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Stories
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Trash day. Now
there’s a holiday worth celebrating. Trash day, too bad it only comes
once a week. Every day should be trash day, the day when all things past
finally meet their end. The day when things that have lost their
usefulness, and their desirability lose their grip on a life meant to be
lived in the present. Trash day holds its own promise, even in November,
even when the last leaves fall and begin their slow decay, even when the
morning and evening roll over one another like evil twin sisters crowded
in the same bed, even when the cruelest of seasons, the Holidays, begin
their slow march: All Saints Day (for the dead who actually made it into
heaven), All Souls’ Day (for the dead who want to hang around longer than
they should or who have been trapped by their sins in Purgatory), and
election day (for the souls who still hold hope in their hearts that the
will of the people has any power). Veterans Day, when the Post Office
closes and school remains open. Then there’s the lineup for mass
consumption: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. But Trash Day, that’s the
best. For it is on trash day when the souls of the faithful departed
truly and finally leave us in bits and pieces of cloth and paper, when
little by little the memory finally releases us, dissipates, and is heard
from no more. Trash day reminds us that past can be buried somewhere
besides in the basements and the attics of our own homes. In celebration,
if I could, I’d rent a backhoe, drive it in though the garage (full of its
own debris), and plow straight into this room where I sit and type. I
would crash through all the furniture and lift the cardboard boxes, and I
would back out with my victory song of reversal: “Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!”
I’m here to clear it all away. Trash day is judgment day! This day will
go down in infamy for the revolution and the rapture and the resurrection
have begun. Then, with the skill of a roadside construction crew, I’d lift
the collection of caliginous junk, hoist it into the air, then dump it
into the dumpster. The wedding dresses, the baptismal gowns, the
letters, the baby blankets, the cradles, the expired insurance policies,
the “this is not a bill” notices from the insurance companies, the
calendars (1982, 1928, 1967) with their expired appointments either kept
or forgotten, appointments once so important now drowned and buried here.
I would haul them all away. And they would pollute some other state’s
landfill, I think. I don’t even know where the trash goes. And I don’t
care. I used to care, but there’s no Time any more. The end of the
world, no matter how slow it is in coming, is surely coming and I’m not
going to leave it with all this incriminating trash. I refuse to do to my
children what my mother and her mother before her did to me. I’m leaving
clean.
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