Steve Rasnic Tem
Hank’s father insisted he take the waste out after dark because he was embarrassed. That’s what he called it: the garbage and the trash and the miscellanea, everything he’d kept too long and now was keen to dispose of. The man had lived life poorly and this was the visible evidence. But it made no difference. In the morning, the bags and the boxes would be sitting in the alley for the entire world to witness.
Hank hated carrying these discards out at night. Their floodlight had shorted out years ago, so he only had the moon and the arc lamp above a distant street corner to guide him. Deep shadow made him uneasy. Anyone might be watching.
He was halfway through the back yard with the last bloated bags when he stopped, thinking he heard his father call him. A weather front was coming in. It sounded like distant applause.
He turned and stared at the back of the house. He’d hauled a wealth of junk from this small, unimpressive mid-Thirties bungalow. You buy, you throw away, and then you buy some more. The “regurgitating economy,” Dad called it. Dad was as bad as everyone else in this regard, but at least he recognised the problem. Hank heard him coughing in the dining room. He waited for any choking sounds but hearing none decided he needn’t rush.
The dark squares of window screen bulged, the porch stuffed with Dad’s belongings staged for disposal or donation, the old man didn’t care which. Dad said he wanted to throw away everything before he died so Hank might have a fresh start. This might have been true, and Hank didn’t want Dad’s shabby things, but the mania with which he’d purged himself of possessions this past year was scary.
The silhouette of the house was humped, the roof altered during his grandfather’s time to add an attic room. The amateur remodel resulted in leaks, which had been causing damage for decades. How could he get a fresh start in something so ruined?
His arms began to tremble. One bag dripped as if perspiring. It felt awful brushing against his bare legs. He reeled off balance toward the alley. The area along their fence was already crowded with bags and spoiled bedding, junk-filled cartons and a few pieces of furniture in such poor shape the thrift stores wouldn’t take them. A scavenger would grab what the trash service didn’t haul away.
His father wanted all this material expunged, he didn’t care how, but he didn’t want to hear any details about thrift stores or junk men or pickers or recyclers. More than once, he’d referred to them as ghouls.
The front was cold and punishing when it arrived. The plastic bags made a rapid snapping sound in the wind. Dad never bought good bags. He never bought good anything. Hank was ashamed – it was an uncharitable thought about a dying old man who loved him.
Their neighbours’ unsecured trash cans rolled down the sloping alley and gathered in the street below. They’d be blocks away by morning. Hank would have gone after them, but he couldn’t leave his dad alone for long. He noticed an unfamiliar black pickup truck tucked away beneath the trees near the street. It was an aged model, so battered he couldn’t be positive about the brand.
An unusually lean figure slipped from the shadows by the truck and entered the street, picked up each trash can with ease and peered inside, tossing them away as if they weighed nothing.
The sight disturbed him but he could not look away. Trash pickers had always worked this neighbourhood, scavenging items they could use, repair, or sell, but they came early in the morning before the garbage trucks ran. Hank knew many, and sometimes waited with coffee and an offer to help load their trucks. He had never seen one working the alley at night.
The dark figure picked up another can, hovered over it, then paused, and Hank could have sworn it grew taller, and broader, its head expanding to fill the opening. It tilted its head back and lifted the can, upending it as if to drink the contents. All at once the slim silhouette grew fuller, its torso swelling so quickly it drunkenly staggered back.
The murky apparition twirled around and shuffled toward the truck. Hank’s insides went liquid.
Hank’s perceptions were unreliable. It was dark and he was stressed – Dad was dying. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of this creature looking at him. The wind intensified, pulling at his clothes. A nearby tree bent over crazily. He grabbed the stretchy cords attached to the chain-link fence and tried to secure the bags he’d just brought out beside the others. He didn’t know what was in them – his father had filled them a few months ago before this last illness. The older bags were more grey than black, layered in dust and the openings secured with those old-fashioned wire twisty ties. One bag split under the cord and something sour dribbled from the wound and down the taut skin. Dad would hate that, but he would never know.
* * *
The moment Hank entered the house he heard his dad talking. “Did you get all the bags of smelly garbage? Make sure you got them all!” His father’s voice turned harsh and wheezy when he was anxious. These days he was anxious most of the time. That was okay. It showed he was still engaged.
