Sustenance and Verse
by Doug Stoiber
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Something moved out near the dumpster enclosure. In the April cool and early dark, I couldn’t see exactly what it was. Maybe a raccoon, but possibly bigger. The enclosure gate was swinging ever so slightly.
When I had pushed the garbage cart a few feet out from the cone of light over the restaurant’s rear doors, my eyes adjusted to the night. It was a someone, not a something. A shadow moved from the stockade fence back to the tree line.
Not that I was scared or anything; any knucklehead intent on ripping off the joint would probably have already come at us through the back door. Can’t figure a mugger would hide out back trying to make bank by holding up a busboy. So I hollered: “HEY!”
Nothing for about ten seconds, then a shadow moved back around to the chain-link enclosure. “No problem, dude. Just lookin’ for a scrounge for tonight. I’m outa here. Don’t call the cops.” He sounded low and tired, like maybe he had a chest cold or something. He hacked a wet cough.
That sucks. Dumpster-diving for a night’s meal out of a restaurant garbage bin.
“Hey.” Not sure what I had in mind, but I guess I wanted to clock this guy to see if I might know him. Probably not. Probably I was gonna get into something not hardly worth my trouble. “Hey. Hold on.”
“Look, pard, I’m putting this back.” He had a plastic bag of stale marble rye held at arm’s length, like he was surrendering a weapon in a standoff with cops. He had picked it off the top of the pile in the scummy garbage bin. “No harm, no foul, huh?”
There was enough light to see he was wearing way more layers of clothing than the fifty-degree evening called for. None of it had seen the inside of a washing machine this year, by the look of it. Facial hair, none of it groomed in any particular fashion. A grimy ball cap jammed over unruly tufts of bushy hair. His words came out of a mouth with about half a full set of teeth. He looked old even if he wasn’t more than thirty.
This didn’t strike me as a threat situation for some reason. Which is why I bothered to ask where he lived.
“I can find plenty of places to keep rain off my head for a night. I just can’t stay in ’em very long. Back of that junkyard on the other side of these trees for now. The dog gives up barking after a few minutes and doesn’t seem to give a crap if I sleep in one of the wrecks in the weeds.”
“You don’t have to put the bread back,” I told him. “Hang on to it, if you care to.”
“Thanks, pard. That’ll settle my tummy for the night. You take care now.”
I was thinking of doing something unwise. “Hold on a minute. Let me make another trip back into the kitchen and see what’s available.”
That caught him off-guard, I guess. He fumbled and mumbled. “Okay, man. Don’t get in trouble on my account, now.”
Which is exactly what I was considering doing just then. Trouble from Gertz, the cook, who once gave me down-the-country about putting a dish of milk outside the back door for the feral cat.
“Well, I’ll see what I can manage.” I swung the two tied-off garbage bags into the dumpster, put the empty barrels back on the float, and told him, “Give me a couple of minutes.”
And back I went. Miss June was almost done closing up her salad/dessert station and had a kind of crooked piece of cheesecake with a raspberry drizzle she was about to dump in the trash. “Hey, Miss June. Do you mind?” I eyed the cheesecake with intent. “I didn’t get a chance to get my employee meal tonight.” And I wasn’t fibbing,
Sweeping the kitchen with her eyes and not seeing Gertz, she shrugged, “I don’t care. Don’t get caught.” I put the dessert in a to-go clamshell and laid it on the float.
“Where’s the Barbarian?” I asked her.
She snickered. “He’s out in the bar talking with Mr. Habal (the restaurant’s owner) about the new menu.”
Figuring Gertz was probably working on his first post-service rum-and-coke and wouldn’t hurry back to the kitchen, I made a quick reconnoiter of the hot line: I grabbed a baked potato out of the warming rack, scooped some glazed carrots in another to-go styro, and threw in the last ladleful of chicken stew (or whatever they called it) out of the steam table pan. Quickly grabbed two more full trash barrels and stacked them in front of the parcels on the float. I dropped some butter pieces in my pocket and a plastic cutlery kit in with them.
The dumpster guy was still there; apparently, he trusted me. Leaning against the rickety chain link, still clutching the bag of marble rye like that was all he might get.
I took a look at the back door to make sure no one was observing. If Gertz saw me, he would probably think I was out here doing a drug deal or something equally dreadful. No sign of him or Miss June or Mr. Habal or any of the wait staff coming out, so I proffered the boxes and emptied my pockets of the butter and the utensils.
“Wow, man, what’s....” His eyes lit up in the dark.
“Chicken stew, some carrots and a baked potato. This one’s cheesecake.”
“Dude...” was all he said.
And then, “This is like a banquet, man. I owe you big.”
“Nah.” I thought to tell him that his “banquet” was destined for the dumpster, but decided not to make him feel worse than he probably already did. “Just be careful around here. The head cook catches you, he wouldn’t hesitate to have you rousted.”
