Don't Fake The Funk

Yardwork Leads To The Dark Side

This morning started normally enough. The backyard needed some work, so I decided to do it, since it wasn’t as hot today as it was yesterday. Those of you that know me and have been to my house know that a few years ago my cousin and I pulled down the basketball hoop in the backyard after a fiercely contested slam dunk contest. I can’t remember who won but I do remember the shriek the tortured metal made as the pole broke right at its base. It was fun destroying it. Afterward we laid the hoop on the ground and left it there. I figured this morning was a good time to finally dismantle and throw it out.

All the bolts and screws holding the damn thing together were rusted and it took some doing taking it apart. The sun was stronger than I realized. So after I was done I was tired and a bit short-tempered. I piled all the parts by the curb thinking that the garbage truck would pick it up this weekend.

My nosy neighbor called to me from across the street to tell me that the DSNY wouldn’t touch the fiberglass backboard and metal hoop and other assorted parts. I was a little annoyed at his tone of voice but I kept my mouth shut. He kept talking, of course, and said I ought to go to the dump and throw it out there.

The dump. Shit. That place sucks. I thought the city closed the Staten Island dump already, but my neighbor was probably right, so I packed all that junk in my car and drove away.

This is Staten Island during the summer. Kids are all over the place playing on the streets. One stupid teenager yelled through my open windows just to say, “Hey you got a basketball hoop sticking out of your car” in that annoying Staten Island accent that I’ve grown to hate. It literally gave me a headache.

I finally get to the dump and it stinks like a mofo in there. I expected that, of course. You can’t live on Staten Island and not expect the dump to smell worse up close than it does from your house eight miles away. But I tell you, it didn’t help my headache or my mood one bit. Whatever, man. I got out of the car and started unloading the junk to carry it to a big mound of fresh, newly dumped junk. It didn’t take that long for me to finish, and soon enough I was carrying the last piece, the pole with a jagged rusted edge, to the mound. My hands were sweating so it slipped a little as I was carrying it and the edge cut my hand. Man that got me pissed off.

With a growl and a curse I threw the damn thing into the mound.

Just as it hit the ground, I felt a tremor. Initially I wasn’t too worried because I remembered hearing once that gas from all the decomposing garbage sometimes builds up and causes the dirt piled up over it to buckle. But then right next to where I was standing, the ground opened up and I fell through.

I felt like I was falling for ages before I finally hit the bottom. From the edge of the crevice that the tremor created these guys were looking at me. They looked about twenty feet up and they were asking the stupidest questions. “Yo you alright?”

What the heck do they think? I’m literally in the fuckin’ garbage dump. I told them to get a rope so they could pull me out. One guy said there weren’t any ropes and I had to climb out myself.

Frustrated, I gritted my teeth and let out a loud snarl. The ground shook again and the crevice opened up some more. And I fell again. Landing knocked the air out of my lungs and it took me a while to stand up. Above me, the opening seemed impossibly far away, like a blue-white jagged bolt of lightning frozen in a black sky made of dirt.

I tried to get my bearings and I wound up bumping my head on an old barbecue grill sticking out of the side of the crevice. This far underground the grill must have been dumped here decades ago. Holding my head and cursing I stomped around and my foot kicked something metal. It rolled away and skittered against the side of the crevice. It was an odd thing, cylindrical, almost like an extra-large motorcycle handle bar. There was a switch on it and I figured it was a flashlight. It was fairly heavy so I guessed that the batteries were still in there, but what were the chances that it still worked? I flicked the switch anyway – and was blinded for a couple of seconds. Suddenly I smelled something burning and felt more than heard a heavy thump on the ground.

My eyes adjusted. A long red-silver light emitted from the 'flashlight' I was holding. But the light itself looked solid and it ended abruptly about three feet from the handle rather than gradually fading into a cone like normal flashlights do. At my feet was half of the barbecue grill with the edges melted as though a welding torch cut through it. I waved the bar of light around and it emitted a low frequency hum.

“Hey what’s that light?” The guy was calling to me from above.

Instantly I switched it off and yelled back, “You’re seeing things. There’s no light down here.”

“I’m seeing things. There’s no light down there,” the guy said to the crowd that was gathering on the surface. That weak-minded fool just parroted back what I told him. Then it dawned on me and I realized what I had found.

With a grin and dark thoughts in my mind I clipped the light saber to my belt loop and began climbing out.

Posted by glenn at July 28, 2005 06:39 PM