There are lots of places to live at the Transfer Station, but I picked the old skip loader because it’s the farthest thing from where Corky has his hut and from where the trash trucks do their drop-offs and pickups. The cab is roomy and the windows haven’t been blown out. Someone jacked the front tires, so the whole thing slopes forward, but I like that. Keeps the blood out of my head.
When I was a kid, it was called the Dump. People backed in and tipped their shit onto the edge of the pile. Every few weeks they’d run a bulldozer through and spread the mess out flat. Now it’s called the Transfer Station and they’ve got Corky up here pretending to manage things because there’s cash in trash. Mostly it’s the metal—aluminum and steel from the cars or copper from when the contractors forget to pinch it out of their own dumpsters. Then there’s all the glass and paper. That sells. Corky pulls some crap out and sells it on the side. They let him pocket the cash. The rest, the real shitty shit, gets pounded into containers and hauled away to I don’t know where. Probably the ocean, which sucks.
The Transfer Station became a necessity after I dipped out for a spell and burned down my apartment building. Or at least my apartment. Definitely believe what you hear about the problems with painkillers. The scaffolding on the nuclear sub I was welding decided to collapse so I got dumped into the fucking bay. Made coleslaw out of my rotator cuff when I hit the water. Then I got real friendly with the little white pills. After the fire, the landlord did me the solid of giving me one choice: hit the streets.
