THE
GARBAGE MAN
By
Daniel Skye
Like most Americans, Jerry Spradlin had grown to hate his
job with a burning, undying passion. Jerry was a glorified citywide janitor.
Every day he was forced to ride on the back of that filthy truck and endure all
the conditions, the blazing heat or the frigid cold. The smell of the garbage
would seep into his clothes, get into his hair. He’d go home every night
reeking like a landfill and would shower twice just to get the stink off.
His younger sister had already accomplished more than he
would in a lifetime. Jessica was a straight A student who missed five days of
high school in the entire four years she was there. And she was expected to
graduate from law school by the end of her final semester.
Jessica’s
only flaw was she still hadn’t left that whole Goth phase behind that she had
experimented with in high school. Jessica still had a penchant for dark baggy
clothing and always used black nail polish that her brother found repulsive.
As Jerry quickly discovered, you can learn a lot from
people’s trash. Jerry savored that aspect of the job. It was the only thing
that kept him hanging on the back of that truck from summer to winter.
For
instance, Jerry knew that his neighbor, John Bulzomi, was using Viagra from the
discarded pill bottles Jerry would find in his receptacles. He knew that old
Blaine McCormick owed back taxes to the IRS and that Mrs. Federico was two
months behind on her car payments.
He noted that rich people usually have lobster shells or
steak bones collected in the bottom of their garbage cans. While poor people
tend to have microwave dinner packaging and macaroni and cheese boxes stuffed
inside their pails.
The truck came to its first stop of the day and Jerry
hopped off. He walked to the curb and fetched his own pails and dragged them to
the back of the truck. Wednesdays were garbage day for his neighborhood and his
house was always the first stop on their route.
He lifted both pails and dumped all the trash into the
waste collector. In this mass of chicken
bones, rotten fruit, drink cups, disposable utensils, and other uneaten food,
he saw it. It was a severed human foot, wrapped tightly in plastic and duct
tape. He could clearly make out the black nail polish through the lucid plastic.
Jerry shook his head apathetically, walked to one side of
the truck, and pulled the lever that operates the hydraulically powered
mechanism used to compact the garbage. He heard the gears chirp and squeak as
the metal plate descended, compressing all the waste and squashing it down to
virtually nothing.
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