The Night Before

Behind you the bats have gone out over the highway. In the alleys the scavengers start up, the ones the street calls Mochis: knee-high boxes on small wheels, each with a flap at the belly where the salvage goes. By day they work the gutters for foil, bottle caps, cut wire. Tonight they come out one at a time and line up in the street, facing the creek. The first goes, and the rest go after it at its speed. A tin lid. A coil of copper. Half a hubcap showing at a flap.

Not one of them stops for a bottle cap.

You walk beside them down to the water with the jar against your hip. At a bridge the first waits for the last. Across it there is a steel owl, and past the owl the library is lit on every floor, and on the steps a folding table stands against the rail with a notice taped to it: THE BINS. POLLS OPEN TOMORROW, SEVEN IN THE MORNING.

The line leaves the steps alone and turns round the side of the library to a low annex.