BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 70

MAY 2012

DENNY GROVER

Kali's letters keep coming, David keeps throwing them away.

He just finished shredding the latest to arrive, throwing the pieces out the window on his way home from the Post Office—despite his detestation for litterers. He pulls into the museum parking lot, where Doyle leans against his pickup's hood. He is watching a backhoe to the trailer's south, its bucket buried deep and then rising claw-like, swinging to the west, then opening and dumping its load into a pile before reenacting the procedure.

David's eyes do the questioning and Doyle grins. "The County Agent said he could fund a soil profile station."

"And that is?"

"People will walk down in the pit, view the changes in the soil from the surface down to below frost level. Like the cutout of a body in the doctor's office."

David's bewilderment is apparent. Doyle laughs. "There'll be glass sides. Stairs. A narrow building to protect the trench. And the University is providing signage. To describe the soil types and such."

The backhoe driver looks at Doyle, who lifts his hand to indicate a halt. The machines' support arms raise and retract. It backs away from the trench, drives out into the lot, looking like a scrambling bug, idles down.

David doesn't recognize the driver but the driver recognizes him. "Mr. Burgess," he says, reaching a hand out to shake. "Just couldn't stay away, I see."

Sensing David's perplexity, he identifies himself. "Denny Grover."

David's minor look of shock stems from the strangeness of the moment: someone who has been here all his life categorizing David's return, simultaneously acknowledging the gravity that the area exerts—perhaps, David thinks, he tried to leave and never did.

They went to different schools, the Grovers west of the district line and the Burgesses east. They come from old families, the Grover lineage older by twenty-five years. Some people calling Danilson's Falls 'Archie's'—after Archie Grover, Tilden's first Mormon bishop at the end of the nineteenth century. He owned land adjoining the falls.

David remembers Denny lives up by the graveyard. Hence, the backhoe—you take what opportunity is afforded you out here, gravedigger being a paying job. He shakes his hand. There isn't much to say so he doesn't say it.

They walk over to the hole, eye it, Doyle says, "Looks good to me," turns to David, "Good to you?"

"Works for me," David shrugs. "I think I'll fit in there just fine." He turns to Doyle, takes his hat off. "Don't you think it's a bit premature, though?" He pauses. "After all, I'm not that old."

Doyle and Denny first look blank, then get the joke and laugh heartily. "Oh," Denny says, "I'd have made the hole neater if I'd known it was for you."

It's doubly funny to David, knowing his diagnosis.

"C'mon," Doyle says to David. "Lock 'er up, time for that tour."

***

We first went to the old Tilden pilings, then to the foundation of the Tilden school. From there to the Big Fill transfer and the recharge reservoir to its north. From there, a road goes by Horst's and meets the old CCC road. It's not exactly a straight shot from there—since that doesn't exist—to here at the foot of the Butte, so we wandered through the desert with Doyle pointing out various landmarks he was familiar with. He, not I, should be the museum director.

Doyle is multitasking. Checking his herd and giving me a tour. Every day or two he comes out to check the state of the grazing allotment and how fast the water supply is dwindling. We drove to the lake the cattle drink from, a low spot that winter snowmelt drains to, and saw it was nearly empty. Doyle didn't like that, knowing it was time to start hauling water. It also was a harbinger of the end of grazing. Soon, the BLM would shut the cattlemen down to protect perennial grasses. If the cattle pastured too long those grasses would not gain enough energy to manufacture seed, such a process ending up in an even more barren desert. It was that practice, in fact, Doyle said, that ruined grazing in the early days and allowed cheatgrass to take hold of the desert.

He asks me about family—Mormons are big on family—and I deflect his questions the best I can. He tells me the County's check 'is in the mail' and laughs, recognizing it as a cliche, then asks me if I have plans for the money. When I reveal that I wouldn't be the recipient of any of it, he gives a low whistle. "Family," he says.

We get as close to the Big Southern as is possible on the South side, Doyle asks me if I want to ride around to the north. I decline, tell him I'd been a lookout which piques his interest. I relate the time Horst started a fire that year.

We park, look up, the windshield framing the Butte. Neither of us speak, just let the desert's sounds—there is never silence, really, though we name the relative absence of noise just that—pass by. But I start up a coughing spell, one bad enough I have to get out of the pickup, bend and lean on my knees. "You all right?" Doyle asks, as the spell abates.

"Grain dust, forty years old. Need to take my lungs to Antique Roadshow."

He laughs. "Could be smoke from Horst's fire," he says. "You should get that looked at."

I ignore him. "Or spud dust from the cellar."

"Or the field," he says. "I remember windy days under a digger."

"Unforgettable," I agree.

I get back in the truck. "Too bad everyone doesn't get to have this tour," I say.

"If only everyone wanted to," he replies.

I let that comment soak in. "There is that," I say.

He starts up the truck, turns around, and we make our way back home.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston