps with an appendage reaching for his belt.
He naturally slammed the bus door shut.
Or tried to. Dunc, realizing what was happening, was reaching for Amos, trying to grab him and stop him, which put his arm in the bus door as it closed. The rubber gasket kept it from cutting his arm off but did hold him firmly while inside Amos, powering into his second and important driving step, clawed for the phone on the driver’s belt and missed, thrown off by running head-on into the coin and token collector.
This deflected him enough that he passed the driver completely and wound up in the front passenger seat of the bus.
The seat was not empty.
It was occupied by an older woman who had been visiting a friend on the other side of the river. The woman carried an umbrella in case it should rain. It had not rained in weeks and the umbrella had become packed and hard from not opening so that when she used it as a weapon to kill the garbage suddenly landing in her lap, she swung very hard and it was very heavy and came down with tremendous force.
Fortunately her aim wasn’t that accurate so she missed Amos, except that unfortunately she aimed high and the full force of a double-gripped overhand blow brought the umbrella down on the bus driver’s head, jamming his hat over his eyes.
In a reflexive action the driver jammed down on the accelerator while jerking left on the wheel. The bus took off away from the curb in a
sweeping turn to the left—Dunc running alongside because his arm was caught in the door.
The sudden turn threw Amos back off the old woman toward the door. On the way he grabbed for the phone, missed again, and caught the door handle, which whooshed the door open, releasing Dunc and allowing Amos to tumble back out of the bus on top of him.
The boys rolled and stood just in time to see the bus jump the curb and come to a stop with its front window almost touching the large glass window of a Chinese restaurant.
“I think,” Dunc said, “it might be time to lose our deep camouflage.”
“And run,” Amos added. “I just hope Melissa isn’t mad because I missed her call.”
•10
“Dunc—”
“Shhh!”
It was pitch dark. Outside, the moon and stars were covered by thick clouds and the nearest surviving streetlight was four blocks away. Inside the Dumpster it was like a black hole.
“Dunc.”
“You have to be quiet, Amos. We’re on a mission.”
“I’m hungry.”
“You’re what?”
“Hungry.”
“We’re in a Dumpster—how could you be hungry?”
“Simple. We took off this morning without eating and there wasn’t much to pick up at the dump and then we did the garbage and the bus and we didn’t get to eat there and when we went home and changed I fell asleep for a little bit and then you woke me up and we came down here in the dark and I was so scared I forgot about eating and now I’m hungry.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Nothing. I just want you to know.”
“So I know. Now will you be quiet?”
“Sure.”
For a moment there was silence. Then from outside the Dumpster a rasping voice hissed, “Is that you in there, garbage?”
The boys froze.
“I was worried when I gave you directions that you would leave, Mr. Garbage.”
It was Charlie Rags. He had been walking since the afternoon, had spoken to several Dumpsters trying to find the talking garbage, but he hadn’t had any luck except for a moment when an alley cat that looked like it had been pulled through a knothole backward snarled at him, and he thought for a second it was mad garbage.
“I need some advice, Mr. Garbage”—Charlie Rags spoke to the side of the Dumpster—“about my life.”
Dunc said nothing but Amos rose to the occasion. He leaned against the inside of the Dumpster and spoke to the metal. “If I give you advice, will you go away?”
“Sure.”
“What was the question?”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated but now that I’ve stopped drinking and I’m going to straighten my life out I wondered whether I should take up the flute or be a doctor.”
“Flute or doctor?”
“Yes. I was going to get on one of those television shows like Oprah and ask but I thought why should I do that when I have you? So what do you think?”
Amos thought a moment. “Do both.”
“Both?”
“Yes. Be a doctor who plays a flute. Or a flute player who’s a doctor.”
“What a good idea. Thanks.”
“Now go, and bother me no more.”
Dunc had been staring at Amos in the darkness, or where Amos would be standing, and he waited until Charlie Rags’s footsteps had died away. “That was great.”
“What?”
“That advice. That poor old man was really worried and you helped him.”
“Comes with the turf.”
“What do you mean?”
“My family. My uncle Alfred is always giving advice to people who don’t want it. My sister is always asking for advice and never listening to it when it comes. And—”
There was a sudden growl of an engine outside and a bump as a vehicle backed against the Dumpster.
“Quiet,” Dunc whispered. He took Amos by the arm and pulled him to the opposite end of the Dumpster. “Get ready.”
With a loud clang, the half-lid of the Dumpster was thrown back.
•11
For a moment there was no sound but the running engine. Then two doors opened and slammed shut, and footsteps approached the Dumpster.
“Oh, man, one of the sacks broke, and it’s all over my truck.” The voice was whiny. “How come we always have to use my truck?”
“Because, pea brain, I don’t have a truck. That’s why we use your truck.”