“It’s okay, Dad! I got them all!” Hank hated raising his voice.
“Then why does the house still smell like garbage?”
He didn’t want to tell him he was smelling his own recurring stink. He hurried down the hall, dodging wobbly stacks of boxes overflowing with mess. There was something deeply unpleasant about brushing against dry cardboard. He had no time to process the disturbing whispers which resulted. “You’ve got to give it some time, Dad,” said loudly to drown out the unidentifiable muttering. “I just now took them out.”
Our bodies are three-fourths water, our slipcases of skin little better than leaking bags. This was painfully true in his father’s case. The elderly man, lying shirtless on a rented hospital bed in the dining room, dripped, oozed, and sweated. Hank had moved in a TV for him, a bedside table full of books and magazines which had so far been ignored, framed photos of family members which his father also ignored, but insisted they be where he could see them just the same.
No eating took place in this dining room. Food smells made his father ill. His dad derived nourishment from a creamy liquid in a hanging bag via a tube plunged into his chest. Another tube delivered medicine into the back of his hand. Chemo had rendered him mostly bald, leaving a few thin strokes, a dream of hair. Pale lids capped sunken eyes. If they hadn’t just been talking, Hank would have thought him asleep.
They’d sold the dining room furnishings: the good dining set, a couple of antique sideboards. Their absence left a large, tattered hole in the faded rug showing extensive floor damage. Dark spots speckled the boards, mildew, or black mould, he supposed, but he didn’t know the difference, nor did he want to. He could cover it with another rug.
His father opened his eyes. They moved around, pale and filmy. Hank wondered how much he could see. Dad refused to wear glasses anymore.
The darkness outside the window changed. Hank stared, waiting for movement, looking for a face or figure, something, but could not find them.
“What took you so long anyway?”
“It’s dark. I was trying to be careful. Remember, there’s no light out there.”
Dad grunted. “How’s the bag?”
Hank glanced at the feeding bag on the pole. “At least a third full. You’re not feeling hungry, are you?”
His father snorted. “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t need that thing. The piss bag, Hank.”
Hank lifted the sheet hanging off the side of the bed and examined the drainage bag attached to the frame. “I’ll need to empty it in a while.”
“Is Sue coming over tonight?”
“Not tonight.” Hank paused. “I think she has other plans.”
“You don’t know for sure? Call her. Invite her over. But make sure you dump the bag before she gets here. Remember to pull my sheet up too. She seems to think she has to say hello every time she comes over, and I don’t want to scare her away with this big gross belly.”
“I don’t think she cares, Dad. But I will, if she comes over, but I really don’t think she is.” The abdomen looked painful, swollen like a tick, decorated with stretched and distorted surgical scars. His dad had spread thick cream all over it with his free hand, partly for comfort, but mainly because he was afraid of insect bites. He’d developed a terror of insects crawling or landing on him. A half dozen nasty yellow sticky fly strips hung from the dining room ceiling, each jewelled with insect carcasses. Whenever the nurses visited, they complained about these strips, and how the cream got all over the IV tubing and the bandages, but Dad refused any changes to his self-prescribed precautions.
I will not end up this way, Hank thought, and immediately felt disrespectful. He’d die before he reached Dad’s age. He wasn’t that healthy.
“You make the appointment for the belly tap?”
“It’s Thursday afternoon.”
“You couldn’t get me in sooner? I feel like I’m going to burst.”
“I know it’s uncomfortable, but that’s the soonest I could get an appointment.”
His father grunted and closed his eyes again. Ever since his last stay in the hospital he kept his eyes closed most of the time, in embarrassment, or so he couldn’t see what was happening to him, answering the doctors’ or the nurses’ intimate questions with mumbles and head movements.
“You two should get married, you know,” Dad said, eyes still closed. “Don’t make my mistake.”
“Maybe Mom was always going to leave. People do that.”
“I didn’t pay her enough attention. I was too busy with my own projects. Now those projects are in trash bags, and I haven’t seen her in years. I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“She could have called me or written. I’m her only child. She didn’t. I know nothing about her. You stayed, Dad.”
“Don’t wait until I’m gone. Don’t screw this up.” Hank knew he was a disappointment. The fact he’d become Dad’s caretaker was proof Hank had nothing better to do.
