Insights from The Returnables (2026) main character:
My name is Gary, and this is a book about what America pays you back for the things you return. The answer is five cents. It doesn’t matter what you return. Cans, bottles, dreams, husbands, the twenty-six years you gave to a job that ended with a sheet cake and a handshake from a man named Ted who could not pick you out of a lineup. Five cents. The machine takes it, the machine grinds it, the machine spits out a slip of paper you exchange for money at a register run by a teenager who hates you personally. This is the deposit system. It’s the most honest thing this country has, and I say that with love, from Buffalo, where honesty and winter are the same thing.
I found this out because Elvis was in my garbage. I want to be clear that I’m not speaking in metaphor, the way people say their marriage is “on the rocks” or their uncle is “at peace.” Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, dead since 1977 according to sources, was going through my recycling at seven in the morning and had opinions about how I store my cigarette butts. I’ve been reprimanded by presidents of homeowner associations and one very angry nun, and I’m telling you, nothing prepares you for getting a lecture on can hygiene from a man in a studded jumpsuit pulling a child’s wagon with mustard on it. I’m not going to explain the mustard. The mustard explains itself eventually, and when it does, I’d like you to remember that I warned you and you kept reading anyway.
What you need to know for now is this: some things get thrown out, some things get returned, and there’s a difference, and the difference has a paperwork process, and the paperwork process has an elf. Everything you’ve lost is sitting somewhere in a sorting facility off the Thruway waiting to be redeemed, and the redemption rate, as previously discussed, is five cents. My lawn is dead. There’s a car I don’t look at directly. A bag showed up at my house with nothing in it, and it turns out nothing is the heaviest thing a bag can hold. I used to think the worst thing that happened to me was the incident, which I’m also not explaining yet. Then Elvis called me a pinheaded prick in my own driveway, and my real life started, and God help me, I went and looked inside the bag.
(Available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle.)
