Garbage Man (12 page)

‘I'm telling you. I saw it. It's nothing.'

‘Go back.'

‘Je -'

‘Do it, Ray. I'm not kidding.'

Ray despised himself for not standing firm yet again. But this was different, wasn't it? This really could be someone in trouble. Knowing that, weren't they morally obliged to go back? He swore to himself and started looking for a place to turn around.

‘If it turns out to be a black bin liner full of rubbish, you owe me. Big style.' he said.

‘I don't owe you anything for doing what's right, Ray.'

‘If you make us miss this lecture for no reason, you owe me.'

She shrugged.

‘Fine. I'll owe you.' Ray smiled.

‘Two dogs.' he said.

‘What?'

But she knew what he meant.

‘Next time we do it. I want it like two dogs.'

‘What
ever
.'

He looked over, gauging her mood. Was she . . . thinking again? Nah, not twice in one morning, surely.

‘Give me that fag, Jenny.'

She crushed the empty pack in her fist, rolled the window down and threw it out into the damp morning.

‘We're out,' she said.

***

‘Quickly. You have to be so quick. Please, Don, he'll be back soon.'

Half terrified and half limp with abandon, Tammy let Don batter her against the beige carpeted stairs. He was standing on the parquet hallway floor, uniform trousers and underpants piled over his shoes. He held her hips as she knelt on the third step. The force of his lunges, the panic in them, hurt and delighted her. He was inept but that made it all the more delicious.

She imagined Kevin coming home, letting the dogs in, standing for a moment in the doorway not believing, taking the first object to hand - a thumb stick from the brolly holder - and smashing Don over the head, swiping at his ribs, driving the tip of the stick into his throat and mashing his windpipe as the poor boy tried to pull his trousers up and explain. Sweet, giddy mayhem.

She came.

When the boy was gone, red-faced and furtive out the back door and off to catch the school bus, Tammy weighed the rumpled condom in her palm. It was still warm with his semen. She slit it with a paring knife and flushed it away in the downstairs toilet. Then, already aching for more risk and the boy's utter devotion, she showered.

In the kitchen, over strong coffee, she read the paper Don had delivered. Catching sight of the wall clock as she glanced up from the singles pages - sad fuckers - she noticed Kevin was taking longer than usual. Christ, she thought, I could have milked the kid a second and third time. Teenagers were like that: endless enthusiasm.

There was a noise from outside the back door and she looked over, expecting to see her boys, Ozzy and Lemmy, thirsty and spent. It wasn't the dogs. Through the glass door she saw some other kind of animal, rolling and struggling on the back steps. It seemed to be covered in rubbish, as though it had spent the night in a dumpster. Its weak thrashing suggested it was wounded. She let the paper drop to the counter of the breakfast bar and stood up slowly to take a better look.

***

The path at Shreve Country Park took a two-mile route around a reservoir and bird sanctuary. It passed through wooded areas and fields, and across a dam-like embankment. Only in some areas did it follow the shoreline of the water. Their warm-up races over, Ozzy and Lemmy now danced on their hind legs around Kevin. Tongues lolling, eyes rolling, foam around their jaws, they begged for him to throw the rubber ball. It was hard, red and heavy. Kevin drew his arm back and hurled it as far as he could, hoping to lose it in the long grass and weeds. That would keep them searching for a while and give him a few moments free of their dirty duo mania.

They raced away at less than knee high and disappeared into the sea of grass. He watched dew drops sparkle off the tasselled grass tips as the dogs tunnelled through below. Knowing there was plenty more time, he wished he'd brought extra cigarettes. Quitting was the second hardest thing he'd ever done. Pretending he hadn't taken it up again was the hardest. But walks were the best time to indulge because the fresh air blasted through his clothes and took away the smells. Between the outdoors and his gold-top breath freshener, he'd managed to keep his relapse a secret from Tammy.

He reached a stile leading to the next section of footpath and turned back to see where the dogs were. There was no movement in the field. The throw had really tested their retrieving skills. That was a joke, of course; when the pair of them
did
return with the ball, neither of them would let go of it and yet they would prance around and hassle him to take it and throw it again. He'd have to wrestle it from their slimy, spittly mouths. Dogs. He just didn't get them.

