We all stood in a circle wearing tank tops and holding shovels. It was Dump Day baby, and we were gonna score big. We yelled and hit our chests and flipped our ball caps around so that the brims shaded our necks. We took our sunglasses and put them on the backs of our heads, under the caps, to make fake faces, faces that would scare away any bobcats that might try and get the drop on us, up on ol’ Dump Hill. We couldn’t chase out the bobcats - they needed their dump food -  but they were mean as hell, and we didn’t want one of them to get their big sharp teeth in our big cool muscles.

Mikey opened up the big book and read out all our names. He called the names of the living and the names of the dead and also a couple names he made up to make us laugh. Names like “Ass Charleston” or “Poop Dennis.” Everyone agreed he was the best at making up names, the best in our group. That’s why he kept the book and that’s why he called roll.

Two by two, we buddied up to watch each other’s backs and make sure there’d be no fatalities, not this time.  My buddy was Morg Dorgo, like usual. Morg was a good guy. He didn’t laugh when I told him my big secret about how I’m afraid of creeks ever since my granny said they’d close up around your foot during an earthquake. He’d just nodded and said he’d try and be more careful around them. I felt safe with him on my team. He could deadlift a lot of weight, like almost two hundred pounds. If a bobcat came after him, I’d decided I’d swing my shovel and hit it in the face, even though we weren’t supposed to.

Once we were all buddied up, with our caps backwards and our sunglasses on, we rolled out. We laughed and high-fived and pretended our shovels were guitars. We were gonna live forever, all buddied up and safe, all flexin’ and struttin’ up the old dirt road to the place where the garbage lives.

You could see the dump from far off, trash birds a-swooping and a-diving like a big cloud of giant flies with feathers and beaks. It stank, a big stink that rolled downhill and across your face, a stink that got into your clothes and your skin and your hair and your cool backwards hat. You’d get home and everyone would know you’d been down digging through the big piles of thrown-out stuff. They’d call you names like dumpy or dump-o or dumperino, names that would hurt your feelings, even if they were true, even if you were a dumperino.

Everyone’s favorite dumperino was Jo-Johnny. Jo-Johnny was our water carrier: he had a big red wagon that he had filled up with Evians. We all loved water. We craved the stuff. And we were gonna need it, ‘cause that sun was blasting down on us like a seagull with a ray gun. Jo-Johnny had a big heart- not just in the way where people say you have a big heart if you try and take care of baby birds that fell out of their nest but also in the way where his actual medical heart was the size of like, a big ol’ honeydew melon- and he always made sure that his boys were hydrated.

 He went out every Dump Day Eve to the gas station down by the overpass to load up on clear gold, splash fuel, sweet aqua syrup, the wet stuff that goes in your body. That was where the bottles were the cheapest and there was the least amount of broken glass on the sidewalk, so if he fell down he wouldn’t get too cut up. And Jo-Johnny, he fell down a lot, because of his great big medically large heart. The doctor said he was a twisted miracle, but then doctors aren’t very careful with their words.

“Hey Mingus! You gonna find more toilets this time? You a big toilet boy?” Ralph Macchio was cruel. He never let Mingus forget his big big mistake of digging up a buncha ‘lets that he thought were gonna be like, car parts or gold or something. The rest of us had razzed him for it, sure, but Ralph Macchio, he had something inside of him that wouldn’t let go, like a dog biting a bone that was still on a skeleton that was in an alive body.

Ever since Ralph Macchio starred in the Karate Kid movies he thought he was a big shot. Well, maybe he was a big shot. He got to wear nice clothes and eat craft service while someone rubbed his feet. He would show us the pictures every Dump Day and laugh and say how good an everything bagel was. I’d never had an everything bagel, but they sounded pretty good. Anyway, Charlie Mingus was a bigshot too. He made up jazz music, and he’d written a pamphlet on how to get your cat to use the ‘let like how humans do. I thought it was crazy but one time he’d had us over to his place and sure enough, his little Scottish Fold flushed down his little cat turds. Maybe that’s why Ralph Macchio picked on him so much.

He kept going, “You gonna get some more toilets for your toilet cat?”

 I turned away. Those two shouldn’t be buddies. But Mingus just opened his mouth and laughed. He had a laugh like the kind of music he made, which was jazz music.

