The man who saved the 20th century
Jack Womack
Short story
“ W hich shooting?” asks Larry.
“Sorry,” says Alan. “DC.”
“What happened?”
“Ten dead. Plus the gunman.”
Alan, who as a boy read much on geology, examines the sedimentary record. As one with the linoleum are thirty-six inches of newspapers compressed over time into twenty-eight. Superpositioned is an eighteen-inch belt of National Geographic , colour striations observable in shades ranging from ecru to chrome yellow. Tectonic subsidence is visible in the ascendant stratum where several feet of paperback novels, spines loosening as the glue dries, flow downward west to east. Directly above, a black-and-white-mottled nine-inch vein of Spy, Psychotronic, Film Threat , and every zine published in Oregon from 1989 to 1993 evidences like upheavals. The most recent layer lies a foot below the ceiling, consisting of cassettes, CDs, DVDs, brick-size cellphones, hatboxes, bone-white earbuds with wires lastingly entangled, and much more.
“They know why?”
“Self defence he posted. Thought it was a madrassa. Wasn’t.”
Four hours to clear one half of one kitchen wall. Sounds drift through the window: pigeon purrs, shouts, a building alarm, a passing car’s bass throbbing as if in mid-coronary.
“You in that F train mess? What happened?”
“Train runs fine till Carroll,” says Alan. “Stops. Doors stay shut. Ten minutes pass, fifteen.”
Five-foot stacks of sixty-odd boxes block stove, sink and refrigerator. Glancing over the panorama, Alan sees Sinclair road maps of the 1960s, Currier & Ives calendar prints, copies of The Saturday Evening Pos t from the days when magazines had the wingspan of eagles, paperback nurse novels, vacuum tube catalogues, shoehorns, hinges. Dust stirred that morning falls, rises, falls again as a gray film over all.
“Conductor says sick passenger.”
Larry grins. “Dead passenger.”
“Passengers .” Alan clarifies. “Heard later. New old school. Anyway, twenty minutes pass and the doors open, cops all over the place. Bullhorns, screaming everybody get off the train now, walk to the next station.”
On his first day he spent seven hours at the front door, digging out space enough to allow it to open halfway. Two weeks later he and a series of associates completed a trench from front wall to back, providing access to all four rooms and the bath. Larry started working the day before.
“Bullhorns inside a station, might as well be sound cannon. We start running up the stairs, people falling down left and right, fun.”
As long as the front door and nearest window are both open, cross-ventilation filters heavier particulates from the kitchen’s air. Holding the door ajar are boxes packed with the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica , a carton of organ LPs, a shoe bag full of hood ornaments.
“Get to Bergen Street, there’s more cops at the station entrance. They line us up to search us before they let us in. Grab people passing by, search them too, they argue and they haul them off to the press pen they’ve set up.”
Near the door is a small table upon which sits a carton stuffed with letters, cheques, contracts, photographs. Six black thirty-gallon plastic bags filled with neckties hide the table’s legs.
“Don’t think I got balls left to squeeze if they search us on the way back,” says Alan, turning. “Come on. Gets to you, you stay too long in one place.”
The older man and the younger move with care past a tentatively balanced arrangement of orange crates full of 78s. Had he not recovered that Charley Patton from the top crate the week before he’d have let it ride, but now Alan feels compelled to look in case he turns up a cache of Black Pattis.
“My old girlfriend lives in Boston,” says Larry. “Phone’s still out. Getting worried.”
“Boston’s not Oakland. She’ll be OK.”
Twisting and shifting their bodies as needed they edge between stacks of boxes and bags haphazardly shuffled to this location from elsewhere in the apartment. Still remembering the place with the rats on West 95th, Alan has been thankful during this job for the absence of wildlife.
“How long he live here?”
“Thirty-five years.”
“Alone?”
An exchange of blinks before Alan replies. “I think so.”
