9 Tales Told in the Dark 11 by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

Author:9 Tales Told in the Dark [Dark, 9 Tales Told in the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bride of Chaos
Published: 2016-03-21T23:00:00+00:00

THE END

AN AUDIENCE OF SQUIRRELS by Sara Green

Brakes squealed. Frank Peavey looked up from his daylilies. It was just the garbage collection he normally wouldn’t have given it another thought but this time it was a little different. The man who had come around behind the back of the big garbage truck seemed to be struggling.

“Need any help with that?”

The man did nothing to acknowledge Frank. He just kept trying to toss a heavy bag into the truck so Frank joined him.

“Let me help you with that.”

The man’s face scrunched up like a crushed soda can.

“Can’t allow you,” he said. “It’s the law. Got all kind of regulations only I can put stuff in this truck, got it?”

“Sure, well it is still my trash and I help lift it, then you can push it in. Right?” Frank was half joking as the regulation seemed very silly considering how much the man who was easily past the retirement age was struggling.

The man looked around and then nodded. “I guess that could work.”

Frank looked around too, wondering if the city garbage men were under the same pressures as almost any other job with bureaucrats who praised efficiency yet existed in such a capacity that it only slowed down productivity and morale.

Frank and the man lifted the bag. Then the man gave it a hearty push and it plopped down into the back of the garbage truck. Frank went to wipe his hands on his jeans, but paused noticing all the soil he’d managed to coat them with while gardening.

“Always a way around a regulation.” Frank smiled.

The man didn’t. Instead he groaned and said, “Regulations are there to protect people.”

“Hey, so my son is doing a report in his social studies classes about parts of the government that do work. You guys do a great job, so he was gonna do trash collection. Is there anybody he could call and maybe talk with to understand the process of how everything works?”

The man shrugged. “Guess he’d want to talk to Tony Gose, but he don’t like kids.”

Frank nodded and let the man walk around to the side of the garbage truck. The man climbed on and the truck jerked forward with a hiss and then went another fifty feet to the next set of garbage cans.

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