The Great Osceola Trash War

 

“The trash migration continues,” I reported to my wife as I stared out the front windows at the ever-growing array of bins, cans, and bags by the curb of the house just north of ours.

 

My wife made a noncommittal sound from the office. We were still getting used to sharing time and space together. Her job now allowed, almost demanded that she work from home. By happenstance, so did mine.

 

During the pandemic, Eistefodds had temporarily transformed into an online-only business. The science fiction import business had flourished during the initial shutdown. After fans had binged through whole catalogs of streaming content in a single weekend, and Zaire.com was still perfecting its guaranteed drone delivery service, readers turned back to us for something new and novel. Business boomed until the Great Reopening followed by the Great Patriotic Special Military Action turned the business cycle against me. The National Guardian Tavern and the Liberty Liquors and Lottery Outlet, both of which had been deemed essential services by Mayor Rivers during the pandemic, had begun to eye us for a divide and conquer campaign to complete their full occupation of the strip mall.

 

So, I took the pandemic windfall and invested it in upgrading the physical space of the bookstore and attached wine bar to be cozier and more inviting. That meant I was currently home while my contractor was overseeing the renovations. Which had turned into a slog of permitting and supply chain disruptions. For the duration, all I had to look forward to through the week was a slow Tuesday night at The Studio in Sunshine City, which had taken over as the venue for our science fiction book club now that Sessions was a shambles of construction debris. That and keeping up with our renewed, if hopefully temporary, online orders only status. As I worked through my mini-storage overstock of Soviet, Cuban and Chinese science fiction that had once been the staples in Sessions’ storeroom, I had a lot of time on my hands at home. Much to my wife’s dismay.

 

I watched the trash truck approaching down the street. It pulled up next door. The skinny kid, a regular who I never thought would make it as a thrower, started his signature spin move to sling bags into the hopper. He was rocking out with his earbuds in. The neighbors had accumulated enough of a pile that the driver got out to help. Not that I was sure how.

 

“They’ve got Carl back on the truck again,” I continued my play-by-play for my wife in the next room.

 

At well under five feet, Carl didn’t have a lot of leverage for slinging trash. Technically, he was a gnome, not a literal dwarf, but other than the lack of beard and being Swedish rather than Norwegian, the distinction eluded me. Either way, he rolled up the company-issued green and yellow container and hooked it on the automatic lift mechanism. When he pulled the lever, the truck did the rest, dumping everything into the hopper. He popped the lever a couple of times like he was waiting for an elevator while he casually pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear and then lit it one-handed.

 

The entire time he eyed the diminishing pile next door. The skinny kid had just unearthed a combination step stool and child’s seat, this one blue, the third the neighbors had put out this month.

 

“How does a childless couple generate so much trash each week?” I asked.

 

“Mmm?” was my wife’s only answer.

 

Every week, twice a week, trash day was the same with our neighbor to the north. A full fifty-gallon container along with a couple older model plastic cans plus a host of miscellaneous black garbage bags began to appear at the curb, sometimes less than an hour after the truck had pulled away. Three days a week if you counted the recycling, which they sometimes used for auxiliary trash overflow.

 

Rolling back the bin and slinging it toward the driveway, Carl examined the diminutive piece of furniture critically then grabbed it, walked it up to the truck’s passenger door and stashed it inside while the skinny kid finished up.

 

“Did I tell you Mayor Rivers put a lien on Carl’s passport? She’s still trying to recoup the tax revenue after the Cache for Trash debacle. I guess restitution through garbage collection beats being deported to Columbia. Poor guy’s trying to outfit an apartment.”

 

“Mm-hmm,” came the response from the other room.

 

“Hey, any bet on whether across the street called in a special pickup for all that metal conduit? How long’s it been at the curb now, a month? Maybe he used all his. I should wander over and see if he wants to borrow one of ours. Maybe talk to Carl and see if he’ll do us a solid.”

 

“Stay out of it,” my wife called from the other room in her best manager’s voice, suddenly paying full attention. “We haven’t had a problem. And we might need those for ourselves.”

 

I watched as Carl walked back to supervise the skinny kid loading the rest of the bags in back of the truck, puffing away on his cigarette.

 

“Instead of worrying about everyone else’s trash there, Gladys Gossip,” my wife continued, a further hint of annoyance in her voice, “maybe you should be more concerned with your own. Did you put out the container like I asked? The cat litter’s beginning to stink up the garage. And put on some clothes for gods’ sake. I don’t want a repeat of last week’s CloseUp meeting.”

 

Oh, crap, I’d nearly forgotten.

 

Satisfied with the job the kid was doing, Carl flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the back of the truck and pulled a different lever to compact it. Then he headed for the cab while the kid climbed up onto the step in back, holding on to the Jesus handle.

 

If I hurried, I could get out the trash before Carl cleared the south neighbor’s driveway. Their bin was already out.

 

I grabbed my slippers and a robe, trying to struggle into each as I popped the button for the garage door opener. I was hopping between the Jeep and my wife’s SUV, trying to seat the heel of one slipper as the door rattled up.

 

The truck hadn’t started rolling yet though I could see Carl’s face peering over the steering wheel well over my height above the ground. When he’d first gotten the job, he told me he had to sit on phonebooks to see over the dashboard, with blocks to reach the pedals because the Trashadorians wouldn’t spring for special equipment to compensate for his lack of height. And he couldn’t afford anything less jury-rigged. But the last time I’d talked to him, he said he’d been promoted to a supervisor. They must be shorthanded.

 

In the cab, it looked like he was rolling a fresh cigarette for later.

 

As I skirted around the tailgate of my wife’s SUV and grabbed the handle of our trash bin, I heard the throaty diesel of the garbage truck fire up. I rocked back the bin, bouncing it off the Beastette’s bumper. It was heavier than I’d expected, likely filled with small, white bags of used kitty litter. I think the cat was developing a kidney problem. As I swiveled it to race toward the curb, the trash truck took off like someone was waving a checkered flag at the end of the street. It whooshed by just as I was a foot from the curb, still rolling my bin. The breeze it generated flipped open my robe and ruffed my boxers.

 

Carl zoomed past the trash bins on the curb at the next two houses. I frantically waved down the kid clinging to the Jesus handle on the back. He waved back, smiling, still rocking out to his earbuds. Then he hooked an arm through the bar and started swiping through his phone. Oblivious to the thin line of smoke I now saw trailing from the truck, though it could have just been diesel exhaust from the mayor’s latest mandatory rolling coal initiative. I was surprised I didn’t see truck nuts swinging below its bumper, too. That would be next.

 

Carl didn’t stop again until they were halfway to the corner. Too far to street hike in my loungewear.

 

My wife would be pissed. This was the third time I’d missed putting out the trash for pickup. Though this time she’d have to admit it wasn’t my fault. How could I have known they’d breeze by the cans next door?

 

On second thought, she wouldn’t. Even though she knew how much trouble the neighborhood was having since Mayor Rivers and the council had changed our decade-long trash contract which no one had had a problem with to a new, discount hauler who insisted that anything larger than a banker’s box outside the rolling bin was a bulk pickup.

 

This time, I was determined we wouldn’t get missed. So, I levered the bin onto its wheels again and rolled it across the street. I grabbed up my two neighbors’ bins next and parked them beside it. I knew Carl had to come back this way to complete his route. After all the complaints, the company had upgraded their trucks with GPS so they could monitor and verify exactly where they’d been. Since Carl was a supervisor, he’d get a piece of my mind when he stopped.

 

I leaned against the bin ready to wheel it into the road and block the truck’s path when it returned. It had just disappeared around the corner, trailing more smoke than before. That engine needed a serious tune-up. It usually only took about five minutes before they swung around to collect the other side of the street. At least this week, they weren’t doing both sides at once. Route planning seemed to be done on an ad hoc basis.

 

But the trash truck never came back. A minute after it disappeared around the corner, thick black smoke flowed over the houses beyond, like the rolling coal mechanism had blown a gasket. Or Vesuvius had blown its top.

 

I quickly retreated inside. When I burst into the office with my robe flying open to tell my wife to call the fire department, I found she was in the middle of her Monday morning status meeting on CloseUp. Again.

 

Nicci rolled her eyes. The new girl from accounting covered her mouth and giggled.

 

---

 

A week later I found myself wandering the neighborhood after I’d hauled the trash bin to the curb. I’d been banished from the house anytime my wife was scheduled to be on a call. The tipping point had been when Cheryl from admin asked my wife where she had picked up my Incredible Hulk boxers. She’d been looking for something similar for her son.

 

She now gave me the boot a full fifteen minutes before each scheduled CloseUp meeting and called with an all-clear five minutes after one ended. Or so she said. I suspected she extended my virtual exile so she could enjoy some additional solitude.

 

Which is how I found myself inspecting the burnt-out wreck of the trash truck around the corner at the end of the street. It had come to rest mostly out of the road on a small parcel of land that served as a utility easement. The top of the hopper was coated with soot. Even though the weekend rain had washed away most of the firefighting foam and smoky residue, it still smelled exactly as I expected a dumpster fire might. A cross between a grease fire at a plastic rendering plant and a cool ranch barbequed salad bar, heavy on the Brussel sprouts and curdled cream. With a bottom note of charred disposable diapers ala eau de toilet of Mademoiselle Dior.

 

I covered my mouth with a handkerchief which didn’t quite hold the stench at bay. How the nearby houses tolerated it was beyond me.

 

“Perfect ending to a fairy tale career, isn’t it?” When I heard the voice behind me, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned to find Carl beside me surveying the back of the truck. I should have smelled the hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. The fantastic stench emanating from the burnt-out garbage hulk masked that at less than three feet away.

 

“So, they fired you?” I asked as what he said sank in. Surveying the damage, I couldn’t say I was surprised.

 

“Ha!” Carl replied. “By the time this is over, they’ll wish they had. But they couldn’t without canning Calvin’s whelp along with me. Wouldn’t please the councilman who’d directed the contract to them in the first place. So, they suspended both of us for a week without pay and demoted me from supervisor back to gen pop.”

 

“Wait, Calvin’s on the council now?” Why hadn’t I heard about this? Ever since my coupon entanglement with the Dept. of Commerce, our delivery of the Osceola Observer, our free community paper, had dwindled to what I could pilfer from any neighbor who left them unattended for a night or two in the street. They usually came soaked through by rain or sprinklers on watering day. Something about a secret restraining order countersigned by Mayor Rivers, or so Cassie had told me at the hearing. Mayor Rivers continued earning her moniker of Auntie Lisa in that old SSR, pre-fall of the Berlin Wall kind of way.

 

“Not just a councilman, Rivers’ pet vice mayor as of the last meeting. He’s the only thing standing between me and deportation. I mean how was I supposed to know one of your neighbors’ spawn had buried an illegal cache of graffiti cans in their bin?” He eyed the truck again. “They lit like a welding torch, burning straight through the drive shaft before the whole thing went up like a Russian ammo dump.”

 

“Well, that sucks,” was all I could think to say.

 

“You have no idea, Bruce Banner,” he replied before taking a long drag on his cigarette. Wait, how had he heard about that? I shook my head. Carl had contacts that would make a veteran CIA field officer blush.

