Jack

Jack drove truck.

More specifically, he drove a semi trailer filled with trash (other people's trash, mostly) up and down the grey veins snaking spider-webbed across northern California. Over the mounting years (growing ever past his own expectations when he had initially, with reluctance, taken the job), the tires of his Freightliner had greased a triangle plotted between the floating trash barge dock, the cadmium & heavy metals reclamation compound and, biweekly, the durable electronic recycling center (which gave the warm fuzzies to a growing lazily-conscientious population, allowing them to believe they were still doing their small part by considerately disposing of their aged computer monitor when in fact they were dropping a mercury grenade off at a depot to be shipped to China and burned in a putrid battleground stretching farther than the eye could see by a sinewy man with no fingertips or sense of smell wearing a tank-top) run by people who held their bottom lines above tired ideals.

This was not being put past Jack. He had recognized his instrumentally insignificant role in this grand irony of the garbage wheel. His personal feelings seemed in constant bloom as if agitated by the vibrations knobby tires sent shuddering through his cab. Guilt followed resignation followed resolve. Occasionally his stomach would churn on the greasy reminders of his place in the big trash dance. Other times he would shrug and think about the line of people who would take his place without remorse.

No matter his feelings, no matter the particular day or specific circumstance which brokered their encounter, the people who shared his highways had to make peace with their past as it thundered towering and overflowing overtaking them in the fast lane. Children would gape at the peaks of disposable diapers capping refuse mountains like snow. Adults would ignore the jetsam which wiggled free from the mound and skidded into the ditch, ignored. He captained a ghost ship filled with the bygone, from tiny insignificant moments to entirely encompassing histories, coffee filters to last testaments, jettisoned once and now filling the rear-view like filthy memories.

Once, on a particularly introspective and dejected evening, fueled and demoralized by spirits of liquid and haunt, he was labeled in permanent inks across his right foot "Filthy Pilot." He pictured his toes as the anchor sinking all those yesterdays, miring things best forgotten, himself being absorbed with them tangled in wedding tapes and tampon strings. They gently pressed 16,000 pounds of history into the earth.

During the first few weeks he found it fascinating what people would discard. The parking spot reserved for him in the covered carport adjacent to his apartment complex was barricaded with good intentions pulled from his early loads: furniture that appeared to be antique only in need of refinishing and upholstery, electronic gadgets that might be tinkered or easily repaired, wrecked bicycles and lawnmowers whose gears would surely be salvageable. But those were the early days, before he became jaded and complacent. He had no use for other people's trash anymore.

That is, until he found the envelope of money.