It’s not always obvious when a neighborhood is going downhill. By the time most folks notice the change, it’s already too late. Broken windows, overgrown lawns, these are the evidence of decomposition, not decline. It’s the little things. More than one nice home goes up for sale. The varnish on the porch steps goes out of style, too many dogs through the chain-link fences. Cracks in the driveway. Even the character of the sunlight changes in a place like that; a heat to subdue rather than cheer.
J.D. wound his way past the cul-de-sacs and Dead End signs. He checked his phone and sighed. He’d forgotten to charge it again. He was always doing that. Hopefully it would last him through the day. He was one minute away now. He started to check the numbers on the mailboxes.
It was the last stretch of road in the development, and the last address on the street. Something about it looked unfriendly. The yard was larger than the others, with the house pushed right up against the tree line, as if to keep an eye on all the other houses. J.D. swung right in a wide arc to make sure his truck’s tail wouldn’t block anyone’s driveway, then stomped the brake.
He waited to turn off the engine until he could collect his things. Cap, price sheet, cell phone, and a winning smile. The rest of the tools wouldn’t be necessary until after he’d secured the sale. And boy, did he need this sale. He took a deep breath, killed the engine and hopped out of the truck. The key stayed in the ignition. Any idiot stupid enough to steal a giant blue truck with a phone number plastered on the side deserved to have it.
J.D. was starting to become resentful of the phrase, “Become your own boss!” He had come to realize how often it was used by pyramid schemers or online finance hucksters. As hard as he had worked to achieve that goal, it was uncomfortable to consider that perhaps it had all been a waste of time. He set out on his own with what he thought were reasonable, thought-out expectations, but learned very quickly that you had to make enough money before you could even start to think about making a lot of money. And enough was proving hard to come by these days.
It was early morning, first stop of the day. The voicemail said it was a big one, so might as well try to knock it out early. If they canceled he would be free to take other jobs that day. If anybody else called. Lately, not many had.
He approached the house. He could tell the weather was going to get swampy later. Lazy gnats were already buzzing around the uncut grass. He noticed the overgrown lawn as well as the wobbly bricks on the front steps. Things like that could indicate broke folks, so J.D. prepared himself to give a good pitch.
He pressed the bell but didn’t hear any sound. He knocked on the door with his knuckles – much nicer than the booming sound from a clenched fist. Through thin windows beside the door he saw a shadow move, then a face peer out. A chain unlocked and the door pulled in.
“Good morning!” called J.D., professional grin on display. “Mr. Calvin Crowe? Right on time for your free estimate.”
The fellow in the doorway stood very still. J.D. wondered if maybe he’d woken him up. His eyes were tucked back into the skin of his skull, surrounded by more than his fair share of wrinkles. Salt and pepper stubble covered his chin and neck, and dirty silver hair fell down to his shoulders. Looked like he might have been a sound guy somewhere. He was thin except for a small paunch emphasizing the word Pantera on his black t-shirt.
“Who is it?”
The shrill words rang out from inside the house.
The man leaned over his shoulder and called, “Junk man’s here.”
J.D. gave a good-natured laugh, determined to put the customer at ease.
From behind the homeowner appeared a very round woman with bright pink hair in a messy bun, at least two inches of brown roots showing. She was wearing black yoga pants and flip flops. Mrs. Crowe frowned and her husband frowned.
“How big is your truck?” she demanded. “The last guy said his truck was too small for this job.”
“About 400 square feet,” began J.D., “But I–”
“I don’t know square feet,” the hostile woman cut him off. “How big is it?”
J.D. pointed back to his truck, “About that big.” He winked at the man, but got no reaction. Okay, all business then. “What I do is, I’ll take a look at what you’ve got and estimate the cost based on how much of the truck I fill up.”
“It’ll be more than one truck,” said Mr. Crowe in a raspy monotone.
“In that case,” continued J.D., “I’ll estimate how many trucks it’ll take, and the cost will be per truck.” He explained the pricing structure, and the couple glanced at each other. They looked back at him.
