! No ih IO AE a teks See Dick run. AND FLYS and irrigation canals to the sides of it. The man watched, wide-eyed, and then smiled. The green and yellow sides of the new street flowed past the muttering white truck. The summer sunlight shown on green leaves, dirty water, and rusty cans. The sand hills bumped by the white truck. The sunlight made a mottled shade under the short trees. Willy started to slow the truck for a corner. The man clung to the hand holds. He held himself flat against the white body of the truck. Willy slowed the truck more. Subdivision houses extended right and left of the intersection. The man turned his head toward the duplications of the same house. He scowled. He muttered into the warm summer wind. “Those are brand new houses. They don’t have any dirt yet. | haven't got the right to take anything from them. This is where | get off.” The truck slowed even more. The man let go of his hand holds and jumped from the white truck. He uttered a guttural grunt that was replaced by a single sob as his knees grated in the pea gravel that moved past at the side of the road. He pitched forward, and his body still moved over the small stones. He turned his head. The left side of his face hit the ground. He lay prostrate in the pea gravel. Blood dripped from his lips onto the pea gravel. “God?” His voice cracked between speaking and whispering. Blood formed a stain in the dust garbage can, rattling, on the side walk. His white coveralls covered his thin body up to the grey stubble of his chin. He hung on the hand holds of the truck like a white Christ. His eyes blinked slowly in the warm summer air. His entire body shifted to his right as the truck started forward. The white truck moved forward and stopped at the red stop sign on the corner of the lot of the orange brick house. The truck turned up the street. The man swung outward from the truck as far as his arms length. “Why don’t you come in here?” Willy asked from the shadowed cab. FRED BLUTH his dropped the can on the light green lawn of the parking. He started walking toward the next garbage can. His black work shoes made no noise on the grey asphalt of the street. The man loaded garbage into the white truck. The white truck moved in bursts of motion along the street. Willy sat in the shady cab, holding the wheel. On the door of the truck, Fremont City S. S. was painted in black paint. The truck muttered as it moved along the street. The man walked along by the truck. The truck came abreast of a cardboard box and a metal can. Willy stopped the truck. The man bent and jerked the cardboard box by its flaps into the air. He caught it on the underside and pushed it like a basketball into the opening on the side of the truck’s body.. Newspapers fluttered out of the box and down the side of the mound of garbage already in the truck. The man bent down. The sun bounced off the metal lid and into an old grey face as the man removed the garbage can’s top. He dropped the lid, and the lid bounced noisily in the dusty gutter. The man pulled the can up by its handle and stepped up onto the truck’s running board. He emptied the can into the body of the white truck. The man stepped down from the running board and Willy made the white truck cough, and the truck moved up even with the man, passed him, and stopped at a silver garbage can sitting in the gutter in front of an orange brick house. The man bent and grasped the lid’s handle. He flung it, and it crashed on the cement sidewalk. The summer sun brought droplets of sweat on the crown of his head. He bent over in his greasy coveralls and picked up the garbage can by its handle and bottom. His eyes saw the white maggots swimming in the rotting roast beef. He averted his eyes and looked at the green lawn of summer. He stepped heavily onto the side running board of the truck and dumped the wet slop into the pile of trash. For a long second he held the can inverted so the water in its bottom had time to run out. His face was contorted into a look of fear from the stench coming from the inside of the truck as he turned and dropped the (8) The man answered, without turning head, “I don’t want to; | want to keep cool.” The white truck muttered as the sides of the street moved by. “| guess we'll be back on this street Friday. The planning board made their collection day then.” Willy nodded toward the sides of the street where bright, sun painted houses moved by. “Why we can’t pick up their stuff today, no one will tell me. What ya think?” “Yeah.” The man’s eyes moved along with the houses. The white truck hit a bump in the asphalt. A half of a grapefruit skin bounced down from the mound of garbage in the truck. The pink inside skin hit the man’s arm and bounced out onto the moving road. It flopped to a stop in the gutter that moved away from the white truck. The man let go of his hand hold and wiped the grapefruit juice off his forearm and on to the hip of his greasy coveralls. He regained his handhold and swung outward from the truck as far as his arms length as the truck again turned a corner. The houses were gone from the sides of the new street. The new street connected Fremont City to a two-hundred house subdivision. The new street still had sand and pea gravel. His eyes were open, and they didn’t blink. He lay in the gravel without moving. The sun shone into his pale face, turning it slowly red with heat. The man rolled away from the street onto his back. He sat up in the pea gravel, bending his knees until he could touch his left cheek to his pant legs. The blood from his cheek splotched his coveralls just above the knees. Blood hills, trees, (9)