Garbage Man (7 page)

‘I remember when you moved in here,' she said. ‘It was my eleventh birthday. I saw your knackered old camper pull in and watched you go around the back. Thought you were a tramp or a gypsy or something. I fell off my pissing bike watching you. Only time I ever cried on my birthday.'

‘You'll have other birthdays,' he said, trying very hard to. . . he wasn't sure what he was trying to do but he knew he was failing.

‘Uh, right,' said the girl. ‘Listen, I can tell this isn't a good moment. I'll come back.'

She turned to leave and all kinds of panic leapt inside him, yanked him into action. He opened the door and put his head out. Already she'd reached the corner of the house.

‘Wait.'

She turned back.

‘I mean . . . I'm sorry.' Something kicked in from the past, from a thousand failed social interactions. ‘I've got a lot on my mind right now. What's your name?'

‘Aggie Smithfield. I live just down -'

‘I know where,' he said and immediately decided he sounded creepy rather than informed about the community. He followed up quickly, holding out his hand which, for once, was not soil-blackened. ‘I'm Mason.'

He watched her hesitate. Something in her eyes, some need he couldn't decipher, made her overcome any nerves she might have had. She walked back to him, boldly enough to make him retreat a fraction. Keeping his hand out was an effort. She took it before he gave in, squeezed it with adult formality.

‘It's good to meet you,' she said and he believed she meant it. Not like the people in the old days. This one was too young to hate him or envy him or try to drain him.

He realised he was still holding her hand and he let go quickly. He'd come too close to blowing this simple - there was nothing simple about it - interaction too many times already.

‘I just wanted to talk to you,' she said. ‘Only for five minutes. Could I come in?'

He didn't move.

She gestured with her head over his garden fence, towards the landfill site.

‘I wouldn't mind chatting out here but,' She wrinkled her nose. ‘You know . . . wind's blowing the wrong way.'

She was right but he wouldn't have noticed without a reminder. To him the smell of the dump was normal. More than that; it was a comfort.

‘Of course. Sorry.'

He retreated and opened the back door of his house to a stranger - to any person - for the first time since arriving six years previously.

For a time he stood there wondering what to do next. Where should they stand or should they sit down? What should he offer her or was that too forward, too much like . . . something? He saw the kitchen with new eyes now, her eyes, and realised she was looking at the state, not only of his house, but of his mind. This was what happened when you let people in.

After a few moments he laughed - pure nerves - at a total loss for how to continue.

‘What?'

‘Oh, God,' he said, finally relaxing just a little. ‘I'm very. . .'

‘Used to your own company?'

He laughed again, exposed and suddenly not minding. Not from her. She seemed so natural about it.

‘Yes, that's it. That's it exactly. Would you like a mug of tea? I make it quite strong.'

‘Do you have coffee?'

‘No. Sorry.'

‘Tea's fine. I'm not stopping long, honestly. I only wanted to ask you about . . .'

She was looking out to the hallway and stairs. She'd seen the photographs. How could she not notice them? They were everywhere except in the kitchen. He couldn't stop himself this time. He pushed the door closed, severing her view. He didn't know what to say. He went to the sink, feeling scrutinised, and put water in the kettle. As soon as he went to plug it in, he realised it was only enough for him; he went back to the tap to double the amount.

‘Actually,' she said. ‘It was the photos I wanted to talk to you about.'

He spun.

‘What? What do you mean, the photos?'

‘Well, about all of it. You know, what you did. How you did it. I want to know about photography.'

He stood there shaking his head. He didn't stop shaking his head. Even after he'd said:

‘I don't want to talk about that.'

The kettle ticked, slow at first and then faster. A sigh began inside it, rising and rising. The sigh became a rumble. There was a click. Mason stopped shaking his head but didn't turn to pour out the water.

‘I don't want to talk about it.'

She'll go now, he thought. Back to her house and her family and I will not have to go through this.

‘Please. I really want to know. It's the only thing that interests me.'