The passage in the first interior room is no wider than fifteen inches, patches of green rug revealed beneath deepening drifts of flaking paper. The left-hand wall is uncovered, but gray metal shelves and the records lining them still hide the other three walls. As each shelf holds at least a double row of LPs, Alan estimates he is looking at ten thousand records. The shelves surround a captain’s bed, its drawers emptied and futon removed. On the bed’s bare platform are forty boxes, hauled here from other rooms.
“I told them to bring in the oldest stuff they found,” says Alan. “Let’s see how they did. What I don’t pull, take to the front. Cousin’ll be by soon.”
At the foot of the bed is a two-handled deep-sided oak wood tray holding long-empty bottles, labelled in radium-bright colours of the gone world: Acme Beverage, Forbidden Fruit, NuGrape, Mount Kineo Ginger Ale, Oertel’s 92, Lung Kuro, Spiffy Cola, Creme de Violette, Moxie. Alan nods at Larry, who carries it away, glass jingling against glass. Opening the first box in reach, Alan separates a sixteen-ounce plastic drinking glass from Dick’s Drive-In in Seattle from its sixty similar companions, all from different venues; and is reminded again that today old means, to most, last night.
“Cousin gets the place?”
Alan shakes his head, in the next box finding twenty-two board games, all tie-ins for TV shows first broadcast seven decades earlier.
“Landlord gets it. Rent stabilised. Was, anyway.”
“That’s what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Landlord had him taken out?”
“No,” says Alan, remembering the family of twelve in Queens, and the others. “They’d been in court for years before the ruling, but it never came to that.”
Opening a shoebox full of postcards, he gives a second’s attention to each, leaving behind those depicting calcite gardens in underground grottoes, horses diving into water tanks, cabbages big as Single cars, the Fuller Building in Springfield, rabbits with antlers, a diner in the shape of a muskellunge. He pulls every eightieth card or so, inevitably an actual photograph, placing it with the select: a boy with no body below the waist, walking on his hands; a wrecked locomotive, its scalded engineer sprawled in the foreground; a burned man hanging from a street light.
“What happened to him?”
“Heart. Outside, in the hall. Gone before he hit the floor.” Alan sighs. “That’s the way to do it.”
“Five flights.”
“Lugging two bags.” Opening a new carton, he sees menus.
“Like he needed more.”
Running idly through pages Alan is reminded why earlier generations had shorter lifespans: Nesselrode pie, stewed prunes, bowl of cream, fried brain sandwich, moo goo gai pan. From the midst of those advertising Ratner’s, Dizzy Whizz, Tiny Naylor’s, Locke-Ober’s, he draws only a single black two-fold oval the size of a child’s head. “Here. Put this in the box with these postcards.”
“Coon Chicken Inn?” Larry stares at the face on the front cover; the tilted cap, the red lips, the white teeth, the malignant eye. “Salt Lake City. Seriously?”
Alan looks up. “Evergreen.”
The next box is full of coffee cups from prewar hotels, each bearing the name of its original venue: the St. Clair, the Astor, the Jefferson, twenty different Milner Hotel cups from as many cities and towns. To the floor goes the box. The next contains WPA guidebooks to the states and cities. No Jim Thompson’s Tulsa , but a fine copy of the North Dakota guide in dust jacket. A quick check shows thirty-nine copies of this extremely rare book presently available worldwide. The book back in the box, the box to the floor. Alan smiles, looking inside the next container, seeing hundreds of candy wrappers, each ironed flat for preservation’s sake after being emptied of their Butternuts, Chicken Dinners, Baby Lobsters, Milk Shakes, Denver Sandwiches and Idaho Spuds. He closes the lid, consigning the day-fresh oranges, purples, yellows and metallic blues to colour-fast darkness.
“What’s evergreen?”
With fingernail stabs Alan breaks the tape sealing the next. “Weapons. Nazi memorabilia. Racist caricatures. Evergreen.”
