Page 5

My boss had his hand square in my back, pushing me out the front door even while my girl tossed me a long distance kiss.

I’d absolutely be back, no doubt about that.

Our next stop, Willie’s Welcome Wagon, was actually a regular restaurant/ tavern with sit-down service from lunch through to a late night bar crowd. Though Willy had passed on several years back, his plump but frisky wife, Natty, served the place well in his stead.

Danny was a regular customer, at least for the booze, and I could swear that the few times I went along with him Natty had set a place especially for him. If there was any moves to reciprocate on his part, well that’s an image I wasn’t about to conjure up.

For all the nonsense goin on with the Dead, Rake, and just the general fuck over of society, The Welcome Wagon still pulled in a decent crowd. During the daylight hours though, the Lakeshore people usually took it over.

We barely slipped by a couple of caddies and a shiny little vintage jag pushing it’s way over into the firelane. As we pulled around back, we found Natty and one of her boys catching a quick smoke on the small kitchen stoop.

"I heard Mrs. Weinstein had alittle upset today. " chatted Natty, wasting some wide smiles at Danny as we dumped the over sized bins into the back of our truck. The amicable gal, over sized herself in small jeans and tight checkered blouse, dimpled quite nicely as the slightly shaggy object of her affections kept a careful even air about the whole affair. "That’s true. " he remarked.

"Of course I don’t which was worse. " I added smartly. "The mess that Dead fella left on her shiny kitchen floor or giving over her precious silver to Rake and his boys. "

"And I don’t know which is worse. " she shot back indignantly. "The assholes with the heavy ordnance, or the assholes who hired em. You know what happened today? I got bad mouthed, in my own place no less. Them snotty rich bitches insisted I had to take plastic after I told them we were only takin cash cause the machines were down, for good. They called me a trashy overpainted whore who oughta feel privileged to accept their platinum cards. "

"What did you do, Natty? " I asked, not trying too hard to keep laughter off my lips.

"I showed them just how privileged I felt by booting their sorry Ralphie Lauren asses out the door, them gals carrying on about how the Association was gonna shut me down. " she explained, catching a case of the giggles herself. "As if . "

"You just be careful there. " Danny warned her. "The old biddies mightn’t have their lawyers on hand ... lest in one piece, but they can mess with your business all the same. "

"Danny Macon, You do give a damn after all. " she laughed heartily, giving him a peck on the cheek for his troubles. "But I can more than handle those spoiled gals, don’t you worry. "

Of course he did look somewhat bothered as we chugged off toward the make-shift fill, well on the way toward Fallen Leaf, where the spoils of our trade were dropped off. The small hills of garbage n unsorted recycles were steadily growing, and I suspected that soon enough they’d become mountains before any orderly disposal became available.

Being it was Tuesday, we found other folk dumping. Two rival fellas were up from Echo Lake as well as locals who spurned us freelancers, casting off discards from out of beaten pickups and shiny station wagons.

Once, somebody has asked Danny what the weirdest thing was he’d ever found in the trash. "A complete ladies wardrobe, from expensive jewelry down to some pretty fancy undies. " he’d remarked with a dead-pan humor. "Some lawyer’s wife was diddling the gardener, or something, so the old boy just set everything out all neat and tidy atop the garbage. I made some three thousand dollars from that deal "

Of course even with the Dead on the prowl, and what with the recent trouble at both the Weinsteins and the Wentworths, I was still surprised to find stranger garbage being unloaded at the dump. Even Danny was taken back by the few bodybags laying on the heaps for all to see.

"You see that over there? " my boss nudged me abit, a short finger pointing toward the far North-East corner of the fill. They were likely a good baker’s dozen, all loping along with the tell-tale clumsy gait of the Dead, coming out of cover to move among the rubbish. Though they were still some distance away, I could see loose bits of gray flesh dangling from the more rotten corpses, the critters lowing like they were cows coming to pasture.

[ Continue to page 6 ]