One Man's Trash

Thick gloves reaching up past the elbows, waders encasing legs becoming weary after eight solid hours of sifting through crap, Cesar was ready to go home. Well, what passed for a home. Just a tent in a city made of tents, in a world that didn't care. He turned, ready to make his way back down the mound of rubbish when his foot dislodged something. Bending down as far as the waders would allow, he reached into the pile and uncovered a human arm, a huge diamond ring still gleaming on the ring finger. Cesar looked around, seeing the other scavengers leaving as the light began to fade. Part of him knew he should keep digging, uncover the rest of the body. But it was late, dark fell early in his part of the city where no street lights shone. He didn't want to be out in the wasteland when the real predators came prowling. Fingers closing around the ring, Cesar gave a gentle tug and it came away without too much effort. Slipping it into the inside pocket of his army surplus jacket, he covered the arm with refuse and headed for home.

Back at the tent he shared with his wife, Suri and baby Minette, Cesar removed the gloves and waders and did his best to clean up using the bowl of water left outside. Making sure nobody was watching, he slipped the ring from his pocket and rinsed it. What a beauty. Putting it safely away, he filed the memory of the arm and whatever body it had been connected to, in a locked box that occupied the deepest recess of his mind. Putting on a broad smile that hid most of the scar on his otherwise handsome face, he opened the tent flap and disappeared inside.

Across town, in an area that neither knew nor cared about the existence of the sprawling city of tents just a few kilometres away, another man, Bernardo, sat at one end of a huge dining table. The room, like the rest of the house, was decorated with hideously tasteless extravagance and to be honest he had never really liked it. He would rather be out on the ranch spending time with horses, not people. But business had beckoned and he hadn't tasted real freedom for a very long time. He stabbed his fork into the huge steak in front of him, watching blood ooze onto the plate. Staring down the table, loneliness rising up in his chest and tears threatening to course down his pock-marked cheeks, he tried to pray. To pray for his beautiful wife, Gloria, who had been missing for two long weeks. Without her, he was nothing, just another ugly man with too much money. Leaving the steak untouched, Bernardo pushed his chair back and, rising, strode from the room.

After a meagre dinner of some kind of stew (he had long since ceased to ask or wonder what was actually in the concoction), Cesar watched over Suri and Minette as they slept. Once the rhythm of their breathing steadied, he took the ring from his pocket and began to polish it with a clean cloth. The diamond was huge, breathtaking even. He couldn't imagine what it might be worth, had no idea how to go about finding out, but he did know he had discovered it for a reason. He began to polish the inside of the gold band that encased the diamond and that's when he found the inscription. 'For Gloria, my love, my life', in tiny italics. Now the corpse in the midden had a name. Gloria. Now Cesar had a dilemma. Should he find out who Gloria had been or just scratch out the words and pawn the ring? He decided to sleep on it as he crawled into bed exhausted.