Stale tobacco’s smell permeates the air seconds after he opens the box, overwhelming the ever-present yet far milder odours of mold, damp, and acidifying paper. “Goddamn,” says Larry, sneezing. Inside, nicotine’s memorabilia: foot-long cigarette holders, Stork Club ashtrays, cigarette cases in non-precious metal and dozens of packs empty and full – Murads, Fatimas, Omars, Picayunes, Home Runs. Alan, coughing as if to throw up his lungs, shuts the lid and shoves the treasures into Larry’s hands.
“These illegal?”
“If they weren’t a hundred years old.”
In Larry’s absence Alan breathes deeply. The next box’s lids spring open as he touches them, releasing pressure on tightly packed copies of Wire Detective, Jungle Stories, Dime Detective, Battle Aces, True Confessions , all from the mid-1930s and 1940s. The Mysterious Fu Wang ’s cover catches his eye: a redhead slender as a deco lamp whips a shirtless man into corned beef hash while a representative of the Yellow Peril stands watching in traditional native garb, holding a snake. When Alan opens the magazine it explodes in his hands, a blizzard of yellowing fragments bursting up and flying into the air before coming back down again, the descent of their last end dropping over the fields below.
“Supposed to rain.”
“Been five months,” says Alan. “About time.”
“Your line floods when it rains?”
“In places. Elevated by the time it gets to the beach, but in between.”
Larry, pulling down his mask, scratches his smooth chin, leaving behind a smudge of dirt. Alan wonders if his new associate shaves more than once a week. “Tom coming by today?”
“Not till we wrap up next week. He’s got twenty jobs to oversee.”
“Good. I don’t like that guy.”
Alan can’t disagree; recalls the open-palmed slap Tom gave him Thursday before last, knocking him onto the floor, cutting his cheek and loosening a tooth, adding a response: Here’s my expert opinion . That Alan hadn’t offered any opinion in his presence, expert or otherwise, made no difference.
“Understandable. If you need the job though, don’t dwell on it.”
“I don’t,” says Larry, shaking his head. “What’s he fucked about?”
“Had to go off his meds.”
“Everybody does sometimes—”
“Insurance cancelled. Daughter got sick.”
The next carton holds doo-wop 45s and albums. While listeners still listened to their favourites – the Vel-Tones, the Incredible Upsetters, the Computones, the Crescents, the Ravens, a thousand or so groups more – these discs were as gold, though as of this afternoon the only people still willing to pay for a few are some elderly Danes, Dutch, and Belgians, their research never-ending.
“So most of this is junk?” asks Larry.
“Is now.”
Three years ago Alan thinks he may have seen the last surviving doo-woppers making their way through the A train: four elderly men harmonising perfectly, as if they were still standing in the high school stairwell, or in front of the candy store at the corner. This Little Light of Mine , they sang; bowed, passed the hat, and moved to the next car before the train left the station. All doors on cars were now sealed for protection, performers no longer allowed on trains; and he never saw the doo-woppers, Orioles turned passenger pigeons, again.
“So you’re looking for what’s still good?”
Alan nodded.
“What happens if you miss it?”
“I don’t.”
Larry smiles. “Come on.”
“Selling this stuff was how I made my living. I’ve still got the eye. That’s why I still come in handy. Sometimes.” His associate takes the box of records. “If I see something good, I pull it. If I miss it, I miss it.” He smiles. “It happens.”
Larry carries the records to the front as Alan fumbles through the next box, uncovering an assortment of 1964 World’s Fair merchandise. In almost every job he’s done in the past, whether in town or suburb or way out in the country, he has found and emptied rooms, basements, sometimes entire entire houses of collectibles worthless even while they were still collectible: action figures, specialty edition baseball cards, limited run Barbies, Cabbage Patch dolls, modern first editions, commemorative plates, small-run coins or medals, all nothing more than force-fed antiques that withered on the vine the moment sellers outnumbered buyers. As Alan sorts through orange and blue rayon scarves, cheap metal bracelets and plastic models of the Unisphere, he thinks he may as well be examining an accumulation of Beanie Babies.
