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about the cat lady; she owned twenty animals. “It’s not against the law to dump your litter box onto your garbage, but it’s common courtesy to put it in a bag,” Scooter explained.
    At last, Burrafato unlocked his sedan and drove me uphill. By now, Murphy and Sullivan were halfway through their route and lightly sweating. The men seemed dour and angry to me, and I was afraid to ask them questions. On foot, I watched and I followed. Soon I realized they seemed sour only because they were concentrating. In constant motion, lifting heavy barrels, they could get hurt if they didn’t pay attention. Metal cans banged against their legs; trailer hitches poked from high SUV bumpers. Drivers honked, urging the men to hustle it up, to get their truck out of the way. Double-parked delivery vans blocked their progress. There was also a surprising amount of dog shit near the garbage cans, and many plastic bags were shiny with urine. Had I never noticed this before?
    After a few minutes, I began dragging together barrels from neighboring houses to form a group, but the guys didn’t want me lifting anything into the truck. “You’re gonna be sore tomorrow,” Murphy said. He was rounder than Sullivan, and he had a stiff, loping walk, not quite a run. He kept his head mulishly down, his eyes trained on the ground. His palms were thick-skinned and yellow, with deep crevices near the nails. Around the garage, he was known as Daddy. Sullivan had an angular face softened by a narrow strip of beard. His hair was a wiry brown and gray, cut into a mullet. A black belt in karate, he was more agile than Murphy. I found him soft-spoken but intense.
    Most people don’t think of garbage collection as particularly dangerous work. It may be dirty, boring, and strenuous, but compared to the potential perils of, say, coal mining, the risks in heaving trash seem minor. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies refuse collection as “high-hazard” work, along with logging, fishing, driving a taxicab, and, yes, mining. While the fatality rate for all occupations is 4.7 deaths per 100,000 workers, garbage collectors die at a rate of 46 per 100,000. In fact, they’re approximately three times more likely to be killed on the job than police officers or firefighters.
    Six days a week New York’s Strongest—who along with New York’s Finest (the cops) and New York’s Bravest (its firefighters) constitute the city’s essential uniformed services—operate heavy machinery and heave ten thousand pounds in snow and ice, in scorching heat and driving rain. Cars and trucks rip past them on narrow streets. Danger lurks in every sack: sharp metal and broken glass, protruding nails and wire. And then there are the liquids. Three New York City san men have been injured and one killed by acid bursting from hoppers. It takes about a year for a san man’s body to become accustomed to lifting five to six tons a day, apportioned into seventy-pound bags. “You feel it in your legs, your back, your shoulders,” Murphy told me.
    Still, plenty of people want the job. The starting pay is $30,696, with an increase to $48,996 after five years. The health benefits are great, the scavenging superb, and you can retire with a pension after twenty years. With a good winter, one with plenty of snow to plow (in New York, DSNY is responsible for snow removal, which often involves overtime pay), a senior san man can earn $80,000. Thirty thousand applicants sat for the written portion of the city’s sanitation test the last time it was offered.
    At eight o’clock, truck CN191 turned east onto my block. I saw my downstairs neighbor close our gate and turn with his German shepherd toward the park. “We’ll get ten tons today,” predicted Sullivan, tossing a black bag into the hopper and cranking the handle. Nine tons had been the norm, but now that the city wasn’t recycling plastic and glass, that extra weight landed in his and Murphy’s truck.
    We moved up