National CleanUp Day started, as far as Gary can tell, as one guy with a trash bag getting annoyed at a ditch. By Saturday it was forty-one people in gloves, three wheelbarrows, and one folding table of donated bagels, all descending on the retention pond behind Oleander with the energy of a very polite invasion.

Guardian showed up first, quiet and early, to stage an extra roll-off for the big stuff — a rusted bike frame, a waterlogged recliner nobody wants to talk about, half a fence somebody's yard had apparently been missing since spring.

Atlas idled at the curb for the cart runs. Bertha took the regular route around it, because Tuesday doesn't care what day the calendar says.

Gerald Files a Formal Complaint

Gerald has run that dumpster and its surrounding ditch for the better part of a decade. He was, understandably, not consulted about the cleanup schedule.

He arrived at the strip mall dumpster at his usual hour to find the ditch behind it already picked clean — every bottle cap, every mystery tarp corner, every item of what he considers long-term inventory, gone into somebody's contractor bag.

Gerald sat on the dumpster rim. He did not move. He did not blink. Diane sat beside him with an expression Gary would later describe as "personally offended." Steve, for his part, tried to climb into one of the volunteer's wheelbarrows and had to be gently redirected.

Gary crouched to Gerald's level, the way he does.

"I know, buddy. I know it's a system. But the system needed a refresh."

Gerald did not accept this explanation.

The Truce, With Coffee Cake

The truce came the way it always does. Russ produced coffee cake from the cab, because the note in his day-one notebook has never once let him down, and set it on the crate at a respectful distance.

Gerald considered the cake. He considered the empty ditch. He considered his own dignity, weighed the two, and climbed down to accept the tribute like a man settling for a very good severance package.

By noon the retention pond was clear, the ditch was clear, and forty-one volunteers had filled six giant contractor bags plus whatever fit in Guardian's roll-off. The bagel table ran out of everything but the plain ones, which nobody wanted, which is the natural law of every bagel table in America.

Somebody found a shopping cart from a store that closed in 2011. Somebody else found seven dollars in loose change, which they donated to the parish poor box, because that's just the kind of morning it was.