by Suzanna Zipperer

Bob the Burn Guy operated an illegal burn pit that was never extinguished, releasing dark smoke from worn tires, creosol-treated railway ties, asbestos siding, and every other kind of garbage a hoarder might throw in because the eight acre lot was too chocker block full with school buses, leaky RV camper trailers, and shed upon shed of vending machines of uncertain reliability, chest freezers with cracked seals, lawn furniture, and other remains brought from the numerous summer cottages by people wanting to get rid of it without incurring the expense of proper disposal.

So, Bob did a public service. If he hadn’t been willing to take all and everything, much of it would have ended up thrown off the back of someone’s trailer into the woods in the nearby reservation where people thought no one cared. They did. It was disrespectful. So, the Department of Natural Resources looked the other way as the burn pile spewed more toxins than the old steel plant down in Green Bay. Not that there wasn’t an official dump. There was, but Miner County could not manage to keep it open for more than four hours, two Saturdays a month, which hardly fit the schedules of the weekend residents from Chicago who spent six hours on the road to northern Wisconsin and didn’t want to get up early Saturday when the point of having a cottage was to relax.

“Shortage of manpower,” the head of the Miner County Department of Works gave as the reason for limited hours. “Summer’s short. These guys gotta make their money replacing doors, repairing roof damage from squirrels, stuff like that. We can’t give ‘em thirty bucks an hour like the cottage owners can.”

It was working the dump that got Bob on his way to becoming a master hoarder. Even though the dump was set up to recycle what could be recycled and ship the rest to the nearest Waste Management landfill, Bob saw usefulness in everything.

“What’s wrong with that shop vac?” Bob would ask the guy about to throw it into the compressor.

“Dang hinges broke. Doesn’t stay shut. Got a new one.”

“Let me see.” Bob would take a look, and being a handy guy, saw it was easily fixed, like about half the stuff that came through. He’d clean stuff up, fix what didn’t work, and take it down to the flea market in Shawno where some Amish family would buy it provided it was something the community said was okay to have. After a year or two, what Bob was taking home far outpaced what was being thrown out. The three small sheds, the old chicken coop, and a twenty by fifteen pole building were filled with no rhyme nor reason as to what went where.

Bob’s wife, Cathy, complained. She forced him to quit the dump, but by then people knew he was open more hours than it was anyway, so Bob’s was the first option. Cathy drew a line down the middle of the property and confined him to his area so she could still have her vegetable garden, flower beds, and trees. Then Bob got to buying semi-truck trailers and using them for storage.

Bob spent a lot of time moving things from one place to another setting up a descending order of usefulness until the last pile became the burn pile. That he could let things drop into a pit of fire proved to Bob, and anyone else who called him Bob the Hoarder instead of Bob the Burn Guy, that he was not, by definition, a true hoarder.

Had it only been the hoarding, his wife may have stayed. Afterall, he was considerate enough to keep it out of the house and did honor her demarcation. But it was that nothing came of any of it. There was no income coming in except hers from her secretary job at the school. Then one of the kids asked her why the school office always smelled like the backside of a riding lawn mower, and Cathy took a whiff of her coat. Enough was enough. Cathy moved in with a young teacher who had inherited her folks’ house. The rent money would pay for repairs.

As with most men, it didn’t take long after his wife took her belongings for Bob to go feral. He stopped trimming his beard, which became a ragged bib filled with crumbs and soup stains. He didn’t bother to wash clothes, just pulled out what he needed from a stack of boxes and threw the dirty ones in the fire. Convinced some of the hoard must be worth something, he spent mornings calling places he thought may be interested. Before the days of E-Bay, Marketplace, and Craigslist, the only advertising option was the local newspaper, where Bob could afford to put a small listing once a month. A radio show called “The Air Exchange” let people call in what they had for sale or what they needed to buy. Bob called twice a week, which was all they would allow him and then he had to give his top five things. A good day was when he fixed two things. A good week was when he sold one.

Generally, when people brought things over, Bob would have a look through it before tossing it in the burn or squeezing it into storage. The kitchen waste and clean up from the weekend party would go straight to burn, most of the clothing too, unless it was Bob’s size. He tried fixing leaky air mattresses and swim floaters, but gave up, so they went in.

“There’s usually something I can use,” he’d tell people as he pulled junk out of an SUV. Since most of the folks coming by had been by before, they’d let him do as he pleased, handing him a few dollars before driving off.

One night in late September Bob woke to see a man standing in the bedroom doorway. There was a full super moon shining that made shadows like daylight outside and came in through the curtains Bob had stopped closing at night so he could see the sky.

“What the . . . who are you?” He shouted as he fumbled for the handgun he kept in the drawer of the bedside table. But by the time he got it and stood up, the man had turned and walked out. Bob switched on the overhead light and moved quickly down the hallway into the living room, but he wasn’t there. The outside door was ajar. Hadn’t he locked it? Maybe not. He often didn’t bother now that Cathy was out. Gun in hand, Bob switched on the lights and, like he’d seen on all the cop shows, moved gun-hand first into the other bedrooms, bath, and closet just in case the guy was still in the house. Cautiously, he walked down the steps into the basement, his legs shaking.

Satisfied that whoever it was had left, but keeping the gun in his hand, Bob pulled out the whiskey and poured himself a glass. Although lately Bob was having vivid dreams, he was pretty sure that he had been awake. He had been thinking about Cathy and how when he went to town to get gas, he saw her talking to the sheriff through the window of his squad. Her hand was on his, and she was smiling into his eyes. Bob turned his back to them and filled his truck. He acted surprised when Cathy came up behind him and said hello.

