The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright

Author:Cameron Wright [Wright, Camron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2012-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Dreams are curious.

Most dreams are nonsensical scenes that cause us to giggle when we recall them in the morning. Others are frightening nightmares during which we are attacked by gangs, chased by garbage trucks, or endlessly falling in menacing darkness. A few rare dreams are so real, so detailed and profound, that they alter the course of our lives. Last night I had such a dream.

It was not of my childhood. I didn’t speak with my grandfather or try to decipher his often puzzling advice. In fact, I didn’t utter a word. Instead, when I awoke in the morning—or thought I had—I opened the flap on the front of our little home at Stung Meanchey to find the entire dump covered in a blanket of white ash. I assumed that the fires must have been especially terrible to create so much ash, but then, as I looked over the horizon, I could see Jorani Kahn. She was waving me to follow, and it was then that I understood Stung Meanchey wasn’t covered in ash at all—it was covered in snow.

I have never seen snow in person, never felt its touch against my skin. I only know about snow through occasional pictures of faraway countries that we find in discarded travel magazines—and from Jorani Kahn’s stories. She once visited a place called Co-lo-ra-do in America with her father when she was a child. She told me about molding snow into balls like cotton, but heavy like mud, and throwing them at other people for fun. She said that the piles of snow in the mountains were so tall that they would almost reach the height of the trash at Stung Meanchey.

I didn’t have time to play in the snow. Nisay had been sick again and we had no money for the doctor. I had to work, but when I looked again for Jorani Kahn to tell her, she was gone. Instead, I saw only stillness—no rumbling trucks, no clanking bulldozers, no scavenging workers, no grunting pigs, no clucking chickens, no boisterous children, no buzzing flies. It was completely and utterly silent.

In spite of the unusual scene, I snatched my picker and an empty canvas sack, as if it were just another normal day of work. Yet the fact that it was just an ordinary day is partly what made it so extraordinary. I stepped out into the snow, but as I began to dig down through the sheet of white, I realized the putrid trash was no longer there beneath. Everything dirty at Stung Meanchey was gone—no germs, no stench, no toxic water, no smoke, no fires, no bustle, no gangs, no rotting food. The filthiest place on earth had been made clean.

As I turned about, marveling at what had happened, in the distance I could see my home province of Prey Veng. I understood that this was impossible, since Prey Veng and Stung Meanchey lie far apart, a distance that requires a long trek by bus, much hiking, and lastly a ride by boat—but I could see the province anyway.

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