“Hey, man, thanks again. What’s your name?”
Did I want to get into this whole... situation? “Des...my name’s Des.”
“Hey, Des. I’m Marlo. Man, I’d like to repay you for your kindness.”
“Okay, Mar-lowe (I kind of drew his name out for effect), entrees are $13.95 and the cheesecake is $4.50.”
I was jacking around with him, as he obviously was not in a position to pay. He coughed.
I broke the awkward silence: “Just kidding, man. Enjoy your meal and watch out for coyotes around that boneyard.”
Marlo stretched his neck and wiped a dirty sleeve across his nose. “Seriously, my friend, is there anything I can do to repay the favor?”
“Like what?” I asked cautiously. Then I wished I hadn’t. I really wasn’t sure I wanted him to answer me. No telling what a hobo might consider as “repayment.”
“I don’t know... any chores to help you out with your job here? Like, you bring out the trash and I tip it into the dumpster?” he offered.
“Nah, Gertz — the cook — would go ballistic if he saw something like that going on. This is my job, for which I am paid a princely sum.”
“You sure? I mean, what do you need?” Marlo sincerely felt indebted, kind of earnest and touching in a way.
“Well, how about an original poem, minimum four stanzas, about any topic, for my Creative Writing class next week?”
He looked at me intently, and then down at the styro meal containers. He coughed.
“I’m kidding, of course.”
But in the dark, I could see a look come over his face. I should be double-timing back to the kitchen, but the poor outcast had something to say.
His rheumy eyes got a little wider, a little lighter. “So you’re in college, and you’re taking Creative Writing?”
“Yep. Community college. Paying my own way... as long as I can keep this job.”
“You want to be a writer? I mean as a career?” Marlo was apparently taking my measure in much greater detail than one might at such a chance encounter.
“I’m not going to lie: my folks are holding out hope I get a ‘real job,’ but I don’t want to end up doing something mindless for the rest of my life. I also don’t want to be poor, sad, and ignored by the reading public.” I really should be heading back. I could almost hear the ticking time bomb that was Gertz.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any paper and a pen or pencil, would you?” he asked.
“Uh, no, not on me. Why?” And I immediately felt like I had just asked another ill-advised question.
Marlo shot me an uncomprehending look. “Four stanzas. Any topic. Right?”
“Nah, man, I was just joshin’. Have a good night and bon appétit.”
“Seriously, Des. Just a few sheets of scrap paper and something to write with. I’ll stay hidden out here.”
He made it sound like it was real important to him, so I pushed the cart back into the kitchen, and while I loaded up more trash bags, I grabbed a pad of ‘to-go’ order sheets and a ballpoint from the kitchen phone station, shoving them in my back pocket. Why I was humoring the poor soul, I don’t know. It just seemed like Marlo needed to settle up on a debt of honor. Who knows if I would ever see him again or, if I did, what he might actually show up with.
I could now hear Gertz talking, back by the beverage station right outside the swinging service doors leading to the dining rooms, so I upped my hustle and re-loaded the cart with the last of the night’s trash.
“Hey, Gertz. Can I buy an extra bottle of iced tea for the ride home?” I asked him as he pushed through the door.
Grumble face. “Just take it. The cash drawer is already counted, and the register’s closed. Pay me tomorrow.” And with that, I pocketed a bottle from the beverage station and headed out the door again.
Adjusting my vision to the night once more, I saw no sign of the hobo. He’d probably taken off to stuff his face, I thought, so okay. But once I got to the trash compound gate, he sidled around the fence again.
“Hey, there you are. Here you go, man. Paper, pen, and here’s something to wash down dinner with.” I offered him the tea.
“You’re a hero, my man. Hey, when do you work here again?” he asked as he pocketed the writing materials.
“I’m on nights all this week, not off until Monday. And hey, about the poetry—“
“Got it, man. Four stanzas minimum, any topic.”
“No, I was gonna say forget about it, I was only kidding. I can’t turn in somebody else’s work. Although I have no idea what I’m going to write about, and I’ve kind of procrastinated.”
“See you here tomorrow night then,” he called over his shoulder as he turned toward the trees, “and don’t worry, I’ll stay outa sight. And again, thanks, Des.”
“Sure thing.”
Marlo disappeared through the wooded buffer behind the junkyard; a wet and croupy cough escaped as he went.
Back at my campus digs, I gave 75% attention to my Poly Sci reading and 25% to my roomie’s pathetic phone convo with his clingy girlfiend, which the way I liked to spell it. “Dude, why don’t you guys text each other like everybody else?” I suggested with mild irritation. “I’m gettin’ an education over here.”
Meanwhile, as I closed the browser window on the Poly Sci text, I wondered what I was going to do about the Creative Writing assignment.
Copyright © 2025 by Doug Stoiber
