"A Visit to the Diner's Dumpster"
January 24,
2013 Writing Prompt:
"Look what I found in the dumpster!"
"Look what I found in the dumpster!"
Today’s prompt
flows so perfectly from what I had in mind for the January 15 prompt that I am
going to write them consecutively.
The
town of Towson didn’t have a homeless “problem,” but like most communities, it
did have a few alcoholics and a family of low IQ individuals who lived off the
father’s SSI and rifled dumpsters for tasty leftovers. The Brunage family lived
in an old 50’s era Airstream, the curved kind, out on an inherited plot of
ground about three miles to the South of the abandoned knitting mill, on land
that had once been logged by Caleb Henry’s crews and then later was an
attempted hardscrabble farm by the Brunage ancestors. Nowadays it was just
ragged third-growth scrub, weeds, plus a lovely crop of abandoned motor
vehicles scattered over a full couple of acres. Jacob Brunage could have opened
a scrap yard, if he had the impetus and drive to do so, but getting to town to
cash his disability check was pretty much the limit of his energy.
His sons,
Taylor and Cameron, went into town a couple times a week to scavenge the
dumpster behind the Burger Barn and the three dumpsters at the Super-Saver
Grocery on Walton Street. Every two weeks, Father Pride at St.Joseph’s Catholic
Church opened the food pantry and let the boys get cheese, powdered and
evaporated milk, and canned goods. Once a month he bought them a gift
certificate to the Super-Saver which had to be used to buy meat products. In
return, Taylor and Cameron showed up at Mass one Sunday a month, sitting at the
back because their presence (and fragrance) tended to offend the upscale
congregation.
Even
though the Church provided most of their needs, the Brunage boys just enjoyed
dumpster-diving. Once Taylor had found a fishing pole thrown into the dumpster
behind the Sporting Goods store; and after that old Jacob, their dad, claimed
he had seen a rifle in there a long time back-but had no explanation as to why
he hadn’t brought the rifle home, or if he had, where it had gotten off to. The
Library dumpster was good for an occasional stash of paperbacks with no covers,
or hardcover discards with loose spines—the boys could read, and enjoyed Tarzan
and pulp adventure.
But
even though other stores and establishments provided merchandise, the Burger
Barn and Sally’s Diner (where a lot of food went to waste) were the Brunage
choices for first stop, every trip. Today, a Thursday, they hit Sally’s first,
because Wednesday was always Meatloaf and Country Fried Steak Special—and Sally’s
customers were either not big eaters, or didn’t like the food, because every
week more meat was tossed than the Brunage family of 3 could consume in a day
or two. Cameron pulled the 72 Ford pickup into the alley next to the diner’s
dumpster, and both boys jumped out and dug in. Sure enough, layers of meat loaf
and country fried, piles of mashed potatoes, lay on top, and they filled up the
cardboard box brought along for this purpose. As Cameron was setting it in the
truck bed, Taylor decided to lift the second, closed lid, and exclaimed, “Cam!
Hey! Look what I just found!”
Cameron
rushed over, and both boys (actually, in their 20’s, chronologically they were
grown-ups, but their minds were at the level of age 12 or so) gazed with
delight. On the closed side of the dumpster rested 3 or 4 layers of meat
wrapped in butcher paper and tied up with twine: roasts and ribs and pigs’
feet, it appeared, all just as neatly prepared and conveniently placed as they
could have dreamed. So they quickly loaded it all into the truck and raced away
toward their countryside home. Before Cameron could park the pickup in the
weedy front yard, Taylor jumped out and ran toward the Airstream, hollering, “Daddy,
come look! We got real food!”
Jacob
Brunage, in addition to being a disabled no-account, had been a veteran of
Vietnam, and his time in-country had left him with dark knowledge he might have
preferred not to ever learn. By the time he rolled out of bed in the Airstream’s
back room, and shuffled toward the kitchenette, his sons had unloaded and brought
in almost all of the new-found discovery meat. “Look, Dad!” Taylor shouted. “Beef
roast! Ribs! Pork chops! Brisket! Pig’s feet!” Cameron had begun to unwrap a
couple of the packages and paused to grab a soiled dish towel to mop up the
blood leaking onto the dinette table. As Jacob stumbled closer and glanced down
at the butcher-paper parcels, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and the breath
hissed out of him like a deflating snake.
“Oh
my sons, what have you done?” the old man whispered. “That isn’t beef. Nor
pork. That’s Long Pig.”
http://www.shewritesbooks.com/2013/01/lets-write-in-2013-day-24.html
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