Trash - Andy Mulligan [9]
One man had a box with a great wad of notes in it, and he’d shown it around to prove we’d all be paid. I overheard another one talking, and I worked out what was happening – they were using their brains. Somehow they knew the bag had been lost in this place called McKinley – which is a rich area – so it wasn’t hard to trace the trucks that look after that neighbourhood. Now, the McKinley trucks had made one visit yesterday, which is how we found what we found – and more were coming in again today. So, for today’s trucks, all the police had to do was get them to drop the loads on a clear patch of ground, and we could pick over it easy, in an hour.
Sure enough, just before noon they brought up the three special McKinley trucks and they dropped their loads, and they kept us all back, so we were all just looking at it. I said to Raphael then, turning him round so no one saw: ‘Are you still sure, friend?’
He was looking scared because I think he was just beginning to realize how big this must be.
He said, very soft, ‘I’m more sure than ever, Gardo,’ so I stayed close.
We tried to look just happy and excited then, because the last thing I wanted was for anyone to think we were suspicious or scared or worried or hiding something – but I was frightened too, and I grabbed Raphael and made sure we joined in the pushing and shoving, like we hadn’t a care in the world. When we saw Rat, we waved: he was squatting close by, smoking, and he would look over at me sometimes, but nobody looked at him, because Rat is grey as trash, and he has only the clothes he wears, which are so filthy he can move around and no one sees him.
After a while the police gathered all us kids together and got us working – they’d got extra hooks from somewhere, and as we were on level ground it wasn’t a hard job: we just ripped and ripped, and spread it all out.
There were about a hundred of us.
The people in McKinley have toilets, so there wasn’t any stupp – McKinley trash is good-quality trash: food, newspaper, a lot of plastic and glass, but the police wouldn’t let us take anything, because as far as they were concerned, we were looking for just one thing.
Then someone found a handbag, and there was real excitement, lots of shouting: it was blue, and old, with one stringy little handle, so it was thrown back, everyone very disappointed, and the police just watched us work, looking grim and their patience running out.
By mid-afternoon, I guess, we’d finished, and I don’t think a pile of rubbish had ever got a better looking at: the men on the trash piles had finished as well, and everyone was ordered down. Of course, we all would have worked for the rest of the day, and the rest of the week – we were hoping to string it out and get five hundred out of it – but the police were smart, and could see that even in a mountain of rubbish, you can pick through what’s up top pretty fast, and you can see what’s new and what isn’t.
I saw the boxer policeman was back – the big guy who’d made the speech yesterday – and he was talking it all over with the site managers and two men in suits by one of the big black cars. There was a lot of arguing going on, a lot of calls being made, and I could see the managers weren’t happy – I think because the line of loaded trucks was getting longer and longer, and the drivers were finally getting itchy, drinking tea all day and not knowing when they were going home. And you could see what the problem was: if the police allowed these trucks to unload new, fresh trash, the precious bag was going to be buried even further down, if it was there. But on the other hand, this was the city dumpsite, and how long can you close down a dump when all these millions of people are sending stuff to it? How long before the city stops?
But what must