“You have a car.”
“Oh, right—you want me to put bags of trash in a classic nineteen fifty-seven Chevy hardtop. Oh, really great. Perfect.”
“Well—”
“That’s enough whining. Now put that cigarette out before we unload this mess. Who knows what’s in here?”
“It’s hazardous and toxic waste—we know that. That’s how come we’re getting paid to dump it.”
“I know that, dummy—I mean, maybe it’ll catch on fire.”
There was another moment of silence, after which a lit cigarette arched through the air and came spiraling into the Dumpster, where it nuzzled down into some mattress stuffing and immediately began to smolder.
“Uh-oh.” Dunc whispered in Amos’s ear. “This isn’t so good.”
“Why?” Amos spoke just above breathing.
“Nitrate—” Dunc began, then stopped as a bag of something heavy flew through the opening and burst. White powder flew in all directions, filling the Dumpster.
“No time,” Dunc whispered again. “Take my hand and follow me.”
“Follow you?”
“Come on.” Dunc grabbed at Amos’s hand and caught his wrist. “Now! It’s going to blow!”
“Blow?” Amos was still whispering. “Blow what?”
But Dunc was past talking. He slammed the length of the Dumpster dragging Amos and emerged into the open end just as another bag of white powder that had been thrown by the men hit the edge of the Dumpster and burst. Half the powder went into the Dumpster and the other half spilled back into the bed of the truck, leaving a trail of powder from the Dumpster to the truck.
Dunc pushed the torn sack off to the side and climbed up and out.
“What—” The men were standing in the back of the pickup. Around them were stacked sacks of the white powder. They were holding a sack between them, getting ready to throw it. “Who are you?” the one on the left asked.
“No time, cigarette, nitrate powder—” Dunc was gasping while he pulled at Amos to get him out of the Dumpster.
“Blow?” Amos mumbled. “What’s going to blow? The garbage? How can garbage blow—”
Dunc dragged him out, across the edge of the Dumpster and onto the ground. “Now—we have to run now!”
Pulling Amos by the arm he took off at a dead run, heading across the street from the Dumpster.
The two men stood stupefied for a moment, watching the boys. Then the one who owned the truck saw smoke curling out of the Dumpster, where the cigarette was about to break into open flame.
“Fire!” he said, and jumped from the pickup bed alongside the open door of the truck. “I’ve got to get my truck out of here!”
He slammed the truck into gear and floored the accelerator. The truck jerked forward, throwing his partner out of the box.
It probably saved his life.
The smoldering cigarette found an edge of paper, glowed, caught, and broke into a tiny open flame. Very small, a little yellow-and-red flicker that would have died.
Except.
In an instant it found new edges of paper, caught there, grew, and was a full-blown fire just as the truck started to move.
Which was when it ignited the nitrate fertilizer.
Even then, for a second, it could still have been all right.
The nitrate burned but only that, just burned in a rapidly growing hot flame, feeding on itself, and growing with a great hissing. But nitrate fertilizer is just another name for explosive powder and the flames found a place where there
was weight pressing down on the powder, and the pressure and flame together triggered the explosion.
Even then it might have been contained. The powder inside the Dumpster had a large opening above it, and it blew up in an enormous whooshing that lit the surrounding area like a flashbulb.
But the explosion jumped from the Dumpster to the bags stored in the back of the pickup and detonated those as well.
The effect was immediate and astonishing.
Rather than blow the pickup to pieces, the explosion was shaped toward the rear, and in a huge pulse of white-hot light, it turned the small import truck into something very close to a rocket.
A rocket aimed exactly at the front window of the Chinese restaurant.
Amos and Dunc stopped with the first explosion out of the Dumpster and turned just in time to see the pickup leave.
Or start to leave. It was much too fast to truly follow with the human eye. For one part of a second, the pickup with the polluter in the cab was sitting there, the next it was doing just under two hundred and thirty-seven miles an hour into the front window of the restaurant.
Luckily it was the middle of the night and nobody was in the restaurant except a cat named Jimmy Yee, who was just in the act of nailing a rat next to the side wall.
The pickup hit the front window exactly in the center, roared through the dining room, cored the middle of the kitchen, barreled out the back loading door, whistled through a vacant lot, caught a side street, and did not slow down for two and a half miles through the deserted streets of town, when it came to a stop in front of a police station. The man behind the wheel sat while the police came out and took him into custody. They had to carry him, still in a sitting position, into the station, where he sat in a corner and said, “I tuned her up myself, but I think I got the mixture a little too rich.” Then he said it again, and again, and again.
Inside the restaurant Jimmy Yee unstuck himself from the ceiling, where he’d gone as the truck came through, and dropped to the floor. The rat was gone.
“Wow.” Dunc had been holding his breath. “Did you see that?”
