Where he goes....

Down in the alley, between blood shot eyes and bent fingers, a man rumbles through a blue bin of brown bottles and cans made wet by a short spring rain. 

 

Each night he searches for gold topped beer cans behind the Easy Bend Bar. Not that the they are worth more than any other cans, but he imagines his small street earnings to be otherwise. He packs the nickel a pop empties into a giant construction bag--the great tool of his trade, along with an old shopping cart with half-rusted wheels he uses to haul his night's earnings to be redeemed at the corner store.

Last night he got beat up in the same alley. His eyes bloodied. His hands swollen by the only two punches he landed on the instigator's head. He got beat up by the same man he knew during his days on Wall Street, who now fought him over the same empty treasures.

 

He didn't go down...not that night, but years ago...

 

Once they were young brokers and rivals. Never quite trusting each other, their friendliness masking their common competitiveness to stake out the same territory of finance and success--make the most money, drive the flashiest cars, buy the crystal and glass condos, catch the same expensive women. Eternally lucid in their seductive dreams of more and more.

In the days of oil barons and gold mines they would have lit conspicuous cigars with hundred dollar bills. In days of Wall St. they would snort coke through rolled up Benjamin's, and drink too much Cognac out of a stoner call girl's high price shoes.

 

Maybe all of that is what takes them down. Or maybe it's the compounding, gnawing truth they are expendable. Or maybe it's just a singular something in their heads--within the high dollar universe of stars and meteors that collapse their minds. 

 

They crash through Wall St windows, slip off Manhattan ledges and land on park benches and fall into the scrabbled livelihoods of men and women who redeem bottles and cans, one nickel at a time.

As with the homeless Vietnam Vet--his PTSD haunting him every second of every relived, fearful thought..

As with the math professor, whose days of numbers and decimals drove her to madness...

As with the Japanese computer scientist, who just ceased thinking...

As with the Honduran mother who cleaned houses during the day and collected bottles at night, so her kids could have a better life...so they could escape the hollow madness of poverty

 

They are called 'canners'. They live at night, collecting and fighting for redeemable bottles and cans against the emptiness in their bellies, against the demon voices in their heads. 

In one perfected motion the man uses his alley strength to hoist the construction bag over his shoulders and drops it into the shopping cart. He turns his squeaky cart around and noisily rushes out the alley and moves hurriedly along the street. 

A police car drives up along him. An officer mockingly says: "Hey, when r' going to oil those wheels? You're waking up half of Manhattan. What's with you grabbin' only gold beer cans?"

In a panic he quickly pushes his cart in an s-curve. The cops laugh as they drive away. The man holds his cart to a stop, scared and out of breath.

From where he stands on the Upper West Side he can't see Wall St. It's gleaming towers, it's bustle of men and women...and commerce...and stocks exchanged and sold...and businesses opened and closed...and dollar demon voices...and shuddered lives, collapsed and crushed like haunted, hollow aluminum.

He stops at the corner store and drops his empties into the vending machine that coughs out his night earnings. Just $15. Each night's collection gives out less and less. He thinks maybe his old friend steals from him, arrives early and takes his golden dreams. He worries what's next, but he also knows there are no more windows to crash through, or ledges to slip from. No more benches in homeless parks where they can land. Just that he knows no where to go is where he is...just another life, another short spring rain falling on brown bottles and empty cans.

                                                                 __ __

Story based on HBO Documentary "Redemption" about Canners of New York

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2cejo9