It was late in the day. We were standing in the driveway leaning against the dumpster that was filling up fast because it was closer to the house than the piles along the street.
A pickup drove slowly by, the driver leaning out of his window looking for cast-off things to scrounge.
He looked up and waved. Bert waved back.
“You getting rid of this?” the man asked, pointing to an antique trunk that previously held family heirlooms but had been immersed in the brown stink water. Virtually everything in it had been a loss. The marbles were salvageable. Some costume jewelry. Trudy and I had sifted thru the contents, setting aside a few things and wheeling the rest out to the curb. When we’d gone thru it all, I picked up the trunk, tipped it over to let the water drain out and took it out the the curb. The man in the truck had his eye on it.
“How’d that get there?” Bert said and glanced over at me.
dang
“I put it there,” I confessed. “My bad.”
Bert walked out and explained that the trunk was there by mistake. The guy smiled and nodded and rolled on.
Bert carried the trunk back to the house and set it in the sun to dry.