“Is it gonna be just you?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “We don’t want a bunch of strangers wandering through the house.”
“I’m a one-man operation. Used to work for a big company, but I knew I could do the same work with no corporate fees. Focused attention and quality results.”
The woman trundled off in the middle of his catchphrases. J.D. hoped his irritation hadn’t twisted his face. Calvin Crowe opened the door.
“Come on in then.”
There were no lights on in the house, only the dreary morning skulking through the curtains. It was clean enough, but the carpet was worn and the walls needed a coat of paint years ago. J.D. knew how to size up a job quickly, and he wasn’t hopeful. They’d heard the price without complaint, but were probably hoping to wear him down. Or screw him over at the last moment. Mr. Calvin led him through the kitchen, where his wife was filling a cup with water from the sink. Dirty dishes.
They stopped at a door, and Mr. Crowe turned around. “Here’s the basement. Everything’s down there.”
J.D. waited, but the man didn’t move. He reached forward and opened the basement door himself. He was immediately hit hard with that smell. The kind that made his nose hairs stand on end. This was a hoarder job. It was black in the stairwell, like a pit, but there was no mistaking that smell. J.D. flipped the light switch and a single hanging bulb illuminated bare wooden stairs. He went down a few steps, then looked back. The Crowes weren’t following.
“Would you mind coming down to show me what goes and what stays?” Hoarders were often very particular with what could and could not be removed from their home.
“We don’t go down there,” said Mrs. Crowe. She said it with condescension, as if J.D. should have known that already. “That’s our son’s apartment.”
“Okay,” said J.D. slowly. “Is he here?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.” J.D. knew he should feel bad, but he hated being made to look foolish. “I’m so sorry.”
“No you’re not,” snapped the woman.
“Shannon. Everything goes,” said her husband. “Take it all. Just tell us how much.”
Something was very strange about all this. This wasn’t J.D.’s first cleanout after a funeral. They were never pleasant, but there was something else. Maybe it was the pair of creeps staring down at him talking about their dead son. Maybe it was the nasty smell drifting along the cold basement air. No, it was deeper. As if an ancient instinct was warning him to refuse. But that was ridiculous. A hoarder job meant multiple loads, and that meant lots of money for him. He shook himself and nodded.
“I’ll take a look.”
It was a hoarder’s basement alright. One of the worst he’d ever seen. There was a narrow pathway carved through a large open room, a canyon in the midst of mountains of refuse. It was piled up to J.D.’s shoulder in some places, like the treasure hoard of some loser dragon. Clothes and toys and magazines and CD’s and takeout boxes and Coke cans and lots and lots of stuffed plastic shopping bags. The chaos had calcified into stratified layers of garbage. J.D. knew from experience that even this wretched mess was deceptive. All the weight would have settled the piles into their current form. Once he broke it up there was no way he would be able to compress it all down to this size again.
He carefully picked his way along the path, getting a sense for the room. The bent frame of a long-disused drop ceiling hung above him. Branching pathways led to a bathroom layered with a slightly smaller pile of filth. The shower curtain was torn down, and two oil drums full of trash were sitting in the tub. Another branch led to a bedroom. The bed, at least, was clear. He thought he could make out a closet and maybe a dresser mirror standing defiantly above the debris.
He crunched his way back, observing the impossibly crammed space beneath the stairs. The smell was overpowering. He put his hand to his nose to get a few clean breaths. Mercifully, as bad as the place was, it could have been worse. As far as he could tell, there were no piles of food or dead critters lying around. It was just an unclean smell, like old socks and unwashed plates. He coughed, trying to keep the taste out of his mouth.
It was a gold mine, though. If he could get the two charmers upstairs to agree to his price, this job would feed him for months. Going out on his own had been an adventure, but now he was writing the paycheck himself. Making money, it turned out, cost an awful lot of money. And so, despite his gut – and his nose – warning him against it, he stomped back upstairs and confirmed his estimate with the owners. He didn’t know how many loads it would be, but he knew it would be a lot, and he gave the price per load. He was prepared to offer a discount if they balked, but Mr. Crowe just nodded and asked him to please hurry. Something about the way he said it caught J.D.’s attention, but he was too grateful for the business to think very much about it.
