The trash company raised the rate and I called to complain like everybody else did. We’re outside Zanesville, Ohio. Thirty-one dollars a month for one can at the end of my driveway. The woman said my bill was ninety-three, and when I told her that couldn’t be right because it came out of my bank automatically, she said, “Yes ma’am, ninety-three. Three services.” She read me the addresses. Mine, a house on Adamsville Road, and a vacant lot with only a driveway and gate.
I drove to the one with the gate on a Sunday. There’s a camper back in the trees with power running to it, a burn barrel, and a dog on a chain that didn’t bark at me. Somebody had been living there for eleven years on my trash bill. I asked the company when the second address was added, and they said both extra services had been active since 2014. Then I asked whose name was attached to the account. They said mine. I asked who requested the second pickup. The woman put me on hold for a long time and came back sounding different. She said the original request had been made in person, with identification.
I went home and pulled my old bank statements because I wanted to know exactly how much this had cost me. Eleven years. Two extra addresses. Every month. Then I went back to the camper and looked at the mailbox. It had a name on it in stick-on letters: my husband’s last name, and a first name I’d never heard before. I called my son and asked if he knew anybody by that name. He said no, then asked me why I was asking. I told him about the trash service. There was a long silence. Then he said, “Mom, don’t go back there. Dad told me about that place years ago.”
