The Garbage Man

By J.D. Clark

My name is Marcelo Vásques. I'm thirteen. When my friends talk about their dads I used to get very quiet or try to change the subject. Their dads are all doctors and lawyers and real estate brokers. They make mucho dinero. That means a lot of money in Spanish. 


My Dad's a waste management engineer. That's what I used to say if anyone asked me. I made it up. It's just a fancy way of saying he's garbage man. When we came here from Argentina ten years ago that was the only job he could find. That's right-my old man's nothing but a poor garbage man.


That's what I used to think of him. But I had no idea what he really did. 


No freakin' idea.

Then, one day I got out-of-school suspension because I got caught cheating and since Mom works too, Dad made me go with him to work.

"No way-What if somebody sees me?" I said.

"You wanna end up like me-you wanna do this job, che?" said my Dad. He always calls me che which means like dude in Spanish. And he always wears a cap and has a sucker in his mouth.

I shook my head. No, I totally did not want to be a garbage man. No way. For once I actually wished I was in school.

"Well that's where you're headin' when you cheat," he said.

We got in his garbage truck. The step up to the seat was past my waist. It was like a two story building on wheels! 

First, we picked up his partner Julio. Julio is a wrinkled old guy, and quiet cause he doesn't speak English too well. But he smelled like he had already bathed in garbage to get ready for the day.

"You stink, man!" I said.


Julio just smiled at me like I told him he looked like a movie star.

When we got to the route, Julio got out first and picked up trash while my Dad drove. The motor and brakes took turns groaning and hissing as we stopped every few hundred yards for a couple hours. I knew how they felt.

Then it was my Dad's turn. He handed me a pair of gloves. 


"Dalé, hijo!"he said which means C'mon, son!.

I didn't want to, but Julio stunk so bad, I needed to get some fresh air.

"Hang on, che!" said my Dad,"We're goin' uptown!"

Riding a truck hanging off the back end was actually pretty fun-like surfing through the streets. The road passed under us like we were standing still and the world was a treadmill. Huh, a treadmill, I thought, that's kinda how my Dad is, going nowhere fast.


Then I ducked when I saw Jeff Walker's Mom drive by. I would've died if she saw me. Freakin' die!

The first house we came to was huge. It looked like the White House. It had a red sports car, and an SUV in the driveway. I could only imagine what they kept in the three car garage. That's where I belong, man, I thought, Not living in a dump. 

Dad grabbed the garbage can and as he dumped it, I thought I saw a ton of dollar bills spill out of a bag.

"Gita!" I yelled. That's another name for money in Spanish. I tried to reach for it. But my Dad stopped me.

"Not ours, hijo!" he said.

"But they're throwing it away!" I argued.

"Yes-and look how happy they are."

In the window, we could see a man and woman yelling at each other.

"Hombre!" I said as we drove on. Hombre is Spanish for man. Then I said, "I can't believe, people throw away freakin' money!"

"Oh that's nothin',"said Dad.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, I try not to peak in the bags, but I see really valuable things get tossed like week-old leftovers all the time."

"What kinds of things?"

"Opportunities, friendship, marriage, trust, integrity-"

"Manda?!" I said. That means What!? in Spanish. But the way I said it was like Have you lost your freakin' mind?! 


My dad just smiled.

Three more stops down the road was a small house with no garbage can out front. But we stopped anyway. My Dad knocked on the door and then just went in. He came back out about five minutes later with three small bags of trash.

"Whose house is that?" I asked as we moved on.

"Mrs. Palantino," my dad said,"She's an old widow. Can't get around too well so I grab her trash and check on her."


"Cool," I said.


"One time she accidentally threw away some letters from her late husband," said Dad.

"Que hizó?" I asked meaning, What did you do?

"I went thru the whole back end of this truck but I found them. I couldn't let her lose him all over again."

At another stop there was this lady trying to get groceries out of her car while her twins were screaming in their car seats. My Dad and I helped her load the bags and and he popped a sucker in each of the twins mouthes.

"Be careful or your gonna make future garbagemen outta them," I joked.

"You're angels," said the lady.

"No ma'am," said my Dad,"just garbage men."

No-he's just a garbage man-I'm a freakin' kid! I wanted to say. But I didn't.

We also helped a kid get a basketball down that was wedged in a goal, get some water for a thirsty dog after it tried to bite us, and got a kink out of a house for an old man trying to water his lawn. 


But mostly we worked. Worked our colas morenas off. That means brown rear ends, in Spanish. I was exhausted and it was only one o'clock. But it was the kinda tired that felt good.

On the last stop before lunch there was this guy who looked like a drunk sleeping on top of a stack of garbage.

"Pablo!"yelled my Dad nudging him,"wake up, amigo!"

The guy smelled like a bar. "Che!"said the man getting up,"Que pasó?"