 

“But not as bad as it will suck for them,” he continued. “By the time I’m done, these Trashadorians will wish they’d fired me. Never screw with a desperate Swede’s revenue stream. Especially when he still has restitution to pay. This job is the only thing that stands between me and a slow boat to Bogota.”

 

“Does Bogota even have a port,” I asked.

 

“Ok, Cartagena. Whatever. Don’t get cute there, Cyclops. The point is there are some nasty ghosts of Christmas past waiting to carve me up like an Andes goose if I ever so much as dip a toe in their territorial waters again.”

 

“Seems to me like laying low might be your best option,” I opined.

 

“And let them get the upper hand?” He eyed me narrowly. “How’s that working out for you now that you’re exiled from Camelot by Lady Guinevere? Enjoying your time taking in the scents of our postmodern Elba, my overgrown Napoleon?”

 

He took another drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke straight across my face. I still couldn’t smell it. I think my scent receptors had been damaged.

 

“So, what are you going to do?” I hesitated to ask but needed to change the subject back to him.

 

“Stick around a while and see,” he said.” Unless you’ve got someplace better to be.”

 

I checked my phone. No right of return greeted me. Seeing Carl in action sounded more entertaining than a walk in the park. I was too late to encounter the dog party anyway. Though I knew after all the trouble Carl had drawn me into, my wife would be annoyed. “Stay away from him; he’s trouble” were her last words before I left. Served her right for the virtual lockout from my own house.

 

We backed off the truck to wait in the shade of the spreading oak just behind it. A minute later, we heard a throaty rumbling coming up the street. At first, I thought it might be Carl’s replacement pickup crew. Until a fastback muscle car that reminded me of my misspent youth rolled into view, matte black calicoed with rust and grey primer. The type of car that had two speeds, smoking fast and screeching stop. It squealed across the curbing to slash to a halt a foot from where we sat in the grass.

 

The driver revved the engine to eleven several times before it gasped to silence with a wheeze. The kid from the trash truck swung open the driver’s door with a squeal reminiscent of a garbage truck compacting mechanism.

 

“S’up, my Tyrion,” he greeted Carl before glancing at me. “Who’s your Ken friend? He come equipped with his own Karen or did she let him off the leash?”

 

I glared. I was getting the sense that I wouldn’t like him much more than his father.

 

“Don’t worry about him,” Carl replied. “He’s just wallpaper for this meeting. And don’t call me Tyrion, Kid.”

 

“Whatever you say, my little Lord Lannister,” he replied, no longer interested. “The rest of the crew coming?”

 

Now I heard the familiar rolling thunder of a nearby trash truck. It turned the corner from my street and pulled onto the easement behind the abandoned truck. A man and a woman hopped off the back, pulled something from a cooler strapped to the side of the truck and headed for us, followed by the driver.

 

The Kid accidentally introduced them with a nod as they approached. “Lady Gaga, Neon Deadpool. UnCommon.”

 

Neon Deadpool was self-explanatory, like the movie character only dressed in black and international yellow, head to toe. Only his eyes were visible. Lady Gaga bore a closing-time resemblance to the pop singer.

 

“Why UnCommon?” I asked.

 

“You’d have to hear him sing,” the Kid replied, “I got to endure his American Opera audition demo every day for a month in training. At least Common has talent.”

 

“I don’t even know who that is.” UnCommon protested.

 

“Man, I should call you Miles Davis,” the Kid responded, “because you’re a classic.”

 

A pickup truck with the Trashadorian logo on its door eased up the stop sign by the corner but didn’t move. The driver sat examining his phone.

 

“Uh oh, it’s the new Floorwalker.” The Kid hooked a thumb at the pickup as it sat idling. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

 

“They made the Lifer a supervisor?” Carl sounded incredulous.

 

“Why did you call Carl the Floorwalker?” I asked. I still hadn’t processed UnCommon but decided it was better to just roll with it.

 

“You know, like Carl from that old movie,” the Kid responded. “Cool Hand Luke’s supposed to be in your wheelhouse, Boomer.”

 

I let the Boomer comment slide. I was a bit young for that. I turned to Carl. “Isn’t it Carr the Floor Walker?”

 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that,” Carl confirmed. “Kids these days.”

 

“Ok, now I’m going to call you Johnson,” the Kid said.

 

“Like the Carl Junior from GTA?” I asked, trying to prove I was still young and hip.

 

“No,” the Kid replied. “Because he’s being a dick.”

 

Neon Deadpool shook his head in what I thought was a silent, knowing laugh. Lady Gaga snuck in a Mona Lisa smile. UnCommon just rolled his eyes out loud.

 

“Whatever you’ve got to say, make it quick, Tyrion.” Lady Gaga took up the thread of conversation. “The Floorwalker’s right behind us, clocking time. We’re on our five-minute hydration break.”

 

Neon Deadpool cracked a bright orange sports drink he’d grabbed from the cooler. He pulled down his full-face gaiter to drink it, letting it snap back in place after each sip.

 

“Ok,” Carl started after crushing his cigarette out against the side of the hopper. That earned a glare from UnCommon.

 

“Hey, respect the truck, Carl,” he admonished.

 

Carl glared back but otherwise ignore him. “We all know this job sucks, and is sucking worse each day. Arbitrary routes and rotations, defective equipment, management trying to squeeze out a profit by putting our jewels in a vice. Yada, yada, yada. No offense, Gaga.”

 

A slash formed across her mouth that said she probably had more balls than he did.

 

“But we all need this job right now,” Carl continued, starting to roll a fresh cigarette. “Bills to feed, mouths to pay, dreams of being the first in our family to attend community college. Plus, the perks of first picks at the curbside clearance sale. Now normally you’d never hear these words fall out of my mouth. I usually leave them to Khrushchev Ken here…”

 

“Wait, you’re the shoe guy?” The Kid interrupted, staring at me with fresh interest. “I loved that speech, man. Best three minutes of my life. Didn’t understand a single word you said, but the passion. Props, my dude. You’re like a viral celeb on the socials.”

 

That garnered nods from Lady Gaga and UnCommon. Neon Deadpool raised a gloved fist in solidarity. I nearly blushed from the adoration.

 

Carl shook his head in disgust. “Don’t feed the ego of this gremlin. It’s after midnight. He’ll become more insufferable than he is already.”

 

My smile quickly died.

 

“Anyway,” Carl tried to rerail his train of thought. “Management has only left us one option.”

 

He let the last word hang in the fetid air a moment for dramatic effect.

 

“Walk out, starting now,” the Kid declared. “You know, we combine that with a grassroots campaign. Complain to the company and the city council. It’s their contract after all. My dad takes public opinion legit serious.”

 

Divide and conquer. We were all stunned. The Kid had a great idea.

 

“What? No!” Carl lit his cigarette and flicked the match against him, missing his cheek but bouncing off the car. “Weren’t you listening, Einstein? Did daddy drop you on your head too many times as a child?”

 

“Hey, watch the paint, Tyrion.” The Kid caressed the side of his car. “This is custom.”

 

Carl glared at him, before turning back to the others.

 

“Organize,” he finally said. “We issue our demands and then only walk out if necessary. Which with the brilliantines the Trashadorians have in management will be absolutely required.”

 

“Weren’t you just technically management,” I pointed out. “I mean before you got demoted?”

 

“Seen but not heard there, Trotsky.” He blew smoke at me again. “Unless you have something constructive to add, Uncle Vlad.”

 

I shook my head, knowing better than to antagonize him further. The silence of his audience lingered, their expressions dubious. Until a voice behind us boomed.

 

“Who told you clowns to quit working.” The Floorwalker, the big guy I’d seen driving but not throwing, was ensconced in the company pickup that had stealthily pulled up on the road near us, window down, AC no doubt blasting full arctic. “This smells like an unauthorized work action.”

 

“Just a quick hydration break here, boss,” Gaga called out, pulling her blond hair back, and redoing her ponytail. Neon Deadpool waved his empty sports drink bottle. UnCommon just turned back toward the cab of the truck.

 

“You three get sweating,” the Floorwalker commanded. “You’re two blocks behind and just picked up a breakdown route after your regular shift.”

 

That elicited groans from the Greek chorus before he turned to Carl and the Kid. “And you pair are slow learners. You’re one thin slip from your next paycheck turning pink.”

 

I tried to intervene to deflect. I really didn’t like this guy already. Like too many people I’d worked with who let an ounce of authority go to their heads.

 

“Hey, yeah, my fault,” I began in my best conciliatory voice usually saved for dealing with a customer who insisted he’d gotten a short pour from a waitress at the wine bar at Sessions.

 

“And who are you?” The Floorwalker barked back. It seemed that cheerful customer service was buried in a shallow grave next to the customer is always right.

 

“Oh, just a customer. I was asking your crew when they thought the company might reclaim their truck here.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder at the burnt-out colossus.

 

“You call it in?” The Floorwalker produced an unlit cigar, which he now clamped firmly in his teeth.

 

“Excuse me?” I understood the words, they just didn’t make sense.

 

“You gotta call it in.” He gestured with the cigar. “Bulk pickup. Too big for curbside. You get four a year unless you’ve burned through them already.”

 

“But it’s your truck,” I said, which sounded as inane as it did obvious.

 

‘Hey, don’t kill the messenger,” he replied dismissively. “Just call it in and we’ll get out as soon as we have a free crew with spare room after their shift. Could take a while. We’re short-staffed.”

 

“Spare room?” I repeated, suddenly more confused. I looked over my shoulder at Carl, but he and the Kid had pulled a fade. Turning back, I added, “It’s a truck, not trash. Your truck.”

 

“Hey, I don’t make the rules here, buddy,” he said, rolling up his window. “I just enforce them.”

 

With that and a dismissive wave, he was gone.

 

The abandoned trash truck was obscured by screen of rolling coal as UnCommon sped past a row of unemptied bins. The Floorwalker’s pickup raced to catch up.

 

---

 

Three weeks later when my wife and I headed to the grocery store for our biweekly shopping trip, the neighborhood streets were lined with uncollected trash. Every house had its sanctioned bin out as well as at least one other unsanctioned one the company said they’d collect. Plus, black bags piled everywhere. It was like the rest of the neighborhood had joined in our north neighbor’s trash migration in solidarity. Next door now looked like they were building a barricade.

 

At the bottom of the street, Carl’s dead trash truck remained on the easement, quietly rusting.

 

“That’s it,” my wife said as I eased the Jeep around it. “I’m calling them again. This is ridiculous.”

 

I kept my eyes glued to the road. Normally we took her Beastette to the store, but it was time for the Jeep’s monthly run anyway. Plus, I knew if she had time to look around, she might get fed up and make a call. My number had already been permabanned by the company after our initial reverse denial of service campaign. City Hall had also blocked my number and threatened an injunction if I persisted.

 

Of course, I’d neglected to mention any of that to my wife. After my encounters with Homeland Security, the Patriot Police, the DEA and the Commerce Department, I didn’t think there was an appropriate time to disclose another potential governmental legal entanglement. It’s the little surprises that keep a marriage vibrant.

 

Just beyond the stop sign midway to the front of the neighborhood, a line of cars sat unmoving. Peering around by sticking my head out the window, I saw it extended all the way to the exit onto the thoroughfare a quarter mile away. Cars occasionally caterpillared forward like the worst morning rush hour traffic on the DC Beltway.