“So if most of this is trash—”
“Larry, don’t. I told you, it’s in the agreement you signed.”
“It just doesn’t make sense, though.”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Alan.
“But it’s trash—”
“Their trash.’
Every year, fewer people he meets understand the allusions he makes; or, rather, the allusions he once made. The way of the world, he thought when he first realised this – the old forget, the new have their own memories, and so it goes. In the past some things had come down from year to decade to century; but for a very long time now this had been a world intent on forgetting its memories before they could settle. Sometimes he thought he was one of the few not afflicted by this societal Korsakoff’s syndrome; though of late he’d begun to see it as a blessing, and that he was the one cursed.
“I’m—”
“I’m saying don’t try to take anything. Period. I can’t help you if you do. So don’t.”
Larry frowns, crosses his arms in front of his chest, and Alan stares at him until his eyes waver and his hands drop to his sides.
Alan picks up the box of fair merchandise and nods to the front. “I can’t help you if you do, so don’t. I’m telling you. You’d be screwing yourself but you could also screw me, and that’s not going to happen.”
What will remain of 20th century popular culture in a few years? Of its high culture? Of the 19th century’s music, how much is still performed? Of the 18th century’s novels, how many read? Of the 17th century’s plays, how many staged? All of 14th-century life that remains with us? Ring Around the Rosy .
“Albert,” a voice calls from the kitchen. “You here?”
When no one any longer understands your allusions, does that to which you allude still exist? Do you?
“Be right there.”
“That’s him?”
Alan nods and they return to the kitchen, not expecting to hear a woman’s voice.
“Oh. My. God.”
Cousin John is tall enough to start stooping even before entering the apartment. Sporting the cropped hair and beard of a convict he holds his phone before him, perpetually tapping. His companion, a blonde woman in her mid-twenties, pauses at the entrance as if reluctant to enter. Like Alan and Larry, both wear orange hazmat suits picked up downstairs. In lieu of tie-on reusable face masks the couple wear nose filters through which they breathe vitamin-infused air.
“My fiancee,” John says, his glasses reflecting his phone’s glow. “McKinley. She insisted on seeing the place.”
Walking in, she bumps into Alan, moves on. “My God.”
The filters add distracting nasality to their voices. “Warned you, Mick.”
“Three weeks and it still looks like this?” Glancing inside the bathroom, she quickly takes a few steps back. “What do your workers do all day?”
“They’re right there.” Tapping. “Ask them.”
“Is the rest as bad?” she asks, not looking at Alan or Larry, as if by locking glances they would steal what she thought lay inside.
“I’ve worked twenty-two days straight, ma’am.”
Tapping. “So what have you got for me, Albert?”
“Printouts, bank statements. Insurance policy, expired. Some photos. Letters, unopened. Couple uncashed cheques.”
“There going to be much more to go through before the 31st?” he asks. “Oh goddammit, stupid fucking fuck—”
Half a minute of confusion passes before Alan grasps that John is in the midst of not just one additional conversation, but two. Alan remembers a time when you could drive away tourists just by suddenly starting to talk to yourself.
“I’m not paying rent another month on this goddamn place,” says John. “Excuse me, Albert.”
“Of course—”
A deafening crash; at first Alan wonders which room’s ceiling, or floor, has collapsed. Turning, they see that McKinley, backing up to get a better look at something, has knocked over the entire stack of orange crates containing the 78s. Black shards piled almost a foot deep now surround the bottom crate, whose discs remain upright if as broken as the rest.
“Hurt yourself, Mick?”
She shakes her head. “They need to clean up this mess.”
Alan hands the menu and postcards to John. “OK, Dave in Queens will give you probably four hundred for these—”
“Hold on.” Raises his free hand in front of Alan’s face while tapping with the other. “I don’t have time. Throw them out with the rest.”
McKinley pulls the menu from his hand, tearing it nearly in two. Looking at it, she begins to laugh. “I want this.”
Tapping. “No, you don’t.”
