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The Last Trash
Day
Richard
St. Germain
The mailman walked across the lawn. The paper came in a plastic bag
on days it rained. The plumber was a fixture. The back and forth of the
mower showed in different shades of green. Wild violets sprouted in a
pile of loam. Cars missed hitting and kept going, leaving tracks. Even
the chimney was painted. The TV antenna fastened to the crossbar with
U-bolts through a perforated sleeve. City plows tore up the shrub on the
other side of the sidewalk and the shrub came back, snagging at the hats
of the passing kids. A rock wall started at the top of the hill. Pairs
of sneakers hung from the telephone wire.
Linoleum over a fault cracked and crumbled, creating passage for
ants. Coins ended up stuck between the backrest and bottom cushion of
the recliner and beyond the reach of pencils in the springs and slung in
the fabric under the loveseat. Three good pulls with the throttle open
started the mower. Past the wheelbarrow was East.
The refrigerator and the waffle iron and the toaster oven and the
garbage dispose-all tripped the breaker. The refrigerator and the waffle
iron and the toaster oven and the electric can opener tripped the
breaker. The refrigerator and the blow dryer and the vacuum cleaner on
"high" and the radio playing tapes and the electric frying pan
and the lights in the hall, the dining room, the kitchen, and the
stairwell downstairs tripped the breaker. The breakers were downstairs.
The bathroom fixtures were Kohlers. The neighbors were also the Kohlers.
The Kohlers had a crabapple tree too. The Kohlers didn't use their
garage to park their car in either, either car, in the winter, or in the
mornings, or when it was raining or might rain and other cars might park
on the lawn or in the Kohlers' driveway or on the Kohlers' lawn. The
Kohlers' crabapple tree did better though. The crabapple tree was out
past where the wheelbarrow used to be. The wheelbarrow leaned up against
the garage. Bees liked the sticky red berries that dotted the shrub
after the city brought sod and grass seed and ice water and treated
where the plows' plows plowed. The mop dried beside a window-box. Even
the awnings were painted.
Swallows left their nest in the tree and swooped under the awnings,
leaving traces of wingbeats on the aluminum. The foundation near the
path to the barrels was graded, the finish on the railings thinned, the
hinges on the trash bin wired, clothesline looped and looped and looped
and knotted on the spool, nails blunted, concrete seamed. Resin beaded
on the lumber. Even the linoleum was painted. The linoleum was even
repainted. The doorbell failed on days it rained. The lower branches of
an evergreen tree were congested with last years leaves. Cedars. The
skyline was cedars. Buses backed up until cars could pass the busses and
cars backed up until busses could pass the cars and the bus drivers
waved to the car drivers and the car drivers looked back and did not
wave and the bus drivers kept going. The bus drivers waved to each
other. Dollar bills turned up in pockets. New sealant cost money. A
puddle filled the crawl space under the landing on days it rained, and
the puddle under the crawl space filled a puddle in front of the stairs,
and the sidewalks and driveways darkened. The noise of the wind in the
screens disappeared. Doors stuck. Windows stuck. Soot washed off the
awnings. The barrels left uncovered filled. Drops getting past the
damper spattered ashes in the fireplace. Plastic covered lampshades. The
phone company charged extra for an extension in the living room. The
phone company owned the phones. Coats hung on hangers in the closet in
the hall and on a hook on the door in the bathroom and over a chair and
over the headboard of a bed and across the corner of a dresser and on
the corners of a mirror on the dresser and at the end of the ruler
sticking out from a stack of books. The arm of a coat reached to the
floor. A coat enfolded its own arms. Collars contained a board stitched
in with stiff brittle line. A painting on the wall was painted under.
Ashtrays went buried behind the china. The turntable and the VCR
worked and the icemaker worked and the front doorbell worked and the
cordless screwdriver and the spray-on stain remover and the toilet tank
flush repair valve and a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda and half
an hour three times a week and the parents of any kid who delivered that
many papers, birthdays, holidays, these days, the parents of any kid
these days, usually both parents and even the grandparents and the
President of the United States and retirees and cheap plastic sheeting,
the cheaper the better. The recliner tipped over and pointless pencils
ended up on the floor. The red berries fell and stained the pavement
downstream from the shrub, and the rain washed the sand across the
street and around a barrel of other sand and across another street into
a V. The board under the door wore down. Clothespins floated. Tin foil
floated. The screw to keep the handles of the lid from hitting the
overhead was a Phillips head. East was the ocean and Marblehead and the
shadow of the chimney leaching up the crabapple tree. The windows showed
the smudges of the noses and the foreheads of the persons searching for
a sight beyond the rain. The letters on the Kohlers' mailbox blurred on
days it rained. The letters read "The Kohlers".
The newspaper showed sales and the day's date and changes in the
spacing that made words fit to the end of the page. Hands developed
folds and serrations and scuffed protrusions lit with the color of bone.
