All night, Buddy tossed and turned, thinking about what might be in the plastic garbage bags piled underneath the Looner Module. Books, sports jackets, photos off his walls, pants, underwear, his favourite beer mug, framed j-awards…
All of it depressed him. He couldn’t bear the thought of revisiting his past life with Leanne and the kids by picking through their artifacts like the survivor of a bomb blast. Nothing he would find inside the knotted plastic bags would be worth the pain of recovering.
“Junk!” he grumbled. Leave ’em sealed, and be done with it.
Income tax returns, credit card statements, medical records… Let some future archaeologist, picking through the rubble of a fucked-up civilization, piece the shreds of his former life together and come up with some kind of theory that made sense. Suits, socks, and shoes—let future historians figure out who it was wore the jumble of garments Leanne had jettisoned and whose DNA had seeped into its fabric.
This is it! he thought. Offloading.
Most of the stuff he hadn’t worn or used, or even looked at in years anyway. Useless baggage; now he’d become a nomad. An outcast!
Buddy rolled the words over. Nomad? A person of no fixed address who carried all his possessions with him, living lightly off the land? Hunter-gatherer. Was that his claim? Outcast? Somebody shunned, excluded. A reject. Did that describe him better?
“No. Not really.”
What then?
He and Leanne had become bored strangers who happened to be living in the same space, sharing its kitchen, bedroom, and bathrooms, wandering in and out of each other’s closets like ghosts in the flesh. Roomies. But resentful, each feeling cheated by the other.
Do I really want to keep any of this stuff?
Buddy checked Google Maps. There was a ‘recycling centre’ up the road that opened at nine. He wished he could use the word ‘dump’ or, better yet, ‘landfill’ to describe his destination, but the 21st century psyche didn’t allow the simple act of discarding things—not even memories. Didn’t permit a sort of burial ground where the hard facts of used or abandoned existences could be turfed, a graveyard of broken, outdated dreams…
But that’s what he was going to do—turf the fucking lot!
I’ll never tell her! he vowed. This decisive act would remain my secret. An act of purgation, not revenge.
Eight-forty-five, his mobile said. That gave him 15 minutes to stuff the junk into the back of the Matrix and drive up to the dump. He’d probably be first at the gate. He folded down the back seats to make room, shoving the bulging bags forward and slamming the hatch. Then he set off on the tortuous route from VORLand’s End to the Peerless Recycling Depot.
“Peerless?” he wondered. Without equal in what sense? Could you be a peerless bastard? A peerless idiot? Peerless has-been?
His mobile told him to turn right on Esplanade, an instruction he obeyed even though it seemed the wrong direction. Then it told him to take a right on Croft Street, which seemed more like a lurching back alley than a proper road. Persevering, he eventually found himself on Chemainus Road, which he recognized as the route out of town, eventually to Incinerator Road and the recycling centre gate.
“Just household garbage,” he fibbed when the attendant asked at the weigh scale. Then Buddy drove through, wrenched the wheel left, and backed up to the bin.
Sure you want to do this? Buddy asked himself one last time as he unbuckled and shoved open the Matrix’s door. “Yes, I fucking well am!” He slammed it shut. Heaving open the hatchback, he grabbed a bag that tumbled out onto the pavement, swung it round like a hammer thrower, and flung it into the bin. It hit the open lid and split, spilling a jumble of clothing onto the pile of garbage… then another, and another…
“Hey man! You okay?”
Twisting round, Buddy found himself almost face-to-face with a guy shod in work boots, wearing a reflective vest and hardhat. He had a broom in his hand.
“Yeah, fine.”
The fellow sauntered over to the rail and looked at the spilled contents of the first bag Buddy had tossed. “Doesn’t look like junk to me,” he said. “Looks like stuff you might want to take to the thrift.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Well,” the guy removed his hardhat, ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair, then fit the hat back on. “There’s people who’d be happy to get that stuff for cheap. And if there’s more of the same in your wagon, you’d be helping them and whatever cause the thrift in your neighbourhood supports. They always support something—the hospital, the homeless, whatever. It’s a win-win.”
“This stuff’s junk,” Buddy insisted angrily. Butt out!
“Well,” the guy pondered, “technically, it’s not junk; it’s recyclables you’re throwing into the junk bin. You’re supposed to sort things before you bring them here, not just stuff them into garbage bags and toss them. It’s a recycling depot, not a garbage dump, eh? We don’t do dumps anymore.”
“Ah!” Buddy said.
“Tell you what. I’ll leave you to it, man. I’m not a recycling cop or anything, just a guy who works at the depot. But, I think maybe it would be better if you sorted through that stuff, picked out what’s good for the thrift, then brought back the leftovers you want to hammer toss.”
Half turned to walk away, the worker checked himself, and fixed Buddy with a gentle gaze. “You know, there won’t be any memories attached to that stuff for the people at the thrift. It’s just clothes to them, something they can afford to put on their backs along with a little dignity.”
He sauntered off, leaving Buddy standing there, still grasping the twisted neck of a plastic bag he was about to hurl. “Shit!” He tossed the bag back into the car and closed the hatch. “Goddammit!” he sighed, shuffling in behind the wheel, slamming the door, buckling up, and twisting the key in the ignition.
Pulling up to the drive at VORLand’s end, he opened the hatch and began lugging his stuff back to the Looner Module. Now he’d have to sort through it all, deciding what to donate, toss, or maybe keep.
Before he started, he texted Robbie. “Thanks for bringing up my stuff,” he said. “See you soon, son.” He stared at the heap, took a deep breath, opened the first bag, and began sorting through the remnants of life after Leanne.
Next: Points of View