Dumpster Boy

short story

Every month, a paint store�"Sherwin-Williams, Home Depot�"has to get rid of the previous shipment’s cans of paint that have been sitting dusty and unwanted on warehouse shelves to make room for new shipments of colors people buy.  All of the reject paint is thrown into a mixer and churched until the whole lot is an inevitable, nondescript grey.  The paint is then put into plastic tubs and shipped off for cheap to coat cider block walls in prison cells and storage rental units and the sides of the dumpster that sat sagging off the curb separating Jared Guest’s front lawn and Franklin Street.  The dumpster had been given to Jared by the city.  Over the years, the fifteen foot long trash bin had begun to rust at its edges and had been tagged on several occasions by the city’s youth.  A few of Jared’s former high school classmates used to spray paint “F****t” and ”Tree Hugger” on the dumpster, but had since stopped because they got bored, or got jobs, or girlfriends pregnant. 

 

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Jared approached the register in the Texaco and set two bottles of Sutter Home Chardonnay on the counter.  The girl working had both elbows propped up, her forearms met where she rested her chin in her hands.  She stared past him with blank, half shut eyes and seldom lips until her gaze shifted and an acknowledging smile spread across her face.

            “Hey!” she said.  She pushed herself up and reached under the counter, retrieving a Diet Coke.

            A leathery, dirt-tainted man entered the store, cursing to himself, “You gotta be f****n’ kiddin’ me.  S**t’s ridiculous for chrissake.”

            He joined Jared in front of the counter.  They stood side by side, Jared becoming more aware of their closeness with each raspy grunt and swear.  The man stopped carrying on when he realized he was in the presence of strangers.  He cocked his head in a perfunctory nod to the girl at the register while scratching at the five o’clock stubble under his chin.

            “I just wanna know where the hell them sandniggers get off makin’ us pay $4.02 a gallon,” he said to the girl.

Jared stared at the rows of 5 Hour Energy drinks and single serving packets of No Doze tablets behind a Plexiglas display case on the edge of the counter.  After a few moments he said, “Actually, I mean, well, it’s the state mandated gasoline tax used for maintaining highways, it’s, that’s really why costs have risen.”  He continued looking at the display case, never averting his eyes while he spoke.

“Who the hell you talkin’ to, son?” asked the man as he threw a wad of bills across the counter and left.

Jared maintained his stare, only allowing himself to look up at the girl behind the register after hearing the beep that sounded each time the Texaco doors opened and shut.

            “Do you recycle the cans?” Jared asked her.

            “Do I what?”

            “I mean the Diet Coke. Do you recycle the cans?”

            The girl looked up and met his eyes.  “Nope,” she said.

            “Well it’s worth it,” Jared continued.  “I live across the street…”

            “I know,” she said.

            “And have a recycling bin exclusively for aluminum and glass in front of my house.  If you save your empty cans I can pick them up when I stop in and take them off your hands.”

            “You mean your dumpster.  Your recycling bin is that big a*s dumpster in your yard, right?” she clarified, nodding her head.

            “Well, it was a dumpster,” Jared told her, “but now it’s…”

            “A giant recycling bin for all of Chapel Hill,” she said, still nodding.  “We know.  You put up flyers in the bathroom here.  I remember.  You want the empty beer cans from UNC students.  We see you come over here from your house every day.”

            A fat woman with heavy blue eye shadow that reached her brow emerged from the back of the store.  Jared had seen her before.  The chins hanging off her face had wrinkles in them and her wispy hair was pulled back into a painful ponytail.  Up until the rubber band wrapped around it, her dark hair was greasy and slick; her ponytail was a fried yellow-blonde.  She shuffled up to the counter saying to the girl, “Ann, baby, toilet’s clogged again.  Will you get a damn plumber in here?  I’m ‘bout ready to piss all over the floor in that s**t inn’t fixed.”

            The girl turned and looked at Jared.  “Dumpster boy’s here.  He lives across Franklin�"maybe he’ll let you use his bathroom,” she said with a shrewd grin.  She took the last sip of her Diet Coke, adding, “Oh, I’ll probably have to pee soon, too, with all this soda.  But don’t worry; I’ll bring my empty cans with me.”

