“Yeah!” Sophie said. “And that teddy bear with no legs!”
“Those are so cool,” Grace said. “I hope we find something cool like that today.”
I just hoped I wouldn’t lose any of them on a conveyor belt or to one of the massive trash pickers.
We’d been to Jake’s plant before and the truth was, just calling it a recycling plant didn’t really do it justice. It was funded by the state and what it really did was sort people’s trash in an attempt to recycle as much of it as possible. So they started with large piles and continued sorting it down until they were down to what was truly waste. The plant itself was a maze of conveyors and robots and there tons of places to view the process. Fun and educational and helping to save the planet.
Like, three of my favorite things.
We saw one familiar car in the parking lot and the kids hurried out of the SUV to go look for their friends the conference room. Jake was there, waiting for us, when we walked in.
He kissed me on the cheek. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I said, peering into the room.
Brenda Witt was seated at the table with her five kids. The youngest, baby Mary, was snuggled in a baby carrier against her chest.
Brenda grinned when she saw me. “Hey, Killer.”
I smiled. “Knock it off or you’re next.”
Brenda and I had been friends since Thornton and I moved to Minnesota. Actually, we’d been friends before—I’d visited a few online homeschool groups before the move, trying to figure out co-ops and what the local homeschool culture might be like. Brenda had responded right away and a friendship was born.
“You’re gonna have to fill me in on what happened,” she said. Mary squirmed and a cry tore from her. Brenda fumbled for the pacifier attached to the carrier and gave it back to the baby, who sucked it furiously, eyes closed, her brow furrowed.
“Let’s just say I would have much rather been in Florida with you guys this last week,” I said.
She nodded sympathetically, her short brown bob bouncing up and down. “And not just because of the weather, right?”
“Exactly.”
I set my purse down on the table and glanced out the window that faced the parking lot. No one else had arrived yet for the tour. I shifted my gaze to the clock mounted on the wall. Our tour was supposed to have started five minutes ago.
Brenda read my mind. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Probably hiding from the murderer,” I said bitterly.
She frowned. “What?”
“Oh, everyone apparently thinks that since Olaf was found in my house, I’m suspect number one. Even though we didn’t know we had a coal chute. Even though I’d only met Olaf one time. For a total of two hours. You know, completely logical.”
Brenda rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I hate people.”
I stifled a smile. “Me, too.”
I didn’t hate all people and neither did Brenda. But what we did hate were judgmental, narrow-minded people. Well, and people who walked slow and people who tail-gated us and people who cut in line at McDonald’s. Homeschooling might have been the foundation of our friendship but it was our kindred spirit-ness that was the glue that bound us together.
Jake walked back into the conference room and looked around. “Is this everyone?”
I’d checked the sign-up document online right before we’d left. There had been six families signed up. A total of eighteen kids. With Brenda’s five and my four, we were only at nine.
I sighed.“Apparently so.”
“Okay,” he said. He hesitated, and I knew he wanted to ask questions. But the kids had all stopped talking and were watching us with eagle eyes, wondering what was going on. Jake cleared his throat. “We’ll get started in just a few. And just to warn you ahead of time. We have another group coming today, too. A bigger group.” He leaned into my ear. “A public school group.”
I made a face. “That’s fine.”
“Well, you usually talk about school groups like they carry the bubonic plague,” he said, grinning. “Just wanted to prepare you for the invasion.”
As homeschoolers, we were spoiled. We never waited in lines at amusement parks or museums or zoos because we went during the day, when most kids were in school. Anytime we saw the yellow buses roll up, I’d cringe a little. Not because I disliked public school kids—Jake and I both went to brick and mortar schools and we had one kid currently enrolled—but because it usually signaled the arrival of a crowd we weren’t ready for and lines we hadn’t anticipated.
“We’ll handle the invasion just fine,” I said. “No turf wars or anything. I promise.”
He winked at me. “Excellent. Give me a minute and I’ll be back and we’ll get started.” He trotted off down the hall.
I settled into the seat next to Brenda and, in a low voice, filled her in on what had happened. The 4-H meeting. The sign-ups at co-op. The crazy sister and ex-wife. She sat and listened, even while Derek, her two-year old, attached himself to her pant leg and Drew, her five year old, babbled loudly about Mario Brothers. She didn’t judge and didn’t offer advice; she just listened. And it was exactly what I needed.
Jake finally came back with another employee at the plant. It was someone I didn’t recognize, an older, grizzled man wearing a flannel shirt, jeans and worn work boots. He greeted us with a grim smile and he and Jake went through the basics of the place—how it worked, where the trash came from, what they did with the materials they collected and recycled. He played a short video that showed everything he’d just explained in action. When the video ended, Jake and Gus, the other employee, herded us into the hallway and distributed hard hats to everyone. After some persuading, Brenda convinced Gus that a hard hat would not, in fact, fit on Mary’s head and that she would do her best to shield the baby with her body instead.
“It doesn’t smell as bad as it usually does,” Will said as we walked.
“That’s because it’s winter and it’s not as hot, so the garbage isn’t ripe,” I said.
“Ripe? Like a piece of fruit?” Grace yelled, trying to be heard above the whir of the machines.
“Something like that,” I called back.
Will wrinkled his nose. “You mean gross.”
“Right. Gross.”
“Good,” Will said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and made a face. “Normally, I want to vomit when we go out there in the big recycling room.”
“Well, let’s hope for no vomiting today,” I said.
“I hope for that every day.”
I rolled my eyes.
Jake took us through a series of doors that led to a massive storage building where the garbage was dumped. It was roughly the size of an airplane hangar. Trucks drove in through a large door, dumped their haulers into a massive pile of trash and then drove out another door. There were mountains and mountains of trash. Bulldozers then dug into the mounds, lifting trash and moving it onto the conveyor belts, where men in little booths used mechanical arms to sort through it as it rode past them. Whatever they chose to remove from the belts was then put in another bin for the next level of sorting. It was all incredibly efficient and made my heart flutter to actually witness something that was truly helping to make the planet a better place.
It was what Jake called my “hippie vibe.”
Whatever it was, it was in full force as we walked into the storage building.
Jake spoke to the kids about what they collected and where it all went after it was sorted and the kids were starting to ask questions about the weird things they found when the next school group was brought into the observation room.
The group was roughly five times the size of ours and the kids looked like they were Grace’s age, either 2nd or 3rd graders. They crowded toward us, squealing with excitement, awed both by the size of the room and the mountains of trash. One kid started to wander off from the group toward one of the trash piles, but was quickly herded back to the group by one of the adults with the group, a woman who looked oddly familiar. Long brown hair. Thick-heeled shoes that looked more appropriate for a fashion show than a field trip.