The Rhythm of the Bins

Wednesday night. Bin night.

Calum stood at the back door in his slippers, holding the kitchen caddy, and stared into the dark like a man waiting on a sign from above. Green or blue. Blue or green.

He didn't check the calendar. He never checked the calendar. The calendar was for people who did not, in their bones, know the rhythm of the bins, and Calum was not such a person. Calum was a man who felt the fortnight. He could tell you, walking past a row of wheelies on a Tuesday afternoon, what colour was due on Thursday, the way a shepherd can predict weather from a sky.

The trouble was last week. Last week, he was almost certain, had been blue. Which would mean tonight was green. Unless last week had been green, in which case tonight was blue, in which case the entire scaffolding of his recent memory was suspect, including, possibly, what he'd had for his tea on Sunday.

He stood there and thought.

Months ago... God, was it only months? He'd put the wrong one out. He'd come down in the morning, opened the curtains, and through foggy eyes saw the unmistakable sight of a green bin in a long unbroken line of blue, like a man who'd turned up to a funeral in shorts. He'd brought it back in at speed. He had, he believed, gotten away with it. And yet the memory still arrived on the regular, in queues, in the shower, mid-sentence at work, a hot little jab under the ribs. The green one. In a row of blue. He would actually wince.

He looked at the two bins. He searched himself for the feeling of certainty and found, instead, the feeling of a man searching himself for the feeling of certainty.

"Aw, come on now, settle down Calum".

He wheeled the blue one to the gate. Stopped. Considered the green. Considered his own track record. Considered that a maverick still has to be right. He wheeled the blue to the kerb and parked it with the firmness of a man who had decided, definitely, this time, for real.

He went inside. He made tea. He did not look out of the window.

He looked out of the window.

The street was dark and quiet and his blue bin sat alone at the kerb like a single tooth in an empty mouth. His stomach did a small, specific thing.

Then, down the road, a light came on in Jim's porch. The door opened and Jim emerged in a coat over pyjamas, wheeling... Calum leaned forward, breath held, tea forgotten...

Blue.

Jim's blue bin rolled out into the lamplight and took its place at Jim's kerb, and Calum felt a warmth move through him that he had not felt since the birth of his first born. Vindication. Brotherhood. The quiet, holy confirmation that he was, for once, a man who had read the week correctly.

He raised his mug to the window.

Jim, who could not see him, went back inside.