He recalled what the guy in the doorway looked like, as he got a good look at him. He was a small man with wire rim glasses wearing a fishing hat with lures attached. Clean shaven. Like an accountant or insurance agent. He looked familiar, but Bob saw lots of folks this time of year. They were all cleaning out the junk accumulated over the summer.

Too shook to go back to bed, but wanting to listen for noise outside, Bob sat awake in the recliner until the sun came up, then turned on TV. Dang, there was the guy’s face on the news. That’s why he looked familiar. The guy had been reported missing.  His fishing boat was found two days before with no sign of him.

Bob picked up the phone to call the sheriff, then hesitated. First off, if the sheriff starts poking around, he may just come across that barrel of lead buckshot that’s too heavy to lift and hide. It was illegal to use since the lead poisoned the ducks. Then there were those containers of pesticide some farmer gave him when it was banned. It worked good keeping the brush away from the pit. A few other things Bob wouldn’t want the sheriff to find came to mind, but the real reason Bob didn’t call was that the guy wasn’t missing. The report said nothing about him having dementia where the guy wouldn’t know where he was or how to ask for help. He hadn’t knocked on Bob’s door. He walked right in, probably thinking nobody lived there anymore, which is how it looked since Cathy left. He turned around and ran as soon as he saw Bob, which to Bob meant the guy didn’t want to be found. If a guy don’t want to be found, Bob figured, let him be.

Nevertheless, Bob poked in a couple of the RVs, and places he thought he would hide if he didn’t want to be found, just in case the guy had hit his head or had a stroke and wasn’t all right. Bob figured the guy had nothing to eat. He put a couple of cans of beans and a can opener, a loaf of bread, and some tuna fish into a covered plastic tote strong enough to keep the racoons out.  He set it on a stump near the road that would be obvious to anyone walking that way, which was the way Bob figured he would walk.

The visitor came again the next night and the next, but these times Bob knew he was dreaming. In the dream, the guy was standing near the fire pit.  Bob asked him what he wanted. He lifted his arm and pointed downward into the pit.

Bob checked the food box. It had not been touched. Maybe the first night was also a dream.

The fourth night, the man appeared again in the bedroom door. Bob sat up. The guy turned around. “Wait,” Bob shouted. “Wait. I’ll help you.” But the guy moved quickly and was out of sight, leaving the door wide open. Bob stepped outside, looking in all directions. The moon had not yet come up, so the night was dark. There was a slight glow from the burn pit. It sent a wispy plume into the clear night that, in another place and time, may have welcomed strangers approaching through the forest.

“Dang,” Bob said aloud to no one. Now he wasn’t sure that he had been awake. He had jumped from his bed.  How could the guy have gotten out and disappeared so quickly? Grabbing the binoculars that hung by the door, he looked out into the yard. As he scanned the lip of the burn pit, a hundred yards away, the flames suddenly rose up. The whole pit was raging like fuel had been poured from overhead. There was no wind. What fed it? Bob headed out. The flames grew higher and higher. Bright orange, yellow. For the first time, Bob feared it would get out of control. A wind carrying embers could burn down the thousands of acres of forest surrounding him. Higher and higher. Then, within them, the form of a man became clear. A man pointing a long, unworldly arm toward the pit. Suddenly, the fire died.

“Ah, shit.” Bob’s skin crawled. He pulled his hair at the top of his head. “Shit, shit, shit.” Clambering back inside, he locked the door, turned on all the lights, and watched from the window. What the hell? He stood looking out for a long time going over the reasons the pit may have flared, but none of them fit what he saw. That guy was haunting him.

Bob grabbed a stack of newspapers lining the living room wall and flipped through them. Sure enough, there on the front-page of the Green Bay Press Gazette was the story of the man they were looking for. Yep, that was him and alongside was a picture of his wife at a press conference.

Bob remembered her.  She had come in right behind a man with a junk snowmobile. He said he was in a hurry, but then delayed Bob by asking him if he had this and that and making him go in a shed to look for a piece of rebar. When Bob got back with it, the lady’s boxes had all been dumped in the pit.  

“It’s useless junk, believe me. Just rags, books nobody wants. It’ll all burn. Nothing toxic,” the nice lady said when Bob told her he liked to go through things before it went to the fire. She gave him forty dollars and maneuvered her SUV around the trailer holding the snowmobile and drove off. A few minutes later, an explosive sound came from the pit. Bob figured it was spray cans and paid no mind.

Bob looked again at the photos. Now he’d have to call the sheriff, but he sure as hell couldn’t tell him he saw the guy’s ghost. If he and Cathy are screwing, the sheriff already had the idea Bob was some kind of nut, which he now agreed with.

Details, Bob thought. You’ve got to remember the details. Her car, the boxes. How many boxes? Enough for a body? Were they heavy? He didn’t see her lift them, but she looked fit, and her husband was a small man. The man with the snowmobile–Bob remembered that he was coming away from the back of her car when Bob came back with the rebar. Maybe he helped her. Then the explosion. Was it one? No. It was three. Three in a row, like the sound of gunfire. Had she tossed in a gun? Bob pressed his fingers to his temple, what else? Yes, one more thing crept from the corner of his mind. Once she was gone, the guy had no more questions and unloaded the snowmobile quickly. As Bob was pushing it toward the pole building, he got a clear look up the driveway. Since the leaves were off the trees, he could see the road. The lady had pulled over and the man with the trailer pulled alongside her. They seemed to be talking.

The sheriff looked over the edge of the smoldering pit, shaking his head.  “How hot’s it been burning since the lady been here?” Bob told him it was a busy time of year. Lots going in. It would take at least three or four days to cool enough to get a fire truck in to hose it down so a crew could work safely. The sheriff sucked his teeth and shook his head.

The next day the head of the Department of Works came and gave Bob a good talking to. “Your bullshit is going to cost us. Cost us big time. You’re done Bob.”