Left for Garbage

to take care of personal urges. Sadly I ain’t the sort of man lonely housewives invite in.
    I guess that trash bag was sti ll drawing me back to that area, as I never forgot about it. My old dead ma used to say ‘curiosity killed the cat’, but I don’t even like cats. I’m a dog person, and anyway, what with the heavy rains, well I thought it would be a miracle if the bag I had tried to report was still there, I mean. So, I stop a little north of my destination, get out and finish my business, then I walk back towards the woods, but I’m apprehensive, remembering clearly how the bag spooked me. ‘Course it was possible that the sanitation department had come and picked it up.
    I got to thinking about that bag a lot of times over the past months but then I blocked it from my mind, something I got real good at after my la st ex-wife. I mean, a person’s got to try and forget some things if you don’t want to wake up screaming. Still, there it was, reminding me on the late news every night, regular as clockwork, when I’d see something about the Brown baby. Don’t we all see enough bad things on the news before sleep? Maybe all the bad news should come on at six in the evening and save only the good stuff for later, to spare us our nightmares.
    Anyhow, one night on the news they said that a foundation called ‘Never Lose Hope’ was offering a quarter million big ones for the safe return of the Brown baby. Now, that’s a whole lot of money. Why, money like that and I’d be the poster boy for why people should keep hope alive. That name caught my attention because it’s the main thing my old ma always said to me growing up as a boy – ‘Never lose hope’. And I never did lose hope all along my lifetime, even when I lost my old ma. She died by eating a ham too fast. I always tell everybody, no matter how old they are, you’ve got to chew your pork-based meats. Doctors told me that hams are one of the top choking hazards all across the world.
    Another thing my old ma always taught me was to be cautious about where I go poking around. That’s why I called the cops last time I seen that trash bag. Make it their business, not mine, it being their job and all to investigate these sorts of things.
    But I get there and this time the water level is higher. You can tell it reached a dangerous level at one point, but it all looks to be receding and causing no immediate problems.
    But there’s another problem. Trash bag I saw last August is there, only this time a whole lot closer to the road. Maybe someone found it and picked it up, then tossed it right on back. People behave like animals when it comes to garbage and what they put down their pipes, as I should know. But I’m guessing the high water pushed it on up further towards the road, or maybe animals dragged it. In any case, now it’s no more than twenty feet from where I parked my truck, clearly visible to the naked eye.
    This time, I’m thinking I’m not gonna call the cops, I’m gonna take care of things myself. I’m not above helping to keep our town clean, especially it being near Christmastime, and isn’t anybody can ever accuse me of not caring about our town, so what’s the harm in clearing away a bag of trash before it dirties up the roadway? But, see, just like last time I seen the bag, I felt a sixth sense about it, therefore I was hesitant to go and touch it. But this time I’m not thinking about anything except helping to clean up the litter.
    I go and pick up the bag and it’s damp but not heavy. But guess what falls out? The worst thing anyone, anywhere could ever want to see. It’s a head, a skull head, a real little one. Why the good Lord Jesus had to go and choose me, poor Harley Ray, to have to bear witness to this terrible sight, I do not know.
    I could see right up front that , it being so small, it was either a little child’s head or one of them poor dwarf people’s. It had some hair still on it, and even worse, there’s was this dirty wad of duct tape wrapped around the jawbone.
    Now , seeing this, I’m sick to my heart, not to mention my stomach, over the situation. There was no eyes looking up at me this time, but I pictured the face, and when I looked at that poor little skull, I wasn’t thinking of no dwarf, no, sir, mainly on account of I hadn’t heard of any of ‘em being missing. I was thinking of the face that probably belonged on it, and that’s the face of the missing Brown baby’s picture I see on