Stephen Dixon - Garbage

“Then you have yesterday’s bags here, which as far as the Health Department’s concerned is yesterday’s garbage, since the dirty bags should have been dumped too.”

“What I say you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Who doesn’t? And please fight it if you like. That’s what our Administrative Tribunal’s for. Most of us inspectors love it when the less reprehensible stores like yours win, as we don’t see any gain for the city when you go out of business and possibly on welfare. At a hearing this week you can show why you failed to abide by the Health Code. If the tribunal judges against you, you’ll be fined. If it also decides, which is usually the case, that you’re entitled to a third inspection and at that inspection you’ve corrected your violations and can show proof of new arrangements where they won’t be repeated, your health permit will be restored.”

“How can I show the inspector I’ve corrected and won’t repeat my violations if I’m not being allowed to correct and not repeat by this company of hoods?”

“Coercion’s a civil court matter, not Health’s. Ours is simply to see that all the food stores and restaurants meet the Health Code.”

“But I won’t be able to prove anything to any court that I’m being threatened or other people are. I’ve no evidence of it and nobody who knows about it will be brave or dumb enough to testify.”

“All I’m saying is if you can prove to a civil court judge that you have been intimidated, then the court will probably make this company pay your fines, give you loss-of-business restitution and also issue an injunction against them to stop molesting you. Then you’ll be able to hire another carter for your garbage which will mean you’ll have corrected your violations and made arrangements not to repeat them. As of this moment though I have to ask you to tell your customers upstairs to go and for you to lock up and not enter the bar again for customers till we restore your health permit. Do and the tribunal might rule that you lose your health permit for good. If you don’t close voluntarily now I’ll call a cop and city carpenter and have a hasp and padlock put on your door and remove yours. Touch our lock and you’ll be arrested and probably prohibited from handling liquor or food anywhere in the state again in a commercial way.”

“Close me. Don’t know from where but I’ll come up with something to open again.”

“That’s the only way to do it, Mr. Fleet — peacefully and optimistically.”

We go upstairs, he carrying my garbage bag. He’s a weak little guy or looks it and I say “Can I help you with that, no evil influence intended,” and he says no. I tell the one customer to pay up and go. As he’s leaving the bar I say “Wait, Walt — here’s your three bucks back. If you’re going to be my last customer then I want it to be like my father did, which was to buy everybody at the bar a last round before he turned the place over to me with this immediate huge deficit. Of course he had them three deep that night and his leaving was like a going-off-to-war celebration, when I just have you two here. You want one, sir?” I say to the inspector. “Even just that coffee or cocoa?”

“Can’t. I’m not even permitted to purchase a matchbook in any establishment I’m examining.” He takes my health permit off the wall, has me sign a release that he took it and puts the permit and release in his briefcase.

“I’ll be twenty minutes.”

I tear down the bar, wipe it clean, shut the lights, lock up and he asks for and I give him the keys. I sign another release for them and he tapes a sign on the door: “Premises Temporarily Closed by Order of Dept. of Health.”

“Everyone who reads that will think I’ve roaches and rats galore in there and never come back to eat.”

“Have them phone me and I’ll guarantee you’ve one of the cleanest bars in town.”

“Want to know something? Maybe I ‘ m cutting my throat by this but I want to say it anyway as a sign of my sincerity. I’ve seen occasional rats and mice in my cellar and of course roaches and trapped or poisoned them or chased them out and sealed up their escape holes. And a couple of times in recent years here an animal or two I’ve never seen before. I don’t even know where this thing comes from and never saw a picture of it in any encyclopedia or animal book when I went to look or heard or read of it talked about. They’ve long slithering flat tails and big round ears and little kids’ baby teeth and faces like platypuses these nonrats, though they’re no larger than our average-sized mice. Once or twice I swear I saw them and when I did they got scareder than I was and darted into the dark together and disappeared, not to be seen by me for another two years. They must come from the sewers through holes or pipes in my wall from yesteryear that are behind things that I think are for something else or never knew were there.”

“Several other bar places around town have told me about them. They’re little and light brown, right? and—”

“‘Little’ I said and that shade of color, yes.”

“And seem to thrive on underground dampness and coolness and garbage and the seepage from kegs of ale and beer. They apparently only travel in twos and are probably of opposite sexes our resident pest specialist says, since one’s always a lot furrier than the other and less the aggressor, but which sex that one is she doesn’t know. Nobody’s been bitten or even touched one yet though they say they have been sissed and spit at. You’d think, knowing the personality and armory you bartenders got, that in the fifteen years since they were first sighted, one of these cellar creatures would have been caught or shot or with a beer bottle or bat clubbed to unconsciousness or found one time down there after they had died a natural death. Since they’ve so far remained relatively timid and for all we know might be the same two going from bar to bar through their own subterranean paths, we kept it on the q.t. to the news so as not to alarm and frighten off the entire bar population and your clientele. But we would appreciate and are even offering a small reward and citation to the first bar worker who captures one alive and a small reward without the citation for one dead in almost any recognizable form, not that we’re encouraging anyone to endanger his life doing it.”

“So I learned I wasn’t crazy all along about these animals, which always till now kept me from telling anyone.”

We shake hands in front of the bar and he wishes me well and I walk in the falling snow to my hotel. Dayclerk’s on duty behind the desk and he says “Never seen you here this early. What’s wrong, you sick?”

“Just very upset. If my luck gets any worse — well, I don’t know, I haven’t all day stepped in dogshit yet. Any messages?”

Letter from the cemetery my family’s at, forwarded from my old address and requesting a teller’s check for the gravesite’s annual maintenance. “This is our final reminder. Snow covers a multitude of untidinesses but does melt. If you cannot settle this debt by next week we will distressingly be compelled to let the ground of your deceased loved ones overgrow.”

Other another bill from my previous landlord demanding I pay all of last month’s rent, even though I was burned out three days into it. Since, to get her off my back, I already sent her half a month’s rent and figure because she’s such a shrewdie she’ll collect fire insurance on my apartment fire worth five times what it’ll cost her to rebuild and then get twice the monthly rent I paid, I tear the bill up and drop it in the cigarette butt can by the elevator.

“Please for godsakes don’t throw your trash in there,” the dayclerk says. “That’s for tobacco objects only, which could ignite your letters and end up burning down the hotel.”