"Thomas A. Easton - Movers and Shakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

boozing it up all along. He'd only come out for a fresh bottle or to hand me some more of his jewels.

Now, though, he wanted to take a real hand in the operation. He had me get a big pet carrier, one of
those plastic-covered masonite boxes with a window in one end, and take him out to the landfill. Once
we were there, he had me carry him around and show him the joint. That was a chore! The place was an
old gravel pit, a hole in the ground most of a quarter mile across, half of it filled in with everybody's
leavings. I bitched at having to lug him around, but he just said, "Do you want people to see me, no?" No
way! I had the money now, but I still hadn't moved. Too much trouble. So the neighbors could still riot.

He didn't explain himself until we'd covered the ground twice. Then he told me, "You will set up the
sorting machines over there, where there is no garbage yet. Then you will only need a conveyer to get
what has already been buried."

And that's the way it was. I had to have a road bulldozed for the trucks, so they could get around to the
back of the landfill pile, and I had to have foundations built for the machinery. But within six months I was
all set up; godawful great hoppers that fed the garbage to a shredder, magnets that yanked out the iron
and steel, air blowers that separated out the paper and other light crap, shaking screens that sifted out the
crushed glass, and a baler for the bits of copper wire, aluminum tubing, and the like that came out at the
end. I took one look at the finished noise-maker and named my outfit "Movers and Shakers, Inc." Wirtz
had done it, alright. That's what I was. And I had more money than I'd ever dreamed existed. I got paid
for picking up the garbage and then I turned around and sold it again. The paper went to a paper
company. The glass went to a bottle maker. The metal went to a scrap metal dealer. A healthy profit on
every ton, and more going out than my trucks were hauling in, at least until I'd finished sorting out the
fifteen years worth of garbage that was buried behind the shredder.

That was when Wirtz came from under the couch again. He said he was bored. He wanted something to
do, yes. And it was time to start recording how I was acting out the folklore quantum he had assigned
me. He wanted a control room, set up right over the conveyer that brought the stuff out of the landfill. He
wanted to be able to start or stop the whole show, or any part of it. He also wanted a grab-arm, like on
a pulp truck, so he could pick things out of the garbage stream. As he put it, "There is no sense in letting
a rock into the crusher, yes?"

How could I argue? That machinery was expensive. He got his control room, an air-conditioned metal
box, four by four by four, with one window looking straight down on the conveyer. How he expected to
watch movies that way, I didn't know, but that was what he wanted and it was none of my business
anyway. Maybe he had a camera that could see through walls. That would explain how he'd known so
much about me.

As long as I knew him after that, he stayed in that box. I brought him booze and food, whatever he asked
for, and let him shut the conveyor down when he wanted to sleep. I hung around in the evenings, too, just
to talk the way we had when he was living under my couch. I told him how things were going, how other
towns were beginning to copy our setup, how the power company was talking about building a small
plant near us to burn the paper and other combustibles we sorted out. If they did, we'd get a better price.
Coal was more valuable than wood pulp, and that's what we'd be competing with. I bitched about all the
paperwork too. I said I wanted to hire a lawyer to handle it for us. He said no. I should do it myself. It
was good for me, yes? He sounded just like my mom.

I must have messed up the paperwork, though, because it wasn't long before we had an OSHA
inspector checking us out. He looked at everything, talked to the employees, and filled out wads of
forms. When he was done, he ticked me off for not having seat belts in the trucks, not having a railing