A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part two)

Here's part two of my story.

For part one, click here.

Johnny Tremain was a dumpster diver, an alley goblin, a curbside vulture. These are all his names for it. He cruised town every day, looking for junk that people had left behind and turned it around to sell it for profit. Everything he gathered was free, and everything he made from the sales was profit. He needed my help because he picked up a lot of heavy shit, and he just couldn’t do it himself. I’m talking old boiler furnaces, refrigerators, freezers, reclining chairs . . . you get the point.

Every morning before dawn, we’d hop in Johnny’s rusted-out, maroon Ford F-150, and we’d start criss-crossing the alleys and side streets of Sangamo Town looking for our treasures. As soon as the truck was filled, we’d head back to Johnny’s garage, which doubled as his home, and dump.

Johnny drove fast down those alleyways. It was crazy dangerous. He’d be thrumming along at 50 mph down an alley no wider than the truck we were in, tree limbs and weeds slapping at the open windows, filling the cab with leaves. He had those alleys memorized. We’d be speeding up and down the alleyways, classical music blaring, and I just kept thinking that riding with Johnny felt a lot like playing Russian Roulette. Every so often, Johnny’d say, “Fold the goddamn mirror in! It’s gonna get tight up here,” and he’d mash the accelerator as I was yanking the mirror in, and we’d go shooting through a spot in the alley just a hair wider than the truck. I never knew when the end would come.

Another thing about Johnny. He loved to fight. He made money fighting, but I don’t think he did it for the money. Every couple of weeks, he’d manage to stir up some back alley brawler and a group of investors, and he’d fight for money. He never told me he had a fight coming up. We’d just be cruising along one day, and he’d stop in an alley somewhere. “Time for a break,” he’d say, taking the gold chain off of his neck and hanging it over the rearview.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a group of men would gather around. Johnny would get out and tangle with their wrangler. Although it would probably make for a better story if I told you that Johnny was a badass who won every fight, that just wasn’t the case. Oh sure, Johnny could handle himself, but he didn’t win every fight. Some of these guys he fought were seriously hard. And big. Johnny was a big guy, at about 6’2” and a little over 200 pounds. He was lanky, wiry, muscular. Some of the guys he fought were built like dumptrucks. Johnny won some, and he lost some. But he never complained. He won more than he lost, he said, and the money was always good when he won.

Win or lose, we’d get back in the truck and do our best to finish the work day. Once, I had to practically scrape Johnny up off the pavement. This was only the second fight I’d seen, I think. He was just laying there on the ground, bleeding out of his eye and nose, and wheezing. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I gotta get you to a hospital or something.”

“Fuck that,” Johnny said. “Help me into the truck. We got work to do.”

He was just that tough. But he was also what I think most people would consider soft. He was as environmental as they come. He was green before it was cool to be green. “Every piece of garbage we pick up is a piece of garbage that doesn’t go into a goddamn landfill,” he’d say. “If only I could sell used paper towels and toilet paper, we’d make a fucking mint.”

He loved to learn things. He read encyclopedias and hardcore political journals like repressed Midwestern women tear through romance novels. But he could throw a punch. Man he could throw a punch.

I guess one of the things I have a problem with, and one of the reasons I’ll never be a good writer is that I can’t keep on the subject at hand. The subject at hand in this story being the aleph I mentioned at the beginning. Please understand I’m getting there. It just takes some time.