‘I can't.'

She took a step closer to him and he wondered what that boldness signified.

‘Just tell me about one photograph and I promise you I'll go. If you still don't want to talk about it after that, I'll never disturb you again.'

Before he could stop her - how could he have stopped her without touching her? - she'd pulled the kitchen door back open and walked into the downstairs hallway. Every wall was covered in framed monochrome photographs. There was no space between them. None of them were straight. He saw them with her eyes, the way he'd just seen his kitchen, terrified by her scrutiny - still quite casual at the moment but deepening, lengthening with every moment that slipped by. He had to get her out.

‘Will you do that? Just tell me about one. I'll go then. I really will.'

What choice was there now short of pushing her out by force?

He clasped a hand over his beard, squeezed the rough hairs until they pulled the skin of his face.

‘Okay. One only. Then you go. And I don't want you coming back here. Do you follow me? Not ever.'

‘Fine.' She was all business now. So close to what she'd come for. A vampire, just like all the rest of them.

Now she looked closer, roved and stopped, moved on again. Drinking his moments - they were his moments even though he never talked about them that way. His moments. His partial realities. His misrepresentations, therefore, of the real world. They were dangerous, photographs, they told lies about the world.

She was on the stairs. She'd stopped.

No.

‘Okay. Tell me about this one.'

She was pointing at the farmer.

***

It was difficult to make it short but Mason did his best. He left out as much detail as possible, used terms that would elicit scant curiosity. He also lied: It was a farm he'd visited once. They'd asked him in for tea. When they saw his camera they asked if he would take a few pictures. This was the only one he'd kept. The shot was a fluke.

The girl was quiet for a while and he could see what was happening. The lack of information itself was causing her to have questions.

‘That's all there is to it,' he said. ‘Time for you to go. Please.'

She turned back to him. Whatever she'd come here for it was clear she hadn't got it. She didn't look angry. She looked sad. Defeated. She walked past him and back out to the kitchen without making eye contact. Two tea mugs stood empty on one of the surfaces, curls of steam still rising from the kettle. She reached out for the back door handle and hesitated, turning back to where he still stood in the hallway.

‘I want to be a model.'

His mind flooded with responses:

Silly bloody girl. No idea what you'd be getting yourself into. It doesn't stop at photography no matter what your principles are. She could do it, though, she's got the build and the grace. She's got the blank, clean face. Whether you make it or not, that life will suck you dry like it did to me.

None of it came out. Instead he gave a kind of snort. It might have sounded like a laugh to her but that wasn't what it was.

‘Why does everyone assume you're going to fail before you even start? I'm not stupid, if that's what you're thinking. I won't be taken advantage of.'

‘Really?' This time he did laugh. ‘How will you avoid it?'

‘I'm a good judge of character.'

‘If that was true you wouldn't be in this house.'

‘I can trust you, Mr. Brand. You're a recluse but I know you're all right.'

‘Do you? How do you know that?' She shrugged.

‘Listen to me,' he said, ‘You're too young and too inexperienced to know who you can trust and who you can't. Do your parents know what you're up to?'

‘It's nothing to do with them.'

‘Give me one reason why I shouldn't tell them what you're thinking of doing. Do you think they'll approve?'

‘Don't do that.'

‘Then don't be stupid.'

‘This is such
bollocks.
'

She was crying. The little girl had been unmasked. She governed herself quickly, wiped the few tears away.

‘Mr. Brand,' she said. ‘I came here for your help. I know I can trust you so don't mess me about. I need a portfolio. A really good one.'

Mason shrugged, not understanding.

‘I want you to photograph me. I know who you are. With your name all over my photos, I'll bypass all the sharks when I get to London.'

Mason held his hand out towards the door, gesturing for her to open it.

‘You have to leave. Now.'

***

The farmer wasn't as sick as he looked.