 

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As a child, Jared watched his father become routinely livid over the McDonald’s cups and empty Bronson packs that were tossed out onto the edge of their lawn from the windows of trucks and cars roaring down Nicodemus Mile on the way to Parkwood Baptist Church, a few dozen yards up the road and across the street.  Sunday mornings, Jared’s father would walk along the side of Nicodemus and pick up the garbage with a long pole that had a wiry claw welded to end.  He would shoot hard, disgusted looks at the Baptists as they filed through Parkwood’s large, wooden double doors.  Because Jared’s father wore nice sweaters and marginally expensive slacks, even while picking up litter, the Baptists noticed him and turned to watch.  Over time, as he sat through year after year of high school, Jared grew to hold just as much, if not more, distain for the apathetic Baptists.  Every time he spotted trash in the neighborhood he allowed himself to be overcome with a fierce anger�"a grudging resentment.  He took each piece of litter personally.  He hated them all.

When he was seventeen, Jared attended his first city council meeting, his agenda being Chapel Hill’s litter.  The city agreed to give Jared an old dumpster that had been rendered useless since Chapel Hill had gotten new garbage trucks with levies that only fit the measurements of the dumpsters manufactured in Louisville, Kentucky and distributed by Pfeiffer Disposal Co. Inc.  Jared’s dumpster would be Chapel Hill’s official receptacle for recycling aluminum and glass.  It would be Jared’s responsibility to post signs around the city to inform the community and transport the recyclable material to the E-cycling Center of North Carolina, located four hours outside of Chapel Hill in the moderate town of Fayetteville.  Every month, Jared rented a U-haul and shoveled the dumpster’s contents into the wagon.  Every month, he made the trip to Fayetteville.

 

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            Jared unlocked his front door and the fat woman rushed past him, frantically darting in and out of linen and coat closets until she found the bathroom.  She shut the door with an abrupt slam and Jared heard the click of the lock turning from inside.  Her shoes squeaked across the tile floor as she made her way to the toilet.  She sat and, with a deep sigh, shamelessly evacuated her bowels.  Jared looked around the living room, asking for distraction.  He thought maybe she was going to try to molest him.  Or steal something.  Probably both.  Silence followed the roar of flushing water.  He paused, hoping to hear the faucet running.

            “Thank you kindly,” the fat woman said, emerging from the bathroom.  “You mind if I smoke?” she asked, wiggling a pack of cigarettes out of the front pocket of her khakis.

            Jared watched closely; he couldn’t help himself.  He couldn’t see her crotch�"it disappeared in the black shadow created by the belly that hung over her belt.  Her long breasts rested low on her chest like pancakes.  She held the filter to her mouth.  A thin veil of hair shielded her upper lip.

            “Want one?”  She extended a complaisant arm, offering him the pack.

Jared accepted.  He had no ashtrays.  He picked up an empty wine bottle off the floor.

“For ash,” he said.

The fat woman looked around the room with wide eyes.  Hasty charcoal drawings were sporadically taped to the stale grey walls.  Charcoal sticks had been stepped on and sat in crumbled piles on the floor.  She circled the room, walking daintily amongst the disarray. 

“Not what I expected.”  She took several drags from her cigarette waiting for Jared to respond.  “Looks more like a dumpster in here than the one you got outside,” she said with an affable smile.  “I woulda thought a nice young man such as yourself would keep a clean place, what with your concern for the environment.”

“It’s not really litter if it’s indoors,” Jared said.

“I wund’t sayin’ it was,” she said, calm and steady.  “Cause I know you don’t give a s**t about the environment any more than the next guy.  You ain’t out to save the world.”

“Why do you say that?” Jared asked.

“Cause I seen you in the store.  You just lonesome.  You want somethin’ to do.  But hell, at least you doin’ somethin’.”  She took another drag from her cigarette.  “More than I kin say for the resta them.  More than I kin say for me; old and still workin’ at the Texaco.”

Jared looked down and saw that his cigarette had turned to a fragile stick of ash.

“Well, I mean, I don’t have a job. At least you’ve got a job,” he said.

“Ya know, I ‘ppreciate you sayin’ that,” she said.  “I hate people too ya know.  Just like you hate ‘em.”

“What?”  Jared asked.

“You wouln’ believe it, seein’ me now and all, but I use t’ be a dancer.  A good one.  Went to a fancy school on a scholarship.  Yeah,” she said, shaking her head to herself.

“What happened?”  Jared asked.

“Too much blow.  Too much booze.  Ya know, they weigh your a*s at those schools.  If you inn’t the right weight, if you inn’t skinny ‘nuff, they kick your fat a*s out.  F****n’ intense s**t.”

“Did that happen to you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“I mean, I wasn’t thinking you didn’t dance anymore because you got fat or gained weight or whatever.  I mean, I didn’t mean it like that.  I wasn’t saying�"” he stopped.

