The Loser Chronicles; Angels & Dumpsters (Part II)

Angels and Dumpsters

By Earl Petty Jr.

(Part 2 of 2)

PART 1

My feet ached. My canvas sneakers weren’t made for walking. They weren’t made for much of anything except to steal twenty bucks out of my pocket for 55 cents of rubber and cheap cloth. Paste my picture up high on the wall at the Sucker Hall of Fame.

 

As I rounded the corner, I saw the two cops were talking to a man in a ragged coat holding two plastic garbage bags. Behind the man was a tall iron gate with two angels mounted high on either side. The gate was ajar and inside it behind a short hedge was a pair of green dumpsters. The guy must have been diving for aluminum cans. The residents, fearing for their lives, called the authorities. Apparently the guardian angels on the gate were not enough security for the owners of the house.

 

As I got closer the cops pinned the man against the car, pulled his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. They recited his rights and stuck him in the back of the cruiser. As I walked by the car I heard the man screaming, “But what about my dog! You pricks, who’s gonna take care of my dog!” As they pulled away a skinny yellow dog trotted out of the bushes and followed the car for about half a block. Then it veered to the right, turned around and trotted toward me, tongue nearly dangling to the ground. The animal walked by my side for a few yards then smelled my ass. Apparently he got a whiff of something he didn’t like and started trotting in the other direction. Everyone’s a critic.

 

Toward the end of the neighborhood, I passed Jill Donaldson’s house, or at least where she spent her summers home from college. We saw each other for a couple months. While we were dating we spent almost all our time together doing whatever we wanted, and paid for the lark with her father’s credit card. It all came to a screeching halt when she said I drank too much. “I don’t think you drink enough,” I retorted. With wit like that, I thought, I should go on the road, maybe even get a sitcom. “You,” she insisted, “are a hopeless alcoholic. Maybe you should get some treatment. Lot’s of people have done it.”

 

“Sure,” I said. “And they replace the booze with something else to fill the bottomless holes in their souls. Some plug up the emptiness with religion, some with exercise, and others with money, sex or self-righteous rage. Or they just become boring. Anyway they become people I don’t want anything to do with.”

 

I walked to the liquor cabinet and poured myself a huge glass of what I knew was my last free liquor from that particular source. The following week she met up with a cokehead from Sacramento. Jill has been in treatment twice since we stopped seeing each other. I have yet to make that trip. I entered a working class neighborhood and immediately noticed a change. First of all there was noise, children playing in the yards, some screaming women and yelling men. Secondly, there was the smell of charcoal burning, people cooking their meals outdoors.

 

I turned the corner and started on the long straight drag to my place. I was soaked with sweat and I had worn holes in my shoes. And I still had 25 blocks to go. It was nearly dark when I reached my door. I was relieved to be home, and actually more relieved to be once again unemployed. Holding down a job is for losers, I thought. Jerks, assholes, flunkies… people too weak to buck the system, sissies who played the game because they had no imagination. I was dead tired, but I felt much more alive than I did before the Citation broke down.

 

I turned the knob on the door. It was locked. I checked my pockets for the key and remembered I threw it in the front seat when I abandoned the car. I went out to the bushes to look for a key I concealed for just such an event. All I found was a half-empty half-gallon of Old Thompson someone hid in the bushes. “Half-empty,” I muttered to myself. I unscrewed the cap and took a drink. It was still hot from a day in the summer heat. It was tough to swallow.  “Hell, I’m an optimist,” I said. I took another drink. “If it was a fifth, my cup would runneth over,” I said. Nobody heard me. I didn’t bother to repeat the statement.