BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 45

1958

DANIEL

A Spanish radio station plays. Doi-ink, doi-ink, doi-ink. Daniel enjoys listening to it for a very short time, and then his linguistic lack and his dislike of the repetitive beat annoys him. He turns the dial off to silence. His car faces westward. The Big Southern. Daylight, but coming from behind him so it must be morning. He knows where he must be, but where is he, specifically, and how did he get here? And when, when is it—is he dreaming?

A knock on the driver side window startles him. Through the glass he hears "Meester Blossom? Meester Blossom?" It's a Mexican face, a Spanish accent. He rolls down the window. Slowly. "Meester Blossom, you okay?"

It takes Daniel a moment to process the question, though he grasps its direction. He formulates a response. "I...I may be lost."

The man is accompanied by a boy, presumably his son, four or five years old. Daniel smiles at him, the boy smiles back but casts his eyes downward, shy. The door opens. "You come," the man says. "I take you home." He reaches in, gently holds Daniel's arm, he complies, stands, the man reaches into the car and turns the engine off, retrieves the keys.

"I know where you live," the man says, helping him into his own car. The boy sits in back, along with four other small children. The radio plays, the same Spanish station he had been absently listening to.

"You maybe no drive no more, Meester Blossom. Maybe not safe." Daniel looks off to the right, keeping the Big Southern in sight, watching the sprinklers' create ripples across the grain, potato and beet fields, some lines running east-west and some north-south, water droplets casting silver in the sunlight spraying across the valley. A numbing rhythm, visual in nature, competes with an auditory hum from the tires that enters the opened windows. He sets his hand against the metal stem that separates the wing from the rest of the window, like a child extends his fingers into the wind. In the back, the children laugh, seeing him do as they wish to.

Ruperto Ortiz lives behind the Rising River Cafe in a boxcar that sits parallel to several others. He recognizes Daniel, having seen him first when he lived at Taber in a similar dwelling a couple years back, as a fairly regular customer at breakfast time—gringos' breakfast time, not Mexicans', which comes three hours earlier. He, along with other retirees and some more important men associated with agriculture, those augmenting the business—field men, potato buyers, equipment salesmen—trickle in during off hours to while away a few minutes, make deals, sift through gossip. In the village squares back in Mexico a similar habit took place but with less effect.

Ruperto's new job runs through the winter, one more step toward prosperity, however distant that still might be. It entails staying to work on equipment in Yamada's shop, which is warmer than the boxcar they live in. There, a small water heater and a cookstove provide the sole heat, and the kids sleep on the floor between them on the cold nights of December and January. A bucket serves as the bathroom at night, the cafe allows them use during the day.

"You make canal, eh?"

Daniel's memory moves, just a little, like a dog sniffing out something that's been there before him. A remnant.

Word moves around fast, you see someone unusual and you ask who they are, someone else probably knows. Blossom, not famous by any means, nonetheless is known as part of the canal building team, and some even further his reputation as its most important cog even though that isn't necessarily true. It's handy, though, to sum up a person in a sentence or two, place an image that seems concrete on something far more fluid.

A bit of it comes back. "Long time ago," Daniel says. "Long time ago."

Ruperto laughs. He half-turns to the children, "This man, he make canal," he says to the two oldest in English, then repeats it in Spanish to the two younger ones not yet in school. They'll be coming up across both the Skeen Canal, which Blossom was involved with—though not at this stretch, that was nearly a decade earlier—and the United.

Daniel doesn't remember the building of that stretch, but his memory retrieves the story somehow. "Mormons," he says, chuckling. Then, he recoils. "My car," he says, his voice at the edge of frantic.

Ruperto pats his leg. "We bring. Meester Yamada get. 'S okay."

The name Yamada reaches him. "We couldn't use Asian labor," Daniel says vacantly. "We could have finished quicker but they wouldn't let us use Japanese like the railroads could. They laid a mile a day."

They make their way to Daniel's home, Ruperto has made this trek before, several times. Last year once, this year more often. Blossom knows the way out, just forgets the way in. The same thing sometimes happens at Aberdeen, a longer trek, the German has told him.

The distant past is closer, the nigh-present is farther, places appear, then disappear. Ruperto helps Daniel to his door. Daniel thanks him. He understands, now, what has happened. Though he is embarrassed, his self-disgust is greater than his shame. "Keep the car," he says. "I shouldn't be driving." He shakes his head, goes through his unlocked door, Ruperto watching.

© Ralph Thurston 2025