Alan, saying nothing, takes a pair of bone-handled switchblades out of the box. “I can run these through my knife guy. Good price, I’m sure.”
“Find any guns?”
Alan shakes his head.
Tapping. “OK, go ahead.”
“And then here’s—”
“Hold on.” Tapping. Alan stands for close to half a minute, waiting, holding the scarred leather suitcase he lifted from beneath the table, near the bags full of neckties. “Go.”
“Here’s the last thing.”
Snapping open the brass claps, lifting the lid, he turns back folds of tissue paper within, revealing a flag. Red field, white circle, black symbol. John stops looking at his phone.
“It’s real?”
“Three bullet holes. Scorch marks along the bottom, there. Folded typewritten note by one Martin Pierce enclosed.”
“My great-grandfather,” says John. “Brought it and a bunch of other stuff back from the war. Grandmother threw it all out, I thought. Worth something?”
“You could hang it in the hall,” says McKinley, shellac crunching underfoot like gravel as she leaves the kitchen.
“Couple thousand, I’d estimate—”
“That’s it?”
“All the big-time collectors are busy buying up the Smithsonian,” says Alan. “They’re not—”
“He slept here?” McKinley shouts.
“Hold on.” Tapping. “See what’s doable and take your two per cent.”
Reaching over to slam shut the suitcase with his free hand, he nearly closes the lid on Alan’s before proceeding in the direction of his companion’s voice. Alan and Larry bring up the rear, and all pass through the bedroom before taking a hard dog-leg right past stacks of boxes half blocking the door into the second interior room. Clearing the boxes they see McKinley standing at the threshold of the front room, looking in.
“My God,” she says.
“Now you see what I’ve been having to deal with,” says John. “Aunt Mary better remember, come next Christmas.”
Warm January breeze blows through the room’s two windows. Mounted on the left-hand casement and attached to the sill is a black metal frame supporting a thirty-six inch wide yellow canvas tube. From the maw of the tube to the floor runs a secured plywood ramp along which heavier boxes can be pushed upward and then down into the tube, which descends four stories from the window to a secured scaffold along the ground floor. From there, a different chute runs directly into a curbside dumpster on Elizabeth Street.
“I sent her pictures so she can see how he lived. Hope it makes her sick.”
In the left corner, between the wall and the tube, are flattened boxes bundled with string, to be removed separately from the apartment. Against the left-hand wall is the couch, still buried beneath a hundred or so spy novels. Next to the couch a row of emptied cabinets, barely visible behind boxes moved from one place to another within the room at least once and perhaps as many as three or four times. In sight are floor lamps, oars, tables with blue glass tops, framed advertisements, magazines bound in black folders, vases, black spinner racks loaded down with comics, reel-to-reel tape recorders, boxes of unbroken 78s, suits still on hangers folded and stacked, chests of drawers, audiocassettes, boom boxes, VHS and Betamax tapes, an eight-track cassette of Never Mind the Bollocks , more LPs, more books, more bags, more boxes. Hanging on the right-hand wall is a screen furred with a half-inch of dust.
“What a waste,” says McKinley, with latexed fingers picking up a remote from a nearby table. “Parasite.”
Alan has opened over two hundred boxes, cleared bookcases, closets and cabinets, and while some semblance of pattern throughout has been at moments discernible, the entirety’s raison d’être remains impossible to comprehend. At times, exasperated by what he finds, Alan believes the keeper to have been no more than an occasionally orderly hoarder. Once or twice, he has thought he understands that the intention was to collect the whole of the world, his world, inside a cold-water flat in Chinatown.
“What’s this turn on?”
It’s impossible to know at which point the keeper became kept by the collection.
“Not the TV, I cut off the service—”
Radio. An announcer’s voice, interrupted constantly by static, blasts through the room.
“—thirty dead, nine hundred wounded—”
Church bells four blocks distant note the half hour. A gust of wind scatters paper flakes across the floor. The tube rattles as rain starts to fall.
