Garbage Cans Along the Beach

Garbage Cans Along the Beach

       By D (Twilled Curtains) R

Pukatowagon is hotter in May

Than boys on a nude beach at close of the day

Count your blessings name them one by one,” Enid Muswagon sang to herself as she bent over the stove and fished out the quarter that had fallen behind it. She added it to the jar of bus change and replaced it in the cupboard above the butter door. She had come from Mission Station this morning on Main Street. Drunks and poor people lined up quite a way down the block, starting at eleven o’clock. The soup was good. She had eaten two bowls and a couple of buns. Last night’s wine sat uneasy in her stomach.

       “A penny for your thoughts!” Count Gordon called through the window. He lived in the apartment adjacent to hers and separated by a couple of feet. He could reach in if he wished and borrow the dish detergent on her windowsill. She thought about how she needed to keep the lights off when she paraded around at night without clothes on sometimes if she had to go into the kitchen for some reason. Sleepy, she forgot now and then, and assumed that the Count had seen her naked on more than one occasion.

       “What’s that smell?” Enid called to him and he stuck his head into her window. He did not seem to know what she was referring to and she explained it to him.

       “It smells like your dog came in here last night and shat all over my floor. It also smells, on top of that, as if your sewer pipes had exploded and plastered junk and sour stuff over half my apartment. Not only that, but it stinks like rotten meat left in the sun for a week and then dipped in old castor oil.” She returned to the window where the Count lounged and listened. He pulled out a pipe and put tobacco in it and lit it.

       “That would explain my stomach!” he said. “The tobacco will help.” He puffed voluminously and sent the billows in the direction of her window. He was not fully dressed, in a sleeveless t-shirt and jeans, and cited the early hour as an excuse.

“Would you care for a cuppa?” he asked and disappeared and returned in a minute with a steaming mug that he reached over her windowsill. He whistled tunelessly and then sang a happy melody from a musical she did not recognize. The words were foreign, probably Italian. She asked him what the story was. He told her it concerned the death of a young boy who had loved a girl very much who did not want him to love her.

“That is very sad,” she said. “Does she die, too?” She leaned out the window and took no notice of the traffic that slid by to her left on Alamont. An older man stood between the buildings fiddling with his fly. Enid sipped the coffee and listened.

“Who told you that?” he said. After a minute he continued. “The girl dies many years later in an accident. She falls from a window where she has been sitting alone looking out of over a lake. One knows that she has been thinking of very little for she sings at that moment about the seagulls swooping over the bay. It ends with the ambulance arriving and taking her away, while out on the lake boats ply their trade and the wind continues its gentle soughing. Smoke from the peat fire burns the eyes of passersby.”

Enid thanked him and returned to her preparations. She was getting ready to return to the Mission Station. She loaded her minivan with her amp and guitar and mikes and stands and drove across town. She got help unloading and setting up from a few of the regulars there who faithfully came to hear her. She sang half a dozen numbers for the down and outers after their supper of fish and potatoes and then packed up and drove home again. She sat in the window in the warm June night air and listened to the few seagulls still squawking around the garbage cans along the beach. Smoke from a campfire on the point drifted past her apartment. It tasted nice on her tongue.