 

“What fresh hell is this,” I wondered aloud, earning a glare from my wife who was using her best professional voice on the phone, the one she reserved for old, distant relatives, small children, and customer service reps. The calmer and quiet her voice grew, the more I knew something deeply unsettling had begun to unfold. I stared straight ahead, trying to remain invisible behind the wheel as though I was concentrating on inching forward when I could.

 

“I see,” she finally said in her we’ll just see about that tone. “Well, thank you for your help, Melissa.”

 

When she repeated a name back, I knew she intended to remember it and use it against someone later.

 

“Trouble?” I asked, trying to head off the obvious. I spared a sideways glance to find her thumbs flying across her phone.

 

“It seems,” she said without looking up at me, “that I’m not the only one who finds this situation unacceptable. Apparently, a number of people have already complained, both to the company and to the city council.”

 

“Oh?” I asked innocently, trying not the slink down in the bucket seat. I needn’t have bothered. She was intent on her phone, engaged in what I recognized as search and destroy mode.

 

“Enough that the company reported it as a dedicated denial of service attack.” I felt the sweat start to prickle my brow.

 

“Oh, here it is,” she continued. “Someone on our neighborhood social media page published the CEO’s dedicated line and the mayor’s personal cell. They’ve both had to change their numbers three times but they keep getting doxed. Guess who’s behind it?”

 

She turned her gaze on me, like twin sapphire lasers. Now a rivulet of sweat began to trickle down my temple. It was a warm day, warmer without the steady breeze of moving in the Jeep. I hoped she’d write it off to that.

 

“I’m clueless,” I said, flashing back to giving Carl my login credentials for the site with his assurance whatever he did would be untraceable. I should never have believed him. When had Carl ever been discreet? “Any hints?”

 

“Gladys,” she said.

 

I nearly blacked out from relief. “You mean our nosy neighbor, always up in everyone else’s business Gladys? Gladys Gossip?”

 

“Oh, she denies it, but it’s right there under her name on the feed.” She flashed her phone toward me. “She says she keeps taking it down but it keeps getting pinned to the top. She claims she’s been hacked.”

 

Oh, Carl. What did you do? Or was it the Kid? He’d have access to that information from his father. Or both. Either way, when cybersecurity unraveled this sweater, I suspected the threads would lead back to me.

 

“Outrageous,” I agreed. “And she thought she’d get away with it.”

 

My wife wasn’t really listening. She’d already moved on to texting someone, at least by the staccato click of her nails against the screen of her phone.

 

I let the silence settle as we inched forward. I could now see two garbage trucks astride the neighborhood entrance, choking access down to a single lane in or out. The Floorwalker interposed his bulk between them. He spoke to each driver in turn, then often motioned in a pair of bruisers from beside the trucks. Two cars up was forced into an awkward U-turn, the driver fuming as she sped back by.

 

I watched as the luxury sedan in front of me went through the automotive equivalent of a TSA strip-search that made the Guardia de Seville look like rank amateurs. I hadn’t seen such ruthless efficiency since I visited a US naval base with my father one summer in Spain shortly after Franco’s death. I’d watched them pull apart the car in front of us with submachineguns trained on the driver who’d unwisely pointed a camera at them. The US Marines at the base gate had looked on with a mixture of boredom and envy. That was the same June I’d also witnessed my first practice strike in the town so local workers at an auto dealership could figure out how to carry signs on a picket line if they needed to rather than to ask for any concessions from their mostly beloved boss. Strange days.

 

I eased the Jeep the final car length forward until the Floorwalker ordered me to stop with an outstretched hand, then ambled up to my unzipped window.

 

“Well, well, if it isn’t a friend of the Proletariat,” he drawled around the cigar clamped in his teeth, this time lit, as he peered inside the Jeep. He shot an evaluating leer at my wife before asking, “Anything to declare?”

 

“Declare?” I repeated, genuinely confused. This was becoming an all-too-common reaction to our conversations.

 

“What’s going on here,” my wife snapped before I could even shoot her a warning glance.

 

“This,” the Floorwalker answered confidently eyeing her, “is an Osceola-sanctioned inspection point, freshly certified by the mayor to search and seize illicit trash exiting the neighborhood, brought about by your comrade husband and his agitator pal with their conspiracy to conduct an illegal work action against the company in defiance of our city franchise contract. So, you’re now under interdict.” He turned his gaze back to me as he removed his cigar and blew a cloud of copious, cloying blue smoke into the cabin as if directly from a hose connected to one of his truck’s tailpipes. “So, I ask one last time, anything to declare? Or do we do it the hard way?”

 

Interdict? Had we reverted to medieval warfare? I blinked back my surprise before gazing around the totally open interior of the Jeep which was for once relatively clean. I replied before my survival filter could kick in. “Only what you see here, big guy.”

 

The Floorwalker’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head, almost ruefully, though I knew it was a ruse. He popped his cigar back between his teeth and flicked a finger toward the knuckle-draggers loitering by the backs of the trash trucks. “The hard way it is then. I was hoping for this.”

 

I slowly exhaled as my head sank to my chest and my eyes began to close in resignation. Like the Guardia or the Marines, these guys had no sense of humor. One day I’d learn to sheathe my rapier wit.

 

Then a sudden movement to my right popped my head back up. My eyes sprang wide open. The horn of the Jeep blared full-throated in a sustained blast which was impossible to ignore. My wife’s left hand pressed uncompromisingly against the center of the steering wheel as her right panned her cellphone from the Floorwalker to his two goons, both now frozen in their tracks looking for guidance that wasn’t immediately forthcoming. My horn drowned out all other sounds before subsiding into an echoing silence as she released it.

 

“Are you recording this?” the Floorwalker stammered before bellowing in his best supervisor’s tone, “You can’t record this! Gimme that phone!” He stuck out a hand as if expecting my wife to comply, or me to compel her. A mistake on both accounts.

 

My wife merely turned her phone’s lens to focus on the red rising to his face. “Recording?” she asked innocently. “No, my fascist trash apparatik, I wouldn’t think of recording this illegal search. I’m live-streaming it to Teletype where a small army of citizen-activists are cross-posting it as we speak. Wave hello to your newfound audience. You’re about to become internet famous. Virally so.” She smiled sweetly as she cocked her head, a look I recognized as the final phase of escalation in an argument. It froze my blood even though it wasn’t directed as me.

 

Their eyes locked for an instant as I watched the Floorwalker attempt to evaluate whether she was bluffing. His goons remained motionless mid-step from some deep seeded male lizard brain instinct of impending female doom.

 

This is what Carl called this a Swedish standoff. As he liked to remind me by way of marital advice, especially after our recent Tuesday night adventure, there was a reason the Vikings called the female Valkyries “Choosers of the Slain.”

 

Time, like my heart, seemed to stop. Only to resume as the Floorwalker began aggressively chewing the end of his cigar, reviewing his options after sensibly concluding my wife didn’t bluff. Tougher men than he with more riding on it had learned that the hard way. Maybe he was marginally smarter than he looked. Or he was married. I couldn’t picture Mrs. Floorwalker.

 

Finally, he stepped back and snapped a hand to motion us through. I quickly shifted the Jeep into gear and zipped out between the two garbage trucks. A quick glance in my rearview revealed the jacked-up white pickup behind me trying to ride my draft before the Floorwalker planted himself firmly in its path. That promises to be a long, close encounter of the unsanitary kind for you, my friend.

 

My wife lightning tapped another unknown sequence on her phone before retrieving the grocery list from where she’d dropped it. She then calmly began to review our BOGO and sales strategy once we arrived at the store as if nothing had happened. Which was eerily disconcerting.

 

I don’t think her systolic had even cracked one hundred.

 

---

 

When we returned from the store, I spotted Carl lurking in the cab of the burnt-out trash truck on the corner. My wife didn’t see him or at least pretended not to. Through her breezy, serene exterior, I could see she was still fuming at our encounter with the Floorwalker on the way out. If a couple decades of marriage had taught me anything, it was that she could hardly wait for the right moment to process the experience with the person closest to her, someone who knew her better than anyone. Someone who would understand and sympathize at all the right moments. Fortunately, that someone was her best friend Nicci, not me.

 

As I waited to review the morning with Carl, and her with Nicci, we both went through the time-honored marital ritual of not rushing while pretending not to care as we put away groceries. Once everything was stowed and tidied, and our reusable bags were stacked on the dryer to return to her SUV, she turned toward the front room office, claiming to have an emergency CloseUp conference she’d just gotten notified of. I simply nodded and said I’d be out in the garage. If not there, puttering in the yard. Having both saved face, we retreated to our separate sanctuaries.

 

I popped the garage door, dropped the canvas grocery bags into the back of the Beastette and made a beeline for Carl.

 

Who was thumbing through a copy of a trash collection trade journal he colloquially referred to as Waste the Day. As I climbed up next to him, he set it on the seat beside him and began rolling a cigarette. The wind was the right direction to make our meeting spot tolerable.

 

For a moment he didn’t say anything, so I drifted off by taking in the higher view the truck afforded me while he concentrated on the object of his addiction. Just across the street was a pedestrian gate into the park. A paved path led from the neighborhood to an abandoned road deeper inside that was now a recreational trial. Just down the fence from the pedestrian gate was a vehicle gate, double-sized for maintenance trucks. There was enough easement along the path for a truck to roll down to the erstwhile road or turn up the ditch behind our house. Shading both was a stately, spreading oak much like the one beside us. It struck me that with a few crepe myrtles and regular tending, this section of street could become a colorful, picturesque arbor-like entrance to the back of the neighborhood.

 

Carl’s voice burst the bubble of my daydream, bringing reality crashing back down. “What exactly did your Fafnirette wife do this morning?”

 

“What do you mean?” The wind shifted, carrying with it the first odiferous reminder of where we were sitting.

 

Carl pressed his freshly crafted cigarette between his lips and struck a match along the textured metalwork of the dashboard.

 

“Don’t play coy with me, Colette.” He drew a long drag and blew it in my face. “This morning all hell broke loose at City Hall. Before I could get down there to mitigate the situation, Rivers had already convened an emergency council meeting and started issuing executive degrees under a citywide emergency. We’re lucky we aren’t under martial law.”

 

I felt a wave of nausea creep over me, and not just from the ambiance of the truck’s slow-roasted cargo combined with whatever Turkish tobacco-clove delight Carl was now smoking.

 

“Executive degrees?” I parroted back, unable to think of any way to counter his annoyance. “I didn’t know she had that power.”

 

“Doesn’t matter whether she does or not as long as she has the council in her pocket and the governator backing her. And your dragon-lady definitely lit a fire under her with that live-streaming stunt. Has she been talking to The Kid? A little warning might’ve been nice.”

 

He tapped the ash from his cigarette onto my jeans.

 

“We were only gone a couple hours,” I protested. “How much damage could she have done?”

 

“Oh, let’s see.” He started ticking down items on his stubby fingers. “First, Rivers implemented a total media blackout. Which put the kibosh on my strike announcement even as The Kid was reviewing the final draft. Then she announced the next violation or denial of service attack would result in a full-blown, New York City 1970s-style garbage blockade. No trash in or out. Somewhere in there the Kid got the bright idea to upload my strike manifesto to the company’s homepage since we couldn’t hold a press conference. When one of River’s lackeys whispered that happy news into her ear, she invoked an emergency clause in the contract to bring in replacement workers, aka strike-breakers, though in this case also union busters. And you’ll never guess who that will be.”

