Note to readers: This is a revised version of an older story of mine titled "The Garbage Man". I retitled it and slightly revised it.
WASTE
MANAGEMENT
By Daniel
Skye
Like
most hardworking Americans, Gerry Spradlin had grown to hate his job with a
searing passion. At age thirty-two, Jerry was nothing more than a glorified
janitor for the city. At least that’s how Gerry perceived himself.
Five
days a week he rode on back of that filthy truck and endured the harsh
conditions; be it the blazing heat or the frigid cold.
The
smell of garbage would latch onto his clothes, seep into his wavy brown hair.
He’d return home after a hard day’s work reeking like a landfill and would
shower and scrub vigorously to erase the stench.
Things
weren’t always like this for Gerry. Hard to believe that at one point in his
life he was premed. He grew up listening to all the pretty girls gab about how
one day they would marry a rich handsome doctor or surgeon. And that was all
the motivation Gerry needed. But after a brief stint in prison, this was the
best job he could land.
His
younger sister had already accomplished more than he would in his lifetime. A
straight A-Plus student, Jessica Spradlin missed a grand total of five school
days during her four-year high school tenure. By eighteen, she was accepted to
Harvard Law. And as Gerry had heard through his folks, Jessica was expected to
graduate by the end of her next semester.
Jessica’s
only flaw was that she still hadn’t left behind that whole Goth phase she
experimented with in high school. She still had a penchant for dark baggy
clothing, and used black nail polish that Gerry found repulsive.
His
jealousy was palpable. His little sister was going to be a lawyer, and he hated
this fact because it made him think of what could’ve been if he hadn’t been
kicked out of med school.
So
he tried his best to concentrate on work and keep Jessica off his mind.
As
Gerry quickly discovered, you can learn a disturbing amount from collecting
your neighbor’s trash. That was the only aspect of the job he savored.
For
instance, Gerry knew that John Bulzomi--the balding accountant who lived
next-door to him--was using Viagra to give himself an extra boost in the
bedroom. Every month, he’d find one discarded prescription bottle at the bottom
of John’s pails.
He
knew his old English teacher, Mr. Federico, was behind on his car payments, and
that his wife owed back taxes to the IRS.
He
knew this just as he knew that Blaine McCormick--the town doctor--had a
mountain of credit card debt and was behind on his mortgage payments. And he
knew this was all contributed to McCormick’s addiction to fetish porn websites,
a fact Gerry ascertained by reading his credit card statements. Next time use a
shredder, Gerry would think every time he snuck a peek at one of Blaine’s
monthly statements.
Gerry
knew everything there was to know about the people from his neighborhood, not
to mention all of the surrounding areas. If blackmail was Gerry’s game, he
could’ve made a fortune.
Hell, he
could’ve told you what the Henderson’s had for dinner last Friday. In case you
were wondering, the answer is meatloaf.
What’s that
saying, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure? Well, in Gerry’s case, the
phrase undoubtedly applied.
* * *
Tuesday,
April 24, 2012.
Spring
Break.
Birds
chirped and twittered their insipid tunes as a mellow breeze flowed through
Gerry’s crimped brown hair. His gloved hand gripped the rear handle of a
sanitation truck tightly. Gerry received a slight jolt when the truck ran over
a bump and he almost lost his grip on the handle. But he was able to retain his
grasp and soon, he felt the truck slowing down.
The brakes
squealed as the garbage truck came to its first stop of the day. Gerry hopped
off the back and went to work. He was riding solo that day; his partner was out
with the flu.
Gerry
fetched the Johnston’s bins, dumping the bags into the rear waste compactor,
and then tossing the bins aside carelessly as most garbage men tend to do.
The truck
inched forward and Gerry grabbed McCormick’s pails and dumped his garbage in
back. He didn’t bother sifting through to take a gander at his credit card
bills. It was nothing he hadn’t read before.
Then he
moved on to his own house. Gerry’s neighborhood was always the first stop on
Tuesday’s. He found the act of disposing his own trash to be degrading. It
wasn’t bad enough that he had to bag it, take it outside, and drag the pails
all the way to the curb. He also had to pick it up and haul it away.
Gerry
flipped both of his pails and dumped all the trash into the waste compactor. In
this mass of chicken bones, rotten fruit, Styrofoam cups, disposable utensils,
and other half-eaten food, he gazed upon a sight that would’ve made anyone else
recoil in horror.
It was a
severed human foot, sealed in plastic and packing tape.
He could
clearly make out the black nail polish through the lucid plastic.
Gerry
paused for a moment and stared vacantly. His look was not an expression of
guilt or sorrow. His face was a chilling mask of indifference.
Then he
wandered casually to the left side of the truck and wrenched down hard on the
lever that operates the hydraulically powered mechanism used to compress the garbage.
The gears whined and screeched as the metal plate descended and the wall of the
back end began to shift. The plate and the wall collided with a heavy metallic
thud, compacting all of the waste, and squashing it down to virtually nothing.
He didn’t even
blink. Not once did he blink.
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