they load it on a ship to china
At the scrap metal yard an old MUNI bus sits along the fence and the bucket loader uses it like a bumper to corral the debris. He drops the big metal scoop to the ground and the tar suffers with a grinding scrape and the feather edge of the metal we’ve been throwing off the backs of our trucks at the foot of the scrap mountain adds a higher pitch to the rumble as our offerings are forced forward and the old saucepan that rolled awkwardly under a truck like a retarded escape attempt is exposed at the perimeter and bounces off the thick lip of the bucket as now it slams into lengths of water pipe filled with the chalk of forty years deposit and then the bigger items, a wire basket, a lamp, caught in the jaw and dragging, now deeper, closer to the foot of the pile are the washing machines, the water heaters, all with skin torn open by the force of the tractor pushing them into fodder for the ferrous peak.
The guy in the orange safety vest gets to talking to me about Hawaii. He went there last year and didn’t want to come back.
“It was paradise. Coconut trees. I didn’t want to come back. I’m from Nicaragua, the rain in Hawaii is just like Nicaragua. It reminded me of home, how it’s warm when it rains. It gets really warm and the smells in the air of the plants and the soil…I miss that.”
“That old MUNI bus has been there a long time huh?” I ask. It still has the same body style of the public buses on the road, so it’s not so old.
“They’ll never get rid of that, it helps them keep the pile organized.”
“Gives ‘em something to push off,” I answer.