Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

The first thing Earl left was a rain poncho. It had kept him dry for years atop hydro poles, but he had no use for it now, clocking most of his time in his car. He left it poking from a grocery bag beside one of the dumpsters, and the next rainy day he was pleased to see Kyle wrapped in it. He remembered Easter egg hunts, hiding foiled eggs in the garden and tool shed for Kyle to find, ruddy joy in the kid’s face as he tore around the yard like a crazed detective.

Now Earl leaves cheap sneakers and chickens, cases of sports drinks, tarps, and packages of size medium underwear, and it pleases him to think Kyle values these items that appear magically each evening in his dumpsters. He likes to think that his grandson feels he is, in some small way, lucky. And it is for this reason that Earl decides he has to at least right the chicken resting half on the bottom of the dumpster. Kyle might not eat it if he thinks it’s contaminated. In truth, Kyle has taken everything set out for him so far, but the thought of him going hungry tonight is more than Earl can bear.

He attempts to pull the oak desk over but can’t get it to budge. Then he scans the alley and spots a floral-upholstered armchair next to a scraggly bush and a motorcycle that likely hasn’t kicked over in years. He drags the armchair toward the dumpster, walking it on its legs, halting intermittently to lean on his cane. He resists sitting in the chair because it smells of vomit and cat litter. Finally, he butts it up to the dumpster, then sets a foot on the cushion. Earl lets his cane fall to the ground and with a grunt he unsteadily mounts the chair, wobbling and sinking into its springs. He feels ridiculous, and for a moment smiles at the idea of someone passing by the alley and taking him for another old dumpster-diver about to take a plunge for sunken treasure. Earl kicks his leg up to the edge of the bin and feels his stockings cinch tight on his calves. He draws a bracing breath and attempts to hoist himself over the lip of the dumpster, wary to not land on the chicken. He is just about over when he hears a sick silence as if someone has placed two drinking glasses over his ears and the sky swings over him and the side of the dumpster heaves up, striking him mercilessly in his ribs, and it is difficult to unravel the sound of the lid slamming from the faraway sound of his head against the bottom and all this is followed by a bleached, dizzy rushing in his ears.

In near perfect dark, Earl pulls himself into the fetal position. The rushing has subsided slightly and he begins to make out fibres of light where the lid of the dumpster is bent a little. His hip is blowing pain and at the side of his head there is wetness. His elbow is pressing into something. He feels the urge to stand but needs a minute more for his body to stop shaking. He fears for a second he is trapped. He can’t remember the last time he was trapped somewhere, perhaps only in a childhood game. But he’s not trapped, he just needs to collect himself. Then he realizes it’s the birthday cake box that his elbow is sinking into. With his other hand he reaches and touches the dead houseplant. After the birthday cake is gone, I’ll eat this, he thinks, crushing a brittle leaf in his fingers, chuckling to himself, until the pain in his hip forces his teeth together.

With the lid shut, the smell is sickening. Years of leaking garbage bags have left a gummy film on the dumpster’s bottom. He attempts to pull his head away from the stench but there is more pain so he stops. While he waits for strength, the smell brings to Earl’s mind with a staggering vividness the day of Kyle’s accident, a few months after Sarah left for the cruise ship.

He and Kyle were at the dump in Earl’s truck, stopped waiting for the junk truck ahead of them to be weighed, its sides built up with scrap wood and brimming with bald tires. “They do it so they know how much we got rid of when we leave,” he told Kyle, who hadn’t asked, but Earl thought the boy might find it interesting. The boy’s eyes were fixed forward. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want, doesn’t bother me,” Earl said. “Anyhow, we have a job to do.” Earl briefly considered how much it would cost if he were to leave the boy there, or for himself for that matter. He calculated it wouldn’t be much for either.

On a dusty road further in, they passed a bulldozer spattered with what looked like soiled toilet paper. Kyle rolled down his window and the truck was deluged with hot, putrid air, a smell so bad it graduated to taste. The little muscles of Kyle’s jaw wiggled and Earl felt the dust starting to make paste in his eyes and he wiped at them with his cuff.

They entered what was like a coliseum of garbage, great slopes that loomed and shifted in the rippling heat. Outside their truck swarms of gulls, so far from the sea, shrieked pure treble and men were yelling at each other over the noise. A man in coveralls rapped at their window. He asked if they had any batteries, or paint, or wood, or metal. Earl turned to the boy; their cargo seemed somehow more his than anyone else’s.

“No,” Kyle said.

The man raised a stick to the end of which he’d attached a mannequin’s hand, making his arm appear grotesquely long, and pointed to where they should unload.

Earl clunked the truck into reverse.

“Why does it matter where we put it — it’s all just garbage, isn’t it?” Kyle said.

“They need to keep things orderly, even at the dump,” Earl said.

The boy was bouncing his knee. Seagulls twisted overhead and the punishing smell found Earl again as he stepped from the truck. He felt the bulldozers in his chest as they churned the waste upon itself. For a moment he questioned whether it was wise to have brought the boy along. Earl didn’t really need his help but had woken that morning with the notion that it would be good for Kyle, a sort of medicine.

“You going to help?” Earl said, and the boy got out and crossed his arms.

Earl dropped the tailgate with a bang, stepped up, and the pickup sank further under him. He couldn’t think of any words that would make this easy for the boy — it was like ripping off a bandage, or jumping into a lake — so he grabbed one of the boxes that Kyle’s father had left behind and hurled it to the foot of the mountain of garbage.

He turned to Kyle and saw that he was weeping, two fat streams down his reddening cheeks, and Earl’s chest fisted with pity. He felt an overwhelming compulsion to lower his eyes, to focus on doing the job they’d come to do, let the rest take care of itself. He threw another box, turning before it landed with a crash made tiny by the roar of the bulldozers.

The boy still didn’t move. Earl figured he was only making it worse for himself.

“You can work, or you can walk,” Earl said, and the boy glanced to the road. Earl wondered if he really was considering the fifty-kilometre hike home. Kyle made two shaking fists at his sides, exhaled, then released them. He turned his slick face away and leapt to the tailgate. He snatched up two shoeboxes and threw them. Then he grabbed a larger box, slid it over, and kicked it from the truck.

“That’s it,” Earl said. “Who needs this junk anyway.”

Earl started on the heavy garbage bags of Dennis’s fancy clothes that swished when he launched them. As they worked, Earl could see the tears had dried and Kyle was maybe even enjoying himself a little. After a while, they made a kind of game of it, aiming for fragile things like old lamps and panes of glass, and this made the time go quickly.

With their cargo gone, Earl drove his grandson home, where they sat in the backyard, waiting for Tuuli to thrust open the squeaky storm door and set a plate of egg sandwiches on the picnic table. The midday sun was hot. The boy seemed all right now, as far as Earl could tell anyway. Perhaps the work had done him good. Kyle said he was starving, so Earl walked over to the small vegetable garden he’d been tending with increasing care since he had retired and pulled two carrots. He rinsed them under the outdoor tap and they sat, crunching.