 

I tried to brush the flakes of ash from my pantleg but only ended up with a grey smear. “Public Works?”

 

“Don’t I wish.” He snorted. “But only on a temporary tag-it-and-rebag-it basis. After that, everything goes over to Refuseniks, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Fenris Bros, LLC. Calvin must have raided my Rolodex.”

 

It took a moment for that to sink in. “Wait, the Fenris brothers, as in D.W.A.R.V.E.N. A.L.E? Our war on Christmas compatriots? That’s great news.”

 

“Is the oxygen really that thin at your altitude, Thrymr, or are you just congenitally suboptimal? Those dverger are still trying to recomp their losses from the whole Cache for Trash debacle. So, they’ve had to branch out before the Oslo mafia calls in their markers.”

 

He blew another cloud of smoke my way, which I frantically and vainly tried to wave aside.

 

“And the best part?” he continued. “Since the Kid posted our manifesto, once the Refuseniks are onsite, all our hairy asses are canned. Even daddy Calvin can’t save us this time.”

 

He ground out his half-smoked cigarette against the vinyl seat, which emitted a smell akin to a spiced Swedish rice-pudding left on the stove without stirring about eight hours too long until wisps of charcoal burst with each delicate smokey bubble that seemed to have all the Baltic Sea’s microplastics baked right in.

 

“So that’s it then?” I studied him. “Hasta la vista Osceola. Hola Bogata.”

 

He glared at me with his trademark evil gnomish grin. The one he used when he played a game that he called Swedish half-craps with a single die where each roll went something like, one, two, three, do something stupid, four, five, six, do something really stupid.

 

“Not even close,” he said. “Buckle up, Buttercup, because life is about to come at you pretty fast.”

 

---

 

It was only three days before I found out just exactly how fast Carl meant. Mach six or maybe warp seven. Definitely not limping along at sublight speed.

 

As a result of my recent close encounter with the Floorwalker, and my known association with Carl, I learned that Sessions had been placed under a full trash embargo. I only found out because the notification, which I never received, had been cc’d to the Health Dept. No trash collection was a sanitation violation. Maria, my general contractor, had texted me a picture of the red-crosshatched shutdown order and the yellow crime tape sealing to the front door along with all the other entrances. Which meant no further progress on the already glacial renovations until the situation was resolved. A delay being bankrolled from my personal savings and the meager income from the online book orders I could still fulfill.

 

Suddenly, I had even more time to kill as my wife had a sharp influx of work-related CloseUp calls. So, I’d decided to resume my walking routine, this time with my wife’s purple weighted vest that were all the rage on social media. I was convinced they would become the 21^st Century equivalent of a hair shirt. But a walk in the park got me out of the house for a couple of hours without risking another altercation at the barricades.

 

As I approached, I noticed movement around the modern art rendition of the mobile dumpster fire still quietly decomposing and perfuming that corner of the neighborhood. An industrial tow truck was parked in front of it raising my hopes that someone was finally going to remove the Trashadorian carcass.

 

That notion was quickly dispelled when I spotted two childlike bodies crawling out from beneath the undercarriage, a pair I recognized by their matching, impressively braided full beards. Gern and Gisel, the twins, the youngest of the Fenris brothers. I ambled over for a quick hello. That’s when I noticed the wrecker truck bore the logo of Refuseniks, Inc.

 

“Well, well,” Gern, or maybe Gisel said. I couldn’t never tell them apart. “If it isn’t the defector.”

 

“And after all we’ve done for you,” the other added.

 

I couldn’t think what that might have been other than introducing me to Carl and taking my otherwise sedentary, sedate and sane life for a spin in the blender on puree.

 

“Dopey, Doc,” I called out to them, returning the barb, knowing how much they hated Snow White references. I motioned to the truck. “What’s the prognosis?”

 

Gisel, or Gern, turned back to the trash truck. “The driveshaft’s mostly borked.”

 

I tried to hide my astonishment at his choice of adverbs. “I guess that means you’ll have to hook it up and finally tow it out of here.” I nodded toward the wrecker which looked more than capable.

 

“Oow, look who ‘s all up in our business,” the first twin intoned. “What else does that big brain tell you, Brad?”

 

“For the hard of hearing at altitude,” the other twin continued, “he said ‘mostly’ borked, not ‘completely’ borked.”

 

“’Completely’ borked might mean we couldn’t perform emergency field surgery with a welder.” The original twin motioned to the welding rig and the steel rods on the ground. “‘Mostly’ borked means the patient might yet live.”

 

“We can rebuild it…”

 

“Better, stronger, faster…”

 

“And if we drive it out, we can claim salvage…”

 

“Otherwise, it’s just a bulk pickup finder’s fee.”

 

My head snapped back and forth between them like watching a Wimbledon final match courtside by the net, trying to see if they were serious. With Norwegian dverger, or dwarves as they liked to be called, it was tough to tell until they burst out laughing for having suckered you in.

 

Before they could decide whether to spring the punchline on me, a disconcerting rumbling emerged from somewhere deep within the park. Like a hippopotamus mating call.

 

“What’s that,” I wondered aloud.

 

“Sounds like thunder…” one twin said.

 

“Sounds like the 4^th of July…” the other corrected.

 

The sound grew louder, now accompanied by an inexplicable squeal, like an amped up version of the Kid about to make an appearance in his fastback muscle car, only set to roid rage speed.

 

“No, by Thor,” the dwarves exclaimed in unison, “that’s a turbo-charged, nitro-injected, vintage Heil diesel engine with the governor removed.”

 

I was still trying to parse through those words when one last squeal presaged the arrival of a dirty pink monstrosity of a garbage truck that virtually flew from behind the screening greenery of the park, straddling the pedestrian path leading to the neighborhood. When it took the final corner at speed, I swore I saw the tires on one side rise from the ground before correcting with a quick Tokyo drift. Two pairs of people clung with both hands desperately to the back, the outside pair nearly weightless during the maneuver.

 

The behemoth appeared to be a driverless nightmare until I spotted a grimacing face peering just over the bottom of the windshield as the truck shifted gears and accelerated onto the straightaway, careening toward the vehicle gate at the aforementioned speed. Engage engines at full, Mr. Sulu.

 

Carl.

 

As they drew closer, I could identify the Kid, Lady Gaga. Neon Deadpool, and UnCommon clinging to the Jesus handles, heads tucked, bracing for impact as the truck cannonballed toward the vehicle gate at ramming speed.

 

Gern and Gisel reacted by diving beneath our derelict wreck for cover while I was transfixed by the spectacle. The rose-colored atrocity smashed the gate, sending panels of chain-link caroming off their hinges twenty yards to either side. The twins grabbed my ankles and pulled. The unaccustomed weight of the walking vest toppled me into a faceplant. As I spit out dirt, the twins continued pulling me to safety by clawing up my jeans like rock-climbers. Only they were stationary and I was the moving wall.

 

When I looked up, Carl and his crew shot past in a haze of pink. I spotted a shot coat of primer on the side panel painted with “GIGO” in blocky black letters with a stylized raccoon in a jumpsuit beside it. I lay in the dirt beneath the Trashadorian behemoth, stunned by what I’d just seen.

 

The twins recovered before I did and sprang into action.

 

“What does that jackwagon think he’s doing,” one of them cried as they scrambled out from our temporary sanctuary.

 

“Only one way to find out,” the other replied. They each grabbed a wrist and pulled me clear next. “You’re with us.”

 

‘I’m good to sit this one out,” I responded, trying to brush away the dirt from my face and from my wife’s now grimy weighted vest. It was now more like a muddy mauve than purple. I’d hear about that when I returned home.

 

“No way,” they replied, slapping at my hands and chest. “We need to corner him. All these twisty little streets in this maze of a neighborhood look alike. You’re drafted as our navigator.”

 

By navigator, I was pretty sure they meant hostage. Like with Carl, that would matter.

 

They grabbed my wrists again and we piled into the wrecker, with me sandwiched between twins. Gern or Gisel had a similar setup to Carl’s to see over the dash and reach the pedals, only less improvised and jury-rigged. That didn’t stop the twin from pouring on the speed as we tore away from the easement toward the corner Carl’s crew had just disappeared around.

 

With the windows down, we could only hear the rumbling echo of Carl’s progress somewhere off to the right, now growing louder. I had a pretty good idea that meant he’d turned onto a street that paralleled ours. The Fenris twins were right about one thing: the streets in this neighborhood often drew the uninitiated into circling for hours looking for their destination. Streets with the same number didn’t connect, until all the GPS navigation apps threw up their hands into confusion. The difference between street, avenue, lane, court and way was critical. Occasionally the Maps app would try to send service trucks through the fenced side yard of the house next to the burnt-out trash truck to try to get to my house.

 

But there were only two ways in or out of the neighborhood, both currently barricaded by Trashadorians like there was a presidential debate scheduled on the other side. Three, I suppose, if you counted Carl’s impromptu addition from the park. But from here, there was only one other route to circle back around.

 

“I think I know where he’s going,” I instructed the twin driving. “Turn right where the road tees.”

 

By that second corner, we began to see signs of Carl’s passing. Random houses across from each other had huge blanks in their hedges of black trash bags, shockingly evident in their absence. Like a rogue dentist had been extracting teeth haphazardly.

 

“That Swedish devil is pirating our bulk pickups,” the twin to my right cried. “Goose it, Gisel or we’ll never catch that garbage scow.”

 

At least now I knew which twin was which.

 

The wrecker engine whined higher as Gisel jammed through the gears but we didn’t put on much speed.

 

“I’m not sure how much more of this the engine can take,” Gisel replied as he flew toward the next cross street. “We’re built for endurance, not acceleration.”

 

“Turn right here,” I instructed, still tracking the grumbling groans of the trash truck ahead of us.

 

Gisel hugged the corner tighter and faster than I imagined possible as we all leaned into each other. When we finished squealing around that it, we saw what Carl was up to. Halfway up the block, the pink monstrosity was idling while the four-person crew threw bags from either side into the hopper. The street was lined with their black-shrouded misses like an obstacle course.

 

“Stockholm speed-loading,” Gisel noted. “That would never pass muster in Oslo.”

 

“Good tactic but the shortsighted,” Gern agreed. “The compactor will eventually put a drag on his acceleration. Unless he’s not going for a full load. Punch it. That’s our chance.”

 

We plowed through an errant bag in the street, scattering a small cloud of trash in our wake.

 

“We’ll outmaneuver them on the corners,” Gisel agreed. “He can only make distance on the straightaways,” Gisel then turned to me. “Any way we can cut him off?”

 

Well, maybe, I thought, if we’d just stayed where we were and blocked his exit through the park. But now that we were on the chase, that ship had sailed.

 

“Not unless he makes a mistake,” I replied, gauging our speed against the pink leviathan. Gisel was right. Carl accelerated faster. Then the unmistakable sound of the compactor engaging caught all our attention. Flames shot out of the exhaust stack by the cab as Carl pulled away, well out-accelerating us.

