Read Garbage for Free Online Page B

I say about any things between me and them that I say now to you. Promise.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œSay ‘I promise.’”
    â€œOkay, I promise.”
    He puts out his hand and we shake.
    â€œSo this is the deal. It goes that I get all the storeowners who fight Stovin’s about their garbage and win without my helping a finger to them, and they get to collect the rest.”
    â€œYou’ll end up with no one but me, if they even leave me a bar here for you to collect from.”
    â€œSo I lose with one fight, but at least here I have slight chance of staying in business a lot more days. For you see, they could just have said ‘Take a walk, baby, we run your garbage show now,’ and me, no madman with my life, would have to have had obey. But my second cousin. I skip his name but he not someone that big in Stovin’s or with their backers—of which group he belong he very sly about even to me. But he arrange as favor that they give me that other verbal deal out: to let me stay collecting garbage till they take away all my business in this neighborhood or almost, instead of just my closing my doors and going away when they say.”
    â€œSo you’ll be out entirely, because you once said you only collected around here.”
    â€œTrue. I do. It’s a pact. Keep your trap shut, but we private carters carve the city into pieces. One gets West Side, other another side, and me I get here downtown. But Stovin’s, they want my piece, they succeed without puffing and maybe later even get half this whole city, when before about twenty of us cut it up. But it’s not so bad. I got savings stacked away and ideas for new businesses for me not concerned with any of them, or so far. And this is what happens a lot in garbage elsewhere. It happens too in lots other businesses here and there—chocolate bars, for one. You laugh, but check with candystores if not true. And news magazines distributing is another and some newspapers too, the weekly ones. And funeral parlors. That one and soon private carting my cousin say is the most. You think you want to open funeral parlor in city when and where you like just because you great undertaker and got degree from school to undertake? Laugh. All controlled. A few people, maybe same ones in garbage, say what you do or don’t with funeral parlors and who even gets city licenses for them, and also orange juice. Everything liquid in citrus fruit.”
    â€œWho is this Stovin?”
    â€œThe man?”
    â€œSo I know who I’m up against.”
    â€œExactly, not for sure, but hear big man with body too, plus tough son. So you’re up against strong tall wall, two walls, no doors through them also, but don’t you believe all that I hear: maybe they’re both small and only their noise is like walls.”
    â€œAnd the backers? I’m not naive, but what’s it: an organized crime group of sorts?”
    â€œEverything I hear is they’re powerful people though maybe Stovin himself most powerful backer of them all and also this time in same business he back powerfully: garbage. He’s not always in it: before he sold cigarettes to grocery stores. But I think I’m lucky they not kick or try to me out sooner, that’s also the truth. They see this as upcoming neighborhood, more stores than before when For Rent signs were, so more garbage to pick up and what have you. So they move in, of course. Later I sell them my trucks, though not at the fairest price. But truth is, Shaney pal, you have to let them pick up your garbage sometime soon, for I be out by then and they won’t let any new carter come around nor would any carter will.”
    â€œOne of the reasons I didn’t—”
    â€œSay, because of our old business together, years on years, I know,” and he grabs and holds my hands. “But told you—I be fine. Savings, wife who understands, and I tell you the truth now too,