Talk of the Town

by Mary Kay McComas

  "You know, that's not a bad analogy," he said, shaking his finger at her thoughtfully. "Do you have a piece of paper and something to write with? I want to get that down before I forget it."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yes. I have to give a talk to the National Solid Waste Management Association in a couple of months. The thing could breathe methane gas and excrete leachate. It's great." He paused. "You don't mind if I use it, do you?"

  "Knock yourself out." She couldn't quite believe this guy was real ... and sober. Or that there was a national association of garbagemen for that matter. But she crossed out the front of one of her bank deposit slips and handed it to him—she never used up all her deposit slips before she ran out of checks anyway. "That's the only paper I have; you can use the back. Here's a pen."

  "Thanks," he said, taking them eagerly. He glanced briefly at the front of the slip, then used the rim of her truck bed as a desktop. "As much as I appreciate you letting me use your mind like this, that's not why I came over here."

  "Of course not. How could you know I had it with me, right?"

  He looked at her, then grinned. "Right." He hesitated briefly. "I came to see if you'd go to dinner or a movie with me sometime. Actually I came over to see if you were wearing a wedding ring. And I know that just because you're not wearing one, that doesn't mean you're not married or living with someone, but it's a good enough reason to at least ask and find out."

  A doorknob could see his intentions. He was attracted to her. And she was flattered. Sort of. She liked him. He was certainly interesting in an unusual way, and he was definitely cuter than your average garbageman, but ... he was a garbageman.

  "I'm not married, but I'm not really dating right now either," she told him as kindly as she could. "It was nice of you to ask, though."

  "Nothing nice about it," he said, looking disappointed but far from defeated. "I think I'd do just about anything to touch that red hair of yours."

  Maybe it wasn't drugs. Maybe he was just plain crazy.

  "If I'm going to go, I'd better . . . go," she said, opening the door of the truck as serenely as possible to hide the turmoil she was feeling. She wasn't sure if she should start screaming for help or giggle and bat her eyes at him. "It's been nice meeting you, um . . . ?"

  "Gary."

  "Gary."

  "Would you mind giving me a lift to the front gate? It gets to be a long walk after a while."

  "Sure. Get in."

  "I'll just ride along here, if that's okay," he said, stepping onto the runner and clamping a big hand on the door frame. "Watch the potholes."

  She shifted into neutral and turned the key. The old truck never started on the first go-round, or the second. But by the sixth try she had the sinking feeling something was wrong.

  "Engine's flooded," he said, stepping down from the runner to stand in the window. "Give it a few minutes and try again."

  "You wouldn't believe how many times I've thought about parking this old thing over there by the crusher and walking away," she said, acutely aware of being stared at. "But I always feel as if I'd be burying it alive somehow."

  "It does have . . . personality." She laughed softly and nodded. "What do you do with all the stuff you collect?" he asked.

  "I elevate it to a higher station, give it a new purpose, a new importance," she said, as eloquent as she was facetious. "I transform it from mere stuff to objets d'art."

  "No kidding. So you're an artist."

  "Don't I look like I'm starving?"

  "Not exactly. You look beautiful."

  Oh, right. In steel-tipped boots and overalls. No makeup. She was tempted to lean over to the rearview mirror to check her hair, but it hardly mattered at this point. The man wasn't on drugs and he wasn't insane, he was simply full of garbage.

  Nevertheless, a disconcerting warmth rose up her neck and burned in her cheeks under his conspicuous regard. She lowered her eyes and looked away, bent forward and tried to start the engine again.

  "What's your name? Are you famous?"

  "Not hardly. I've sold a couple pieces, but Rosemary Wickum isn't exactly a name you'll hear bounced around with Boccioni and Gabo for a while yet."

  Sensitive as ever to any mention of the crusher, the old bucket of bolts decided to behave itself. The engine turned over without a sputter.

  "Maybe that's good," he said, jumping back on the runner. "I've never heard of those guys anyway. So, maybe you'll be bigger than both of them."

  She rolled her eyes. As if being a Master of Trash automatically made him an art critic.

  "Would you like me to keep a lookout for interesting pieces and put them aside for you?" he bellowed into the window, raising his voice over the cacophony of the truck.

  "Thanks, but I pick my pieces like New Age freaks pick out their rocks. If I'm in the right place at the right time and it calls out to me, then we were meant to be together. It's a very subjective thing."

  "Like meeting people."

  "That's right. What interests you might not interest me at all."

  "Or we could have similar tastes and you'd be missing out on some really good pieces. You never know." She bobbed her head as if to admit that it was possible, but not likely. "We should definitely go out then, get to know each other better, compare tastes."

  Kissing came to her mind. Comparing tastes with their mouths. A distracting thought. So much so, she forgot to drive around the next pothole.

  "Awwwwwww."

  The truck came to a standstill in a cloud of dust. She turned off the engine and left it shuddering as she leaped out.

  "Are you all right?" she asked, running past the tailgate and falling to her knees beside his lifeless looking body. "Are you hurt? Can you hear me?" He tried to nod his head and grimaced. "I'm so sorry. I didn't even see it. Are you hurt?" He rolled his head back and forth. He patted his chest and took in great gulping gasps of air. "Are you all right? Talk to me."

  "Just . . . winded." He tried to sit up.

  "Stay still a minute. Good grief, I could have killed you. Why couldn't you ride inside with me? You should have. Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

  "No. I'm okay. I just need to . . . catch my breath," he said haltingly. She was more worried than angry with him, and he liked that. The anger and the worry. It made her eyes an even darker green and her skin paler, more delicate looking.

  "You scared me to death," she said, placing a hand over her quaking heart, a movement he didn't miss. But with the sweatshirts and overalls, his curiosity as to what lay beneath was simply more piqued.

  "I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention," he said, sitting up slowly. She sighed and sat back on her legs, her hands on her thighs. He looked up from her lap with a foolish smile. "I was worried you'd leave before I could convince you to go out with me."

  She scowled at him. "I told you—"

  "I know what you told me. I'd just . . . well, I'd like to see you in something other than those overalls once. And get to know you. It doesn't even have to be a date. We could meet for coffee or a drink somewhere. Before dark. In broad daylight. You could bring a big ugly friend to make sure I don't step out of line."

  "But why?" she asked, thinking it a logical question. She was only average height, and very strong. Her hair was too curly. Her nose was too thin and turned up on the end and covered with freckles. Her right eyetooth was a little crooked. The only truly remarkable thing about her was that she created beauty in metal, and he hadn't seen any of her work.

  "Why not? We both collect junk. We both recycle it. Who knows what else we might have in common?" She gave him a suspicious eye. "Truly. I like to eat, do you?"

  In spite of her misgivings, she laughed.

  "You're crazy. You know that, don't you?"

  "Sure. I have to be. Look at what I do for a living."

  "There's nothing wrong with what you do." Somebody had to do it, right?

  "Fighting a losing battle is crazy," he said.

  "You're not losing. Th
ings are getting better. I read not long ago that the hole in the ozone was beginning to heal itself. You must be doing something right."

  "Not fast enough. And dealing with other people's trash is as bad as being a mortician. Everybody needs us, but no one wants to dance with us. Besides me and Cletus, how many garbagemen do you know? Have you ever gone out and introduced yourself to the guys on the trucks? Have you ever even talked to one before?"

  She tried to recall. Then shook her head.

  "Do you speak to your mailman?" he asked, questioning in a natural, tolerant manner.

  "When I see him."

  "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.