Pretty soon we were there, the dump sign rising up on the top of Dump Hill like a lit-up Christmas tree that wasn’t lit up and was just a big flat piece of wood with words stenciled on it. Words that said “CITY DUMP.” We all trudged up the hill to just under the sign and started to make our dump plans.  Last Dump Day, Morg and I had to do burial duty, so we got first pick this time. We called dibs on Radiator Ridge, where all the radiators from old houses got taken. It was a primo spot, ‘cause even if you didn’t find nothing new, the big pile of radiators made a nice shade so you could sit around and tell jokes and watch the seagulls fly in and out of the holes where they’d made their seagull nests. Plus, sometimes there was jewelry in the radiators that people had lost before their houses got torn down or renovated or whatever. I’d found a wedding ring once. There was probably a story there, I’d said to Morg. Morg had agreed. So sad. Then we’d sold the ring to a pawn shop and used the money to buy matching tattoos that say RING FINDERS.

Mikey and his buddy Pump Dunkler wanted to hit up the Car Graveyard. They’d heard that a lambo got smashed up into little lambo pieces in a big crash and ended up there. Rumor was the back end was still primo though, so they were gonna go and pose like they were in the back seat of the lambo and take pictures that hid the front, pictures they could show to people and tell them they’d been in a lambo.

Ralph Macchio and Charles Mingus took forever to pick their spot. Mingus wanted to go to The Pumps, and Ralph Macchio kept sayin’ it was dumb, or fulla‘lets, or he’d just make a fart noise with his mouth, which at first was funny but got old fast. He did it so long we all started to boo and tell them they had to go to the Fight Hole. “Go to the Fight Hole!” we yelled. “Fight in the Fight Hole!”

That made Ralph Macchio scared. He didn’t wanna go to the Fight Hole.

 He hung his head and said he’d go to The Pumps, even if it was definitely fulla‘lets. But his voice was all small, and I don’t think he really thought it was fulla’lets. It would be weird if it was, since it’s a bunch of old pumps.

Once the rest of the guys finished calling their spots, Jo-Johnny handed out Evians and told us he’d see us on the other side. He said it was his last Dump Day. He said the doctor told him if he kept pulling big heavy carts full of water on hot hot days he’d die. Jo-Johnny hadn’t wanted to stop though. He told us how much we all meant to him. He said we were like brothers, or sons, or dads to him. He told Ralph to stop being so mean, because even though he got to eat little cheese pies and pre-sliced meats while he got his feet rubbed it didn’t mean he got to be a big time jerk. He told Mikey how much his funny names made him laugh. He said he remembered when all this was forest. I think that last one he made up, because he wasn’t that old.

Then he sat down in his red wagon and he died. The wagon started rolling down the hill with his body in it, almost like he was sledding. We all saluted. It was how he wanted to go.

 I felt my eye make a tear come out as Mikey took out his book. He crossed out Jo-Johnny from the “Alive” page and he wrote his name on the “Dead” page. Then he thought of a new funny name and wrote it down on the “Funny Names” page. It was “Butt Fartington.” We all agreed that it was very good, and that Jo-Johnny woulda liked it.

None of us laughed though. We were all too sad. Even Ralph Macchio was crying a little.

It was funny, Jo-Johnny’d cared so much about keeping us hydrated, and now we were pushing water out of our bodies for him. Not funny like the name “Butt Fartington,” but funny like when you think about life and you come up with something that doesn’t make sense, even though it does.

Jo-Johnny’s body was rolling down the hill, getting faster as it went. It almost looked like he was steering the little red wagon he’d used to carry so many Evians for us. He went faster and faster, little tiny wheels kickin’ up a big big tail of dust behind him. Eventually you couldn’t even see the wagon. Just the dust tail. And then even that was gone. It was like he drove his wagon home. When we went back down the hill that night we’d see he actually fell off the wagon pretty early and got eaten by some bobcats, but right then we all thought it felt important.

We wiped away our tears. I scraped mine into my Evian. We couldn’t stand there crying all day. Jo-Johnny wouldn’t have wanted that. Two by two, we went through Dump Gate, shovels in one hand, Evians in the other. It was Dump Day baby, and we were gonna score big.

Max Kreisky lives in Boston with his wife, where he produces the audio drama True Tales of the Illuminati. You can find him on twitter or blusky at maxtothek. He has had sketches aired on BBC radio 4 and written scripts for other audio dramas, and this is his first published short story.