His dad raised his head and stared as if he’d been struck. “You have to lock down this relationship now, while you still look halfway decent. Trust me, you don’t want to grow old alone.” He fell back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. “Make sure the doors are locked,” he whispered. “If somebody tries to break in—”
“Nobody’s breaking in, Dad.” But Hank was no longer sure.
“I said if. I can’t stop them. People see stuff coming out of here, they might think we have something worth taking. How’s it going with the back room?”
The back room was the biggest room in the house, packed wall-to-wall with furniture, trunks overflowing with his mother’s belongings, projects his dad abandoned. Hank had no idea what most of it was, just that it had filled the room thirty years or more with an inaccessible, impenetrable accumulation.
“I think I found a junk dealer who’ll take it all, maybe even pay you a little for it.”
“I don’t want to know the details. I don’t want to watch – have them come through the back door. I can’t be thinking about strangers pawing over my stuff. But that’s good. It’ll make a nice size bedroom for you two. Sue will have an empty house to make her own. She won’t say no to marriage if you can offer her this house without me in it.”
Hank didn’t reply. There was no point. He watched a mayfly land on his dad’s belly and struggle in the ointment, stuck fast. He grabbed a tissue and snatched the bug, leaning over and kissing Dad on the forehead to disguise what he was doing. His dad’s eyes sprang open in confusion.
“Goodnight, Dad.” The eyes moved around as if searching for something, then closed again.
At some point he would have to tell him that he and Sue broke up weeks ago. If his dad died before then it would save them both a painful conversation, but he wanted his dad to live as long as possible. Hank just didn’t want to see the disappointment in his face.
With surprising strength Dad grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him within inches of his mouth. “Keep the ones you love close,” he whispered hoarsely. “They’re all you have in the end. To the rest of the world, you’re food.”
* * *
Trips to the hospital meant unhooking everything and getting him into sweatpants and a shirt, sitting him up on the edge of the bed, and a short but difficult transfer into the wheelchair. Dad struggled to help but he had little strength left.
He was slippery. His dad was always wet. The massive belly made a sloshing sound and the shift in gravity made the move tough to control. Hank hadn’t dropped him yet, but he was afraid every time.
The hospital admitted them through the emergency entrance and provided a bed in an alcove some distance from the other patients. Dad wasn’t happy about it. He said going through those Emergency doors made him feel like he was dying. Hank did not remind him that he was.
Hank didn’t want to watch, but Dad said he needed him there. They sat Hank in a heavy steel chair a couple of yards from the plastic paracentesis canisters. The clinicians required at least five for his dad, but several more were ready if necessary. Hank always turned away as the large needle went into his dad’s belly but felt a morbid fascination as he witnessed canister after canister fill with the straw-coloured liquid. This fluid would be analysed but they already knew it was full of cancer cells.
It was called ascitic fluid, and despite the fancy containers it was biomedical waste and had to be eliminated. Hank had no idea how they did it; he assumed they couldn’t put it out with the regular garbage.
He was surprised the belly didn’t shrink more given the amount they drained. Dad contained an endless supply. With each visit Hank felt a little sorrier for the old man.
An observation window stretched behind the surgical table, with doors opening and closing as workers moved carts and gurneys around, removing canisters and other materials and bringing in fresh supplies. Hank didn’t pay much attention until a towering figure in dingy, stained scrubs wheeled in a filthy metal cart. He was alarmed such an unclean presence might be permitted in a hospital. The individual wore a voluminous surgical cap and a duckbill mask so Hank couldn’t see the face. This masked worker bent awkwardly as if its waistline were misplaced. It slinked around the room examining the equipment as if unfamiliar with the environment.
The figure lifted a canister full of ascitic fluid, sniffed it, and held it up to the overhead lights. Hank was so convinced it was going to take a sip he turned away and shuddered. He stood up to warn the clinicians. One turned and said, “Sir! You need to sit down!” Hank pointed at the window, but the area behind the window was empty.
* * *
Trips to the hospital exhausted Dad and he slept for hours afterwards. Hank took advantage and made arrangements in advance with a local junk dealer, who arrived with two trucks and a crew. Hank closed the multi-paned French doors to the dining room and the workers carried bags, boxes, and loose items from the back room out both the front and back doors. Some were curious and stared through the glass doors at his dad and the festooned tubing. Some neighbours gathered outside to watch. Hank paid attention to what was coming from the back room; much he couldn’t remember having seen before. He supposed the day provided entertainment for everyone.