“—New Mexico troops this morning preparing for the next assault by Texas—”
She turns it off. Alan hears Larry ask John a question.
“Did you know him very well?”
Tapping. “Met him maybe five, six times. Weddings, funerals. Friendly fellow. Tall. Went to Stanford.”
“What’d he do?”
“I don’t know. Mom didn’t know. Mary didn’t tell her. Maybe she didn’t know.”
“Nothing useful, obviously,” says McKinley.
“Police called Mary when they found him. She called Mom, Mom called me. Lucky me.”
Larry shifts from foot to foot as they stand there, and reaches out to brace himself with one hand against the wall as he reaches down to adjust his bootstraps. Alan perceives an unexpected heaviness within the single right-hand sleeve pocket of his associate’s suit.
“What are they going to do with the building?”
Not again. Not again.
“Total regood. Everybody else’s been tossed, so this is the last. It’s going to be capsule condos for business travellers. Landlord’s from Seoul, he’s got investors.”
“He got any available shares?”
“You want to work with those people?” Tapping. “He told me that the apartment below this one had thirty restaurant workers sleeping in shifts.” Tapping. “They’ll be able to cram in as many Chinese but charge a thousand per.”
Alan’s stomach burns, bile rises into his throat, his heart repeatedly punches him. He hears the sound of light rain brushing against the windows.
“Let’s go,” says McKinley.
Sidestepping quickly, Alan avoids McKinley banging into him again as she passes. Alan directs Larry to precede him, trying to remember if his sleeve was already full when he came in that morning. By the time they return to the kitchen they already hear McKinley’s steps echoing in the hallway.
“That isn’t convenient for me,” John says, nodding to the box. “Put it all in a plastic bag. A clean one.”
Alan hands the bag he finds to Larry. As his associate transfers the material out of the box Alan examines his arm more closely. Something the size of a paperback is tucked within the velcro-sealed pocket.
“See you Tuesday.” Tapping. “Then we can wrap up.”
They stand listening to cousin John’s footsteps growing ever fainter as he heads downstairs. Once he passes the second floor landing Alan shuts the door and turns to face his associate.
“What’s in your pocket, Larry?”
His eyes waver, and he pulls his mask back up over his mouth. “What?”
“Your pocket. On your sleeve.” Alan points. “That one.”
“Nothing.”
“I can see it. What’s in there?”
“A book,” Larry says, turning so that the sleeve in question is hidden from Alan’s sight, starting to walk into the bedroom. “It’s nothing. I brought it from home this morning—”
“Didn’t you have a reader with you yesterday?” asks Alan, following.
“Yeah,” says Larry, facing his superior yet continuing to back up. “Was on the train last night, this guy stole it. Mom had this, it looked interesting, I wanted to read it.”
“That’s why you took it out of your street clothes to put in your work suit?”
Larry bumps gently into the stacks of boxes still blocking easy access to the second interior room, reaching behind him as if to be sure where the dogleg is. He laughs, but doesn’t seem to be finding anything funny. “I just. I—”
“Give it to me.”
“It’s nothing. It’s not—”
“Show me!”
As Alan lunges forward Larry slips on magazines underfoot, falling backwards into the closest stacks as he tries to escape into the second interior room. Cartons cascading down on top of them, one landing on Alan’s head, bursting open and releasing a storm of disintegrating paper. Seizing Larry’s arm he reaches over and tears open the velcro. “It was my dad’s!” Larry shouts as Alan pulls the book from the pocket. Sixties science fiction, judging from the abstract cover. As its pages detach from the spine they merge with the fragments snowing down. Alan rips open the velcro of his own suit’s pocket, pulling out the corrector issued him on his first day.
“I told you,” Alan says. “Didn’t I tell you—?”
“I’m not stealing, I had it to read I’m not—”
Metal prongs touch Larry’s neck and Alan presses the button. With a shout and then a groan the young man falls back, hitting the floor, legs kicking, feet caving in every carton at hand, adding to the storm of pulp filling the room. Alan, slipping again, lands painfully on his knees.