Mrs. Shannon Crowe had made her opinion known about folks traipsing through the house, and J.D. didn’t care to haul all that stuff up the stairs anyway. He wanted to pull the truck down next to the side door and toss everything straight in from the basement, but she had an opinion about that, too.
“Absolutely not,” she snapped. “You keep that truck out of my yard.” She cursed him out when he tried to protest. Mr. Calvin just stared.
So the plan became to haul everything out the side door, up the yard and into the back of the big blue truck. J.D. wasn’t looking forward to that. He was glad then that he hadn’t given them any kind of discount. No wonder the other guys had said no. But if that was the price of payment, he’d pay it.
That’s how he found himself standing next to Mr. Calvin Crowe as he tried to find the right key for the downstairs door. He tried three or four before one finally caught the lock. He fought with it, trying to get the bolt to snap back. Finally, it did, and J.D.’s first armful of junk fell out into the hot sun and tall grass. The dank smell wafted his way.
“Thanks Mr. Crowe,” he said.
Mr. Crowe grunted and walked off. But when J.D. came up the hill and turned the corner around the house, he was surprised to see him standing on the porch, watching him. He gave a wave as he opened up the truck to grab his big shovel, but the man just followed his movements with those dead eyes. Well, that wasn’t unusual, some folks were curious about the process. Sometimes they were just precious about how he handled their junk. All the same, J.D. would have preferred this particular man kept his attention to himself.
He didn’t actually spend too much time inside the basement that day. There was enough trash crowding the doorway that he could stand outside and fill up his big shovel. Once or twice he reached in and knocked down parts of the pile to give himself more to work with. Hot sweat pooled at the base of his spine, soaking his underwear. It wasn’t a long walk back to the truck, but a few dozen trips with a snow shovel full of garbage started to take their toll.
Before long the big truck was full, and J.D. was lowering the net over the top before pulling out. He shoved the side door closed and turned to let Mr. Crowe know what was going on.
He was there, and so was his wife. She was drinking out of a humungous fast-food cup. J.D. waved and approached the porch. They whispered together.
“I’m going to take this off to the landfill. Be right back.”
“Didn’t look like you half filled up that truck,” said Mrs. Crowe, with suspicious eyes.
He tried to laugh off her concern, “No ma’am, it’s pretty full.”
“How many loads you think?” asked the man of the house.
J.D. shrugged, “Hard to say, sir. Might know better after today.”
“Well,” he said, sweat beading under his mane of grey hair. “Best be getting on, then.”
J.D. preferred to think of the landfills and transfer stations around town as safe places. They were smelly and treacherous to drive on, sure. And the employees were little friendlier than the average junkyard dog, but it was an easy routine. Signal the attendant, maneuver past the mountains of garbage, dump the truck, sign your form and leave. At his old job all he had to do was wave to the man on duty, and they’d log his weight and charge him monthly. He was still waiting to get his own account registration processed. No updates today.
It was ironic that the job took longer now that he was rolling solo. On his way out, he had sworn he could haul junk faster and better than any corporate outfit. His coworkers had laughed at him, wondering why he would choose to stay in this business if he was starting over. Especially with the market share they had. He rationalized that all he needed was a small slice to take care of himself. Jobs like this one, that they hadn’t wanted. So for now he didn’t mind the extra time. He was in no hurry to get back to the beauties waiting for him at that house, anyway.
When he rolled back into the neighborhood, the Crowes were inside again. Or maybe they were gone, didn’t matter much to him. He opened the door and got back to work. Shovelful after shovelful, load after load, one step at a time.
