Remainders

... a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too ... 

     "Very well, then!" cried the woman. "Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose? ... Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.  ... I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it.  We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It's no sin.  Open the bundle, Joe." ...

     "What do you call this? ... Bed-curtains? ... You don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

     "Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

     "You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

                               --Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave Four

In a Florida neighborhood, a vast mound of belongings on the side of the road usually means eviction--a sad enough circumstance.

Very rarely, it means that someone has died, which is crushingly sad. This happened on our street, where a pile of belongings began slowly accumulating in front of the house on the corner. There, a brother had been caring for his cancer-stricken sister, who had occupied two rooms of the house and, her son said, had filled them as only an eBay addict and hoarder can do.

Day after day, new objects and mysteries were brought out to join the growing mass on the curb.

A file cabinet, its drawers fastened shut with duct tape as if to protect its contents; a perfectly serviceable chest of drawers with brass handles; endless black garbage bags stuffed with clothing; a spangled black dress-up purse; wooden shelving; a New York Daily News Michael Jackson memorial issue, along with thirty years of other newspapers deemed worthy of preservation; empty boxes of Quaker chocolate-chip granola bars; a Santa doll, bottoms up, atop the heap; the mingled odor of floral dryer sheets and Vicks VapoRub; old prescription bottles; three TV monitors and an Xbox, for passing the time away; tassled decorative cushions in Oriental-carpet fabric; rolls of stained red-shag carpeting; a mattress or two, in equally poor repair; copies of For Love of the Game and How to Make Money with Gold Coins; somehow, a full-size refrigerator; a single-size headboard with a mirror that must have overseen the last days of this woman's life. A lone ceramic angel stood guard at the head of the line of trash, wielding an empty candlestick.

Who's the worse for the loss of all this? All of it meant something to its owner and, if only for that reason, deserves peace and respect.

But whenever there is a heap of stuff like this, it becomes clear to human scavengers that someone means for it to be gone, and quickly put out of sight. They soon appear, to remove, first, items that contain salable metal, silver or copper; next, usable furniture; then, goods of progressively lesser value.  Until rain and wind finish the job by eroding the rest, and the remaining pile is scooped up by the county or Waste Management.

In a chilling moment reminiscent of the ragpickers' scene from A Christmas Carol, a pair of large women pull up in their sedan to sort through what is left of this other woman's life, as her dogs bark impotently inside the house. One of the women sits down in the midst of the heap, the better to appraise its contents. The other bends double like a migrant worker, picking and discarding, for over an hour. Even a package of Peeps that must have been decades old disappears into their trunk. I was tempted to remark in passing, "She died of ebola, you know," if only to see them shriek and scatter like startled vultures.

I wasn't bold enough.