 

“What in seven hells is that,” I asked in disbelief.

 

“That, my friend, is the nitro kicking in,” Gern responded.

 

We closed slightly after cornering but each time we made up distance, Carl would blare his airhorn and the crew leapt back to their Jesus handles as he bolted off the starting line like he was practicing for Daytona. We never got closer than half a block. He always grabbed up enough territory on the straights to allow his crew to perform another quick load.

 

Carl led us through the gridwork road patterns in the back of the neighborhood, allowing us just close enough to keep his options open so we couldn’t get ahead of him. He played the distance so we could never anticipate whether he would circle around toward the stop sign intersection or double back the way he came. It was like a cat and rat race in GTA: Staten Island, Fresh Kills landfill edition.

 

Even with the stops, they’d barely made a dent in the curbside backlog.

 

“His acceleration’s lagging from the load,” Gern finally noted. “He’s got to be wrapping up.”

 

He was right. Carl was no longer jumping off the line as quickly. We began slowly gaining on him after each corner but the bulk of his truck formed an effective passing barrier even if Gisel were to attempt it on the sidewalk. I rifled through the map in my head.

 

“I have an idea,” I said, reflecting back on my only experience with street racing when I was about the Kid’s age. “There are two ways back to the park entrance. With both, there’s a parallel route where we might just be able to get in front of him and cut him off.”

 

Gern nodded approvingly. “And trap him like a rat in a coffee can.”

 

With the way Carl was headed, there was really only one route he could take.

 

Gisel inched closer on a straightaway as he and Carl blew through a four-way stop. Carl’s crew no longer looked so cavalier hanging off the back, eyeing us.

 

“I hope this thing corners as well as you say,” I said. “We’ve got three to his one and we’ll be ahead of him.”

 

Gisel nodded a confirmation, no longer taking time for words.

 

“Take the next right.” I instructed.

 

“What right?” Gisel asked. We were so close that it wasn’t immediately obvious.

 

“Right! Now!” I yelled.

 

As Gisel yanked the wheel, our rear tires squealed in a half-Rockford, followed immediately by a similar left two houses later before we could plough into someone’s living room. His wheels never slowing acceleration until they recaught pavement. He floored it on the straight, pouring on speed. I could hear as he passed Carl’s unmistakable but now laden rumble a block over. If we could make the final upcoming turn, we might just have a chance.

 

“At the tee, turn left,” I instructed Gisel.

 

“What’s to the right?” Gern asked.

 

“Dead end,” I replied. In fact, the one that would have connected to my street and taken us back to where we started without an interposing barricade and fenced yard in the way.

 

I’d done something like this once before. In high school, perhaps unwisely, I’d taken my slant six up against a friend’s V-8 through a neighborhood much like this one. That time, the two routes were even, a pair of L’s forming a rectangle with the in and out on opposite long branches. So, two turns either way you went, one early, one late.  My friend was already in front, blocking my ability to pass by swerving back and forth. He chose the early turn, as he’d always done. From somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remembered a piece of psychology. My friend had the lead and thought he could keep it. There was a natural tendency for him to ease off the gas once he no longer saw me behind him, thinking maybe I’d given up. Out of sight, out of mind. But he didn’t know the neighborhood like I did, that there was an alternate route. So, I poured on the speed after he turned. Freed from behind his taillights, I setup for late turn path.

 

And slewed through a right then an immediate left to appear as if by magic in front of him with only time for him to instinctively brake. If I’d gauged the distance wrong at a glance, or if his video game reflexes had failed him, we both would have woken up in an ER. If we’d woken up at all. But I was right and he was quick, so we didn’t. A win for competitive adrenaline, I guess?

 

At that point I had controlled the lanes to keep him from passing until we reached out destination, much as we hoped to do with Carl.

 

This scenario should have worked out the same. But perhaps Gisel was less tolerant of testosterone poisoning. Or perhaps it was the longer distance with an additional turn and a lesser engine. Or maybe, just maybe, I’d miscalculated Carl’s sanity. Though the stunt with the grenade on that slow Tuesday night a while back should have tipped me off.

 

What I hadn’t counted on was Carl, then or now, channeling his adoptive Columbian drug-dealer cajónes which we were about to learn massed more than all of ours combined. And his sanity, much like a teenaged boy’s, couldn’t be measured with a micrometer, tilting the scales even further. Though between him and Gisel, that might have been a dead heat.

 

Either way, when Carl spotted us preparing to cross his T, he was already slowing to prepare for the corner. But instead of braking to fall in behind us, he made an unorthodox survival maneuver. He zigged when he should have zagged, turned right instead of left. Which meant instead of broadsiding us, likely into a confetti of sheet metal, he performed an impromptu PIT maneuver that transferred all our momentum into a tight spin in the intersection. Which only wound down after several dizzying revolutions, leaving us in a perfect facing to witness his dilemma as we shuddered to a stop.

 

The sudden turn and slight collision had left the pink behemoth once again with its left wheels attempting to gain traction empty air. Meaning he could not make the right turn onto the parallel street we’d just come out of without going over onto his side. So, he jagged the wheel out and back to resume full contact with the pavement. By then his final escape opportunity was gone. With the dead end he was hurtling toward, we could just pull up and box him in.

 

Or so we thought.

 

Instead, Carl chose door number two, the one with Carol Merrill standing next to it. He punched what was left of his acceleration, shattering the “No Outlet” bumblebee stripped warning barricade which barely slowed him before giving the white privacy fence beyond the same treatment. He then ground through someone’s double-lot side yard before mowing down the matching fence streetside. Which left him one quick turn away from his freshly installed, unauthorized access point into the park and a lumbering getaway.

 

The three of us in the wrecker could only stare as Neon Deadpool and the Kid executed a perfectly synchronized single-finger salute. Lady Gaga tossed a handful of pink papers into the air that formed a cloudlike screen for their escape. UnCommon clung to his handle with both hands like he’d just had a full come-to-Jesus moment. Mr. Wizard that I didn’t want to be a renegade trash collector anymore.

 

By the time we three recovered our wits and followed the line of debris back to the derelict trash truck where our merry chase had started, all that was left of Carl and his crew was a distant, intermittent rumbling in the park.

 

Gisel silently pulled up next to the abandoned hulk in defeat. While the twins retrieved their welding rig, I gathered up one of Lady Gaga’s pink papers. All I could make out through the Olde English script was something about GIGO, Vice Mayor Calvin and a letter of Marque and Reprisal, whatever that was.

 

After a moment, Gern and Gisel joined me in puzzling over the sheet. Both shook their heads as one of them said, “It looks like Carl’s crew has gone full trash panda.”

 

“Trash panda?” I asked.

 

“It seems,” the other twin replied as he crumpled up the pink paper and tossed it over his shoulder, “That your illustrious vice mayor granted him rights as garbage privateers.”

 

With that they prepared to retreat and report to Fenris Bros central. Leaving me to explain my morning and all the commotion to my, by now, morbidly curious wife.

 

---

 

I didn’t have long to wait for a reaction to the wild ride. It was hard to tell if the neighborhood was more annoyed with the carnage of Carl’s trash raid or with his half-completed job. The neighborhood socials were ablaze with speculation of who was behind it. No names had been mentioned yet, I suppose because people were too busy crowdsourcing the meaning of GIGO to some rogue AI. After much effort, they settled on the programming acronym of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

 

Our north neighbors didn’t wait for the speculation to resolve. As usual, they fled in the dead of night at the first hint of inconvenience, like the neighborhood had transformed into a crime scene, or had received a full FEMA ground zero designation. But not before adding to the wall of black trash bags blockading the easement. I wondered if I could somehow have Carl or the Kid pin this on them.

 

I only know all this from the infrequent updates I received from my wife. The moment I limped back through the door, she’d grounded me like an errant child, without wanting to hear whatever lame, half-assed explanation I’d had time to concoct.

 

“You, Carl, the Fenris brothers, the mayor, the mysterious Tibetans no one else has seen, I don’t care,” she said in her most ominous voice. “I just want a normal life with normal problems that don’t involve local, state or federal police agencies. Gladys Gossip is inundating the neighborhood page hoping to flush out a scapegoat. If our name comes up, she’ll gather up the torches and pitchforks and burn us out. I have no intention of being collateral damage in her karaoke edition of “Mob Rules.” I will throw you and the other little monsters straight under the trash truck if it comes to that, Frankenstein.”

 

My survival instinct maintained its four second delay. “Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster,” I couldn’t resist pointing out, like it would help me with this unwinnable argument.

 

“Zip it, Mary Shelley,” she spat. “Unless you want an improv reenactment of the ending of that novel. Spoiler alert, he dies, she died, everybody dies!”

 

I thought she might be confusing that book with Hamlet but I knew from the death glare she gave me that adding fuel to the fire of this Shakespearean tragedy was a uniquely bad idea.

 

“So, until your latest mental health crisis resolves,” she continued, “you’re restricted to the back room during the day so I can keep an eye on you.”

 

True to her word, she exiled me right after breakfast the next morning.

 

“You have your tablet, a book, some snacks and access to the back bathroom,” she said maternally as she prepared to shut me in. I was surprised she hadn’t gifted me a cask of amontillado. “So don’t let me see you open this door until I come get you for lunch. Until then, mommy’s working.”

 

I sat for the next two hours locked within her imaginary iron bars of confinement. I distracted myself researching early science fiction to see if there was suitable expansion for Eisteddfods offerings should the renovations ever resume. I had just begun catching up on an unknown early science fiction novella by George Eliot, when I heard the squeal of tires echo off the side fence by the window my reading chair was perched beneath. A few seconds later, I heard the front door open then close with alacrity.

 

After another moment of ominous silence, I cracked the window to see if I could hear anything. All I could make out were occasionally raised voices though I couldn’t discern any words. My wife’s soprano countered by a bass baritone that I became increasingly convinced was Carl’s.

 

Crap.

 

I shut the window and sank back into my chair, determined to comply with my wife’s implied and at times quite explicit warnings. But like the cat at my feet, curiosity gnawed at me the longer she remained outside. I began to fear for Carl’s safety.

 

I cautiously nosed open the door to my little cage and crept out to investigate. Just a peek outside to satisfy the itch, then I’d retreat back to solitary.

 

When I got to the dining room and peered through the blinds, I spotted my wife physically blocking Carl from approaching the door. The Kid’s fastback was parked on the curb by the mailbox. All I could see was his arm resting on the top of the door where the window was rolled down. Just as my wife looked ready to physically throw Carl off the property, the Fenris Bros’ wrecker flew into view, screeching to a halt across the street. All seven dwarves piled out.

 

Sig and Gun strode toward Carl, who ducked behind my wife while others hung back by the truck. The twins began admiring the mound of metal conduit across the street. I prepared to retreat back to the safety of my sanctuary thinking my wife had the situation well in hand. Then, Gun said something which suddenly had Carl intent on confronting him, leaving my wife to play referee at a Columbian soccer match, trying to separate them in the driveway.

 

I had to decide quickly whether I valued discretion more than valor. I wasn’t supposed to be at the dining room window, wasn’t supposed to be witnessing this confrontation. I was uncertain whether my wife would welcome a white knight move or would resent it if she felt she had the situation under control. But I knew the Fenris brothers, knew Carl, and knew how any situation involving them collectively could quickly turn out of pocket.