Some time after his second trip to the dump, while he was scraping the indoor pile closer to the door, he heard a fierce YOWL! He swore and stood up quickly, whirling around. What was that, a bobcat? He dashed outside, brandishing his shovel. There were the woods. The shadows were dark and the trunks close together. He took a step or two toward the trees, a rickety old shed off to his left. The alarming sound did not repeat itself. Finally, he let the shovel drop and turned back to his work. What a weird day. He stuck his head back inside and filled up the shovel, using his gloved hand to hold a bunch of old magazines in place.
He tossed them into the truck, but heard another noise. This one much more human, however. Pssst! There it was again. This place was making him jumpy. He poked his head around. An old Asian woman was crouching against the side of his truck. Couldn’t have been an inch taller than five feet. J.D. started to speak but she waved a hand to silence him, then beckoned. He looked at the house. The Crowes were nowhere to be seen. He stepped over.
Probably wanted an estimate herself, one of the advantages of working in a neighborhood like this, great marketing. Of course this job would keep him busy for a long while yet. Hopefully she wasn’t in a hurry.
“Can I help you ma’am?”
She leaned in close. She was very old. Her accent was understandable, but thick. “You working here? For them?” She sounded afraid.
J.D. said that he was, and she shuddered. She shook her head hard a few times.
“No no no no no! You got to go. Got to go right now.”
He might have been offended. Some folks got upset about him slumming up their neighborhoods, but she didn’t seem angry. Maybe she needed help.
“Ma’am, are you alright? Do you need me to call somebody?”
“No. Listen!” She put a cold, wrinkled hand on his arm and applied gentle pressure. “You got to go. This a very bad place.” She indicated the house. “Very bad place!”
“Ma’am,” J.D. laughed, “I appreciate your concern, but I meet all sorts in this business. Grumpy customers are nothing I can’t handle.”
She did not smile. “Very bad place. Very bad people.”
“I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Crowe are just grieving the loss of their son.”
At the mention of the deceased, the Asian woman drew in a sharp breath, and clutched her hands together. Her eyes darted. J.D. gave her his full attention.
“Ma’am, are you sure you aren’t in some kind of trouble?”
She pointed at him, her finger trembling. “You in some kind of trouble. Go now.” She was shuffling her feet, starting to move away. “Go now,” she repeated. “Please.” She looked back one last time. “Please. I tell you.” With that, she darted back up the street.
J.D. tried to laugh off the woman’s warnings. But every time he returned to his truck, he half-expected her to be there, waiting for him again. Every run to the landfill he contemplated what she might have meant. Clearly she’d had some run-ins with the people he was working for. That didn’t surprise him. And yet, that look in her eyes. It wouldn’t let him go.
For all the unusual happenings of that day, when it came time to settle up for the day’s work, Mr. Crowe made no fuss. J.D. knew better than to wait till the end of a job like that to get paid. In all likelihood they’d run out of cash long before he finished, and he wasn’t about to get into a dispute over exactly what he was owed with people like this.
“Back tomorrow?” was all Mr. Calvin Crowe had asked.
“Bright and early.”
“We’ll be waiting for you.”
J.D. finished the day scooping up the last of the wayward items he’d dropped. The sun was making its way down, and his hat was soaked through with sweat. He firmly shut the side door on the basement. Maybe a little too firmly. It sounded as though an echo had slapped back from the wooden shed down by the woods. He turned to look. He waited. Just a grody old shed. Although it had sounded like – no, it was nothing. Time to go home.
That night he had a migraine. He tried to be pleased with the great payday and the prospect of more to come, but the more he thought about it, the worse it got. He was tired, he supposed. Not that it mattered. He was making his own bacon now, sick days were dead days. He wanted to go to bed, but that just meant getting up early again and returning to that antagonistic house. So he stayed up and watched something stupid on TV, trying to make it feel like there was at least some downtime between shifts. But the pain in his head and the invasive thoughts about his new contract would not leave him alone. Eventually he gave up and crawled into bed, making sure to plug in his phone this time.
His final thoughts were of the frightened woman. “You in some kind of trouble. Go now. Please. I tell you.” His dreams were filled with wild howls and loud bangings against the wooden walls of his mind.
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