Some big men worked on the junk man’s crew, broad men and tall men, one so incredibly tall and of such unlikely strength Hank felt compelled to follow him around. They all wore dust masks. Maybe Hank should have been wearing a mask every day while living in this house.
He supposed he should ask them to slow down and let him peek into those containers. There might be some valuable objects leaving their home. But the goal was to get rid of it all, and his dad wasn’t going to sleep forever. Besides, downsizing and making space felt as if Hank were accomplishing something.
He vaguely recognised his mother’s hats and dresses, a favourite painting, a jewellery box, a vase. There were cartons full of correspondence – some might be letters from his mother – he didn’t know. Heavy furniture requiring four men to carry, water-damaged antiques good for nothing but firewood. Bags of art supplies from when his dad wanted to be a painter. But if there had been paintings Hank never saw them. Bags of jottings and notebooks from when his dad wanted to be a writer, but as far as Hank knew he’d never finished anything. He felt some regret, but he wasn’t going to stop them. Better to be done with the job and have all this gone.
When they finished the junk man gave him a small check. Hank didn’t feel cheated. Clearing the room had been the goal. It was what his dad wanted. The junk man said, angrily it seemed, “There’s something I want to show you,” and walked back into the room. Hank followed.
With the room emptied he was alarmed by the scars and cracks in walls and woodwork. He knew something was odd the moment he walked in. He felt a slope in the floor, and it bewildered him, as if he’d strolled into a funhouse. A shuddering sensation passed through his feet as he tried to find some balance.
“You can feel the instability, right?” the man said. “Look over here at the baseboard.” At least a three-inch gap yawned between the baseboard and the floor along one wall. The junk man walked toward the far corner but stopped well short. “It’s worse over here. I came close to pulling my people out. Do you have a wet basement by any chance?”
“Sometimes.” Seepage had ruined everything in the basement more than a few times over the years. He rarely went down there due to the stench.
“I’m guessing you have a few rotted posts. You need to get an engineer in here; this house might not even be safe to live in. I’ve seen it before – the skin of the house is intact, but the bones are gone. The hoard filling this room might have been the only thing holding the house up.”
* * *
Hank wouldn’t be calling anyone. There was no money for it. It was hard to believe in upcoming catastrophes beyond the disaster which was already here. He couldn’t see the point in worrying his dad further, who still slept soundly. He should check on him, he thought, but what could he do if there was something wrong? Things were already as wrong as possible for his father. Hank retreated to his own bedroom to lie down and think.
Unlike the rest of the house, Hank’s room was a study in minimalism, open and clutter free. Forced to live with the tangle of his father’s possessions made him intolerant of mess in his own space. The ability to stretch out and roll around on the floor like a child, staring at the ceiling and imagining stars, was priceless.
Today he could see the cracks spreading through that firmament, and where the corners and door and window frames misaligned. He’d stared at those surfaces countless times before, seeing what he’d wanted to see.
He heard footsteps in the hall and for a brief, impossible moment thought Dad might be up and looking for him. He opened the door and saw through the French doors a towering figure in faded scrubs leaning over Dad’s bed. Visiting nurses sent by the care service had come into the house unannounced before, but Hank still considered it unacceptable. The nurse turned, but due to some distortion in the glass panes she or he had no profile. “I’ll be right with you,” Hank said. He went back into the bedroom to change clothes.
Slipping into fresh jeans he kicked over the pillowcase holding some clothing and other things Sue had left behind, spilling them everywhere. He didn’t know if she wanted them, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw them out with the trash. He scrambled to gather them back into the case.
He’d never seen a person as tall as today’s nurse. He or she was new. These services had a tough time keeping personnel. He hoped this one had been properly vetted.
Hank rushed from the bedroom. The nurse was no longer in view. He jerked open the doors and ran to his father, who lay crumpled to one side, small and deflated within his over-abundant skin.
* * *
As strange as his father’s last moments had been, Hank found it even stranger how quickly a life is wrapped up, packaged neatly, and the process of erasure begins. Everything had been prepaid. As per Dad’s instructions he called the funeral home and two young men looking uncomfortable in their old-fashioned black suits came to pick up the body. Another phone call to the medical supplier resulted in the removal of all rented medical equipment within the day. A week later a man delivered the ashes in a burgundy-coloured plastic container slightly bigger than a cigar box. Everything his father had been weighed less than five pounds in Hank’s hands. The awkward gentleman unhelpfully explained the cremains were bone fragments processed down to resemble ashes.