 

I looked down to the floor to find the cat looking up at me as if to remind me that the curiosity was killing me and there was only one solution even if it meant risking my hide. I just hoped the satisfaction would be worth my resuscitation as I opened the front door and started down the walk.

 

Carl’s voice hit me first. “Calm down there, Lady Liberty,” he admonished. “Let’s not turn this into a bodice ripper.”

 

“I’m just saying,” my wife answered patiently, “that my husband couldn’t lead a three-ring circus.”

 

I assumed from the look she shot me that was for my benefit. Uh, thank you, hon?

 

“Which is exactly what you’ll get if you leave these amateurs in charge,” Sig replied.

 

“Why don’t you and your Laplanders pile back into that clown car you call a wrecker,” Carl sniped. “Maybe if you pedal faster, you can catch me next time.”

 

That sent Gun surging toward Carl who ducked behind my wife. They both chased around her like a pair of bratty kids playing tag amongst the living room furniture.

 

Now that I was halfway down the walk, my wife shot me a look of appeal. After her opening comment, I ignored it. Instead, I strode across the lawn to toward the Kid in his car, shaking his head while Carl and Gun played May Pole around my wife. He nodded to me as I approached with a glance at the antics in the driveway, then another to where the remaining dwarves were busying themselves across the street. The twins had wandered over to more closely examine the pile of metal conduiting while the others were futzing with the welding rig on the wrecker. I kept an eye on the scene to make sure none of the other dwarves were about to shift the odds against Carl.

 

“Aren’t you going to rescue your damsel, my dude?” The Kid asked as I leaned on the roof of his fastback.

 

“In a minute. How about you give me the Readers Digest version of what’s going on first so I know what I’m rescuing her from.”

 

“You mean like the Snaptagram episode synopsis?”

 

“Yeah, that.” I had no idea what those words meant but hoped he did.

 

Somehow, he crammed all the morning’s useful information into a ninety-second spot like he was promoting it to a production company agent in an elevator pitch while getting kickbacks on the clicks.

 

Apparently, a great deal had changed since I’d been in prison. His startlingly cogent commentary went something like this.

 

When the mayor heard about the wild ride, she decreed the vice mayor had exceeded his authority. She then revoked GIGO’s letter of marque and fired everyone including the Trashadorians and the Fenris brothers. In another emergency council meeting, she declared me as the ringleader of this civic unrest from our previous encounters, with Carl and the Kid as my lieutenant-accomplices.

 

Next, she tried to declare martial law but the sheriff refused to get involved in what he termed “a domestic dispute”. So, she had mobilized all the city workers. First, she instructed them to blockade the entrance through the park. Carl and the Fenris brothers had barely gotten through before they parked a city dump truck astride the park entrance. Then they installed the barricades they used for crowd control at citywide Great Patriotic holiday events across both entrances to the neighborhood, replacing the now evacuated Trashadorian trucks.

 

In an hour, or whenever they got fully organized, she had instructed them to open the barricades at the front of the neighborhood and invade, issuing code violations to any house with uncollected trash. To avoid the fine, her enforcers would graciously offer to help rebag the trash to ready it for bulk pickup for a small assessment fee. Armed with walkie-talkies, special tags and a sheet of freshly renegotiated rules for the ever-shifting bulk pickup requirements, they would guarantee priority curbside collection. Like a mafia protection racket in a 1970’s New York City garbage strike.

 

Unlike me, Carl hadn’t slept on the morning’s events. Before he and the Kid broke into our siege camp, he’d instructed Lady Gaga, UnCommon and Neon Deadpool to organize a relief force. Now every independent hauler in the county, reinforced by the displaced Trashadorians, had gathered just beyond the city workers’ siege lines. Because the termination of the trash contract was seen as an anti-union action, the local Mermaid Baristas and Smiley Delivery Drivers both had signed on in sympathy. They had completely enveloped the public works trucks and barricades to form a double siege.

 

By the time the Kid had finished, Carl was using my wife as a fairly effective shield against Gun. But Carl couldn’t leave well enough alone and lofted some fresh new insult. Sig lunged to join the fray. Carl looked like he was about to turn my wife into a jungle gym. This time there was no hesitation as she turned her eyes to me in an appeal for aid.

 

“How would you like to see a live encore to your favorite three-minute video,” I asked the Kid.

 

His eyes widened. He nodded eagerly.

 

“You know how to wolf whistle?” I asked him.

 

Again, he nodded, though this time more like who doesn’t. Well, that would be me. A skill I’d never picked up.

 

“On three, give me an introduction,” I instructed him. “One… two…”

 

I couldn’t hear myself say “three” over the shrilly piercing WEE-OO-WEET that emerged through the Kid’s fingers. It scared me and I’m fearless. But only for the instant it took for the tangle of dwarves around my wife to freeze. The heads of the three lingering by the truck snapped in our direction. Even Gern and Gisel looked up from their bickering over the pile of metal tubing.

 

With their full and undivided attention, I sprang up onto the hood of the Kid’s car.

 

“I don’t know who THINKS they’re in charge,” I bellowed in my best Coyote News cabinet member press conference voice. Then I hooked both thumbs toward my chest. “But I KNOW I’m in charge.”

 

Ten pairs of eyes were glued upon me with expressions of shock, awe and disbelief.

 

Unfortunately, that was about as far as I’d thought the moment through. I had them but now I had to keep them. Time for a little improv.

 

“From what I’ve just heard, we’ve all been tarred by the same brush.” I jumped back to the ground, sticking the landing, and strode toward the center of the street, midway between all three groups. “And the feathers are on the way if we all stand here bickering.”

 

That was greeted by uniform looks of confusion. Not my strongest metaphor.

 

“It seems to me that this morning the mayor declared war on all of us collectively,” I continued. “Well, if it’s war she wants, it’s war we’ll give her.” I paced the asphalt like a tiger. “She knows what Carl and I can deliver from the deeply personal defeat of her Patriot Police. She still stings from that. But she’s never witnessed what that means when combined with the full fury of the Fenris brothers.”

 

Where I expected a roar from the dwarves, I was only greeted with an enthusiastic “Yeah!” from the Kid.

 

I remained undaunted. “So, we can either stand here bickering about who smurfed who. Or we can combine our talents and shake the Osceola world tree to its roots. Who’s with me!?”

 

This time the soundtrack swelled into a full chorus of crickets. Sig and Carl exchanged a dubious look that indicated continued bickering might be the better option.

 

That’s when my wife grabbed them each by the collar and stage-whispered in the universal mom tone a warning. “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”

 

After a moment of stunned silence, my wife released them and gently straightened their collars.

 

Sig finally sighed. “Ok, so what’s your plan Oppenheimer?”

 

“Carl has half of one and allies on the outside,” I said with a nod to my wife, thanking her for the support. She nodded back. “So, let’s start with that.” I motioned for him to explain.

 

“We’ve got a double siege outside the neighborhood,” Carl took over. “But Rivers is no Julius Ceaser, so we just need to break her lines and our reinforcements will stream in. They’ll have this place cleaned up before her bureaucrats can sharpen their pencils.”

 

“Yeah, and that’s the problem,” Gun protested. “With only the wrecker and the Kid’s toy car, we don’t have the fire power.”

 

“Gern, Gisel,” I called out to bring them into the discussion, “You’ve been worrying over that pile of conduiting awhile. Tell us what you’ve got.”

 

Gern or Gisel cleared his throat and began, “We need to get medieval on them.”

 

The other twin took up the explanation. “We’re thinking we could build a trebuchet to brush back the crowd if we drop the right ammunition into the city assembly zone.”

 

The first then took up the cause again, “When they scatter, we use the wrecker to reverse reindeer the derelict truck by the park entrance to bust open the barricades.”

 

The other twin ping-ponged back, “But we need a tow vehicle for our siege engine, ammunition and a caisson, and someone crazy enough to steer the derelict and bail out before impact.”

 

All eyes turned toward the rear bumper of the Kid’s fastback and it’s conspicuously absent a tow hitch.

 

I grinned. “The Jeep has a tow ball. And ammunition is no problem.” I stared at the trash migration next door until all eyes followed. “We give them what they want to fine us for anyway. Two birds, one stone.”

 

Then my wife piped in. “We can use my Beastette to haul ammunition as long as we lay down plastic first so it doesn’t stain the carpet. Plus, we can gather bags of kitty litter as chemical warfare. That will drive anyone off.”

 

All the dwarves paused, contemplating. Those were… great ideas. I hadn’t expected her to be onboard.

 

“We’ll have to fire and move like a first-person shooter,” the Kid threw in, much to everyone’s surprise. “We can use the Stallion here to scout out multiple firing locations, call in corrections, and recon what the mayor is up to. No Leroy Jenkins.”

 

“So, all we need is a derelict driver,” I noted.

 

All eyes turned to Carl. He sighed and hung his head in resignation but nodded.

 

“Ok, folks, we have a plan. But we don’t have much time, so let’s get started,” I said.

 

This time I was greeted with a ragged cheer.

 

---

 

Gern and Gisel started welding the framework for the trebuchet using Nibel and Schil as assistants to haul metal tubing and hold it in position. Hagan raided our garage. He came up with a hand truck and my wife’s bicycle to cannibalize for wheels. He took the plywood we used to cover the windows during storms to build the counterweight box. Then he grabbed all our rope, chain, parachute cord, carabiners and a set of heavy-duty hinges. He rooted around all my hand tools but didn’t find anything worthwhile except a crowbar and a sledge hammer he hefted before taking both with him.

 

My wife and I removed the back seats from her SUV then lined the cargo deck with an old plastic shower curtain that doubled as a painting drop cloth. She pulled the Beastette onto the curb by the neighbor’s trash migration where we chose the ripest, yet most integral bags and stacked them inside. Followed by a cannonball stack of smaller white kitty litter bags we retrieved from our own trash, now safety sealed and double-bagged for our protection.

 

Sig, Gun and Carl took the wrecker to check out the derelict Trashadorian truck around the corner. The plan hinged on being able to push rather than pull the abandoned leviathan to break through the city barricades. Even without a drive shaft, that should be possible if they could gather enough speed. Carl would steer until the last minute when the wrecker would veer off and he would bail out.

 

The Kid set out as recon with a laundry list of priorities. First, he needed to scout out several firing positions and mark those on a shared map he’d created and given us all access to. Second, he needed to find a prime position for spotting and fire correction with at least one alternate. Finally, he needed to coordinate with the rest of Carl’s crew beyond the barricades and get them moving once we broke the blockade.

 

For that Carl had already established a private, encrypted Teletype group chat which he added all of us to. Well, all except my wife who wisely refused to give out her number. She bogarted my phone instead. The Kid said if his thousands of hours of playing Fog of War had taught him anything, it was that we probably wanted two or three separate, secure comm networks, especially with all the newbies. Carl vetoed that idea as too complicated. “If anyone gets too chatty, I’ll tell them to STFU.”

 

Watching the dwarves erect the trebuchet was a little like fast-forwarding through an old episode of Trashpile Wars. There were growls and grunts, curses, clanging and condemnations, all against the disco ball flashes of the welder. Soon our siege engine began to tower against the sky.

