The hunter is hunched over in the morning fog, his shoulders
squared by the chill and the years of bad living. It’s been a long time since he
could stand up straight- decades since he lined up with his classmates outside
the hall, lines shining on his blazer from when he tried to iron it once,
proud.
He’s shaking slightly, the wind whistling through his dried
lips onto his deserted cemetery of a mouth. Nobody else is around, and that’s
good. It’ll give him a chance to get to the good stuff: the bottles, cardboard
and other salvageables in the bins left out on the pavements for the garbage
truck.
Lights are switched on and then angrily off again in the
distance as sleeping dog owners are roused by their barking pets. An burglar
alarm perhaps a kilometre away has been whining for some time.
He flips the lid on the wheelie bin. The stench had made the
owner of the bin retch a little when he dragged it outside, but the hunter
doesn’t notice it anymore. Oblivious to the leftovers wrapped in newspaper, the
nappies and sanitary napkins folded in on themselves, he follows the clinking
sounds all the way to the jars and bottles. Slips them into his sack. Holds one up to the amber of the streetlamp and
coughs. Spits.
On to the next one. He’ll make a few bucks with this load. In
his mind he’s mixing his fantasies- in one he’s buying bottles and bottles of
cheap wine and throwing a party outside the furniture store where they’ve set
up huge speakers and blast loud music on Saturdays. He’ll dance on the pavement
and say funny things to the people who will sidestep past him into the road,
frowning, not making eye contact. In another dream, he’s parking his car
outside the pizza restaurant, going inside for pizza and beers, and then
tipping the car guard with abandon, because, shame, the car guard probably
comes from some hellhole of a country where he couldn’t be a radiographer
anymore and had to flee with his family.
The glow of dawn brings him back to the street. The birds
sound like they’re offering each other coffee up there in the trees.
Coffeecoffeecoffeeteateatea, they cry.
He swings up the lid to the bin. Blinks. A doll’s hand
wrapped in an old blanket has startled him. Then it twitches.
He drops the lid of the bin in alarm. Who to call? He tries
to imagine who looks after babies in bins. Not the police, surely, the swaggering,
barrel-chested men who have too often rolled him into their vans with
unnecessary force. No. Too violent. Not the homeowners who scream at him to
stop lying, stop drinking, to get a job. Not the hookers with their vacant
faces, the only light in their eyes are drug-fuelled embers. He can’t call his
mom or dad. They’re long dead. Down in the tangled grass amongst the other old
bones, an unmarked wooden cross above them.
He thinks about running to the night shelter, but he’s not
allowed there, either, since the confusion about the cold showers; he’d
forgotten to check that it was the men’s turn- how the old woman with the endless
folds of breasts and belly had gasped at him with her toothless mouth and
clutched her facecloth to her body, as if it could have helped redeem her
modesty.
There’s a rustle in the bush next to him, and a rat slips
into the drain. He thinks about the children’s home nearby, and the kids in
their massive jerseys and shorts, all cheekbones and gap-teeth. He considers
the jail cells where he’s seen the kids become dead-eyed killers, slaves to the
gangsters.
He thinks about life on the streets. The scraps, the pain
the noise, and a trickle of snot dribbles out of his nose as he weeps for the
baby and walks away, old wine bottles clinking against his hipbones.
The truck grinds and rumbles in the distance.
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