Stephen Dixon - Garbage

“Try and I’ll lock you in and call Cab Control who’ll call the cops.”

He presses a button on the steering wheel and all the door locks snap down another notch. I try pulling up my lock but can’t. There’s a steel screen between us and I say through it “Okay okay, no more complaints. Get to Pearlwood fast as you can and I’ll pay.”

“Now you’re talking sense.”

He turns the cab around and drives to Pearlwood and stops at the cemetery gate and says through the screen “Eight dollars.”

“Meter reads four-fifty.”

“I have to ride back and have no customers here because your cemetery’s closed. And I don’t feel like waiting for you, even if you wanted me to, at the dollar-every-three-minutes time. For one reason, you might leave through one of the side ways if you got in and for another, I know you’re not giving a tip. So the eight or I take you back to the station and let you off after you pay the four-fifty plus whatever the new reading is from here to there.”

I put a ten in the screen tray and he gives me two dollars change and presses the button that releases the locks. I get out.

“Piece of advice,” he says.

“I’ll give you.”

“No listen, see that phonebooth there? When you call a Meyermeg cab to get back, don’t ask for Nate’s.”

“Bastard,” I yell. He waves and drives away. Never should’ve yelled anything like that in front of here. About death I’m a bit superstitious and make the religious sign with my fingers over my chest and then think that’s ridiculous and rub it off and ring the bell on the cemetery gate. Voice on an intercom above the bell says “Cemetery closed for the day.”

“Please, I’ve come a long way.”

“Sorry, closed, good day.”

“Look, I haven’t seen my parents or sister in years and I can get out here just about never.”

“Next time come earlier.”

“Next time I will, that’s a promise, but this time give me a break.”

“I shouldn’t but could.”

“Yes?”

“That’s it. I shouldn’t but could.”

“So what’ll it take?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying can we talk straight?”

“Anyone with you?”

“You can’t see through that camera thing on top of the gate?”

“It’s dark behind you. People can lie in shadows and what I’m seeing you through is a cheap set.”

“Nobody’s with me.”

“Then we can talk, but be circumspect.”

“Will a five or ten dollar cash contribution get me in for a half hour?”

“Contribution to the cemetery.”

“Cemetery.”

“Fifteen minutes total is all I can spare you once we reach your plot. You don’t know where it is, I can be of service in another way, as I’ve this direction book to help.”

“It’s in one of the rows to the right off a driveway. I can’t miss it as it’s in a meadow almost by itself.”

“Others have gone up all around it.”

“Louise and Lester Fleet then. And my sister, with the same last name, and our grandparents, Dondon, in adjacent graves.”

“All I need. E-F-Fl-Fleet. Agnes. Lester and spouse. Corelated: Beatrice and Daryl Dondon the third. Row 141, section 7S. Wait for me.”

Drives down, gets out of his car, says hello and sticks his mitted hand through the gate. I shake it. “That’s fine, pleasure’s all mine. But the you-know-what.”

“I’m not sure anymore I can.”

“Don’t try to haggle with me, Fleet. The ten-dollar cemetery donation or I ride back and you won’t see me again today.”

“Please, let me go over with you what I’ve gone through to get here and why.”

“Not interested.”

“Don’t be such a hard guy.”

“Also no time for talk.”

“Then just let me in. I don’t want to hand over money and it’s cost me enough just to come out. And it’s my cemetery. My grandfather also reserved space for me here and my wife and kids if I had them.”

“You need cash then? Sell your extra plots. There’ll be no end to takers. This is a relatively close space to the city, so you’ll get plenty for them — ten times what your grandfather paid.”

“I don’t want to. I still could get married someday and have a kid or already my wife’s. And this is holy ground. At least sacred to me with my family in there, so don’t make me have to report you.”

“You threatening? I’ll deny and backfire on you. I’ll say you went crazy when you came late and I wouldn’t let you in. I’m old and trusted here. Just as I thought you could be trusted — dragging me down here, you son of, and you didn’t act that type over the TV screen — so they’ll believe me as they know people in grief have tried everything with us day and night and also the owners never heard my doing anything wrong. Not that I ever have or am doing anything wrong now. A contribution to the nondenominational cemetery chapel I’m trying to collect for them they certainly won’t frown upon.”

“It’s a bribe for yourself you want, no contribution.”

“Whose bribe? You pushed me and I refused. God, if I had the legal right or my earlier age and strength I’d force you to pay to the cemetery the car gas down here and my wage consumed and maybe for me my medical bills for the temperature I’ll probably get standing here and charges. Courtroom charges I’d be using to sue you for breach of everything and filthy slander,” and he gets in the car and drives up the hill.

I shake the gate, ring the bell. Maybe someone else is in the office. Nobody answers. I shake, pound the gate with a stone, stay on the bell, still no one answers. I’ve had it to here with these bastards, had it and shake a fist at the camera and go right along the fence looking for another entrance, but in my five-minute walk through the shin-high snow there is none. I start climbing the iron bar fence. Screw him, I’ll get in my own way, but it’s slippery with ice and I slide down. I start climbing another less slippery spot but stop halfway up. It’s night so how would I find our gravesite? Piled up snow, maybe the graves and stones grown over as well, even with the good moon I got, probably surrounded as he suggested by a thousand headstones by now when before they were alone, and getting back over might even be tougher.

I look through the fence and think I see their headstones in the distance and start to cry. This would be about where they are, same size and rounded on top, each with an inscription on them about something to do with “rest, peace” and “love.” Little obelisk for my sister I can’t see to the left of them, but it might be some kind of optical illusion stopping me, or knocked down.

I stay there, forehead against the fence, say my own prayer and let their five faces pass through my head, then walk back to the front gate and yell at the intercom “Hey you — caretaker. Next time you come outside the grounds you’re going to get one of these here, but with a brick in it for your evil nose,” and I make and throw a snowball at the camera and hit a tree way off and get on my knees to make some more. Brick wasn’t a serious threat. And why my making these balls for? Police will be called and I got what I mostly came out here for, didn’t I? and that’s to never let these thieves get to me where I let up or start to beg and I also saw or think I did my sister and folks and spoke a few words to them and thought.

I go to the phonebooth in front and am about to call the cab company when I hear sirens. I run across the road, feign going right, in the dark go left and hide behind a bush about fifty feet from the gate. Police come, look around, ring the bell and caretaker drives down and points in the opposite direction I ran and they shine their flashlights there and then write on a clipboard and he signs it and they go.