Trash Collection
- May 13, 2020
- 2 min read
by Jonathan Cardew
I. Wheelie of Fortune
I was in the Wheelie trash can, the brand-new contraption the city had sent us for refuse.
“What are you doing?” my wife said, leaning from the side door.
“I slept with Jeanie,” I said, over the rim. “I fucked her last spring.”
My wife winced, walked down the steps.
“I know,” she said.
“You know?”
“I watched you. Right from where you are now. I came home and saw her car. That’s why I got in the trash.”
“It’s a good view,” I said, sinking a little further in.
My wife lit a cigarette. She took a draw and then blew out a smoke ring.
It was a perfect night to smoke.
II. Catharsis
“You should get out,” she said, tapping the side. “Really. I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.”
She tapped the side of the wheelie again to hammer home the point.
“I forgave Jeanie, actually. I called her. We had a long chat on the phone. Really cathartic, you know?” She blew out another smoke ring. “She’s a complicated and lovely woman.”
III. The Road to Nowhere
The garbage collectors came much earlier than usual.
The metal grabber pincered the wheelie and flung me over and into the bed of the truck where a succession of bags rained down.
“What the hell,” I said, but I didn’t say it with conviction—I just kind of whispered it to myself.
The truck took corners like it didn’t care, like road safety was not a concern.
Bags fell all over me. Slime oozed from tears.
I peered out of the slats in the side.
I saw Jeanie’s house.
The Tudor.
IV. The Flowing Nightgown
“What are you doing in there?” said Jeanie, face up close to the side of the truck.
Her breath came out in little puffs of smoke.
It was a chilly evening.
“Do you regret it?” I asked her. “Do you think about what we did?”
She was in a flowing nightgown, and she looked beautiful and natural.
She was ready and waiting with her wheelie at 3 a.m.
“I don’t think about much anymore, to be honest,” she said, after a pause.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
The two trash guys were running up and down the deserted street, pushing wheelies like they weighed nothing.
They didn’t look at Jeanie, and they didn’t acknowledge my presence when they turned on the trash grabber.
The truck began to move off again.
Jeanie waved.
She waved all the way around the corner.
V. Incineration
The incinerator was an ugly block building at the edge of town. Twin smokestacks skewered the sky—a hateful structure.
The trash truck pulled up to a loading bay and the guys got out of the cab and lit cigarettes.
They wore hats and had hunched shoulders, but they were clean.
One of the guys whispered, “I bet a twenty that guy kills himself,” and then a loud beep went off, and it all changed for me.
Jonathan Cardew’s stories appear in Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, People Holding, Passages North, and other venues. He is blog editor for Bending Genres and contributing editor for the Best Microfiction series. He lives in Milwaukee, Wis.
