The Marina

THE MARINA

     I catch a lot of noise, you know, like "Why don't you get a job?" and "Why don't you work?" Well, let me tell you, picking up aluminum cans to sell to recycling plants is work, too! I may not punch a clock or dress up in a costume, but riding around on my humble bicycle, picking up your litter, is a lot of work. Besides that, you can well believe that I'm also risking my life almost everytime I stop to pick up cans on the side of the road, while you're talking on your cell phones, not to mention just riding my bicycle to and from the recycling center.

     Sure, I couldn't do it if I had a normal life, you know, rent, bills, and stuff like that, but for what I earn a day, I feel as if I do pretty well. The trick of it is to go to places where other homeless people had set up camp for a while, but the police had run them off. The homeless either had the chance to split, or they'd been taken to jail downtown (The Downtown Hilton, the street people joke), and those that can leave, can only take what they can carry.

     Then I, the can scavenger, scurries in to pick up whatever I can sell for scrap. It's not like I'm buddies with the police or anything--far from it--or as if I had privileged information, but sometimes I hear things, and other times, through luck and intuition, I find camps that have been abandoned for months, or even years. Not to mention, of course, that when I'm in those places, I'm as guilty of trespassing as the original inhabitants were.

     Sometimes, though, I do feel a little strange. I mean, these were people like me, hoping and dreaming of a better life. They couldn't afford rent, they may have been out of work for a couple of weeks, or months, maybe, or maybe they were alcoholics or crack-heads, or whatever . . . so then they're in the woods, or in the swamps, or God only knows where, but the police finally find them, and they're done.

     Then I come in.

 Don't misunderstand . . . I won't go into an occupied camp, I don't care what's in there. I won't go into people's homes, because that's what the camps are: people's homes.

     It breaks my heart, sometimes, as I pick my way through the remains of their lives, the remains of people I don't even know, and hope that I never will. I see so much of who they were, and of what they wanted to become . . . and I can see that it was all suddenly ripped away from them, all at once, ripped away and smashed into the ground.

     You know what? The earth didn't mind that those people were there; the earth didn't take offence that some people were quietly, peacefully snuggled into its vastness--it's other people that mind.

     So, okay, what it means is that some other people 'own' that land, but they're not making any money off of bums living there for free. The people resent it, so they call the police, and the police run them off or arrest them, and then me, the scavenger, sneaks in and carries away anything I can sell.

     The thing of it is, I've run out of places to raid. I'm out of a job to the extent that I might have to look for a real, God-forbid, job. I've been reduced to going back over the the camps I've already hit, in case someone else had moved in, and moved on. I'm now scraping the bottom of a barrel that I've scraped so many times before that it's shiny, and I've got no where else to go. . . .

     Except back to the marina. . . .

     Months ago, when I had first worked out of there, I had to lift my bicycle over a palm tree trunk and a concrete barricade. Then, the only other obstacle was to cross another hurtle, this time a fallen pine tree, and follow a wide spit of pines, palms, and palmettos between two bodies of dark, brackish water, which led to several unoccupied camps deep inside.

     Now, that area had been almost entirely closed off, as someone had obviously used a front-end loader to block the entire entrance to the peninsula with huge mounds of dirt and lime rock. I mean, people could still get through, and they probably have, but it was new to me, and so I was taken aback.

     To the right, however, where a multi-tiered wall of fiberglass boat hulls have always stood, there appeared to be no sabotage, and so, in order to recoup on my next to useless time, I explored. Between the lower level of two stacks of shells, I found, by accident, a hidden tunnel that led to a new and unknown, by me, terrain beyond.

     I hid my bicycle, and threaded my way through, holding my breath for fear of collapse or shifting weight, and I was soon on the other side. I was immediately amazed to find an other-dimensional wonderland of pine trees, a thick carpet of pine straw, and evidence of several, heretofore, undiscovered camps. Despite the profound and otherworldly beauty and quiet, however, I was struck by an indefinable sense of foreboding and menace. But there were aluminum cans galore, all conveniently concentrated in numerous garbage piles, and, still with no signs of current habitation.

