Bart Blog

The plastic bottle deposit was the best thing that ever happened to you, and to people like you. Five empty bottles get you a cheap beer. Five more, another beer. Another five, something to eat, or another beer. No more standing outside the store asking. That was the worst part. No one gave you money. The kind ones gave you bread, cheese, milk: things you already had, crushed in your backpack. You can’t forget the world on milk.

Today you just need to swim, as you call it, in one or two containers dedicated to plastic, and you are set for the day. You collect all your bottles in a big bag. Light, but huge in volume. It makes it complicated to travel with large quantities of stock. But you never have patience. Five bottles and you are off to find the closest deposit machine.

And hope the machine is in service. You stand in line with people trying to deposit their stash. Usually in quantities of ten, twenty, even fifty bottles. This takes time. You wait patiently.

Bip bip.

Fuck. The machine is full. Two guys in front of you look dumbfounded.

“What the fuck am I going to do with this now?” one yells, loud enough for the store manager to hear.

You look at his bag. It’s hefty.

“I’ll take it,” you say quietly.

The guy looks at you, slowly, from your toes to the top of your head. Thinks for a second.

“Yeah. Take it.”

He hands you the bag. It weighs something. You look at the other guy. Without a word, but with a smirk, he hands you his too. It’s even heavier.

You throw the bags on your back and head for the next closest machine. You look like a tired, shaggy Santa Claus with a very poor assortment of gifts.

The next machine is fifteen minutes away, on the other side of the roundabout. The bags swing against your back and thighs. People look. A woman with a stroller steers wide.

The line is shorter this time. Three people. You set the bags down and they slump like sleeping animals. The woman in front of you has maybe twenty bottles in a neat canvas tote. Organized. She glances at your pile and says nothing.

The machine takes her bottles one by one. Whir, clink, whir, clink. She gets her slip, nods at no one, leaves.

You step up. Pull the first bag closer. Feed in a bottle.

Bip bip.

You stare at the screen. Container full.

Behind you, a man with two bulging bags exhales through his nose. “Fuck. Again?”

You turn around. He’s already looking at your bags. Then at you. Then at his own. He does the math out loud.

“You know what. Take them.” He nudges the bags toward you with his foot. “I’m not dragging this home.”

“I—”

“Take them.”

He walks off before you can answer.

You look at his bags. Then at your three. Then at the empty sky above the parking lot, like it might offer an opinion.

You load up. Two more on your shoulders, the rest on your back. You’re not walking now so much as advancing, slowly, in the general direction of the next machine, which is, you try to remember, near the tram stop, maybe ten minutes if you weren’t carrying half a recycling plant.

You make it two blocks.

A window opens on the second floor.

“Hello! Hello, sir!”

You stop. Look up. An old woman, white hair, reading glasses on a chain.

“Wait there! I have some more for you. Looks like you can use them!”

The window shuts before you can say anything.

You stand on the pavement with the bags piled around you and wait, because what else are you going to do.

You hear her on the stairs before you see her. Slippers, slow, a small grunt at each landing. The front door opens and she comes out holding a plastic bag at arm’s length, the way you’d carry a fish.

“Here. I’ve been meaning to take them down.”

The bag isn’t big. Maybe fifteen bottles. But there’s a dark patch spreading along the bottom and a thin trail behind her on the tiles.

“It’s leaking a little,” she says, like you might not have noticed.

Still. That’s money.

“Thank you.”

You take it. She pats your arm and goes back inside.

You start the calculation in your head. Five bottles, a beer. How many fives are here? One, two, you lose count. Again. One, two, three… It’s more than enough.

You stand there and try to figure out where this one goes. Both shoulders are taken. Your back is taken. Your hands are full. You hook the leaking bag onto your wrist and feel something cold and sticky run down the inside of your sleeve immediately.

It shouldn’t be that bad. It’s not heavy. Fifteen bottles, a few hundred grams, plus whatever is leaking.

It is that bad.

It’s not the weight. It’s the geometry. The bag swings against your hip and throws off every step. The bags on your shoulders shift to compensate. The ones on your back slide. You take three steps and have to stop and rebalance everything. Take two more. Stop. The wet sleeve clings to your forearm. Something is dripping off your elbow.

You are not marching. You are negotiating with yourself, one footstep at a time, in public.

You take a couple of steps, you see a bench, right around the corner. Perfect. You drop everything on the ground. Sweet relief. You need three trips to haul from where you dropped your bags to the park bench.

It’s perfect weather for a bench. Blue sky, birds looking at you suspiciously, gentle breeze. But not today. You are sitting on a treasure. The next machine is ten minutes of unweighted stroll away. Probably half an hour for you. You are thirsty and hungry. You have the means to satisfy that. You just need to cash in.

“Good morning, sir!”

You look up. A policeman. His eyes inspecting your stash.

“That is something. Where did you get it?”

You explain how. He nods.

“Where are you going with this?”

You look in the direction of the machine, throw out the street name.

“It’s out of service. We were just at the store for breakfast.”

You run the map in your head. Four kilometers.

You want to cry.

“You can’t sit here with this. Pick it up and leave.”

You do as you are told. But an idea pops into your head. A hundred meters from here is a bus stop. In the exact direction of your journey.

You wobble, you stumble, you curse, but you arrive. You look at the timetable. You look at the sky. About 9 a.m. Something should be here any time soon.

You see a bus on the street turn. It approaches you slowly, wobbling gently on the old street.

You are proud of yourself, and embarrassed you hadn’t thought of it earlier.

The bus stops. You are the only one. The driver’s door opens. He looks at you and says, calmly: “Don’t you even fucking think about it.”

The door closes. The bus leaves.

You drop onto the bench at the stop, praying the police don’t come back. The bags are still on you. They settle over you like a pile of snow. You look up at the sky again.

You hear it before you see it. The hydraulic groan, the diesel cough. A garbage truck rolls down the street, slow, two men hanging off the back like it’s a parade float for a holiday no one celebrates.

They see the bags. They see the bench you’re not allowed to sit on and the bus stop you’re not allowed to use. They see you with your face turned to the sky.

The truck stops without anyone signaling.

The older of the two jumps off. Gray stubble, orange vest, gloves stiff with whatever gloves get stiff with.

“Brother. What happened to you.”

“Machines are full.”

He looks at the bags. He looks at the other guy still on the back of the truck. The other guy shrugs.

“Where you going?”

You tell him.

He laughs. Not at you, more at the situation, the whole arrangement of the morning. “Get in. We’re going past it.”

“You can do that?”

“Who’s going to stop us.”

They load the bags before you can. Two men who pick up other people’s leftovers for a living, lifting your leftovers into a truck that’s full of everyone else’s. It takes thirty seconds. You would have taken twenty minutes.

You sit up front, between the driver and the older one. The cab smells like coffee and warm plastic. The driver doesn’t say anything, just nods, puts it in gear.

The older one looks over at you. Considers.

“You know what you are, right?”

You wait.

“You’re us. Without the truck.”

The driver snorts.

Outside, the city moves past at the pace of a working vehicle, slow and entitled to its lane. You are riding, not walking. The bags are not on you. Somewhere ahead is a machine that might or might not be in service, and for the first time today, it doesn’t entirely matter.