“Don’t hurt me,” Larry screams, his voice so high that Alan wonders if it is still breaking. “Please—”
“You want me to lose my job? Didn’t I tell you?”
Ripping open Larry’s hazmat suit Alan pushes his corrector against the boy’s chest and presses the button again. Larry’s eyes roll back into his head, he grunts and moans as his tongue fills his mouth.
“You’re hurting me—”
Larry’s arms and legs begin flailing in every direction; one hand flies up and hits Alan on the same side of his face where Tom earlier hit him, reopening the wound. When Alan feels the tooth earlier loosened come out, and as a wash of pain hits his jaw as if he’s just taken a crowbar to the face, he begins applying the corrector to the boy over and over, pressing it as firmly against the skin as he can, trying to spit out the horrible taste in his mouth.
“Mamma.”
In three weeks Alan has gone through nine associates: one skipped an hour after starting work, two others quit before noon on their first day, two disappeared once their first forty-hour shifts were finished. Like Larry, the other four weren’t able to resist trying to take something from the apartment, warnings to the contrary notwithstanding. Alan is never told where the supervisors hide the cameras, and he knows well that if corrective steps need taking, he must be seen by his bosses to be correcting in the proscribed manner in every situation if he has any hope of keeping his job, his room, his life.
“I told you,” Alan screams. “I told you.”
Larry’s legs are no longer kicking when Alan drops his corrector to the floor, rolls to one side to remove the pressure on his knees, reaching up to press the throb in his jaw in hopes that he can shove it out of his face. Feeling every month of his sixty-eight years, Alan manages to pull himself up and stumble through the apartment to the bathroom, arriving just as he throws up what must be a gallon of clear adrenaline into the bowl. By the time he sees traces of floating blood he guesses he is pretty much empty. As he sits back, leaning against the wall, he breathes heavily, wiping his mouth and eyes, listening to blood race through his carotids, looking at his legs shake even as he finds himself unable to feel anything in his hands and fingers but tingling. Bringing his arms to his sides he holds himself, trying to cry, failing. In memory he sees again graffiti once seen on a building on the far side of downtown.
If you liked the 20th century you’ll love the 21st .
By the time what seems to have been a half hour has passed, he has recovered enough to get up, and walk back through the apartment to where Larry is still lying. After examining him for a few minutes Alan convinces himself that the boy is still breathing, and accordingly says so for the benefit of those who may be watching. Following approved discharge procedures he moves to the next step. Seizing Larry’s ankles, with effort he drags his ex-associate through the second room and into the front, bumping him over cardboard, hills of magazines, piles of fragmented paper. Trying to pull him past a table Alan hears a sharp crack as Larry’s head hits the metal table leg, followed by a groan. Pulp floats in the air as he positions the boy on the ramp, feet uppermost. Kneeling once again, the pain in his knees now greater than that in his jaw, he shoves Larry upward until his feet enter the tube, and his legs are held in place at the knees. Then, with even greater effort, he raises Larry’s shoulders and shoves him upward, shoving until with one last heave he is pushed over the edge of the tube. Alan hears a sizable thump coming from the bottom of the chute at the scaffold, and then a more distant thump as the load continues on through the connector and down into the dumpster itself. Looking down to the street through the window he sees wind scattering papers out of the half-full dumpster’s load. Listening to rain hit the glass more steadily he decides to stay here that night, possibly stay the weekend, to finish up as much as he can.
“I told you.”
Everything in the room is ready for disposal. Picking up the doo-wop records Alan lifts the box, balances it on the edge of the opening, pushes it forward. Picking up the box of coffee cups he shakes them down so as to hear the sounds of their breaking as they crash against the scaffold. Picking up a box of magazines he punches it into the tube with his fist; then he picks up a box of books, another of magazines, he steps to the couch to grab up the novels and hurl them down the maw of the tube one, two, three at a time. More books, more boxes, more bags, more records, faster, faster. Into the tube he shoves the world.
For Robert