 

By now, my wife and I had finished cleaning up after loading the Beastette. The happy trio of our leadership had returned from scouting the derelict, apparently pleased enough that the reverse reindeer strategy would work. They’d prepositioned the derelict on the straightaway that led out of the neighborhood with the wrecker behind and street hiked back. Sig and Gun were immediately pressed into service with the finishing touches on the trebuchet: wheels, lever arm, counterweight, tow block, release hook.

 

Carl joined us to lean against the Beastette and watch the Fenris brothers’ final push. We would have only minutes to spare if Mayor Rivers met her timeline. Being that she was an elected official issuing ordering to civil servants, we had little fear of that.

 

“What do you think the range of that thing is?” I asked Carl as we watch the dwarves’ choreographed mechanical ballet.

 

Carl stared thoughtfully a moment, first at the trebuchet then at the barely diminished bags of trash migration. “Normally not much more than a quarter mile, at least with stones. But with the weight of those bags being more like a large pumpkin, maybe double that. Plus or minus windage.”

 

“And you really think this will work?” my wife asked, unable to break eye-contact with the dverger efficiency she’d never witnessed firsthand.

 

Carl turned to her and nodded. “These things have been used on battlefields in Ukraine and Syria for the past ten years. They’ve been field tested by the IDF and those guys don’t mess around. All we’re trying to do is scatter the opposition to minimize casualties. So, yes, Freya. It’ll work.”

 

“I love it when a plan comes together,” I said, rubbing my hands together in delight.

 

“What is it you always told me about no plan surviving first contact,” my wife asked, referring to our brief, joint Fog of War endeavor on our anniversary a few years ago.

 

Carl answered before I could think up a suitably soothing response, “To quote Thor in the Poetic Edda, ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’”

 

Both my wife and I stared at him aghast but he never stopped watching the dwarves. “No worries, ettin. I’ve seen Sig pull of crazier plans.”

 

Our phones dinged in unison with a Teletype notification from the Kid. We all consulted our screens.

 

“We’ve got movement on the perimeter. Not long now.”

 

“So much for a test firing before the main event.” Carl shook his head, then bellowed across the street. “Sig, they’re getting ready to greenlight this operation. Where are we?”

 

Nibel, Schil and Hagan were filling the counterweight box with pavers they pried up from the north neighbor’s driveway using our crowbar. Gun took a final swing with the sledge to bend the release hook, examined it and nodded in satisfaction. Sig echoed his nod and said, “Tell him the first round will be up and on the way in five.”

 

The next flurry of activity centered on getting the Jeep into position so all seven dwarves plus Carl could drag the trebuchet onto the tow hitch. It snicked as they dropped it into place, a perfect fit.

 

I admired at the thirty-foot, metal framework. Then I spotted a problem.

 

“Uh, guys?” I started. “This thing won’t fit under the trees along the street.”

 

“Sure, it will,” Gern or Gisel replied confidently, seemingly in complete defiance of the reality I was seeing. Then they proceeded to pull a number of levers on side of the trebuchet. The framework slowly collapsed to nearly flat with the wheels from our hand truck riding the pavement as supplements to my wife’s bicycle tires.

 

“Humans never trust dwarven engineering,” the other twin added.

 

“Because they’re so bad at problem solving themselves,” the first responded.

 

Sig, Gun and Carl started street hiking back to the wrecker for the final preparation of the derelict. Nibel, Schil and Hagan crammed into the back of the Jeep with tools, spare parts and a spot-welding rig. They’d serve as crew and loaders with Gern and Gisel as artillerist engineers. One of the twins claimed shotgun in the Jeep, the other in my wife’s SUV.

 

With the Jeep dragging the trebuchet and the Beastette trailing as our ammo caisson, we slowly drove off to war.

 

---

 

The first blow landed while the dwarves were setting up the trebuchet in a cul-de-sac with enough clear sky to fire that the Kid had marked on our shared map. All our phones dinged again, this time from Carl.

 

“Looks like Odin put his eye in the sky. That cramps our timeline.”

 

That’s when I heard nearby rotors beating the air into submission.

 

My wife raised a hand to shield her eyes and squinted at the sound. “It’s a news helicopter, not the sheriff or the Coast Guard.”

 

We all looked at her in uncertain amazement.

 

“No green or red stripe,” she explained. “I think it’s blue, like Channel 6. They all sound a little bit different.”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” said Nibel, who’d taken over as leadership with Sig and Gun gone. “If they are broadcasting live, the mayor will spot us for certain. We’ll have to risk firing more from each location or we’ll run out of time. Gern, is there anything we can do to speed up the operation?”

 

Gern broke away from the trebuchet while Gisel and the others locked the framework into place by lifting it and relocking the levers. “We’d thought we’d fire either trash or kitty litter from alternate locations. Then we’d see which was more effective.”

 

He stroked his braided beard in thought a moment then continued. “I suppose we could stack both in a single shot and see what happens but the spread could be unpredictable.”

 

Gisel piped in after giving the framework final a shake. Rock solid. “If we don’t wait for the Kid for ranging and fire correction, we could get in more shots.”

 

“But it will delay firing for effect unless we get lucky,” Gern finished.

 

“There’s nothing for it,” I said. “We’ll have to hope your back of the napkin trajectory calculations are good.”

 

“If we can drop a forty-foot spruce on a dime in Rockefeller Center under fire,” Nibel said, “this should present no significant problem.”

 

“Even the ettin over there could solve it if he asked his second head check his math,” Hagan added in his gravelly baritone voice, motioning to me and my wife.

 

What happened next, I only pieced together from vague memories and the evidence at our “trial”. Someone had accidentally invited Channel 6 into our encrypted Teletype conversation. My initial bet was on the Kid, but Carl or any of the dwarves might have seen some advantage in alerting the media. Which explained the helo on this side of the lake without a dead body to attract it. The mainstream news was generally reluctant to report on the surreal goings on in Osceola, I have no idea why.

 

The Piney Point Press ran a special section with a full-page fold out of the “scene of the crime” using stills from the News 6 video exploded out against a map of the neighborhood with a paragraph describing each location, and circles and arrows pointing to each incident on the timeline. It ran under the headline of “The Great Osceola Trash War” which made our actions sound like a well-planned and coordinated military campaign. It read like the Kid delivering an after-action report about a Fog of War scenario on Snaptagram.

 

The scene on the ground was much more chaotic.

 

“We’ll adjust fire on the fly and fire for effect immediately if we get word,” Gern said. Gisel added, “So each time we pull the arm back into position, drop another pair of bags into the sling, one trash, one kitty litter.”

 

“Got it. Two bags full,” Nibel repeated back. The other dwarves nodded in unison.

 

Our diminutive artillerist crew demonstrated more dwarven efficiency with each firing. The dwarves pulled down the arm, Hagan locked it in place, Nibel loaded our odiferous ammo (a large bag of trash with a small bag of kitty litter on top like the maraschino cherry on this trash sundae), Gern adjusted the alignment of the arm. Then everyone stood back as he cried, “Loose” and Gisel pulled the rope connected to the pin holding the arm in place.

 

Gravity and the counterweight took over with a whoosh then a snap which sent the two bags sailing in an arc over the houses and trees on slightly different trajectories toward the city assembly area, just under half a mile away.

 

Before the bags reached their apex, all the dwarves dove for the ropes and chains connected to the arm to pull it back into position so Hagan could reinsert the locking pin. The dwarves were denser than they appeared. They had no trouble pulling up the counterweight box of rocks.

 

My job was to pass the ammunition for Nibel to load into the sling. That loading was a precision operation not to be trusted to uninitiated. Meanwhile, my wife monitored our Teletype channel to relay any fire adjustment from the Kid.

 

Gisel pulled he pin on the next loaded round.

 

Whoosh, snap, sail.

 

The second pair of bags were in flight before we got word of where the first pair landed. Nibel was in the process of nudging the third pair into the desired position within the sling that only he understood, when my wife began reciting the Kid’s initial report.

 

“Big bag flew long, took out the Mermaid’s comfort station. Small bag landed in the city staging area, scattering city workers. Bullseye. Whatever those are, fire for effect.”

 

Nibel finally got the third pair of bags adjusted to his liking. He shot a glance at Gern who motioned him back then gave the high sign to Gisel who pulled the pin.

 

Whoosh, snap, sail.

 

Our third pair of bags arched out of the neighborhood, leaving the firing arm and sling in the air and the counterweight box resting near the ground. If we kept this up, we might empty the neighborhood of accumulated trash in no time. If Rivers and her goons let us. Unlikely.

 

“How many of those kitty litter bath bombs do we have left?” Nibel asked, seeking to adjust to the Kid’s report.

 

I glanced at the open hatch of my wife’s SUV where they were stacked like cannonballs beside an artillery firing position on the wall of the Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine. Initially three tiers stacked 9-4-1, so fourteen. We’d fired three. I doublechecked the math.

 

“Eleven,” I called over.

 

I passed Nibel a bag of trash which he held in one hand then weighed it against a bag of Kitty litter in the other. He lips moved as he soundlessly worked out the calculations.

 

“We’ve got three loads of triple aught shot and a pair of remainders before we’re out of ammo,” he called to Gern.

 

Gern considered a moment, exchanging a look with Gisel, then said, “We’ll split the ettin. Hagan, take her back and load up on as much special ammo as you can lay hands on. The other half will take over for Schil who takes over for you. We’ll drop what we have and meet you at our secondary firing position.”

 

“How come Hagan gets the smarter one,” Schil complained.

 

“Because the dumb one weighs more,” Gisel answered. “Now go! You, half-ettin, on the ropes.”

 

The Beastette sped away with Hagan and my wife. She left my phone. I was supposed to take over for her as well as Hagan, plus keep up with my own duties.

 

The next few minutes were a blur of contradictory barked orders and instructions. Grab the rope, hand over hand like a Presidential physical fitness test in elementary school PE. Hold the arm in place with shaking, straining muscles until Schil slid the pin into place. Scramble over to pass three bags of kitty litter to Nibel. Three equally weighted bags, he admonished. Run to my phone to check Teletype, reading out anything relevant from the Kid. All with a different dwarf screaming in my ear at the same time for same reason, not moving fast enough.

 

Whoosh, snap, sail. Rinse and repeat.

 

By the third iteration, I was beginning to get the hang of it, though not to anyone’s sense of speed and timing. By then, my muscles ached. My mind had gone numb. Reading the words of the Kid’s updates felt like thinking through molasses. The Smiley Delivery Drivers had rushed the barricades prematurely but been driven back. And there was still no word from my wife or Hagan about our relief ammunition supply.

 

For our fourth and final volley, I passed the two remaining bags of kitty litter to Nibel, the two heaviest and most recent of the cat’s output. They were denser than the rest. We really needed to get her to a vet.

 

Nibel weighed them, one in each hand, made some arcane adjustments to the trebuchet and declared, “It’ll do.”

 

Whoosh, snap, sail.

 

As that final pair of white bags took to the air, I was already on the phone reading the Kid’s report. A perfect creeping barrage. The last of the city workers were fleeing the scene before our final rounds landed. I called all that out as the dwarves dropped the trebuchet into travelling position, ready to be limbered and towed by the Jeep.