Hank had no idea what to do with these ashes or bones or whatever they were. He had an unreasonable fear of accidentally throwing them away with the remaining trash.
He spent the next week hauling everything left out to the alley and the fence. The city service wouldn’t take it all and he wondered if he might be fined. The pickers would be grateful for the bonanza. He worked all day every day with short breaks, stopping in early evening because he didn’t want to be out there at night. Without his father to goad him the timetable was his own.
On what he planned to be the final clean out day he ran late. It was past twilight, and the shadows flowed in. He kept thinking how relieved he would be when the job was finished. He had the last items in the back yard, boxes of housewares, and bag after bag of miscellanea, mostly those bags Dad filled ages ago.
He could barely distinguish one rough shape from another. The backyard was almost full, and he couldn’t imagine how he was going to manage it all.
A tumult erupted from the alley, cats screeching and dogs barking, heavy movements in the gravel between the alley pavement and their yard. He was hesitant to walk out there, but eager to be done with this final chore.
It began to rain. The soft beginnings of it, landing on the bags, sounded like beating moth wings, of which he’d seen many when dragging stuff from the rooms. A rapid metallic tapping began, and Hank turned around and looked at the house, the rain hitting the metal flashing and the gutters, pouring off the sides because they hadn’t been cleaned out in years, leaves and twigs and fragmented roof shingles clogging the openings into the downspouts. He glanced up at the roof itself, saw the gaps where shingles had been torn away, and couldn’t understand why he’d never noticed this damage before. He felt irresponsible, like a neglectful parent.
Waterfalls began to pour here and there from the cracks between the board siding, tearing away bits and pieces of the house. Hank knew little about construction, but assumed water was getting in from the damaged roof and down behind the sheathing. He looked around, finding fallen plaster and crumbling brick. Cracks spread through the limestone foundation stones. There appeared to be a definite lean to the back porch, the lines no longer true, the entire structure beginning to separate from the rest of the house.
He heard a muffled groan and a cracking noise. A portion of the roof line suddenly complicated itself, breaking into several additional angles.
Hank held his place in the thundering downpour until it stopped, the world gone quiet again except for the gentle dripping of the bags. He shivered within his soggy clothes. Furious with himself and with his father, he grabbed bags and carried them to the alley, threw them on the others and went back for more. He made several such trips before pausing to rest, collapsing against the fence.
The storm advanced the night prematurely. Streetlights came on. He heard distant traffic, but no cars moved on the nearby streets. He heard a damp shifting noise, and a bag moved. He assumed it was the contents settling, when one side stretched out, and the entire bag began to distort. The plastic near the top ripped, and something climbed out of the bag, but it was too dark to tell what it was. After a moment of stillness, it scampered away. Perhaps a squirrel or some other varmint had gotten inside while the bags sat in the yard. Hank approached the piles and nudged each bag with his foot, waited for some movement, and went on to the next. None of the other bags responded.
Something crawled across his arm, and he shook it off. He probed deeper into the layers of bags, their stench rising around him now the rain had ended. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he couldn’t stop.
A few insects scrambled from the small openings where the bags were tied, then a larger number, and then a flood. Soon the dark plastic skins were thick with them, the bugs pouring off the bags and into the alley as if frantic to escape.
Hank heard scraping trash cans, and gazing down the alley saw the angular silhouette progressing brokenly from can to can, leaning over the dark mouths then standing up larger, swollen head and swollen chest, swollen belly then thin again, rapidly processing everything it had eaten.
It turned its body and shambled toward him, to the next garbage can, close enough that Hank could see the vague rot along its profile, its edges deteriorating from all the waste consumed.
Hank was faint with dread, legs too weak to support him. He’d been holding himself together so well, but he was so tired. The house was empty, and Dad was gone.
He felt himself settle into his skin and dropped to the ground between the high black plastic walls, as if he were hiding inside a large bag of his own making.
When his turn came and the creature peered inside, its small eyes seemed impossibly far away, and yet its immense mouth so very close.