He looked around before he shouted out:

‘Ozzy! Lemmy! Here.'

He hated calling their ridiculous names - Tammy's idea, naturally - and withered inwardly if anyone was near enough to hear.

On the other side of the field there was movement in the grass and then a single line of disturbance approaching fast. Lemmy appeared from the hip-high jungle with the red sphere plugging his mouth. Ozzy was right behind him. Their coats were dark-streaked with fallen dew. Lemmy stood quivering in front of him, offering the ball, wagging.

‘Clever boy, Lemmy. Want me to throw it again?'

He reached down to take it and Lemmy turned away. Ozzy tried to steal the ball from his mouth so he turned the other way. Kevin reached again. They both started to bounce and cavort around him.

‘Right. Piss off then.'

He stepped over the stile. Delighted - laughing it looked like to Kevin - Lemmy and Ozzy went under it, dropped the ball and sprinted away up the path.

He caught up to them a few minutes later. They were sniffing at a split bag of rubbish.

‘Hey, get out of it, you two!'

Bloody hell, he thought. Why did people dump stuff this way? And in a nature reserve of all places. He clapped his hands twice.

‘Oi, OUT! Come on.'

They looked back, guilt on their faces, and ignored him. It was a big bin liner and much of its contents were strewn out behind it into the water. It looked like it had burst open when someone tried to drag it out. He stomped over to the dogs, sick of being disobeyed. As he bent down to grab their collars he saw that the rubbish wasn't rubbish at all. It was moving.

It was alive.

9

Ray and Jenny left the car on the other side of the road.

Now they stood on the grass verge with the traffic slashing past over the wet tarmac. They were close enough to the road that some of the spray from the cars sprinkled their legs. Ray had his arms folded across his chest. He felt stupid standing there. People would drive by and think that they were the ones dumping stuff illegally. But he was half happy too: Jenny owed him. Big style. Doggy style.

‘What did I tell you? It's just someone's unwanted crap. I can't believe we're doing this.'

Jenny didn't answer. She was looking at the elongated, comma-shaped pile of junk and black plastic as though it had hypnotised her.

‘We're late,' said Ray. ‘Let's get going.'

Jenny walked around to inspect it from a different angle. He couldn't understand why; the stuff stank of rot and shite. She crouched down.

‘Jenny, this is mental. We're leaving.'

‘No.'

‘What do you mean “no”? We need to get to lectures.' She turned her head and stared up at him.

‘Ray, look at this, will you?'

She was pointing at something near the fat end of the trash pile. Ray hadn't seen it until then. It was the body of a rabbit but it was flat, like it had been run over. The eyes were missing from the head. It was a patch of grey, fur-covered bones.

‘Road kill. If I stand here much longer, my breakfast is going to make a reappearance.'

‘I don't think it was hit by a car.'

‘Jenny, I don't care if it was assassinated or died in its sleep. I'm going now. If you don't want to come with me you can hitch to college.'

He said the words but he didn't leave and Jenny didn't stand up to come with him. Typical, he thought, his self-respect leaking away as it so often did when dealing with her. On the road the traffic was decreasing, the rush hour almost over.

‘Ray?'

‘What.'

‘Is it me or is this moving?'

‘If that rabbit's moving, it's because it's got a skinful of maggots.'

‘No. Not the rabbit. The rubbish. Look.'

She pointed to the oddly shaped lump of debris. Ray looked more carefully. It seemed to rise and fall as if it were. . . breathing. The thought of missing lectures suddenly lost its importance. Ray became mesmerised by his concentration, his attempt to recognise what he saw. Jenny beat him to it.

‘I think there might be someone stuck inside all this,' she said.

She reached out and began to remove items of refuse from the pile but each thing she took hold of - an old noodle carton, a crushed nine-volt battery, a piece of rag - remained attached to the whole as if fused. She pulled harder, tried to dig her fingers through a section of black plastic. The rubbish rolled towards her and she fell back onto her bottom in the waterlogged grass.

‘Shit.'