 

By then, the day had turned unseasonably warm. I was dripping bullets of sweat, completely exhausted. News choppers buzzed overhead. The one had divided into three in some form of media mitosis. Channels 2 and 3 had now joined Channel 6. Still no sign of the sheriff.

 

Gern and Gisel continued shouting orders as the rest of us hitched the trebuchet to the Jeep after dragging it into position. The dwarves piled in. We scrambled to shift to our secondary firing position.

 

As I wound through the neighborhood toward another cul-de-sac through the maze of ways, streets, avenues, lanes and courts, all with matching street numbers, Gern instructed me there had been a change of plans as he stared at his phone.

 

“Head for the tertiary location,” he called out, his brow furrowed from whatever he’d just read, which he chose not to share.

 

So instead of turning left into a closed loop near Carl’s newly installed cutoff back toward the house, I followed the road around a corner to the stop sign at the tee intersection that led into and out of the neighborhood.

 

Which meant we arrived in perfect time to see Carl steering the previously abandoned Trashadorian truck as it blew through the stop sign in front of us, pushed by the Ferris Brothers’ wrecker at a clip approaching lightspeed.

 

As he sped by, Carl’s face held a grimace of determination as he clutched the wheel at ten and two atop a stack of phonebooks to get a clear view over the dashboard, his trademark cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth. Sig and Gun echoed his expression of extreme concentration as they blindly accelerated the burnt-out Brobdingnagian behemoth toward its destiny at a speed that left wisps of smoke and debris swirling around the windshield of the wrecker as if the hopper’s long-extinguished fire had reignited. Like a trio of coyotes strapped to an Acme rocket cruising across desert asphalt at roadrunner speed.

 

“Follow that truck,” Gern and Gisel yelled in unison.

 

I punched the Jeep’s straight six for all it was worth. Four liters roared to life with a Serengeti mating call as we slewed into position behind them. I struggled with the wheel, belatedly remembering not to jack-knife the trebuchet and test the roll-cage.

 

Which once again put us in perfect position to witness the ensuing climax.

 

The Piney Point Press claimed Carl was going 98 when the Trashadorian hulk hit the barricades blockading the neighborhood. MPH or KPH, they didn’t say and I still don’t know.

 

Either way, we saw the wrecker break contact and veer off down a dead-end side street two blocks before impact. A block later, Carl pulled the ripcord and bailed out, rolling like a Brazilian soccer player at a World Cup final as he hit the grass of someone’s lawn, his cigarette, trailing a shower of sparks, flying toward a destination unknown.

 

An instant later, Trashadorian truck shattered the barricades with a squeal of metal and an explosion of splinters that initially obscured the full carnage. A debris cloud enveloped the street and the connecting thoroughfare before slowly dispersing, revealing the noisome colossus had slewed to the right, caroming into a drainage ditch before grinding to a halt, nose down, load bay in the air, one back wheel spinning idly. Which meant it hadn’t plowed through the privacy fence ten feet beyond and into the birdcaged pool behind it. Nor had it ridden roughshod through the neighborhood just opposite ours. The Mermaid Baristas gave the dwarves a 9.7 for the overall routine with an extra tenth point for sticking the landing.

 

The dispersing debris cloud still sparkled like a magical mystery mist enveloping the rainbow bridge. As it finally filtered to the ground, a gaggle of Smiley Delivery Drivers tentatively approached the beached leviathan with a mixture of trepidation and awe.

 

My only thought at that moment was for Carl, who lay motionless on a lawn amidst a set of evil-looking garden gnomes arranged on a stage like a diorama of an 80s hair band.

 

I started to stomp the Jeep’s brakes until I again remembered the trebuchet riding close behind me. Instead, I began a controlled braking maneuver until we slung to a stop intact. The dwarves piled out, I mistakenly assumed to tend their erstwhile compatriot. No. They jogged down the side street to where the wrecker waited, piled in, and made their escape by breaking through a no exit sign at the dead end into a previously unconnected neighborhood.

 

Leaving me alone in the Jeep, still attached to the trebuchet, deciding what to do.

 

I knew I should have followed the dwarves, but where would I go? I couldn’t disappear like they could. I would have to go home sometime. And I couldn’t just leave Carl. Could I? Would he leave me? Don’t ask that. Wrong question. I knew the answer from years of experience.

 

But despite all the insults, the angst, and sometimes the sheer terror of our misadventures together, I still thought of Carl as a friend. Perhaps not the kind of friend I would loan the Jeep to, or entrust with the spare keys to my safe deposit box. Or really even ask to clear the cache on my computer if I died for fear of what he might add in. But a friend nonetheless.

 

And he still wasn’t moving, awkwardly sprawled like an adoring fan who’d passed out in the mosh pit in front of the heavy metal stage.

 

Before I could move in one direction or the other, trash trucks began pouring into the neighborhood through the shattered siege lines. Trashadorians, Refuseniks, Wastoids, Garbageers, plus a few independents I couldn’t identify on the fly, each with two and sometimes three throwers clinging to the back plus an auxiliary riding in the cab. As steady stream that began dispersing to each side street, cul-de-sac and closed loop behind me to begin Stockholm speed-loading bags and emptying the contents of standard containers.

 

Which meant the Jeep was stuck for the duration as the parade of trucks swerved around it. Decision made.

 

I sprinted to Carl while the news choppers circled overhead like ospreys seeking prey. When I knelt beside him, I noted my Swedish friend’s gnomish face was encased in a mask of complete tranquility. Like a baby-faced cherub in a Rococo painting I’d once had to memorize for a college course in Art and Architecture. Maybe the Toilet of Venus hanging in the Met. Peaceful and innocent. Completely un-Carl-like.

 

When I reached down to lay a hand on his chest to keep him from stirring while I evaluated his injuries, he slit one eyelid and smiled wryly.

 

“We really shook the World Tree this time, didn’t we Jotunn?” he whispered through his pain and confusion. “We’ll be drinking for free forever beyond the gates of Valhalla for this.”

 

Then he passed out with a contented sigh, leaving me to decipher the expressions of the wicked garden gnomes arrayed above him like a tribute band as I collapsed to the grass in complete exhaustion.

 

---

 

The aftermath I pieced together from various accounts. Honestly, I found Channel 6’s version of events three times more engaging than Channel 2’s and twice as accurate at Channel 3’s. My wife and Osceola Observer’s continuing coverage, plus the Piney Point Press special section filled in most of the holes from Carl’s concussion and my lingering PTSD.

 

True to Carl’s word, the rogue trash truck convoy cleaned up all the garbage in the neighborhood before Mayer Rivers’ city workers could crawl out of wherever they were hiding after they were released from the Hazmat Decontamination protocol that Osceola Fire Rescue had insisted they go through. Turns out the fire union had stopped by Mermaid Baristas’ comfort station to partake in the complementary dark roast and avocado toast combo, free for fellow union members only, before we cleared them out with friendly fire. But they had enough time to flirt and cut a deal for the exclusive fire station coffee supply rights in exchange for the Mermaids help with leveraging the city in the fire district’s upcoming contract renegotiation.

 

The only code enforcement citation the city workers managed to issue was for the trash migration next door. Their pile was too big for a single truck to handle even after we’d raided it for ammunition.

 

The only real casualty of the operation, aside from the Mermaid Baristas espresso machine, was Carl’s concussion. For which he received a silver garbage can lid medal from the newly formed Trashadorians’ union with a two-bag cluster for service above and beyond the call of duty.

 

Because wife’s SUV was safely hidden in the garage at Trashadorian truck’s the time of impact, it miraculously had not been ID’d on camera. Nor had she been tagged in the review our Teletype handles which ended up all over the News 6 reporting.

 

Since they were on camera outside the assembly area when the rain of trash started falling and had indecipherable Teletype handles, Neon Deadpool, Lady Gaga, and UnCommon all had airtight alibis.

 

The Kid did not. It turns out he was the one who’d “accidently” invited the News 6 chopper crew into out private Teletype chat. His handle, “Spawn of Nivlac”, was easily identified, so he immediately dragged Carl and I under the trash truck with him. With that and all his Fog of War experience, he had every earmark of a future Secretary of Defense.

 

Hagan disappeared, taking off into the park across the ditch behind the house while my wife was distracted by double-bagging the remainder of our used kitty litter to make certain it held together in flight. Presumably, he headed to a prearranged rendezvous with the other Fenris brothers.

 

The Fenris brothers melted away like a morning fog in a fjord in the midst of global warming. After picking up Hagan, the wrecker lost itself in the road patterns of Osceola while the news choppers were focused on the aftermath in the neighborhood. An anonymous source told Holly at the Osceola Observer that they’d all self-deported before ICE could round them up and Gitmo them.

 

But they didn’t totally leave us totally holding the bag. They were tried in absentia alongside us, which meant their lawyer represented us pro bono. He was a small, sharp Icelander who had made his name defending rock fairies from urban encroachment. He cleverly revealed Mayor Rivers had never formally delivered the proper written revocation to the Fenris brothers, so the vice mayor’s Letter of Marque and Reprisal still had full legal force at the time of the “incident” with the Trashadorian truck. He then produced a predated letter saying myself, the Kid and Carl, along with his unnamed crew, had been hired as subcontractors by Fenris Bros, LLC, which fully indemnified all of us. Witnessed, countersigned and documented by the Danish embassy, where the dwarves may or may not have sought asylum.

 

With that, the city’s case fell apart. With Calvin still on the council and riding high in the polls for ending the trash embargo, and the Kid being an accused member of the leadership cartel, everyone wanted this garbage case buried.

 

Well, almost everyone.

 

The mayor needed an example for her own upcoming reelection campaign. In the end all she could do was cite us for a violation of the municipal codes for littering and creating a public nuisance. Which carried a maximum fine of $50 along with community service of picking up any remaining garbage.

 

Which the three of us duly performed the following Sunday at the erstwhile assembly area at the neighborhood entrance in custom orange jumpsuits provided by the Smiley Delivery Drivers with all manner of time and back-saving equipment they donated as a marketing write-off. The Mermaid Baristas setup another comfort station, where Osceola Fire Rescue continued to flirt. And we had an honor guard of Trashadorians to keep our exuberant if adoring public at bay.

 

Most of them only wanted selfies with us looking over our shoulders so back of our jumpsuits were clearly visible. The inscription on which read:

 

“I survived the Great Osceola Trash War

And all I got was this $50 jumpsuit.”

 

A month after our victory, the Trashadorians adopted those as their official one-day uniform to celebrate their successful unionization and restored city franchise contract. With the Smiley Delivery Drivers, Mermaid Baristas and Osceola Fire Rescue trooping alongside them, and Carl adorned with his shiny new medal in the lead, they paraded through the streets of Osceola like an Orange Order March, only without as much animus or sectarian violence. More like a Great Osceola Trash War Victory Carnivale.

 

But somewhere in the bowels of City Hall, in a dimly lit chamber, framed beside the City Charter behind a block of bullet-proof glass, Mayor Rivers enshrined the autographed copies of our formal city code citations. Or as she refers to them, our full confessions and acknowledgment of our crimes. Which she enthusiastically rolls out for display on each of her Great Patriotic Holidays as a part of her newly funded Committee for Public Safety, which she now chairs.

 

As it turns out, Auntie Lisa has a very long memory.

 

 

© 2026 Edward P. Morgan III