Provenance Unknown

The things you people treasure. Honestly. Crates brimming with broken children’s toys off-gassing free radicals. I don’t even want to touch those things and, believe me, I’m not precious. You think your “enlightened” kid wants their widdle bundle of joy gumming sticky plastic secretions? They’d be better off licking an arrow frog. And books! Do you know how heavy those moldy old boxes get? I’m not talking about the first edition Huck Finn that kept my glass full of the good stuff for a year. By all means, keep those coming. But the complete collection of Danielle Steel drug store paperbacks whose spicy parts you dog eared for when you got a little “me time?” No. Somewhere, one of those birdhouses people call “Little Libraries” is eager to distribute your commuter smut to the next gen magic wand aficionado. Share the love. Furniture is hit or miss. Mostly miss. Jewelry? Go for it. It doesn’t even have to be good stuff. There’s a dented lid for every dented pot and, besides, the mass to value ratio is A+. But don’t, and I’m serious now, don’t get me started on the photographs. Jesus please-us, why do you keep so many of them? Do you think every snapshot of little Billy captured a sliver of his soul he might one day want back and, if so, what kept you clickin’ away then, you grubby Kodachrome vampire? Do you think little Billy is going to stumble upon your carboard shrine and posthumously feel something for you he never expressed while you were hoofing around on terra firma? Or is this like a magic carpet for you? A vehicle for transmuting this faded pastel present into some vibrant primary past? Sorry, doll, let little Jimmy break it to you. It was always faded. Still in all, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Whether you’re trying to preserve the past like a frozen dinner or lock it away like a dog that bit you once too often, Junkman Jimmy is here to spin your mountains of hay into a few strands of gold whenever you stop paying the rent on your past.

“Morning, Jimmy. What’s shakin’”

“The last few drips, T-Bone. Also, it’s three-thirty in the afternoon.”

Terrance Bonnet (pronounced like the hat, not the Lisa) flicked his bloodshot beadies to a plastic Casio squeezing his big ole Silly Putty wrist. “Huh.”

T-Bone was the proud ... nah, I’m not even going to say that ironically. He was the manager of the U-Store-It-40. Not to be mistaken with the U-Store-It on 41, which was a tight ship, a going concern. The U-Store-It-40 was so named both for its placement on highway 40 and for its forty rusty units drunkenly tilting in four rows on the rocky soil of the Bonnet family farm. Corn, I think. Something that started green and turned yellow, anyway.

I’m Jimmy. I make my living off the discarded remains of sentimentality. Storage joints like T-Bone’s are only required to keep your crap for a couple months once you stop paying them for the privilege of filling one of their mouse-infested tin shacks. After that, they post up units for auction and, like hyena’s drawn to the scent of carrion, guys like me climb into their beater trucks to come feed off the body.

The serious places draw an okay crowd with their sales; you never know when that next Huck Finn is going to be in the haul. But places like T-Bone’s are lucky to get anyone. Who wants lay down good money on what will likely be a stack of yellow newspapers horded by some old hayseed biddy? No, the juice was never too sweet at the Bonnet manse but, owing to a general lack of interest, it was usually worth the gentle squeeze.

As usual, my garbage scow was the only vehicle in the three-car dirt patch that passed for a lot as T-Bone led the way.

“Banner day, Jimmy. I hope you emptied out your club cab ‘cause I’ve got two deadbeats to sell you for the right price. Right across from each other, too. Easy loading!”

“Shrimp and grits? I can finally retire in the manner to which I’ve grown accustomed.”

Two for the one wasn’t as good as it sounded. Part of the deal was the auction winner had to clear out the cubes right down to their dirty floors. If these two were stuffed to the rafters, I might have to make two trips to casa de Jimmy, which would ruin my carefully laid plans to do not much of anything.

But one thing experience teaches us all in the end. It can always get worse.

A shiny Subaru nudged delicately into the dusty spot next to mine, it’s pristine, Jacques Cousteau yellow hide looking like it had never known the rough touch of lawn.

“Aw, hell,” I spat.

T-Bone grinned.

Ever since a certain “reality” show had aired, a whole new class of people had been popping up at auctions. Inspired by the lure of unexpected treasure, these amateurs would arrive in their regular ass cars thinking they were going to land a Van Gogh. Or at least a Grandma Moses. They drove up prices, which explained why I was looking at the gapped cemetery of my host’s teeth.

“Are we too late for the sale?” called one of a pair of pinkly perky gals in tight jeans and hiking boots that cost more than my truck.

“Not at all, ladies, you’re right on time.”

T-Bone staged himself between the two units like a circus ringmaster.

“Now, I’m sure you know how this works. I’m gonna open up both these units and let you take a good gander from the peripherial area.”

“Peripheral,” I muttered inaudibly.

“After that, you’ll get a chance to make your bids. Now,” he leaned in conspiratorially to the rubes, “don’t let Jimmy fool you. Some of these old farmers have some real ‘bank’ so you never know what you’re gonna find in these things.”