She still held the tongue of an old tennis shoe in her hand. She attempted to get back onto her feet. Ray, watching it all, saw the bulk of the rubbish pile in a different way now. It seemed heavy, muscular. He saw the eyes before Jenny. Two tiny brown eyes that glittered. They were charged with a life and intelligence far superior to that of the rabbit they had once belonged to. With unreal speed, the mass of rubbish surged towards Jenny, knocking her flat on her back. Before Ray could move, it had swamped her legs, humping its way over her like some junkyard walrus.

She screamed: fear and disbelief. Ray couldn't move.

She screamed again: pain.

‘RAY. It's BITING me. Get it OFF.'

He looked at the thing, still not understanding it. Not knowing how to begin to save Jenny from a living, breathing pile of litter. Another scream. She looked at him, eyes wide and beseeching.

‘
PLEASE
, Ray. DO SOMETHING.'

Finally the animal in Ray surfaced from below the constant haze of spent marijuana. Wrathful and vicious, he put the boot in like a rioter kicking a downed policeman. The steel toe-cap of his Dr Martens hefted into the rubbish again and again, penetrating the black plastic, forcing crumpled cans and crisp packets deep inside the thing. It ruptured easily and liquid filth spilled forth. The stink made him retch and still he kicked, fear and ignorance devolving him into a savage. He kicked and choked and kicked again, tearing the thing open. It had covered Jenny to her chest by this time but the damage Ray's boots had inflicted had overcome it.

Soon he was kicking a deflated pile of rubbish. Pieces of it flew away with each new shoeing, sending litter and paper across the verge. He kicked and kicked. Jenny pushed the bulk of the thing off her body and rolled away and still he kicked it. The eyes, the tiny clever rabbit eyes, watched him as if interested in what he was doing to the rest of its body. He saw them and stomped them out, stomped them dead into the wet grass until they were mud and mucus. Tears streaked his face and then, exhausted, he coughed up his breakfast amid the strewn trash.

Jenny was standing awkwardly and weeping in shock and pain. As she cried, she scanned the ground and limped through the scattered remains of the creature. Ray saw the torn end of her shoe and the way her blood ran so freely from the wound there.

‘We've got to get you to hospital.'

‘Not yet,' she said.

‘Yes, Jenny. We have to go now. You're losing blood.'

She looked at him, pleading again, yet somehow still in control.

‘Please, Ray. We have to find my toe first.'

***

Mason found the thing early on the morning after the storm.

He'd seen something moving around the bottom of his runner bean canes and thought initially that it was a cat taking a dump or a sick rabbit looking for refuge. Neither would have bothered him much. He'd have moved the cat shit - no telling what toxins might be in it - to a place where it wouldn't affect the purity of his crops. If he'd caught the rabbit he'd have ended its myxomatosis misery or put it back out in the scrubland beyond the garden. It only took a few seconds of watching to see that it was neither of those things. The colours were too man-made. The movements were wrong.

With a mug of tea he'd only taken one sip from in his right hand, he shuffled barefoot into his wellies and flop-footed his way out to the bean canes. His mind worked hard to make sense of what he was seeing but there was no context for it. Partially obscured by the lower leaves of the runners, it was the contents of an overturned dustbin, it was the run off from a sewer, it was the scum that forms over drains, the pin mould of the cellar. He smelled it before he reached it and knew immediately where it had come from. He stopped, feet chilled in his Wellingtons, right hand hot from the tea mug.

The thing was an accident. It was an abortion. Yet it lived. The shape of its body was that of a huge, bloated tadpole. He could see echoes of embryo, attempts at foetus, but it was all wrong: plastic and cardboard and glass and paper did not live, could not move. He had to be seeing it wrong. He had to be looking at an animal or newborn baby which had somehow entangled itself in waste. Perhaps some underage girl had given birth in secret and then thrown away her child. Perhaps it had survived.

He experienced a ripple of guilt rising along his spine. It passed immediately. He'd done nothing wrong, broken no trusts or taboos. He'd looked, passed time, taken the photos. He'd been professional, as he'd been in his old life. That was all. And this was nothing to do with it.

And still, he felt responsible. Even if it was nothing to do with the girl, it was something to do with him, was it not? He knew it was.