Joe by Larry Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

fourteen Old Milwaukee cans from the rubble and put them into his tow sack.
     
    “Ain’t you gonna mash em?” the boy said.
     
    Wade made a dismissive gesture with his hand. The boy bent to the piles of sacks behind him. He picked up another one and said, “If you’d mash em it’d make more room.”
     
    The old man just grunted. Each time he bent over, the boy could see a patch of loose belly flesh, pink and soft, in the gap where his overalls buttoned on the side. He tottered light-headed and delirious with hunger over mounds of garbage inside the smoked-up walls. He moved a newspaper. Green bottleflies swarmed up off a stringer of bream that somebody had thrown into the Dumpster. The fish were bloated, their eyes solid white. Their bellies were pale and their scales were gray. His stomach heaved but there was nothing to come up.
     
    “Hurry up,” the old man said.
     
    The boy bent once more to his work. He knew his father was wanting to finish and get away from the road quickly, but before they had the tow sack half full, a pickup appeared far down the road. He raised himself up.
     
    “Who is it?” he said.
     
    “I don’t know. You got any more in there?”
     
    He didn’t answer, only stood watching apprehensively as thevehicle grew nearer and slowed. They looked at each other and Wade said: “Get outa there.”
     
    Gary climbed down from the Dumpster, holding onto the door. The pickup had slowed to a crawl and now a shield emblazoned on the door appeared, a county emblem like a Maltese cross. The truck stopped and the driver shut the motor off. They waited. A tall man with brown hair and khaki clothes got out. He didn’t say anything at first, only studied them as if they were errant children whose unacceptable behavior he had suffered far past reason.
     
    “Hidy,” Wade said. “How you?”
     
    The man put his hands on his hips and walked over to the Dumpster. He looked inside and shook his head.
     
    “You don’t care for us gettin these cans, do you? We didn’t figger nobody wanted em.”
     
    The man kicked at the piles of trash they’d thrown on the ground, nudging at the mess with his toe as if he’d lost something in that stinking heap of offal. Then he looked up.
     
    “You people are unbelievable,” he said. “You really are.” He kicked at the stuff again. “What do you think this Dumpster’s for?”
     
    “We ain’t hurtin nothin,” the old man said. “We just after these cans. Who are you, anyway?”
     
    The man stared hard at him. “By God, I’m Don Shelby. I’m the supervisor of this beat. Who in the fuck are you?”
     
    Wade Jones toed among the mosaic of ground glass and said nothing.
     
    “Look at this mess,” the man said. “Who do you think’s going to clean it up? When we had a dump here and kept it bulldozedyou wouldn’t even drive down to the end to throw it out. And now I’ll be goddamned if you’re not throwing it out of the Dumpsters.” He looked at Gary. “Do you know you can get put in jail for this?”
     
    “Nosir,” he said. He was wondering if he should run for it. The woods were pretty close.
     
    “Well, by God, you can. It’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for littering. Have you got five hundred dollars?”
     
    “Nosir. I ain’t.”
     
    “Well, that’s what it would cost you. It’s a state law.” He looked at the pile of trash again as if he couldn’t believe it was still there. “My hands can’t run over here every fifteen minutes and pick this stuff up. They’ve got other things to do. Now you two pick up every bit of this mess and put it back where you got it. And I’m gonna stand here and watch you.”
     
    “Say you the supervisor?” said Wade.
     
    “Damn right.”
     
    “But you ain’t the law,” he said doubtfully.
     
    Shelby stepped up until he was in the old man’s face. “Naw, I ain’t the law. Smart son of a bitch. But I got a radio in that truck. And if you don’t pick this shit up in the next