“I know,” she said, and dropped her cigarette butt down the neck of the wine bottle.  It landed in backwash that sat like tiny puddles of rain at the bottom and sizzled for a moment before going out.  “One time, at rehearsal, I shot up backstage.  Got so f****n’ gone when the queer ballerina boy lifted me, I lost balance; fell square on my head.  Broke my neck in two places.”

Jared stood, silent.  All he could think about was how odd it was to hear this dirty woman say ‘rehearsal.’  An elegant demon had momentarily possessed her.

“Gay boy’s name was Antonio.  Boy, did he turn me into a f*g hag.  I miss that little cocksucker.  He was beautiful dancer.  Thought me fallin’ was his fault�"blamed ‘imself,” she said.

“By ‘shot up,’ do you mean, like heroin?” Jared whispered, extending his neck forward, bouncing glances like racquetballs off the living room walls.

The fat woman sat down on the couch and lit another cigarette.  She offered Jared one.

“Yup,” she said, “I was a ballet dancin’ junky.  Had me a scholarship and everything.”

“S**t.”  It was the only thing Jared could think to say.

“Rehab’ll make the boniest little b***h a fat cow.  I can’t look at myself in the goddamn mirror no more,” she said.  She kept shaking her head to herself like she’d just witnessed a car wreck.

Jared sat down next to her, reminding himself to keep taking drags of his cigarette.  Through the corner of his eye he saw that her seat cushion sank far deeper into the couch than his.

“Ah, f**k,” she exclaimed, “look at my sorry a*s, sittin’ here reminiscin’ and sufferin’ from nostalgia.  I’m sorry hun�"I don’t mean to talk yer damn ear off.  S**t, I ‘pologize.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jared said.  “It’s fine.”

“You sure do drink alotta wine,” she said, turning to face him.

“Yeah.”

“Been nine months since ma last drink,” she told him.  “I was always a whisky girl muhself.  I didn’ never feel classy ‘nuff to be drinkin’ wine.  Always felt strange when uh did,” her accent thickened.

“Oh,” Jared said.  He wanted to empathize.  He wanted to look like he cared.  It wasn’t that he was indifferent; he just didn’t know what to do.  All he could think about was the unequal distribution of weight on the couch and how it irritated him.

“Whaddya say we pop the cork on one ‘a them bottles you jus’ got?” she proposed with a wink.

“I don’t think that’d be…”  Jared started to stand but the fat woman pushed him back into his seat.

“Ah, come on!  I’ll even recycle ‘em in your dumpster we we’re done,” she promised.  She got up and pulled one of the bottles of chardonnay out of its brown paper bag.  “You gotta corkscrew, right?” she asked.  Her eyes scanned the clutter on the floor.  “Oh! Nevermin’, found one!”

Jared watched the fat woman pull the cork from the bottle.  She took a big swig, wiping her mouth on her sleeve as she handed it to him.  Jared looked around before taking a sip from the bottle.  It probably wasn’t a good idea drinking with a troubled woman, but it was nice to have someone to drink with him.

He braced himself for drunken blather, but the fat woman sat in silence as the two passed the bottle back and forth.  The wine provided a new objective; there was no longer a need to fill the grey walls with washed-up anecdotes.

After they finished the bottle, the fat woman got up to leave, only pausing to say, “Thanks fer the pick-me-up,” before shutting the front door behind her.  She crossed the yard, holding the empty wine bottle with a clumsy grip, letting it swing freely at her side.  When she reached the dumpster she stood of the tips of her toes and peered inside, looking at what little her short stature allowed before tossing the bottle in.  A beat-up Bronson pack caught her eye; the cellophane glistened in the sun like the brow of a pregnant woman.  A single cigarette lay unsmoked inside.  The fat woman wobbled from side to side on her toes, making sure her eyes hadn’t deceived her before she began hoisting herself up the side of the dumpster.  Just as her upper half was high up enough for her to lean inside, she slipped on the sweat that permanently gloved her pudgy palms and lost balance.  Her arms whipped out in front of her, leaving her baggy torso straddling the dumpster wall.  Her body rocked back and forth like a seesaw until it tipped over and she fell in headfirst. 

Inside, Jared heard the thud of the fat woman hitting the dumpster’s floor.  He opened the front door and looked out across the lawn.  He stared at his dumpster�"the woman flailed about inside.  He stood in the doorway for a while, listening to the orchestra of clinking bottles and crushing cans.  He heard her screeching “M**********r! M**********r!” while she pawed around in a sea of aluminum and glass.  Then he stepped back into the house and locked the door behind him.