Salvage Zombies of Atlanta.

I flew to Hotlanta to make my dreams happen. I had a couple of reality show ideas, plenty of screenplays, and at least four completed novels to sell. My plan, and trust me I had a plan, was to get in, get out, and get back to the Pacific Northwest or to Tahiti, and I was leaning towards Tahiti.

But once I arrived in Hotlanta things sort of unwound. I did everything I'd planned to do to get things going. I had the ideal set up: I would help a fellow writer fix up her second house, the one that was going to cause her financial ruin if she didn't sell it. In return, I would get a free base to operate from.

I toted that bale, I fixed a variety of problems in the house (ah, the wonders of Gorilla Glue!), painted walls, doors, closets, and ceilings. I walked the woman's dogs, cooked her lots of dinners, made a lot of phone calls and emails, and in the end came up empty.

That's when I started to wonder about the sanity of my great plan, and realize my boat had a hole in it and I might drown. But then I realized that it wasn't all my fault; I didn't have to flagellate myself, which is a relief to any former Catholic. It was the economy that was making people not return my calls, and answer my emails. The South had turned cold. Hiring companies had a more conservative, skeptical attitude than five years ago. They are keenly aware that there are many more qualified people out there who are about to lose their shirts. It has become a buyers market. They can be extra choosy.

I figured manual labor would assuage my disappointment, and help my friend, who was about to commit hari kari. I asked her if she had thought about taking antidepressants, and she said she wasn't suicidal, she just didn't want to live anymore. "Right," I said.

I took about a ton of junk to the top of the house's driveway last night. I had the ability, like most ants, to lift several times my body weight. I would be the guy who would lift the car off of you if the jack slipped. It is a genetic thing.

It was trash day today, and the woman's garage was packed with stuff no one wanted. Several tons had already been sent into the Never Never. Even the Australians across the street had myths about all the stuff I'd set on the street for the garbage men to haul away.

This morning I awakened early; the mockingbirds were doing their imitations of creaking hinges and babies crying in the woods behind the house.  It was then I realized that among the ancient doors, sheets of very heavy glass, handles for tools that no longer were made in the Western Hemisphere, and tables made by logic deprived peoples, was a nicely painted molding I could use along one wall in the garage to dress it up. It was only six-thirty in the morning; I figured I would find the molding still on the pile. But after searching for ten minutes I discovered someone had taken it in the narrow window between eleven in the evening and six in the morning. The suspects: nocturnal people, aka: insomniacs; better known as Salvage Zombies.

While I pondered how the zombies worked, a beat up old red pickup truck pulled to the curb. A dark black man got out and he began looking longingly at the pile.

I said, "I had a plank out here and now it's gone."

"The zombies took it," he said. "They get it in the night."

"Zombies?"

"Yeah."

I noticed his interest in the junk. I said, "See anything you like?"

"Yes, sir," he said, "I'm wondering if you have any metal I could have. You see, I salvage metal.  I take it to a place by the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium and they pay me for it. That's how I survive."


I introduced myself and he said his name was Henry. I asked him how he got into this line of work. He said he had been laid off so many times he had déjà vu. Then he had the epiphany that the only solution was to be self-employed because, while we are often our own worst enemies, we don't bite the hand that feeds us. Normally that hand is attached to our own bodies, unless of course we are salvage zombies, in which case it is often walking around on its own in the street at night, like that hand, ‘Thing,’ in the old Addams Family TV show.

Henry said that the metal he takes to the recycling center is crushed and shipped overseas to countries such as Japan, where they make it into products such as cars and the shells of audio equipment. So I said, "You mean to tell me that the next time I buy a car from Japan that I'll be driving around in a reconstituted pile of junk like this?

"That's right," Henry said.

"Cool," I said. "So you're not a salvage zombie?"

Henry said, "No, I'm not a hard core night zombie if that's what you mean. I'm a day zombie. Those freaks work all night and sleep in the daytime. They're scary. I have seen them before."

 "You mean," I said, "They are like the creatures who lived below ground like in the book by H.G. Wells?"

"Don't know no H.G. Wells," said Henry. "All I know is I start early and quit early, 'cause I am a daytime salvage man. I ain't no zombie, no sir. Never gonna be one of those."

I liked Henry. I liked him because he took the bull by the horns. I think he was swell. I helped him load all the metal from my pile. I held the heavy doors up so he could pull out some old metal window screens. I said to him, "Henry, when we get to the Promised Land, will you stand up for me and tell God I helped you out? I'm depending on you Henry, to stand up for me when that big celestial finger is pointing at me and saying how I screwed up. I want you to raise your hand and say, ‘Excuse me, sir, but this here man is all right.’"

Henry said he would do that for me. And then Henry and his metal laden truck drove off into the dawn.