He came to visit Mason often. Sometimes walking down the steep, treacherous track with help of a long, warped stick. Mason would hear him coming long before he arrived. The diseased wheezing and the knock of his staff finding purchase on stones, the uneven footsteps of a limping man, the footsteps of a determined man. Stealing over the greasy stones, over the mossy stones, through air hanging wet even when it wasn't raining, he came. He came through woods either angered by wind or resisting the unmoving light above them. He passed through the mug and cling of summer and through the nerveless hands of winter with pain in its bones. To him the world was a gateway. He need pay no fee for entry, showed no fear of departure. Bearded, ragged, staring, he walked like he was already a soul slipped from its shitty human moorings, a living man with the knowledge of the dead. And then he would be there, beside Mason and silent, watching the world with him, leading Mason's eye to what he saw, how he saw.

Other times he came in Mason's dreams. No less cumbersome or telegraphed an approach. No less fanfaring of his power. No less a shell of a man and still no less a mage.

Whether conscious or not, the farmer tutored Mason. He was a demanding master, a cruel one, and yet occasionally more caring than Mason's own parents. His lessons were stories sometimes, tales of people who lived in times lost to memory and history. His lessons were visions of those ages and visions of the future. He taught about the Earth and the land.

‘You came here to forget who you thought you were,' he'd said one day. ‘That was the right decision. You thought you'd find yourself here but you won't. That would be an insignificant pursuit, a waste of very precious time. You must learn about how things are, not what you believe them to be. You must become a blank, a forgetting.'

This hadn't been what Mason wanted. He'd wanted only to be left to himself.

‘It doesn't matter what you want, fool,' said the farmer.

‘But I'm
paying
you to let me stay here. I came to be alone.'

‘I don't need your money. Leave if you want. Leave now. But if you want to stay here, if you want this sweetness -'

He'd made the woods silent then, like a conductor, and creature by creature, sound by sound, mood by mood, he'd brought it back to life and Mason's soul was enchanted.

‘- you'll heed me. You'll work hard to discard what you thought you knew and who you used to be. You'll understand - the way the old ones did.'

Mason didn't even see the farmer's hand seize the back of his head. The old man knelt and Mason was forced down with him. The hand, like the claws of a huge falcon, pushed his head onto the ground. Fallen gorse needles punctured his face. Moss and weeds mingled with his beard. Plugs of damp peat entered his nose. He panicked, tried to push back. The claws were too powerful. Trying to avoid suffocation, he opened his mouth. The farmer pushed harder. His mouth was stopped with the oozing of soft soil. His eyes went black against the engulfing mire.

‘You'll learn to love your mother, boy. Smell her, taste her, listen to her. Respect her. This is what you are, boy, your mother's reek and muck. Everything you are, she's given you.'

The claw pulled him gasping from the ground. He was lifted by his head until his feet lost contact with the earth. He felt the most nauseating whirling and disorientation, a disconnection from everything, a free-floating terror.

‘Open your eyes, boy.'

The soil was gone from his mouth and nose and face. Gone was the fecund stench of endless cycles of becoming and destruction. He could see. And so he looked. What he saw was the sun. It burned everything else from his vision. It scoured his mind of all distraction until there was only eye-whitening heat and purity.

‘Simple enough for you? Mother Earth. Father Sun. Learn it. Embody it. That's why you're here.'

The claw had disappeared and Mason found he was sitting beside the farmer on the rocks as they had been before. The farmer was looking out of the woods towards the other side of the estuary or maybe he was looking into other worlds than this. Mason's heart was arrhythmic and loud, his breath laboured. He touched his face but there was no trace of soil there in his beard, no burnt skin.

The farmer had stood up, his joints creaking like wet timber, and begun his walk back to the farmhouse.

‘Stay or leave. It's your choice.'

That was the first lesson.

Mason stayed.

***

That was exactly the kind of detail he left out of his brief explanation of the photo on the stairway. As he sat, drinking the tea he'd been about to make for both of them. He sifted through the events of the morning trying hard to ignore all the parts in which he'd acted like a little boy. It didn't leave much.