Every day I walk the path. There's sixty-seven dumpsters out here, two thousand one hundred and eighty-two lines to step on. Some days it's two thousand one hundred and eighty-three or two thousand one hundred and eighty-one. Some days it's other numbers. Two hundred and fifty-seven telephone poles. Miss one, they'll fall. Turn around to stop it, turn around for each one missed. They go uncounted, the untold will happen. But I count them, count them all. Step on every line else turnaround. Stop the counting for a moment, the sky will fall, the ground erupt. I see the signs of destruction everywhere, the slit and leaning slabs and poles, the repeating numbers of 1301331, the way the perv on the bench in the house yard giggles, the S upside down on the church sign. Three taps for that one. I step carefully for fear the earth'll crack open. I've seen it in my mind and the other part of my mind tells me it's all made up, but I'm so afraid of what I'll see if I let the vision go on. The only relief is to keep to it.

But these bottles—ahh, they're a test. Get them mostly from the dumpsters, but sometimes they're on the path. I check each one, you know—have to. I know the ones apt to have food you can eat so I check those. The others, just lid up lid down. I wouldn't want to see something I might be responsible for. But every day it's something different with the bottles. Most days they won't line up, but I make them. I keep it to myself, but I gamble on the exact combination and I don't know till they're set if it'll be okay. I pay attention to the middle, find the very center the length of each. They have to touch and they can only be put down once. I reckon it's right I don't know what'll come each day—it's my penance for counting so well. Sometimes I find as many as a dozen, some days none. I drink it all straight away—they have to have something in them, you see. Empty, they're already run out of power. It's just, once I touch one and pour the liquid from it, I become responsible for what's been let loose. Once my fingers touch the bottle, I'm obliged to drink it if it has something in it, and then I'm responsible for setting it right. So I drink it all and put the empty bottle in my satchel. They clank and scuff. I see them in my mind, banging and rubbing, and they weigh on me, cloud my mind until I can set them down. But I can't set them down, see, until I'm done with everything else. It's the last thing I do. But I think about them the whole time, how they can fit together. Counting the poles, stepping on the lines. Takes all I got. I picture them in my head, the brown one with the long neck, the tall plastic one with the curved sides, the squat can. I see their middles, imagine them lying there, and arrange them in my mind until I can see the right pattern. I carry them around chattering like they do till I finish counting and I put them to rest. It's the last thing I do.

I got a place over by the TV towers where I stay. It's a little opening under one of them tall bushes up there by the wall. The hedge is hollow inside, doesn't grow because I live there at night and guys before me I never saw lived there. Can't see it from the street, coming or going. You gotta walk right up on that bush to see it. That's where I go when it gets dark and the weather's dry. That old guy stays on the other side in the bus stop—he's there too usually. But not always. I keep to myself but sometimes he comes around. Says the FBI is talking to him through the towers, says they have a mission for him that he refuses on account it's murder and he won't be a stooge for the government. He says they're after him now, because he won't take the mission, and now they're reading his mind with these signals and manipulating his thoughts. He warns me to stay away, asks if I don't hear it. I say, You're crazy man! They can't read your mind! But it doesn't help. I see him there at the corner staring up at them towers yelling nonsense and pointing and waving his arms around like he's swimming up to meet them. He goes on too long, people call the police and he gets picked up. But he comes back around. He can't stay away.

I lay out the tarp and the moving blanket, run my hands over each until they're completely flat, no corners folded under. And then I tie up the other tarp to the underside of the branches with wire ties from stash. I pull up the cart close and unload my satchel—my plastic bags, the day's catch—till there's just the bottles, and then I take the sack with the bottles, jittering from having that whole thing to themselves, and I walk round to the street where there's a flat spot raised up a little bit. Some kind of conduit runs under the ground there that pushes it up. It's warmer and dryer, and flatter. The bottles won't roll. A caretaker comes by once in a while and takes the bottles—has no idea!—and then I have a lot of space to work with. But most of the time I work with space that's left from the day before. I can only lay them once. So I stand over it, the picture in my head, and I look at the ground. They can't roll. They have to touch; they have to be perfectly lined up, just like in my mind. I open the bag and look at the bottles, how they've arranged themselves, challenging me, and I look back down at the spot. Three times. Long before short, dark before clear, glass before plastic, two shapes before one. Size and shape over kind. Plastic always in the middle. I reach for the brown bottle with the long neck, twisting my hand round backward so that when it comes out I can turn it around right and set the bottle down, its lip perfectly lined to the wall, the bottom edge to the sidewalk. If it shifts as it sets, blink two times. I set it down firm and straight. Coors it says, right up at the sky. Then I reach for the plastic bottle with the curvy shape that don't line up with the middles of the other bottles. It's upside down in the bag, label facing the wrong way. The center of it is just a hair past the narrowest part of the curve where your hand is supposed to grip, below the words so the words won't line up. Blink twice. Why do they make them like that? I already see it in my mind, the middle of the brown bottle two-thirds the way up the wide part and the tight part of the curve of the plastic bottle, all lined up, the tops and bottoms jagged and awkward, but it'll be right. I set the plastic down harder than the glass because the plastic'll blow if there's a breeze. They must touch but the bottle can't move neither. I hold it there a moment, till I sense it'll stick and then let go. It's right. Arrowhead. Now the can. Only three today. Squat but square, already placed as far as I'm concerned. Also light. The letters 100% span its belly across the middle, and the middle is right up under the curve in that damn plastic bottle. I reach in the bag and pinch it at its exact center, words facing my palm so words get placed up. It goes down swiftly, lightly, and flush. I know it's right if it's like the wind shifts and hides; wrongly and it's six turns per bottle to ratchet them up tight. But tonight, it's right. Now I can sleep.

I lay down on the blankets, pull the sleeping bag out of its bag in the cart and spread it out on the blanket. Take off the shoes and set them at the bottom edge of the tarp under the thickest part of the limbs and the lowest edge of the tarp, tips along the edge. Zip up the bag, pull the edge up over my head. I close my eyes and see the poles falling behind me. I try to think of other things but they keep coming back, one falling right after another. Can't stop them.