Ray Bradbury. The Garbage Collector

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The Garbage Collector
                1953

     This  is  how  his work was: He got up at five in the cold dark morning and
washed  his face with warm water if the heater was working and cold water if the
heater  was  not  working.  He  shaved carefully, talking out to his wife in the
kitchen,  who  was  fixing  ham  and  eggs  or  pancakes or whatever it was that
morning. By six o'clock he was driving on his way to work alone, and parking his
car  in  the  big  yard where all the other men parked their cars as the sun was
coming  up.  The  colors  of  the  sky that time of morning were orange and blue
violet  and  sometimes very red and sometimes yellow or a clear color like water
on  white  rock.  Some  mornings  he  could  see  his breath on the air and some
mornings  he  could  not. But as the sun was still rising he knocked his fist on
the  side  of  the  green truck, and his driver, smiling and saying hello, would
climb  in  the  other  side of the truck and they would drive out into the great
city and go down all the streets until they came to the place where they started
work. Sometimes, on the way, they stopped for black coffee and then went on, the
warmness  in  them.  And  they  began the work which meant that he jumped off in
front  of  each  house  and picked up the garbage cans and brought them back and
took off their lids and knocked them against the bin edge, which made the orange
peels  and cantaloupe rinds and coffee grounds fall out and thump down and begin
to fill the empty truck. There were always steak bones and the heads of fish and
pieces of green onion and state celery. If the garbage was new it wasn't so bad,
but  if  it was very old it was bad. He was not sure if he liked the job or not,
but  it  was  a job and he did it well, talking about it a lot at some times and
sometimes not thinking of it in any way at all. Some days the job was wonderful,
for  you  were out early and the air was cool and fresh until you had worked too
long  and the sun got hot and the garbage steamed early. But mostly it was a job
significant  enough  to keep him busy and calm and looking at the houses and cut
lawns  he passed by and seeing how everybody lived. And once or twice a month he
was  surprised  to  find that he loved the job and that it was the finest job in
the world.
     It  went on just that way for many years. And then suddenly the job changed
for  him.  It  changed  in a single day. Later he often wondered how a job could
change so much in such a few short hours.