     Pushing further, climbing silent, glowering hills of pine straw and crossing brooding, oppressive valleys, and discovering even more indications of previous occupation, I eventually encountered what appeared to be the central trash dump of the entire, mysterious area. With just a cursory glance, I realized that there were far more cans than I could carry in one trip. Rather than be greedy, and still feeling unusually ill at ease at being there, I anxiously bagged only the cans that were near at hand. Then I hurriedly returned to the fiberglass wall, squeezed my back out between the pontoons and rode my bicycle to the recycling center. From the marina, the center was only half the distance I usually travel.

"Hey," the recycling guy said, "you're early today."

     "Yeah," I chortled, pleased with myself. "I'm working out of the marina again. I found an area I never knew about."

     "Oh, yeah? On the other side of a wall of boat hulls?"

     "Yeah. How did you know?"

     "Some of our best aluminum business used to come from there. A couple of dozen people lived there, and they would bring in huge loads of cans several times a year. Then, all of a sudden, they just quit coming in."

     "What happened to them?" I asked, intrigued.

     "No one knows. It's like they just disappeared. We figured the cops must have finally found them, and ran them off, but they never resurfaced--none of them."

     Well, despite my haste, I had succeeded in bagging an easy twelve pounds, enough for a six-pack, and the knowledge of where I'd be going the next day: the marina.

 

*                                       *                                         *

 

     The next day being Sunday, I had all day to bag cans at my leisure, so I didn't bother to start until the afternoon. Skulking down the back road of the marina, toward the boat landing, I made sure that there were no cars ahead or behind me when I made my turn off.

     Once more surmounting the barricades and hiding my bicycle, I again crept between the racks of boat shells and instantly re-entered the alien world of pine trees, pine straw, abandoned camps, and sepulchral silence. Continuing onward, and climbing the low hills, I found the community dump that had been so generous to me the previous day. I expected to be equally fortunate today.

     Although I wasn't in any particular hurry, regardless of my persistent, and almost familiar, sense of foreboding, and listening with only half an ear for intrusion by the police, it was easy for me to get distracted and lose tract of time. I suppose that it's the mindless monotony, or perhaps just the mindlessness, period, of collecting cans, but I was surprised to realize that the sun was already beginning to set.

     It was when I took off my sunglasses that I was suddenly aware that I was no longer alone. . . . Encircling me, at a distance of perhaps a hundred feet, interspersed among the pine trees, stood a ring of men and women. They were mutely and intently staring at me, clumps of pine straw clinging to their hair and clothing.

     I almost dropped my sunglasses.

     "Uh, hi, everybody," I stammered, lamely waving a hand.

     No response. The setting sun seemed to cast their gaunt faces in deep shadow, especially their eyes, and I couldn't help but notice how pale and thin they all were.

     "Uh," I began again, "I didn't think anybody still lived back here. You know, uh, I thought maybe the police had raided you guys."

     Still no response, except they all, simultaneously, took a step forward, their arms still hanging motionlessly at their sides, their dark, unblinking eyes still staring at me.

 "I hope you don't mind if I was taking your empty cans," I said, and laughed nervously. "You can keep them if you want. They're already crushed, and everything."

     Silently, they all took another step forward.

     I wanted to back up now, but since they surrounded me, that would have been pointless. Despite the increasing chill of twilight, I could feel myself beginning to sweat.

     "Hey," I heard myself stutter, "I don't want the cans, really. You guys can have them, and I'll just go ahead and leave."

     Now they were trudging steadily toward me, slowly, but steadily, their black, hollow eyes boring relentlessly into me. Their arms were now raised, all of them reaching out toward me, their pale, thin arms out-stretched, their long, slender fingers extended like the talons of bony birds of prey. . . .

     I picked a direction at random and began to run. Without seeming to increase their pace, they closed in on me and dragged me to the ground, their fingernails clawing, their teeth biting, until I, too, wait until darkness, and until another stranger comes to visit us.

 

 

THE END