She can see him in her mind’s eye. He is young but looks old, his hair a sparse mess of crooked grey strands stuck to his lumpy, liver-spotted scalp. His few longish brown teeth curl up from the bottom jaw below a nose too bulbous and inflamed to resemble a proper potato. In her mind, his eyes are two black grapes, peering out from under a ridge of skin where any other man would have a pair of eyebrows.
She sees him there: hideous, hateful.
He hunches over the steering wheel of his rusted green garbage truck, slowly creeping down silent city streets in the murky pre-dawn hours, passing through sickly orange cones of street-light. He drives with his low-beams on, searching for the quietest street, her street, a street lined with plastic green bins filled with day-old waste from the apartments stacked skyward, rooms filled with people dwelling deeply, serenely, behind the fragile veil of their dreams.
She imagines him thinking about them, his long-toothed mouth twisting in a sideways sneer.
He arrives at her intersection, and the mist swirls and settles around the wheels of his truck. This street, which during the day crawls with visitors to the local businesses and cafes lining its narrow sidewalks, is absolutely silent. Moths float in and out of the light draining from the streetlamp. He sees the reflection of his truck in the mirrored storefront glass, tries to make out the shape of his face but can’t. He considers the plastic bin directly in front of him, wonders what it holds tonight. Glass, he hopes—bottles to break against the sides of the truck’s metal crib. He pushes a button.
A steel claw extends from the bonnet of his truck, lowers and grips the sides of the garbage bin. A few objects clash idly inside as it is lifted up and over the top of the truck, out of his sight. He feels it poised silently above him for one more pristine moment. He takes a deep breath of pure, cool night air, and as he exhales, jabs a hairy finger at the release button shuddering with pleasure as the cacophonous racket ensues, an deranged orchestra of glass and cardboard boxes, egg cartons, tin cans and plastic bottles, a storm cloud of angry sound. He savors the fading clamor of the breakage, sharp shards scattering about the bed of the truck, settling into the softer piles of composting leftovers and paper packaging.
When it is silent again, he creeps slowly a bit further down the road, coming upon another green bin. This time, he extends the claw, grasps the sides of the bin, and puts his truck into reverse, slowly creeping backwards until he stops at the intersection once again. From there, he repeats the process, savors every echoing clang like a prayer. This is his song.
On the third story, a window slams shut. He looks up through the dirty windshield, searches for the girl’s face behind the closed glass. He imagines she’s beautiful: thin ribbons of blue veins running down her neck under semi-transparent skin, her long, tangled black hair piled sleepily atop her head, eyes like polished jade. He knows she can’t see him for the glare of the street lamp, but he can feel the weight of her anger pressing down on him like gravity. He smiles.
Someone knows he’s there.
# # #
Andrea Holck is an American-born writer and teacher based in London. She received a BA in English from the University of Iowa and an MA from University of Wisconsin, and recently studied short-story writing at City University in London. Her story “Trashman” was inspired by her own battles with the midnight trash collector while living in Zagreb, Croatia. Read more here: andreaholck.wordpress.com
Photo: sebastiaan stam