    
     He  walked  into  the apartment and did not see his wife or hear her voice,
but  she  was  there,  and he walked to a chair and let her stand away from him,
watching  him  as he touched the chair and sat down in it without saying a word.
He sat there for a long time.
     "What's  wrong?"  At last her voice came through to him. She must have said
it three or four times.
     "Wrong?" He looked at this woman and yes, it was his wife all right, it was
someone  he  knew,  and  this was their apartment with the tall ceilings and the
worn carpeting.
     "Something happened at work today," he said.
     She waited for him.
     "On  my  garbage  truck, something happened." His tongue moved dryly on his
lips  and  his  eyes  shut  over his seeing until there was all blackness and no
light  of  any sort and it was like standing alone in a room when you got out of
bed  in  the  middle  of a dark night. "I think I'm going to quit my job. Try to
understand."
     "Understand!" she cried.
     "It  can't  be  helped.  This  is  all the strangest damned thing that ever
happened  to me in my life." He opened his eyes and sat there, his hands feeling
cold when he rubbed his thumb and forefingers together. "The thing that happened
was strange."
     "Well, don't just _sit_ there?"
     He took part of a newspaper from the pocket of his leather jacket. "This is
today's  paper," he said. "December 10, 1951. Los Angeles _Times_. Civil Defense
Bulletin. It says they're buying radios for our garbage trucks."
     "Well, what's so bad about a little music?"
     "No music. You don't understand. No music."
     He opened his rough hand and drew with one clean fingernail, slowly, trying
to  put  everything  there  where he could see it and she could see it. "In this
article  the  mayor  says  they'll  put sending and receiving apparatus on every
garbage  truck  in town." He squinted at his hand. "After the atom bombs hit our
city,  those radios will talk to us. And then our garbage trucks will go pick up
the bodies."
     "Well, that seems practical. When -"
     "The garbage trucks," he said, "go out and pick up all the bodies."
     "You  can't  just leave bodies around, can you? You've got to take them and
-"  His wife shut her mouth very slowly. She blinked, one time only, and she did
this  very slowly also. He watched that one slow blink of her eyes. Then, with a
turn  of  her  body,  as  if someone else had turned it for her, she walked to a
chair,  paused, thought how to do it, and sat down, very straight and stiff. She
said nothing.
     He  listened  to his wrist watch ticking, but with only a small part of his
attention.
     At last she laughed. "They were joking!"
     He  shook  his  head.  He  felt his head moving from left to right and from
right  to  left,  as  slowly  as  everything  else had happened. "No. They put a
receiver  on  my  truck  today. They said, at the alert, if you're working, dump
your garbage anywhere. When we radio you, get _in_ there and haul out the dead."
     Some  water  in  the  kitchen  boiled over loudly. She let it boil for five
seconds  and  then  held the arm of the chair with one hand and got up and found
the door and went out. The boiling sound stopped. She stood in the door and then
walked back to where he still sat, not moving, his head in one position only.
     "It's   all   blueprinted  out.  They  have  squads,  sergeants,  captains,
corporals, everything," he said. "We even know where to _bring_ the bodies."
     "So you've been thinking about it all day," she said.
     "All  day  since  this  morning.  I thought: Maybe now I don't want to be a
garbage  collector  any  more.  It  used to be Tom and me had fun with a kind of
game.  You  got to do that. Garbage is bad. But if you work at it you can make a
game.  Tom  and  me did that. We watched people's garbage. We saw what kind they
had. Steak bones in rich houses, lettuce and orange peel in poor ones. Sure it's
silly, but a guy's got to make his work as good as he can and worth while or why
in hell do it? And you're your own boss, in a way, on a truck. You get out early
in  the morning and it's an outdoor job, anyway; you see the sun come up and you
see  the town get up, and that's not bad at all. But now, today, all of a sudden
it's not the kind of job for me any more."
     His  wife started to talk swiftly. She named a lot of things and she talked
about  a lot more, but before she got very far he cut gently across her talking.
"I  know, I know, the kids and school, our car, I know," he said. "And bills and
money and credit. But what about that farm Dad left us? Why can't we move there,
away  from  cities?  I  know a little about farming. We could stock up, hole in,
have enough to live on for months if anything happened."
     She said nothing.
     "Sure,  all  of  our friends are here in town," he went on reasonably. "And
movies and shows and the kids' friends, and...."
     She took a deep breath. "Can't we think it over a few more days?"
     "I  don't know. I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid if I think it over, about my
truck and my new work, I'll get used to it. And, oh Christ, it just doesn't seem
right  a  man,  a human being, should ever let himself get used to any idea like
that."
     She shook her head slovly, looking at the windows, the gray walls, the dark
pictures on the walls. She tightened her hands. She started to open her mouth.
     "I'll  think tonight," he said. "I'll stay up a while. By morning I'll know
what to do."
     "Be  careful  with  the  children.  It  wouldn't be good, their knowing all
this."
     "I'll be careful."
     "Let's  not talk any more, then. I'll finish dinner!" She jumped up and put
her  hands  to  her face and then looked at her hands and at the sunlight in the
windows. "Why, the kids'll be home any minute."
     "I'm not very hungry."
     "You  got  to eat, you just got to keep on going." She hurried off, leaving
him  alone  in the middle of a room where not a breeze stirred the curtains, and
only  the gray ceiling hung over him with a lonely bulb unlit in it, like an old
moon in a sky. He was quiet. He massaged his face with both hands. He got up and
stood alone in the dining-room door and walked forward and felt himself sit down
and  remain  seated in a dining-room chair. He saw his hands spread on the white
tablecloth, open and empty.
     "All afternoon," he said, "I've thought."
     She  moved  through the kitchen, rattling silverware, crashing pans against
the silence that was everywhere.
     "Wondering,"  he  said,  "if you put the bodies in the trucks lengthwise or
endwise,  with  the  heads on the right, or the feet on the right. Men and women
together, or separated? Children in one truck, or mixed with men and women? Dogs
in special trucks, or just let them lay? Wondering how _many_ bodies one garbage
truck can hold. And wondering if you stack them on top of each other and finally
knowing  you  must  just have to. I can't figure it. I can't work it out. I try.
but  there's  no  guessing,  no  guessing at all how many you could stack in one
single truck."
     He  sat  thinking of how it was late in the day at his work. with the truck
full  and  the  canvas pulled over the great bulk. of garbage so the bulk shaped
the  canvas in an uneven mound. And how it was if you suddenly pulled the canvas
back and looked in. And for a few seconds you saw the white things like macaroni
or  noodles,  only the white things were alive and boiling up, millions of them.
And  when  the  white  things  felt  the  hot sun on them they simmered down and
burrowed  and  were  gone  in the lettuce and the old ground beef and the coffee
grounds  and  the  heads  of white fish. After ten seconds of sunlight the white
things  that  looked  like  noodles  or macaroni were gone and the great bulk of
garbage  silent and not moving, and you drew the canvas over the bulk and looked
at how the canvas folded unevenly over the hidden collection, and underneath you
knew  it  was  dark again, and things beginning to move as they must always move
when things get dark again.
     He  was  still  sitting  there in the empty room when the front door of the
apartment  burst  wide.  His  son  and daughter rushed in, laughing, and saw him
sitting there, and stopped.
     Their  mother  ran to the kitchen door, held to the edge of it quickly, and
stared at her family. They saw her face and they heard her voice:
     "Sit  down,  children,  sit down!" She lifted one hand and pushed it toward
them. "You're just in time."