The gals sized me up, amped and bouncing like prizefighters. Just primed to beat the Junkman at his own game. I considered going home right then. Instead, I set a price cap in my head and nodded at T-Bone to continue.

The doors of the first cube opened with the squeal of a shaken baby. I sauntered over and shielded my eyes from the sun so I could see its shaded contents.

A beat-up motorcycle poked its flat front tire promisingly from the drift. Could be worth a little in parts – the front fender wasn’t rusted off which hinted at the condition of the rest of it. Some cardboard moving boxes strapped shut with that tape that looks like it’s laced with dental floss. I didn’t know a soul who used that anymore, so the contents probably weren’t too recent.

My worthy competitors were texting each other instead of whispering. I caught one of the lines before she saw me and angled the screen away from my wandering eye.

Is that an antique Harley? Like WW2 or something?

It wasn’t.

The hinges of the second cube whispered an oily tale of someone who had cared. Not that it mattered much to me. Care didn’t pay a dime.

Inside, stacked just as neat as Legos, were eight opaque Rubbermaid tubs, the garbage-can grey ones that were the only option before they introduced novelty colors to differentiate your Christmas crap from the rest of your crap. As far as I could see in the shade, no drift of mouse turds speckled the lids. The sides had distended a little under the digestive pressure of their contents. So, recently visited but not recently stored.

T-Bone invited us to bid on both units together, with table stakes in the decent dinner out range. The gals and I both raised tentatively, adding a cocktail’s worth at a time to the bill until we were squarely in anniversary range. Time to get serious. My next bid took us into car repair range and close to my cap.

The gals considered my offer and blew past it.

Well, that was a waste of gas. “They’re all yours, ladies.”

They whooped and fist bumped with what I suspected would prove to be the emotional apex of their experience. I remember the high of winning some of my early wars only to find the earth scorched and salted.

I waved farewell to T-Bone and ambled back to my truck.

Before I even had the door open, one of the perky pals was at my side, looking sheepish.

“Um, excuse me… sir? The man says he only accepts cash.”

“He’s old fashioned.”

“Only we don’t have that much cash?” I waited. “We didn’t know,” she explained helpfully, as though my silence was the product of incomprehension.

I waited some more. When her anxiety looked like it might pop her head like an overfed tick, I offered her a rung up into adulthood. “Was there a request in there?”

Something I love even more than people who try to bridge their perception of a class gap with an honorific delivered like a lottery prize, is people who state a problem and then wait for you to volunteer to rescue them from it. Not this Junkman.

She bit her lip. It was a nice lip. “We have half…”

Again, she waited for me to relieve her without accruing debt. I waited her out.

She huffed and spelled it out through pursed lips. “You can have one of the units if you have the cash for it.”

I looked past her to where the other gal was still arguing with T-Bone in the distance.

“Which one?”

“We-elll, we were thinking, since you’re helping us out, you could have the newer looking one and we’ll take the dusty old—”

“Stop. Dear God, please stop. This is painful to listen to. You obviously want the bike, just say you want the bike.”

She pouted. “We want the bike.”

“Thank you,” I sighed.

Now, I was pretty sure it was an unremarkable Indian Scout poking its nose out of that cube, no more than twenty-five years old and possibly carrying a gas tank full of paint. It was no brass ring. As for the rest? There was no real indication it was any more or less valuable than the Rubbermaid surprise but for one thing. The care. The dusting and the oiling hinted at least a the possibility that the plastic tubs contained something of worth to someone. It was slim, but slim was all I had.

I nodded. “The bike is yours.”

She squealed, honest to dog squealed, and galloped off with my stack of still-warm bills.

As I probed Legoland, I heard the popping bubble of their elation behind me when the cruel sun revealed the true identity of their prime attractor. Rust bucket Indian. Has the Junkman still got it? Yes, yes he does.

I was feeling pretty good about my trade until I uncorked the topmost tub in my cairn.

“Son of a…”

Photo albums.

Their nasty little spines pointed up, displaying curly-cornered date labels like the proud little sentimental soldiers they were. I could have spit.

The crate next to it was full of old trophies, and not even good ones. T-Ball, Little League, all sporting inanely chipper team names like “The Red Rabbits,” or “Bondi’s Pizza Pirates.”

Whatever the gals had found in their boxes seemed to be turning their moods around. Good for them. I grabbed the box of trophies, prepared to hump the balance of the tubs into my truck unopened, when T-Bone sidled up next to me and pulled out one of the photo albums.

“Huh,” he muttered, glancing at pages whose plastic sheeting parted with the sound of an old lady’s kiss. “Did you look at these, Jimmy?”

“A million times. Let me guess. Christmas PJs, school clubs, sports teams, vacations. They’re all the same. Only the faces change.”

“Yeah, but Jimmy, check this out.” He held open the book for me to see.

I was right about the context. All the same, indeed. It was the face looking out of all those predictable shots that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

I took it from him. Flipped the leaves, my hands shaking.

“That kid in all these pictures looks just like you, Jimmy.”

No. Page after page confirmed it. Not like me.

That was me.

Chapter 1: Jimmy, Meet Jimmy