"You get thrown out again?"

"Sí-with the trash."

"Hop in the truck. I'll take you to AA."

AA is a place where people who are alcoholics go to get help. It's upstairs from the homeless shelter. Dad says it's Pablo's second home because his wife won't put up with his drinking problem. 

You think we were squished before? Now we were sardines. And Julio still thought he was a movie star.

But then it got worse. On the way to the homeless shelter, we stopped at Kelley's Market and picked up a bunch of old food they were going to throw away. 


I was getting hungry. I looked at the date on a can of peanut butter sitting on my lap. It was like two years old!

"You think I'm going to eat this freakin' crap?!" I said.

"It's not for you, hijo," said Dad.

We took it to the homeless shelter. There was some skinny dudes there. And kids too. They're hungrier than I was, for sure. 

Then we stopped at the park and ate the lunch my Dad had packed cuz' we can't afford real food at McDonald's. Turkey Mc-sandwiches. 


After that, I laid down on a bench and the next thing I knew my Dad was nudging me.

"Vamos, Che!" he said. That means Let's go!

Then we went out for another three hours and picked up more trash and helped more people along the way.


At this one place we stopped, a man gave my dad a big hug and was sobbing.


"You'll never see it again," said my dad.


"Thank you," he said, giving my dad a trash bag he was carrying,"God bless you."


"What was that all about?" I asked him.


"His wife was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver many years ago," said my dad,"The hate was killing him inside. I told him I'd dump it for him."

"Estás loco?!" I asked, which means Are you crazy?


But my dad just smiled again.


At the end of the day, we went to the landfill to dump all our trash. It was like a mile wide of nothing but hills of garbage. All the seagulls flying around it made it look like waves on a sea of trash.

"Looks like your room, eh?"said Dad in Spanish.

Julio laughed til I thought his last tooth was going to come out.

I looked at one pile and tried to make out what some of it was. I must have been really tired because I started seeing all the things my Dad said people threw away. There was a tire that had a kid swinging on it all by himself and crying for his mother who was an old bike too busy to play with him. Two splintered planks of wood became a man and woman fighting. 
A battered desk became my teacher's desk and I saw

her telling me how disappointed she was again. And I saw a huge scary hateful monster that almost clawed our truck. 

We got home about 6 pm and I was too wasted to even eat. I just collapsed in my bed and didn't wake up until early the next morning. Then I couldn't go back to sleep. I just lay awake thinking about what had happened the day before. About my dad. 

I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a word on it. Then I crumpled it up and threw it in my empty wastebasket. I wrote two more words on two more pieces of paper and crumpled them up and threw them away, too. 


Then I cried.


"Que anda, che?" said my Dad coming in my room. That means What's going on? "Got homework?"

"Yeah," I said wiping my eyes.


"Ok-I'm off, gotta go in early today."


"Wait,"I said,"got some trash for you."


I pulled the liner out of my trash can and tied it in a knot and handed it to him.


"But it's not even full," he said.


"Yes-it is," I said. Then I gave him a hug,"sí-pappá."


I could smell the tortas fritas cooking in the kitchen. As I downed a piece of fried bread and sipped mate, I sat on our old thrift store couch in the living room. It was more comfortable than ever.



When I got to the bus stop for school that morning, I heard this rumbling motor coming around the corner. I thought it was the bus.


But it was my dad's garbage truck.


He pulled up beside me and all the other kids at the bus stop.


"Hop in, che," he said,"I'll take you to school."


"Dude-is that your dad?" said Mark Hunt,"He's a garbage man?"


I nodded and smiled. Then I jumped in the truck. I could hear Mark saying, "Marcelo's Dad's a garbage man!" and all the kids laughing as we drove away but I didn't care. Not one freakin' bit, man.


My dad didn't speak until we got to the school. Then he said,"You know, I try not to peak in the bags. It's not right. But I saw what you threw away."


"Did you toss it?" I asked.


"Yes and you were right-it was full," he said.


Then he grabbed me and hugged me with his huge gloves.


"Te ámo, hijo,"he said, which means I love you.

"Te ámo, pappá,"I said.


I went to school that day feeling proud. Proud of my dad. I wasn't afraid to tell anybody who asked who my dad was. Who he really was. Because it had nothing to do with what he did for a living. In fact, I wanted to announce it on the intercom: 



"Good morning, students. I'm Marcelo Vasques. My dad isn't a doctor, or lawyer, or real estate broker. He's makes a living as a garbage man and does a dang good job at it. But that's not who he is. He's a hero. My hero!" 


That's what I would say, I swear.

I smiled as somewhere in a landfill rotting in a sea of trash were the crumpled up pieces of paper with words: SHAME, ENVY, and PRIDE written on them. 


Rotting. Freakin' rotting, man.


The End.