Yes, the side tables combined. Even the vases displaying the gnarled
arrangements of wildflowers in them were glazed or enameled or sprinkled
with chaff. Shells mimicked the hiss of the surf flushing tide pools in
Marblehead, rolling the sea urchins over and back. Pipes sang. Ants
dismantled their dead. The circuits withstood the cycle of the electric
coffee percolator. Evidence of the mailman's investigations came to
appear. The dairy delivered three times a week in anodized crates to a
receptacle on the back stairs lashed against the incursions of raccoons
with a bungee strap. The delivery was free if the customer bought so
much every week. The prices compared to the high-end supermarkets' for
conventional milk in which the cream did not leave a ring in the bottle
after being poured off. The empties offered at drops that subtended the
awning. Even the wind chime on the breezeway managed to chime with two
of its chimes after the stepladder had failed to yield. Moist gropings
showed on switchplates, mullions, cupboards, and drawers, and dry
swipes, with the light from behind, on candleholders, teacups, and
photographs. The timer halted. The timer stopped. The teacups rumbled in
their saucers. The meters recorded the kilowatt-hours. Everything
depreciated, but proportionately. The arm on the storm door prevented it
from shutting before the wind blew it open again. The char on the tips
of the candlewicks stiffened. The clock in the dining room agreed with
the clock in the living room and the clock in the living room agreed
with the clock in the TV and the clock in the TV agreed with the clocks
in the radios on the nightstands beside the beds. The clocks in the
radios agreed with the announcers on the stations the radios were set
on. Everyone agreed.
The rain brought the day to submission. The first set of headlights
breached the bald cut of wall at the end of the walk. The play in the
awnings sounded like: rebekrint, rebekrint, krinty, krinty,krint. Have a
few vats of respect for spelunkers. Crawl up and see a parts shop in the
yard. Even the limousine was highlighted by glimpses of silver when cars
turned around in the driveway. Runoff revoked its tributaries, reaching
the strata of salt flats and marshes that were made into acres by layers
of developers' fill. Only reliquaries remained: the pencil sharpener
charged with pencil shavings, a dashed line of grass in the cemented
floor. Even the cedars disappeared. Prices marked the oldest spices. The
liquor cabinet retained its stock of ancillary bottles steeping in the
gloom. The butter dish stayed out on the counter. The newspapers went
out on the breezeway. The other papers and the magazines and the paper
plates and the plastic bags, the contact paper on the microwave, the
priceless spices and the abject teas, the bloated cartons of baking soda
and the fat-free salad dressings and the mealy peaches and the pallid
apples and put-up pints of bean soup and rust-crusted jars of condiments
and pickles and fishes dissolving into the brine went in cinched or
double-knotted plastic kitchen garbage bags to the enclosure holding the
two-wheeled garbage barrels already satisfied with the trash accumulated
since the last trash day. The axles bowed, the wheels buckled, the
handles twisted the rivets that married them to the barrels. Mr. Kohler
anointed the foot of his landing with raindrops from his paper. The
projections of light from the windows fanned across the lawn.
"Missed the kids playing hide-and-go-seek going to the
canteen," Mr. Kohler said. "Some guy swore it was going to be
World War Three." The leaves of the crabapple tree began to
applaud. "Lubovsky," or someone, Mr. Kohler described,
"fired a shot and the puck went to the crease and stopped. I don't
care what Clara--" or Clare, or Clarence,
someone--"said," Mr. Kohler said. "All your teams beat
the clock." Even the street bore a stripe that marked the divide
between dispersal and convergence over engineered surfaces to a
fulminating outlet at the sea. The East smoldered and closed over a core
of light upholding the approaches to stores. The limousine ended at the
barrels. The TV antenna accepted the direction of the wind. Three major
networks and representatives of others came in echoed by their sister
stations in different cities, interspersed with a broadcast from the
same soundless hole. The quaking of the baseboards subside. The afghan
made a pillow. The drapes made ample convolutions. The panes unshrouded
assured a semblance of night. Even the houseflies wearied and settled
under their wings. The birds were first. The birds observed. Accretions
capitulated. Furballs escaped on uncoilings of toilet paper. The men
loped ahead or cast legs up to footholds and never looked down, only
out, taking in the limited views. The barrels lolled. Spillages
lingered. Dew improvised paths down the hood of the limousine. The
plumber went by, planning a camping trip to the Alleghenies in June. The
coat hangers gradually moved down the dowels, displacing the dresses and
the inscrutably auburn hairs. The paperboy left a note on the breezeway
saying his work would earn him a scholarship to a college. Mr. Kohler
inherited the wind chime. The limousine decamped for a space behind a
security fence. The awnings played on, rebekrint, rebekrint. Creeley
creeley crint. All's a shall that ends in a wall. A flotilla of
Byzantine cousins is dancing with dank octoroons. Come up and see that
parts shop again. There's a sale on potato knishes. There's a closeout
on three-pronged converters from the desert of East Timor. The catalogs,
the credit card offers, the alumni club newsletters: the mailman kept
coming, increasing his command of the mailbox and of the weatherstrip
attached to the door. The contents at the top will spill onto the
driveway when the mailbox is full. Look for Readers Digest, rebate
checks, samples of laundry detergent. The Kohlers may be keeping a watch
from their landing. Tell them you know me. |
Volume
III Special Issue I