Goldilocks (standard:other, 5201 words)
Author: kupecz99	Added: Sep 14 2000	Views/Reads: 4248/2484	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A young man who got caught doing insider trading as a stock salesman now is a garbageman, and things turn a little strange. Is he just a lucky guy?

GOLDILOCKS 

"Wash me & comb me & lay me on the bank to dry 

Softly & gently I'II watch the passersby." 

English Fairy Tale 

"Shake your ass, white boy, I wanna go home." 

"I'm shakin' it boss, I'm shakin' it,"  Dickie Cooper said, trying to
make a joke out of it, trying to imitate the old movie Cool Hand Luke, 
sweating. To himself he said, I'm gonna shake this fuckin' garbage can 
down your fuckin' throat, you son of a bitch. 

As usual his partner had more or less forced Dickie to work on the
harder side of the street (lined with apartment buildings and double 
houses, and took for himself  the side with neat single-family homes.  
The big man moved their truck farther & farther up the street and away 
from Dickie, goading him to catch up. "C'mon boy, I done my side. What 
the hell you doin' so long?" 

Some people were nice enough to drag their garbage cans out to the curb,
though they didn't have to. Dickie ran back to the curb with the empty 
cans, grabbed two more by the rims and heaved them through the air into 
the big scoop on the back of the truck, where they landed with a 
crunch. Then he sprinted over there himself to dump them out. He didn't 
think it was worth making anything out of the razzing from the big 
moody man, an ignorant-crazy schemer who turned from sentimental to 
vicious and back again several times in the course of a working day. 
But it was very hard on the garbage cans. Oh God,  he thought, This is 
hell. Did somebody put a curse on me or what?  Did you make me to live 
like this?  Give me a break. 

It was only 10:30 on this Wednesday morning when they finished their
last street and headed for the dumps. With the temperature already at 
85 degrees, a fine high stench permeated his clothes and spread out 
behind the truck. Anything above 75 degrees is uncomfortably warm for 
this strenuous work, and he wouldn't feel chilly till the temperatures 
were close to zero. 

"See that, Dickie?  I git you mad an' you work hard. This ain't a bad
time to git done. That ain't no easy gawbige route, neither. You want a 
beer?" 

Dickie could have killed him, but he just shook his head. Wednesday's
route was only four hours or so of hard labor -- running, lifting, 
dumping the barrels, jumping in and out of the driver's seat to move 
the truck up -- yet Dickie's knees and hands were still trembling, his 
head spinning from the work and the heat. 

*	*      * 

Some mornings he couldn't stand up straight for a half-hour after he got
out of bed. Later, when he got home it took an hour in the hot bathtub 
to soak some of the pain out of his arms and legs and back. 

Still, Dickie Cooper figured now he was getting used to the grinding
work, and he could put up with anything for eight or nine months more, 
which is all it would take for the stink to blow over from his big 
fuck-up. Of course he couldn't ever go back to work trading stocks 
again, not at home, anyway, though he already has had a nibble of 
interest from a competitor in Syracuse. That tickled his vanity. Not 
everybody in the business thought a little smart dealing was the same 
as murder, the way his father seemed to. 

So Dickie thought now that after a bit of time passed he would be going
into real estate. And he had lined up a good deal; a lot better than 
any other new guys got -- and right here in town, too. It would just 
have to wait a while. 

The truth is, he thought, It's a bad idea to work for relatives, and he
never would have done it if his dad had stuck to the goddamn boring 
bloodsucking life insurance business. The idea of all those late nights 
talking to idiots in their greasy kitchens, and spending all day 


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