13

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in
comparison with those which my neighbors have
undertaken.…

Walden, “Economy”

Julian Snow’s two-week vacation was over. He was back at work at the landfill next to Pond View. His boss at Public Works had offered to extend his leave, but Julian said no. “I guess it takes his mind off his loss,” said the boss.

So all day long in the mid-June heat, Julian sweltered in the cab of his big machine, sitting sideways, hurling his two mighty rollers at the heaped-up mounds of trash, driving them ahead of him. Plastic bags billowed and tumbled. The huge teeth of the rollers burst the thin coverings and crushed them flat. Flotsam and jetsam sailed through the air. A folder from Saint Bernard’s Catholic Church floated into the open window of the cab and landed in Julian’s lap. “FIRST FRIDAY,” it read, “MEDITATION AND PRAYER FOR THE SANCTITY OF LIFE.” A pizza box thudded against the windshield, and Julian could plainly read the penciled word Pepperoni on the cover before the box fell away. Craning his neck left, then right, he backed and filled while the householders of Concord drove their cars up to the working face and threw out their accumulations of rubbish.

In the crawl dozer Eddie Tanner sped toward Julian with a bucketload of dirt raised high in the air. Sandy dust foamed around them. The air conditioner in the cab had stopped working two years ago. Sweat poured down Julian’s face. The back of his shirt was soaked. The two massive machines made a tremendous throbbing racket as they came together. Eddie dumped his dirt on the flattened trash and raced away for more.

After lunch Eddie and Julian changed jobs. Now it was Julian’s turn to cover the trash with dirt excavated from the cliff face beside the landfill. It was a state law; everything had to be covered by nightfall. The Concord dump was a model landfill, operated strictly according to the rules laid down by the commonwealth. Deep down under the excavation a lining of clay prevented the contamination of ground-water. Effluent was pumped out every day.

Julian took pride in the way the place worked. Sometimes, it was true, he imagined old Henry Thoreau standing in the line of trees beside the convenience area, looking out over the dumpsters full of newspapers and glass. But then he told himself that Henry Thoreau was dead and gone, while here he was, Julian Snow, doing the best he damn well could to keep the place clean.

So he went home with a good conscience, as the sun disappeared behind the white pines in a transport of pink-and-orange cloud. Entering his mobile home, he was aware that his stomach muscles were not tightening with apprehension the way they usually did at this hour. Tonight there would be no asphyxiating fog of talk, no whimsical demands, no blare of television game shows.

He took a shower, and then in blessed silence he made himself a pan of fried potatoes. After supper he got to work clearing out Alice’s stuff. He took down the ruffled curtains, he stuffed her flowered pillows into paper bags, he removed the picture of Willard Scott. He lifted off its hook the thing he detested most, the doll basket with its wicker skirt full of plastic flowers.

Without the pillows and curtains, without Alice’s giddy afghans and sentimental pictures, the living spaces were bigger and dirtier. The rosy dusk of the summer solstice filled the trailer with warm light. Julian sat down at the kitchen table and looked around with satisfaction. Then he exclaimed and leaped to his feet, catching sight of a young man staring at him from the next room. But it was only Julian’s reflection. The fluffy curtains no longer hid the mirror.

He stared at himself as if at a stranger. He didn’t really look all that young. It was just that his stoop was gone. He was sitting more erect.

But when Julian crawled into bed, he missed Alice. At bedtime her motor had always run down. In the dark she stopped talking at last and lay quietly in his arms. Without her, the bed was too wide, too empty. Julian tried lying in the middle, spreading out his arms and legs, but he soon moved over again to his own side, missing his wife.

Next day after work Julian distributed Alice’s stuff. Shirley Mills took the comforter. Mavis Buonfesto got the pillows. Honey Mooney was delighted with the ruffled curtains. Since Honey had been so especially kind since Alice’s death, Julian asked her to pick out anything else she would like. At once she chose the doll basket. “I’ve always loved it,” she said.

Honey lived alone in the mobile home next to Julian’s. She was a widow, one of the youngest residents of the park. Her trailer was fixed up in a style very much like Alice Snow’s, so the ruffly curtains fitted right in. She found a place for the doll basket right next to the telephone on the wall beside the door. The plastic flowers in the wicker skirt looked dusty, so Honey plucked them out and threw them away. Something else came out with the last of the flowers—a hundred-dollar bill.

“Oh,” said Honey, snatching it. At once she looked in the basket. It was stuffed with money. Pulling out all the bills, she counted them and tucked them in her pocketbook. The total came to sixteen hundred dollars.

Next day she blew the whole wad. She drove to Waltham and bought an entertainment center. It was a multiunit set with a twenty-seven-inch TV, a stereo, a radio, and a CD player, all built into a piece of Spanish-style furniture.

Delivery was prompt. Somehow the two men in the truck managed to wedge the bulky apparatus through Honey’s door and set it up in her living room. As soon as they left, Honey turned on the television set. She was just in time for “The Young and the Reckless.”

Honey called Shirley and Mavis, and they came right over. Sitting down comfortably in front of the entertainment center, the three of them munched on Shirley’s date-nut squares and stared at Vanessa and Dirk, who filled the screen, twice life-size.

“Oh, if only Alice could be here,” said Mavis tearfully.

“Look,” said Shirley, “Vanessa’s pregnant. But her husband had a vasectomy, remember? Who do you suppose …?”

Neither Mavis nor Shirley asked how Honey had acquired the money for her new entertainment center. Honey herself did not reveal that it was Alice Snow who had helped herself to the family savings and hidden it all in the doll basket. Nor did she explain that she had found the money and taken it for herself.

As a matter of fact, Honey hardly bothered to remember the source of her good fortune. Julian had given her the doll basket. It belonged to her. She had found the money in it, she had taken it, and she had spent it. And that was that.

And if anybody else at Pond View wondered how Honey Mooney could suddenly afford an expensive entertainment center, they never asked her about it. One didn’t question a neighbor’s extravagance.