Great Falls
It was a beautiful day to work the Great Falls route. The weather was pleasant, unseasonably so for this early in the spring. It was partly sunny, partly cloudy – whichever is your preference. There was a gentle breeze that gathered itself as it passed through the thick stands of trees, between the rows of neatly-spaced million dollar homes, over the manicured lawns and unblemished driveways, and up to our noses where it stunk, badly, as you might expect it would standing on the back-end of an open garbage trunk.
"These people may be rich, but trash is trash. Like their shit don’t stink." Those were the words of Leroy, on left bumper; he was just a week on the job and already brimming with bad attitude. Leroy didn't appreciate how good he had it working the Great Falls run. Rich people’s trash, poor people’s trash, it was all the same to him. Not to me. I’ve humped garbage on both sides of the tracks and believe-you-me this side is better. The beautiful vistas. The mature trees. The smooth roads. And, oh, yes, the shapely, well-to-do housewives in skimpy robes, rolling their garbage cans to the curb in the early mornings. The Great Falls route is the jewel of the County Sanitation Department.
Dub was still driving the truck, at least as of this day. We're all kind of waiting for the axe to fall, not least old Dub himself. He's only got a couple of years to go until retirement, the poor bastard. But, you drive a garbage truck the way Dub drives, for as many years as he’s been driving; you're going to have the occasional accident. Tough luck, though, flattening a prized English Setter owned by one of the most powerful Senators in these United States of America.
The road kill incident happened a few days ago, here in Great Falls, on Bird Dog Lane. (Now, that’s irony!) The next day, management sent in an observer to ride shotgun and keep an eye on Dub. The management guy doesn’t help out any on the business end of the trash truck. We don’t even know his name. He never introduced himself. He just sits up there and watches Dub, scribbling down his observations in a notebook. No good can come of Mr. Management being here; any fool can see that.
As if all this stress wasn’t bad enough, last week, T.J., Theodore Jerome, my partner of two years on this truck, up and quit the business. T.J. got word that his ninety-six year old mother died up in Concord, Massachusetts. He said he needed to quit to go up there and take care of the estate. The estate! Turns out T.J. was a moneyed guy. He had never said a word about it to Dub or me. I asked him, What in the hell are you doing working on a garbage truck? “I dunno,” he said. “Every man’s gotta do something. I like riding on the truck.”
The new guy, Leroy, was hired under the State Convicted Felon Second Chance program. Leroy did a couple of years in a medium-security penitentiary. He used to have a good job in metalworking. He was an apprentice blacksmith – made some pretty damn fine gates and dinner bells, to hear him tell it. One day Leroy got word that the plant foreman wanted to see him. The other guys started razzing him, telling him that the only thing a visit from the foreman can mean is he's fired. "Pack your bag, Leroy," they said, "you're gone by the end of the day." Leroy’s pretty intense and he’s got a short fuse; you can tell that by looking at him. One of his fellow workers just wouldn’t let up, teased him mercilessly, kept singing, “hit the road, Leroy, don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more…”. Finally, Leroy just snapped. He pulled a red-hot poker out of the fire and branded an “L” on this guy’s cheek. The foreman, who at that very moment had come around to tell Leroy the good news, that he would get his blacksmith certificate ahead of schedule due to his exemplary work, witnessed the whole horrifying event.
So, you might say that Leroy is a tad bitter. He resents having to work in the refuse business and it shows in his level of effort. When he throws garbage at the bin of the truck, he frequently misses and it splatters onto the street. He rarely puts the lids back on the customer's cans. And if people come out late, chasing our truck with their trash bags in hand, pleading with us to stop, Leroy flips them the finger.
The management guy has noticed Leroy and his mishaps. I doubt anything gets by this weasel. Mr. Management doesn't say much, but he's taking it all in: Every mile per hour over the posted speed limit old Dub pegs the truck on those residential side-streets, every busted Hefty Steel Sak spewing fetid liquid onto the driveways of America's wealthy, every profane word uttered. It all goes in the notebook.
Today was the day I was going to pull the "new guy trick" on young Leroy. It had been planned since before the accident. The gag is kind of a tradition with Dub’s crew. Dub pulled it on T.J. and T.J. pulled it on me. Now it was my turn to initiate Leroy. I had even gone so far as to plant the mannequin – damn, it was lifelike! I smattered it with some of that fake blood from the costume store, wrapped it up in clear plastic and left in on a curb near the end of our run. You can probably figure the rest: "Yo, Leroy, give me a hand over here will you. Hey, what’s this?" But I was having second thoughts. Leroy had been talking to himself all morning in an angry tone, and during break he skinned an apple with the biggest hunting knife I have ever seen. The guy was freaking me out. Plus, Mr. Management was keeping a close eye on things today. He was in a more weasely mood than usual. I didn’t want to make things any worse on Dub.
Down the street, the mannequin lay in a heap of trash near the curb. When the truck pulled up close, I jumped off and picked it up. I was about to throw the thing in the hopper when I thought, what the hell, I’m gonna go through with this prank. It was tradition, after all. I called for Leroy to give me a hand. He didn’t answer. I called again. Still no response. I went around to the front of the truck. That’s when I saw him a good half block up the street, walking away with his hands tucked in his pockets. “Where you going, Leroy?” I yelled. But he just kept walking. Finally, he turned the corner and disappeared.
The air horn on the truck sounded. I looked back. Dub was smiling and giving me a thumb’s up. Mr. Management had a look of horror on his face. I had forgotten that I was still carrying the shrouded “corpse” under my arm. The fake blood was dripping down on my boots. Not knowing what to do (I felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights), I slung the body over my shoulder, walked back the hopper and dropped it in. Dub got out of the truck to give me a hand with the rest of the trash. At first we tried to play it straight, like none of this had even happened, but before long we were laughing uncontrollably and recounting the story. Up in the passenger seat of the truck, the management guy scribbled furiously in his notebook.
10:31:56 AM  Stories
|
|
