Garbage by Stephen Dixon Read Free Book Online

I’m sick of garbage after so long. She sick of it too, telling people what I do, even with all the money I once make, so stop concerning yourself for me and see them and agree to the first offer they say to take your garbage from now on.”
    â€œAll they want is two thousand and now probably more.”
    â€œPay it. Then they come around nice-like for your garbage, and that’s the price you pay for not calling me before besides being so nice and for first saying to them no.”
    â€œI don’t have two thousand to spare.”
    â€œHave it, find it, spare it, please.”
    â€œThat much? No way. They either have to collect my garbage for the fifteen to twenty-five extra dollars a month or run me out. I can’t get a loan, not that I’d try, so I have no choice.”
    â€œThen start running, I think, but I pray maybe you’re right and you win after all.”
    â€œShaney,” a customer says coming in, “you won’t believe it, I just got laid off, so you’ll have to start me a new IOU tab with a double shot of rye.”
    â€œNow I got to go,” George says, “and say goodbye last time in our lives for a while perhaps, for I don’t want Stovin’s people see me here and think I advising you to oppose. Thanks for the bad brandy,” and he drinks up, kisses my hands, pats my customer’s back and goes.
    I phone Stovin’s and say “Jenny, don’t hang up, this is Shaney Fleet again. I’m sorry for the unease I might’ve caused you the other day with my being rude, but could you please tell your boss or Turner or Pete if they’re there—”
    â€œI already told you.”
    â€œThen just Mr. Stovin or son or the accountant who might know of me or any salesman that I’m ready to give in, this isn’t a trick, and I’d like your company to start carting for me.”
    â€œFor whatever it’s worth, Mr. Fleet, I’ll pass it on.”
    â€œYou’re a doll.”
    Next day while I’m tapping a keg in the basement cooler right under the bar a customer shouts out “Shaney, a paper just flew through the mail chute—want me to pick it up?”
    I run for the stairs, then down the two steps I got up, as the rod in the keg could explode the way I left it halfway in and the beer ready to spout, and finish tapping it and run upstairs and around the bar to the outside. Policeman on the beat, police car cruising the street, a group of kids tossing around iceballs and making noise as they walk home from the nearby parochial school, overhead pretty close a seaplane, faraway the barking at the same time of fierce dogs, around me snowflakes. I pick up the envelope and read the note inside. “Our answer,” it says in letters painstakingly penciled and filled in from an alphabet stencil, “is same place last chance $2500 now go to bank dont for a moment phone or delay.”
    I take one of my pickled eggs, mix lots of garlic cloves from the jar with it, chop them up and under the counter stick them in the note envelope and spit a goodsized wad into it and tell the two customers “I’ll be right back, get another beer free if you want but don’t let a soul in even if they knock.” I stick a little billy in my back pocket just in case and go outside, lock the door and go to the bank and write on the back of a withdrawal slip “2500 death germs I hope you get from my spit, you bastards, and may the garlic not be enough to ward them off, don’t ask me what good or symbol to you is my putrid egg,” and put that in the envelope on top of about twenty blank withdrawal slips and seal it up, get on line and when it’s my turn I go to the teller and put the envelope on the counter between us and just as he grabs and brings it down to him I say “Excuse me, I forgot something, just a second,” and rifle through my coat pockets. “Damn, I must’ve left it in