Garbage Man Read Free Page B

runners and bearings. The man in the coat waved the truck in. There was a hiss of brakes being released and a cough of diesel. The truck pulled inside the perimeter and stopped again. Behind it, the gates were already closing.
    The figure from the building approached the cab. The window was open. A tattooed face looked out, grinning and chewing.
    â€˜Alright, Stig.’ said the driver through crackles of gum.
    The gate-man nodded, not missing the open-mouthed smacking.
    â€˜Still trying to pack in the cigarettes?’
    â€˜Nah. Given up giving up, mate. Addicted to the bloody gum as well now. Fackyin’ . . . look at this.’ Chewing all the while the driver with a bad painting for a face rolled up his sleeve. His eyes were open very wide. ‘Nicotine patch, that is,’ he said pointing as though the gate-man might miss it. ‘A fag’s just not the full bifter without the patch and the gum. I have to take a couple of beta-blockers with a few swigs of scotch before I can think about gettin’ any kip at night.’ The driver stared out into the night. ‘Fackyin’ . . .’
    The gate-man considered a light-hearted jibe about rehab and let it pass. The driver was lean and had a reputation for getting out of his cab to settle slights. Instead the gate-man said:
    â€˜Know where you’re going?’
    The driver nodded. Too fast. Too many times. Like a viper-strike his hand came out of the cab window. The gate-man flinched but he needn’t have. The hand was thin and grimy, fading turquoise webs and dots extending down from the wrist, a swallow near the thumb. Between the long fingers a wad of dirty twenties. The gate-man smiled and took them, flicked through, and pocketed the lot.
    â€˜Who’s overrun their quota this time?’ he asked as the hand withdrew upwards.
    â€˜It’s not that,’ said the driver. ‘The incinerator at the hospital’s bust, innit. Fackyin’ . . . can’t burn up the cut off arms and legs and lumps of cancer an’ that. Amazing how much “waste” they create. I ain’t going in a hospital, Stig. Not ever. I’d come out half the man I am now.’ The driver looked down and grinned, eyes chalky, already thinking about something else. Briefly, he came back to the moment. ‘Tell you what else, Stig. It stinks. The worst stink of anything I’ve ever had to shift. Shit and disease and rotting meat, all from people like you and me. Went into hospital in one piece, left with bits missing and a super-bug. Never going in there, mate. Fackyin’ . . . never.’
    The gate-man nodded and stepped back.
    The driver slammed the truck into gear and ground away along the temporary road leading to the landfill cells. Very soon, when the canyons of trash were all filled, the whole landfill would be sealed and covered with soil. They’d turn it onto a public park or sports centre or playing field and, in time, no one would remember the network of feeder roads that led the trucks to the huge mouths in the earth that swallowed the town’s muck silently and willingly. All this would be gone but the gate-man would be doing something similar somewhere else - at least for a while. There would always be waste and there would always be a need for waste managers and refuse engineers. He smiled because he knew he’d never be out of work.
    Until he wanted to be.
    The sound of the truck’s engine receded into the darkness along with the glare from its headlights. The gate-man half wished the driver would make an over-stimulated miscalculation and bury himself and his truck as well.
    Fackyin’ . . . forever.
    But where was the charity in that kind of thinking? Besides, without the hyperactive driver, whose name he still didn’t know after years of after-hours interactions like this one, there would be no backhanders for burying the town’s unauthorised waste. Not to mention the loads brought in by